Down You Come!

In conventional games, the go-to strategy was naturally to pile on the most expensive gear, but Wasteland OL was a completely different story. Equipment, level, and player experience were each merely one factor determining victory or defeat in battle, never the whole picture. Overly realistic hitboxes and physics systems often filled combat with unpredictable variables. Much like rolling dice. An experienced fighter had higher odds of rolling a higher number, but a minor blunder or a split second of hesitation would force the dice to be rolled again. If he could reload a save, Ye Wei swore he would never spend a million silver coins on an iron coffin like a total sucker. Although the OD-10 Dragoon was equipment designed for orbital drop divisions, its lightweight design was only relative to the T-10 Champion. It was intended to be air-dropped into cities to support armored units and lighter infantry in urban warfare, so its armor still had considerable bulk. If one truly wanted to parkour and bound between skyscrapers, they needed a Special Ops model with greater mobility and a far lighter build. It would be even better with active camouflage and chemical thrusters. "Cough—!" Inside the pitch-black shaft. Jolting awake from his blackout, Ye Shi twitched like a reanimated corpse atop the elevator cab, coughing as he sat up from the caved-in steel hull. "Damn it, I'm finally back online!" Yellow exclamation marks flashed across his tactical visor, but fortunately, the power components and mechanical structures were undamaged. Flexing his limbs and confirming that the servo motors in every joint were operating normally, Ye Shi finally breathed a sigh of relief and scrambled nimbly to his feet. Had the power armor's shock-absorbing liners not dissipated part of the impact, that drop alone would have sent him straight to the respawn screen. At the thought, Ye Shi broke into a cold sweat. An antique from two centuries ago, patched up and used to this day, could still function after plunging fifty or sixty meters. Era of Prosperity tech was truly something else. Still, with that long string of yellow exclamation marks... he would most likely need an overhaul when he got back. His awareness had fully returned, and a sense of impending danger crept into his mind. Knowing he shouldn't linger, Ye Shi swiftly leapt down from the wrecked elevator cab and shoved it aside with the brute force of his power armor. Ripping away the elevator doors and stepping into the corridor, Ye Shi caught sight of the number on the wall: B4. Holy cow. What a deep drop! He quickly located the floor map on the wall, wiped away the dust with his hand, and soon pinpointed his position and the emergency stairwell. "...Turn left at the corridor corner." To be safe, he snapped a photo. But just as he was about to leave, a faint sound reached his ears. "Haaah—" It sounded like a beast panting. Sudden and eerie in the pitch-black corridor, it made every hair on his body stand on end. Immediately following came the crunch of boots treading on dust, echoing from the far end of the corridor and drawing steadily closer... "Damn it... this was supposed to be a fun, lighthearted game, and you turned it into a horror survival for me." Cursing under his breath, he slung the overly long Gauss rifle onto his back and unholstered the LD-50 carbine at his waist. The enemy already knew he was here, so stealth was pointless. He clicked off the safety and smoothly chambered a round. Just as he expected, the footsteps didn't hesitate in the least. The enemy seemed certain he had nowhere to run, pacing forward step by step as if toying with prey. Ye Shi fixed his gaze on the end of the corridor. When he got a clear look at the figure stepping around the corner, his pupils constricted sharply. It was a green-skinned giant wearing a heavy steel helmet that practically brushed the corridor ceiling, his broad shoulders taking up half the hallway's width. His knotted muscles resembled piled blocks of granite, and his gripped right hand held a chainsaw as tall as half a man. Even more chilling was the left side of his body: from the waist up to his head, it had been completely replaced by cybernetic machinery, and his left arm was mounted with a massive-caliber barrel! Holy shit?! A cybernetic mutant?! What twisted lunatic operated on this thing?! "Olu." That guttural growl sounded like a battle cry, or perhaps its