"Roar—!"
A deafening roar echoed through the corridor, nearly cracking the alloy walls and floor.
Covering his ears, Meng Liang's face twisted in agony.
Poking half his head out to look down the corridor, he could practically see concentric shockwaves of dust kicked up by the massive impact.
"Holy crap... This thing is wicked!"
Ducking under a howling, lethal blow, Battlefield Guy glanced at the door slab embedded in the wall behind him, vibrating like a tuning fork, his face turning slightly pale.
Good grief!
What kind of Battle Mistress Sivir was this?
If that had sliced into someone, even Brother Guang would probably be cut clean in two...
He had thought they were facing a shield warrior, but unexpectedly, with two loud clangs, the Decayed Knight had hurled the "shield" and "sword" in its hands at him and Su Ming like javelins.
"Damn it..."
Taking a solid blow from a rebar spike straight to his chest, Su Ming struggled to push himself up from the ground.
Ignoring the searing pain burning across his chest, he forced his dazed mind to focus, grabbed the Gauss rifle lying on the floor, and aimed it at the monster standing at the end of the corridor.
"Die—!"
The instant his index finger pulled the trigger, electrical arcs flashed!
Countless kinetic slugs burst from the barrel, showering toward the far end of the corridor like a torrential downpour, sparks dancing wildly across the Decayed Knight's armor.
Unfortunately, it failed to pierce the armor!
The Decayed Knight reached out with its right hand, clamped onto the door slab of an adjacent room, and with a violent heave, ripped it completely off its frame.
Both men's expressions changed. As Battlefield Guy kept pulling the trigger, he bellowed toward Su Ming.
"Not enough output! Can that thing of yours... charge up?!"
He remembered that Ye Shi's Gauss rifle could increase the penetration of a single mass slug by charging it.
A fully charged lethal shot could even penetrate the armor of a Conqueror tank!
Evidently having realized that the evolved organism's defense was absurdly high, Su Ming took a deep breath and braced his weapon before Battlefield Guy even finished his sentence.
The numbers on the battery indicator plunged rapidly, and pale blue arcs danced at the front of the capacitors as terrifying energy built within that ominous barrel!
"I need time!"
"How long?" Watching the Decayed Knight act as if taking a full magazine was nothing, Battlefield Guy gritted his teeth and asked while swapping magazines.
"Ten—"
Before he could finish, a howling gale swept in. The Decayed Knight standing at the end of the corridor suddenly exerted force through both feet, rocketing forward like an artillery shell.
Its sweeping, wide-open onslaught caught both of them off guard.
The swinging door whipped up a hurricane. A single collision batted Su Ming and his rifle flying through the air, incapacitating him, followed closely by a horizontal slash aimed at Battlefield Guy, swatting him into the corridor wall.
"Cough—!"
Battlefield Guy, having accidentally bitten his lip, spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva, glanced at his rifle snapped in two, and tossed it aside.
Thank goodness he had instinctively blocked just now; otherwise, that single strike alone would have been enough to send him straight back to spawn.
At the thought, Battlefield Guy broke into a cold sweat.
Such terrifying strength—
Quantified into game stats, it would probably exceed a hundred!
Worst of all, its speed and defense were not lacking in the slightest, bolstered by absolute defense as hard as a turtle shell and the tenacious vitality unique to slime mold.
Even if an occasional bullet pierced a weak point in its armor, it was nowhere near enough to inflict a fatal wound.
This was simply not an engagement on the same level!
"Damn it..."
Gritting his teeth, Battlefield Guy drew the short sword at his waist. As the Decayed Knight lunged at him once more, he slashed violently at its head.
A dull clang rang out!
He felt as if his short sword had struck a mountain, the shock rattling through the webbing between his thumb and forefinger with a brief, sharp sting. Before he could recover, the door slammed into his chest and sent him flying.
The ballistic plate across his chest caved inward. Battlefield Guy let out a muffled groan and slammed heavily onto his back.
Not far away, on the Decayed Knight's head, that toothpick of a short sword had merely shaved off a layer of dark-red creep.
His full-strength strike had failed to leave even a scratch on the helmet.
Then again, it made sense...
That was power armor, after all.
Battlefield Guy let out a self-deprecating chuckle, thinking that had he known the evolved organism they would encounter was a Decayed Knight, nothing would have convinced him to come here.
Yet regret was useless now; his only solace was that he had seized the chance to save his progress earlier.
Step by step, the creature walked up before him.
The Decayed Knight raised its right arm high, the door gripped tightly in its hand poised to smash Battlefield Guy into meat paste.
Yet right at that moment, its movements suddenly froze.
Opening one eye halfway, Battlefield Guy noticed that where his sword had struck earlier, a palm-sized eyepiece was exposed.
Previously, that spot had been covered by thick creep.
Behind the eyepiece flickered an unsettling scarlet glow, when suddenly, concentric ripples of pale blue swept across the lens.
The completely paralyzed power armor—its reactor long shut down—seemed to awaken after some program was triggered.
Limited electrical current surged from the backup power supply, and mechanically driven servos engaged in reverse, completely arresting its motion and locking that high-raised right arm rigidly in place.
Even though the flesh beneath the steel had rotted away—
His lingering willpower still governed this invincible suit of armor.
With a hiss of venting gas, a cylindrical fusion cell ejected from the armor's back. At the same time, a low growl laced with static slipped from the helmet.
"Kill... me."
There was no time to hesitate.
Having regained the ability to move, Su Ming gritted his teeth, pushed his upper body up, and hurled a cylindrical plasma grenade straight toward Pangolin.
"...The silver pull ring is the switch! Jam that thing into the power armor's battery port... on its back!"
Understanding his intent before the sentence was even finished, Battlefield Guy snatched the grenade rolling before him, quickly rolled behind the Decayed Knight, and ripped out the fusion cell on its back.
Then he pulled the grenade's pin and shoved it with all his might into the loose battery port.
"Get clear!"
Without needing Su Ming's warning, Battlefield Guy completed the sequence and instinctively dove forward.
Almost at the exact same moment, blinding white light erupted behind the Decayed Knight, bursting sparks scattering along with dancing electrical arcs.
Solid-like plasma flooded into the power armor, instantly charring the slime mold filling its interior to cinders.
"Roar—!"
A roar of agony shook the entire corridor.
As if drained of all strength by that searing white flash, the scarlet light clinging behind the tactical eyepiece gradually faded, and the armor completely lost power, slumping slightly forward before collapsing heavily onto its knees.
Seeing that the evolved organism was finally slain, Battlefield Guy, lying on the floor, exhaled in relief. After panting for a long while, he gritted his teeth and dragged his electricity-numbed body back to his feet.
At some point, Su Ming had walked up in front of the power armor, clutching his Gauss rifle and gazing at it in silence for a long time.
Prying off his caved-in chestplate, Battlefield Guy walked over to his side.
"Someone you knew?"
"Yeah."
Su Ming gave a quiet nod.
Battlefield Guy's Adam's apple bobbed.
He had already guessed this person's identity, but asked anyway.
"He's..."
"Captain Lu."
Without saying more, Su Ming reached inside the helmet's opened faceplate, retrieved a black card affixed to the interior, clutched it tightly in his palm, and finally slipped it into the interlayer of his exoskeleton.
That was a backup of the power armor's mission logs.
The recordings inside might explain what had truly happened here...
Hearing that things had gone quiet outside, Meng Liang nervously walked out from a side room.
Looking at the power armor standing motionless there, he swallowed hard.
"Is it over?"
"Yeah, it's over," Battlefield Guy said with mixed emotions, turning his gaze toward the room at the end of the corridor. "The Administrator's office is right ahead."
The three pressed forward.
Battlefield Guy reached out to touch the sliding door, expecting some mechanism to block their path, but the door slid open with ease.
Behind it lay a simply decorated room.
There was only an empty bookshelf, an office desk, a chair, and a terminal sitting on the desk.
Meng Liang hurried forward. After booting it up, his hands flew across the touch keyboard, but after trying for ages, he still could not log into the system.
"Use this." Su Ming walked up beside him, patted his shoulder, and handed over the hard drive Yun You had given him earlier.
"Thanks."
Feeling embarrassed, Meng Liang took it and plugged it into the port on the terminal's side.
As the intelligent hacking program imported and he ran through a series of operations, he finally obtained the password to the Administrator's terminal.