name. The guy seemed intent on taking him on in a one-on-one duel. Swallowing hard, Ye Shi tightened his grip on his weapon, turned on his loudspeaker, and introduced himself in his mother tongue: "Your daddy!" "Daddy..." Looking through the dark tactical visor, Olu read the panic in the human before him, and a cruel grin twisted the corners of his mouth. These ugly little human pests had been harassing them for quite a while now. He swore he would butcher this guy in the most brutal way imaginable. Utterly disregarding the little popgun in the human's hands, Olu revved and swung his chainsaw, making a provocative gesture. "...Damn, you're not even flustered seeing power armor?" Catching the taunt in the mutant's eyes, Ye Shi raised an eyebrow and decisively squeezed the trigger. Rat-tat-tat—! The burst of gunfire roared down the corridor as the LD-50's muzzle belched fierce tongues of flame, riddling one side of the hallway in a hail of lead. The cybernetic mutant didn't flinch. He slammed the heavy chainsaw into the floor. Its blade, two palms wide, acted like a shield, the converging rain of bullets carving leaping sparks across the metal. Too weak! Standing sideways, Olu stared coldly at the human at the end of the hall, a cruel smirk spreading across his lips. Yet at that very moment, things took a sudden turn. The human dropped the empty carbine, instantly snatched the Gauss rifle slung across his back, and shouldered it. Olu froze. Inside that cold, dark muzzle, he faintly glimpsed dancing electric arcs. It was already fully charged— But when?! "Eat shit and die!!" A piercing sonic boom detonated down the hallway, the searing projectile trail seemingly warping the air. Over a distance of less than twenty meters, the high-speed mass slug struck in an instant, blasting both the chainsaw and the mutant backward through the air. While spraying that green baboon with the carbine, Ye Shi had already engaged the charging switch on his Gauss rifle, switching to it the very moment his carbine clicked empty. At such close range, a direct hit meant certain death. Yet the warning bell ringing in Ye Shi's mind still refused to dissipate. "No way... This bastard's still alive?!" The capacitor's cooldown had barely ended when Ye Shi hit the charging switch again, intending to pump another slug into the green baboon. But almost the second his finger pressed down, a deafening blast erupted from the other end of the corridor. Boom—! A tremendous impact slammed into his chest plate, knocking him into a backward stumble. Then came two more booms in rapid succession; one shot blew apart the sagging door panel behind him, and the other drove him backward into the twisted elevator cab. "Roar—!" Blue smoke drifted from the massive barrel, fury blazing in bloodshot eyes. Struggling to his feet against the wall, Olu snatched up the broken half of his chainsaw. Refusing to underestimate his foe any longer, he roared and charged toward the mangled elevator. A few lead slugs naturally couldn't pierce power armor, but with enough brute strength, he had no doubt he could pound the bastard inside that iron coffin into meat paste. He no longer cared where this rat had come from, nor whether it was allied with the other little vermin. All he wanted now was to see him dead! "Die!!" "Daddy—!" The broken chainsaw smashed down violently toward the fallen power armor, but the blunt impact of striking steel never came. Instead, the saw cleaved straight into the cab floor, its dull teeth wedged fast in the warped, crumpled metal. His attack had been anticipated. The human encased in metal rolled aside to evade the lethal blow, slammed against the side of the cab, and leveled his Gauss rifle. Olu wasn't about to let that happen; with a savage sweep of his left arm, the club-like gun barrel swatted the high-tech rifle out of Ye Shi's hands. Bang—! Flickering electric arcs discharged, and a searing projectile streak tore between them, blasting a gaping hole through the elevator cab. Olu bared his teeth in a vicious grin. Letting go of the stuck chainsaw, he threw himself atop the power armor, pinning down its joints, and shoved the fist-sized barrel directly against Ye Shi's neck. Yet something completely unexpected occurred. Almost the very instant—or perhaps a split second before—he pulled the trigger, the power armor pinned beneath him threw up its right hand, violently dragged the muzzle down against