"The power station's fire suppression system has been activated, and the broodmother has gone dormant... Looks like that Wilante and the Academy researcher were one step ahead of us." Meng Liang breathed a sigh of relief, slumping into the chair as if a great weight had been lifted.
In truth, just as Yun You had said, the terminal in the Administrator's office might not have been able to bypass core permissions to scram the reactor in the power station.
Fortunately, they had prepared a backup plan, dispatching a team to the power station to manually activate the fire suppression system. Otherwise, they might be facing trouble far worse than that evolved organism right now.
"Regardless, the intel here is something we need as well." Su Ming cast an interested glance toward the terminal. "What's stored inside?"
"I'm looking right now, hold on..."
Meng Liang's fingers tapped rapidly across the virtual keyboard, quickly decrypting the secured files stored in the terminal and pulling up all the data within.
"Project Torch..."
As he read through the documents opened on the screen, the further down he went, the tighter Meng Liang's brow furrowed.
Noticing the shift in his expression, Battlefield Guy asked at once.
"What does it say?"
Meng Liang remained silent for a moment, then finally shifted aside slightly.
"See for yourself."
Looking at the text on the screen, Battlefield Guy was completely dumbfounded.
Although he had no major trouble with daily conversation, spoken language and written text were two entirely different matters; with the handful of characters he recognized, he was practically illiterate.
Especially with specialized technical documents like this, he couldn't even make sense of the abstract.
Fortunately, Su Ming stepped in and read aloud, resolving his illiterate dilemma.
"'...When all light has been extinguished and the world plunges into boundless, eternal night, we shall raise high the torch, dispel all darkness, and rekindle the spark of civilization.'"
Battlefield Guy could not help asking, "What does that mean?"
Staring intently at the screen, Meng Liang lowered his voice.
"It means exactly what it says... The purpose of the entire 'Torch' Project was not to solve any existing problem, but to completely reboot a process stuck in a death loop after all other plans failed."
Pausing, he continued.
"This was not a conventional shelter initiative; it was essentially a form of shock therapy."
Battlefield Guy stared at him blankly.
"...Was there really a need for that?"
Perhaps because he was a player, his mindset remained that of a player, and so he felt this world was not entirely terrible.
Although the Wasteland Era was undeniably like a rotten apple compared to the Era of Prosperity, he felt it had not rotted so thoroughly that it needed to be wiped out entirely once over.
There were still many people living on this land who, in their own ways, were forging their own civilization atop the ruins.
Meng Liang took a deep breath and continued, his eyes fixed on the screen.
"I can only try to understand it from their perspective... Clearing the ruins across the wasteland does present certain difficulties—marauders, mutants, sub-humans... And those are merely minor problems compared to the even deadlier mutant slime mold, something hard to eradicate completely even with nuclear weapons."
"According to the original project proposal stored in the terminal, the initiators of Project Torch attempted to customize a specialized system primarily composed of two parts: the 'Flame' and the 'Handle.'"
"The former's objective was to eliminate over ninety-nine percent of organic life on the planetary surface with minimal side effects, leaving behind a pure and unblemished environment. The latter's goal was to preserve the remaining one percent of organic matter beneficial to a new civilization, stored inside a container called the 'Handle.'"
"In their envisioned scenario, once the 'Torch' was ignited, surface organic life would be harmlessly purged, and the screened organisms preserved in the 'Handle' would be released. At that time, the surface ecological environment would gradually recover to that of the Era of Prosperity—or even earlier."
Staring blankly at the text on the terminal, Su Ming's face was filled with disbelief.
He could not bring himself to believe it.
That Shelter 0—rumored to end all suffering in the world and bring down the curtain on the Wasteland Era once and for all—was actually such a terrifying thing.
"...So the premise of this project was to kill everyone on this planet?"
"Yes," Meng Liang nodded, his expression equally complex. "More precisely, to kill all organic life outside the 'Handle.'"
"Back in the Human Alliance era, a terrifying project like this could actually secure a budget?" Battlefield Atmosphere Group could not help swallowing hard.
Even as lore in a game, this sounded absurdly extreme.
Meng Liang scrolled further down through the proposal's contents, fell silent for a moment, and ultimately offered a defense for the Human Alliance.
"This sinister project was not funded by the official Human Alliance government. Like many private shelters and commercial sanctuary initiatives, its budget was primarily sourced from private capital—to put it bluntly, sponsored mainly by a handful of social elites. Although the project was regulated by Human Alliance authorities like other commercial shelter initiatives, its activation sequence belonged to the final tier, so the authorities considered it safe."
"...How could that ever be considered safe?"
"Relatively safe, since this apparatus would only be activated after confirming that all shelters and other sanctuary programs had collapsed. In other words, by that time, there would hardly be any living humans left on this planet, with only mutants or other things remaining."
Pausing, Meng Liang continued.
"A project like this could hardly gain public support, so the planners concealed its full scope. Most participating researchers only knew a fraction of the plan. For instance... if you were a researcher in the 'Flame' group, you would likely believe you were developing a secret weapon for the Human Alliance. If you happened to be in the 'Handle' group, at most you would know you were helping develop some fortified shelter facility."
"However, the project ultimately failed. One reason was that time ran out, and another was that a researcher uncovered the conspiracy hidden by the upper echelon... When they realized they were being used to construct a weapon that might kill them, nearly everyone stepped forward in opposition."
"Although the project's initiators repeatedly insisted it would only be triggered after all sanctuary programs failed, people were no longer willing to trust those lying elites."
"Project Torch ultimately collapsed before consuming even twenty percent of its budget... While countless sanctuary projects went bankrupt during the final years of the Era of Prosperity, a project collapsing due to collective opposition from grassroots personnel was exceedingly rare."
At this point, Meng Liang could not help sighing inwardly.
The entire project was like a product of accidents.
Its existence had been an accident, and its collapse had been an accident as well.
As for whether the Human Alliance authorities had ever been tempted by the 'superweapon capable of wiping out ninety-nine percent of organic life on the planetary surface' mentioned in that unfinished blueprint, no one knew.
Everyone who had taken part in the project, whether opponents or supporters, had already turned to dust in history.
"...Where is that unfinished data now?"
As he asked this, Su Ming glanced inconspicuously at Pangolin, his hand unconsciously drifting toward the sidearm at his waist.
Before coming down here, he had never imagined Shelter 0 would be this kind of place.
Yet things had come to this, and Pandora's box was already open. Whether Project Torch had been completed or not, data related to that plan could never be allowed to fall into the hands of the Wilante.
Coincidentally, the man he was guarding against was thinking the exact same thing.
If it were merely a few black boxes or a few suits of power armor, letting the Legion take a cut wouldn't matter much; the Administrator wasn't that petty.
But the nature of this thing was entirely different...
It threatened not just the Alliance, but every single person on this planet.
If it truly fell into the hands of the Wilante, there was no guaranteeing those big-noses wouldn't commit even more heinous acts... No one could say for sure how it would end.
Staring intently at the screen, Meng Liang's expression grew solemn.
"The data stored on the shelter's server was deleted."
"Deleted?!" Su Ming stared at him dumbfounded, his expression cracking. "They only deleted the experimental data... while leaving the project proposal behind?"
"The proposal was released to the public after the project collapsed, so it wasn't confidential. Furthermore, it's stored in read-only mode within the main server's core program. Unless one obtains full Administrator privileges... this terminal alone can't delete it."
At this point, Meng Liang's fingers suddenly paused on the virtual keyboard.
Noticing the change in his expression, Su Ming pressed immediately, "What is it?"
Meng Liang hesitated. Considering that he was alone here and that Enterprise was an ally, he ultimately came clean.
"The method used to delete the data wasn't very sophisticated. Given some time, it could actually be restored... No, actually, until two months ago, someone had continuously been attempting to recover the deleted data. Some terminals in the Sector X-13 archives show frequent database access logs, and as of two months ago, the restoration was already complete."
"However, whoever restored it didn't upload the recovered data back into the database... It was likely saved onto something like a portable hard drive."
"Sector X-13... The Pioneer crew members seemed to be right there," Battlefield Guy said in a low voice, simultaneously glancing at Su Ming's right hand while unconsciously moving his own closer to his weapon.
An eerie atmosphere hung over the room.
While Su Ming wrestled with what to do, Battlefield Guy was equally torn over whether to confess his identity as an undercover agent.
Was it really a good idea to let Enterprise know he was actually an Alliance mole?
Snatching the data under his Legion identity and having Ye Shi bring it back to the Alliance was another option... In any case, what happened down here might never be known outside.