its own breastplate, and clamped down with all its might, practically welding the barrel against the armored chest. Olu's expression changed. He sensed danger instinctively, but it was already too late. The powder detonated violently. With nowhere to vent, the explosive pressure blew the breech apart, showering the interior of the cab with fiery sparks and scorched flesh. Olu shrieked in agony. The mangled remains of his left arm dripped blood, an unrecognizable ruin of gore and machinery as he stumbled backward onto the floor. Ye Shi's breastplate was left with a shallow dent from the kinetic force of the lead slugs. He grunted and slumped back against the ground; though battered, he was far better off than the psycho who had a gun barrel literally built into his flesh. "...I told you, I'm your daddy." Grinning, Ye Shi struggled to his feet and walked over to the mutant named Olu. There was no signal in the elevator shaft, so he didn't worry about the creature calling for backup. Still, considering mutants had the survivability of cockroaches, it was better to finish him off without delay. Sensing the approach of death, Olu struggled to push himself up, but Ye Shi gave him no breathing room. He unsheathed the combat knife at his waist and drove it ruthlessly into the mutant's eye socket. "Roar—!" The blade lodged in the socket. Olu bellowed in pain, yet he still wasn't dead, throwing a wild right fist at Ye Shi's head. His vitality was truly monstrous to be struggling even in this state. His helmet took the punch square on, but Ye Shi, bracing for it, merely swayed slightly. Without pausing, he swung his fist like a sledgehammer into the knife's hilt. Squelch—! The heavy vibration of metal sundering flesh and bone traveled up through his fist as the knife lodged in the skull drove straight through Olu's brainpan. Olu twitched as if electrocuted. Then the cybernetic eye on the left side of his face rolled upward, and he went completely still. Worried the monster might still be clinging to life, Ye Shi stabbed him several more times. The interior of the elevator was an utter mess, gore virtually soaking the floor. "Damn... Dead enough for you now?" Nearly drained of strength, Ye Shi exhaled, let go of the lifeless mutant, pulled out his knife, and looked around, clicking his tongue. This blood splatter could rival a B-movie. No, B-movies looked tame compared to this! How the hell was this a lighthearted game? Silently cursing Brother Guang in his head, Ye Shi picked up the Gauss rifle lying in the blood and flicked off the gore. The barrel had been bent by the mutant, but the Type 15 "Python" had a quick-detach barrel anyway, so it wasn't a major issue. Slinging the Gauss rifle onto his back, Ye Shi snapped a few photos of the cybernetic mutant's corpse, picked up some scrap components at random, and hurriedly evacuated the elevator cab to head for the emergency exit stairwell. Although Olu had come down alone to duel him, the big brute certainly wasn't the only one hunting him. Four or five mutants were crouched at the stairwell landing, palpable murderous intent practically bleeding into his retinas. But murderous intent aside, these minions were nowhere near as dangerous as the cybernetic elite monster he'd just fought. Knowing he probably couldn't push through their crossfire, Ye Shi simply backed out of the stairwell to Floor B1, slapped a block of C4 onto the ceiling, and turned into an adjacent room. "Down you come!" A wicked grin crept onto his lips as he squeezed the detonator. A deafening boom echoed through the corridor. The shockwave not only shattered the ceiling but brought down the entire aged concrete slab. The mutants guarding the ground-floor exit never had time to react before plunging down alongside the debris, crashing into the billowing dust. Normal humans would have died instantly, but mutants could shake their heads and recover after a brief breather. Giving them no chance to recover, Ye Shi strode over the strewn concrete chunks and put a round into each of their heads. The explosion inside the building drew the attention of patrolling mutants on the street. Not daring to use the front entrance, Ye Shi slipped out through the back door into the street. But almost the moment he escaped onto the street, blinding headlights flared to life on both sides of the road. Through his tactical visor, Ye Shi saw two armed pickup trucks armored with welded