Compared to those ancient survivor factions, the Alliance was still far too weak... But if they could master the weapon described in Project Torch, perhaps it would grant the Alliance the leverage to stand on equal footing with the fallen empires.
Of course, it might also infuriate them completely.
Battlefield Guy found himself between laughter and tears, realizing that the button deciding the course of world events seemed to have been shoved into his hands once again.
What should he do?
Countless thoughts flashed through his mind at lightning speed.
Even back when Weilichi had incited him to assassinate Griffin, he had never been as conflicted as he was today.
"How strange."
Not noticing the two men beside him harboring their own hidden agendas, Meng Liang stared straight at the screen, muttering softly to himself.
"...And here I thought they were the ones who deleted the data."
...
The shelter's power station.
Inside the reaction chamber housing the reactor, the dark-red broodmother pulsed rhythmically, like a human heart.
The reactor at the center had been nearly engulfed by it entirely.
It was clearly evident that with each pulsation, the broodmother expanded slightly more than the last, and its frequency was increasing as well.
Watching the incubating follicles through the floor-to-ceiling window, Wali, holding his assault rifle, felt his scalp prickle with numbness.
Right now, only a single window separated them from the broodmother.
Although newly hatched fruiting bodies couldn't smash through that window and rush him head-on, flanking behind them through the corridors along the power station's perimeter wouldn't be an issue at all.
Seeing one of the follicles rupture and an unrecognizable organism crawl out from within, Wali could not help urging her.
"Hey, Academy girl, how much longer?"
"Almost."
"If you were under my command, dammit—"
"Shut up."
Ignoring the crude Wilante, Jiang Xuezhou stared expressionlessly at the console, her hands clattering across it in a flurry.
Finally, breaching the last firewall, a look of relief broke across her face.
"Done?!" Wali asked immediately.
"Yeah."
Lifting her hands from the interface, Jiang Xuezhou turned her gaze toward the window beside them.
Almost simultaneously, in the reaction chamber separated by a single wall, ceiling panels opened outward. Milky-white crystalline mist cascaded downward like a waterfall, drenching the broodmother attached to the reactor.
The pulsating broodmother contracted instantly, recoiling aside as if electrocuted, while lashing out fleshy tentacles in an attempt to plug the source of the coolant.
It had to be said, this creature was indeed intelligent, and its survival instinct was remarkably clear.
Yet before coolant capable of chilling a nuclear reactor, such a level of struggle was entirely futile.
Including the follicles tethered by tentacles, the broodmother that had been bursting with vitality a second prior was frozen solid in an instant.
Even the moisture in the room's air froze into ice crystals, and a layer of white frost condensed on the inside of the window.
Seeing the broodmother frozen, Wali finally let out a breath of relief, lowering his rifle as his taut nerves finally relaxed.
"Nice work."
Jiang Xuezhou ignored him, merely gazing transfixed at that world frozen in time by frost, becoming somewhat entranced for a moment.
So beautiful...
Though snow fell often enough in the Wandering Marsh, she had rarely appreciated it like this.
Just then, an untimely cough came from beside her.
"Hey, I know you can't stand me, but I'll tell you anyway. Next, I'm heading to the Administrator's office to regroup with my servant. If you want to stay here, that's up to you, but if you're coming with me, hurry up."
"Who wants to go with you?" Jiang Xuezhou rolled her eyes, but remembering her destination was the same, she gritted her teeth.
Wali grinned, propping his rifle onto his shoulder.
The crisis had passed.
The broodmother was the greatest threat here.
Yet at that moment, an ominous premonition suddenly surged through his heart. Almost by reflex, he brought up his muzzle and flicked off the safety.
"Get down!"
Seeing the Wilante's sudden reaction, Jiang Xuezhou's eyes went wide with astonishment.
"What are you—"
Before her words could land, gunfire erupted without warning from a corner of the room.
"Rat-tat-tat—!"
Almost at the same time, Wali snapped his muzzle around and pulled the trigger, yet the volley of bullets seemed to hit an invisible air wall, merely splashing open rings of distorted ripples.
Taking three rounds to the chest and one to the shoulder, Wali groaned and collapsed backward onto the floor.
And from behind the spreading ripples where his assault rifle had emptied a burst, a slender figure materialized.
The newcomer wore a lightweight exoskeleton. Beneath a chestplate cracked by bullets was a blue coat.
She held a suppressed pistol, and her toned musculature and the scar below her neck clearly indicated that her prowess was anything but ordinary.
Right now, a hint of dishevelment marked that wheat-toned face; evidently, Wali's preceding burst had not been entirely without effect on her.
Yet compared to Wali lying on the ground, she was in far better shape.
Optical camouflage?!
Shock seized Jiang Xuezhou's heart, and she immediately ordered, "Xiao Wang, kill her!"
Yet no sooner had her words fallen than, before her robotic dog could fully deploy its weapon systems, an EMP grenade rolled right beside it.
Simultaneously, the intruder stepped forward, kicked away the defensive pistol in Jiang Xuezhou's hand, and followed through with a powerful hand clamping tightly around her throat.
"Guh—!"
Starved of air, her face instantly flushed a dark, bruised red.
She felt as though her neck were gripped by iron tongs; no matter how she struggled, she could not budge it in the slightest. Then she was hoisted clean off her feet by that single hand.
The fluid sequence of movements was so fast she could not react at all.
Then again, it made sense.
She was not frontline combat personnel to begin with, whereas the speed, strength, and experience of the person before her were on an entirely different level.
Sizing up the little lamb dangling in her grasp, the woman let out a scoffing click of her tongue.
"Too weak."
Panting on the floor, Wali quietly gripped the pistol concealed at his waist to seek an opportunity, squinting as he stared at that unfamiliar face, unable for the life of him to remember where he had seen her.
The only thing he recognized was that blue coat, familiar to any wasteland resident.
Although not everyone wearing it was a shelter resident, it was unmistakably the standard issue of every shelter resident.
"Who are you?"
"Guess?"
Even as she said it, the woman gave him no chance to guess, nor did she intend to leave any opening for this untrustworthy fellow.
With a casual flick of her right hand holding the suppressed pistol, she aimed at his upper body and pulled the trigger, firing until the magazine was completely empty.
Half his face shot into mangled flesh and blood, Wali lay silently in a pool of blood, the pistol in his right hand slipping from his fingers.
Watching her teammate die in an instant, all color drained from Jiang Xuezhou's face. She stared in horror at the person clutching her throat, her entire body trembling uncontrollably.
Especially when the woman looked back at her, she felt for a fleeting moment as though her heart had stopped beating.
"Hmm, your face is actually quite pretty."
Studying that terror-stricken face, the woman's eyes shifted, and an unsettling smile spread across her wheat-toned complexion.
"Now it's mine."
Ignoring Jiang Xuezhou's frantic struggles, the woman retrieved a C-shaped pair of spectacles from her waist and forcibly pressed them onto her face.
A green indicator light blinked.
The moment the neural link device was fitted onto her, Jiang Xuezhou shuddered as if struck by lightning, after which her tensed muscles and nerves slacked completely.
Confirming the victim had entered the virtual realm, the woman smiled, patted that fair cheek, and dropped her into the corner.
"Enjoy it slowly."
"No need to thank me for letting you recall a few pleasant moments in the final moments of your life."
Leaving those words behind, she reloaded her empty suppressed pistol. At the same time, her wheat-toned skin was gradually replaced by a pale complexion unexposed to sunlight.
The shifting optical projection altered not only her facial features and hair color, but even her clothing, without missing a single minor detail.
However, compared to the broken optical camouflage, this holographic cosmetic system was far from ideal.
It failed from too far away, failed from too close, and could only serve as a brief makeshift disguise.
To truly become another person completely, one still had to carefully read their memories and undergo cosmetic surgery.
Once she returned, she would consider doing so.
If the esteemed Master Guixu deemed it necessary to recycle that female researcher's identity...
Removing a timed explosive from her waist, the woman affixed it to the nearby floor-to-ceiling window.
Casting one last glance at the frozen reactor, she turned and left the power station, heading toward Sector X-13.
The operation on the surface should be nearing its end.
The phase cannons deployed nearby were sufficient to cripple those two airships, and the forces led personally by Master Guixu would launch their assault at the same time.
Now, it was time for her to awaken her slumbering kin and reclaim what rightfully belonged to them from this ancient ruin...
Chapter 508