steel plates, the machine guns mounted on their roofs aimed squarely at him. "Fuck—" His face fell. Just as he moved to find cover, two missiles screeched down from the night sky, their fiery explosions swallowing the two technicals in an instant. Mutants engulfed in flames tumbled out of the trucks as rapid bursts of gunfire rattled from the opposite side of the street. At the same time, automatic gunfire chattered from across the street as Fang Chang, who had earlier covered the guerrillas' retreat, led his squad back into the fray. A familiar voice came over the comm channel: "Ye Shi! How's your status over there?" Hearing that voice like music to his ears, Ye Shi shouted in excitement, "Brothers—" "Cut the goddamn crap and get over here right now!!!" The gruff shout brutally cut off his swell of emotion halfway through. "Heh, copy that!" Chuckling sheepishly, Ye Shi bolted toward the rally point marked on his map without pausing for a second. Shouts from mutants echoed from distant streets, and raucous gunfire popped like firecrackers, nipping at their heels around every corner. Ye Shi soon rendezvoused with Team B led by Fang Chang, and together they pushed toward the extraction point. The extraction point was an open-air parking lot next to an abandoned building, merely three hundred meters away. A Viper transport sat right in the center of the lot. The group scrambled aboard, and the pilot immediately pulled up, piloting the VTOL transport toward the outskirts. The crisis was finally averted. Watching the illuminated half of the city recede into the distance, Ye Shi finally let out a breath and looked across at Fang Chang. "Didn't you guys bug out? What brought you back?" Before Fang Chang could speak, Jieyan clapped Ye Shi on the shoulder with a chuckle. "Bro, that's a million silver coins! Leaving you behind would've been a total loss!" Another squad member chimed in playfully, "Exactly. At the very least, we had to recover your corpse." Ye Shi: "Damn! That cold-blooded?" Fang Chang rolled his eyes. "Cut the crap. What in the world were you doing down there just now?" Recalling the adrenaline-pumping ordeal, Ye Shi sighed. "Long story. The mutants crept up below me trying to flank my ass. I sensed them early and planned to take the elevator down. But those bastards didn't fight fair—they probably heard the noise in the shaft and severed the cables from above..." "Good line of thought. If you were fast enough, they might not have caught on. But with that gear..." Fang Chang gave the power armor a skeptical look. "Weren't you afraid of getting wedged in there?" Ye Shi scratched the back of his head awkwardly. Remembering something, he immediately changed the subject. "By the way, those mutants were weird." Saying that, he detached the piece of scrap metal hung from his power armor. It was charred black and coated with scorched blood and gristle, utterly unrecognizable as to what part it had been salvaged from. Several players leaned in for a closer look, unable to make sense of it. Fang Chang frowned slightly. "This is..." Ye Shi's eyes shone brightly. "A cybernetic implant! I tore it off that elite mob—no, wait, off the boss." Hearing his answer, the players gasped in astonishment. "Holy shit?! Cybernetics?!" "On a mutant?!" "Are you sure you didn't hallucinate that?" Seeing these bastards doubt him, Ye Shi flared up. "How the hell could I mistake that? I literally drove a combat knife through his skull!" He launched into a vivid description of the cybernetic mutant's appearance and just how perilous the encounter had been. Only after talking until his throat was parched and his ego satisfied did he share the photos to his teammates' terminals, earning another eye roll from Fang Chang in the process. Jieyan, on the other hand, had listened with rapt attention. He usually believed whatever he was told, and his eyes had gone wide as saucers during the brutal grapple inside the elevator cab. Only after Ye Shi finished his boast did Jieyan marvel with lingering awe, "Man... since when can mutants undergo cybernetic surgery?" "It's not entirely incomprehensible. The higher-ups of the Church of the Torch aren't ordinary believers—they're Vault experts who use religion as a tool," Fang Chang said, brow furrowed as he stared at the photos on his VM screen. "Come to think of it, I felt something similar earlier... Neither their tactics nor their gear resemble an ordinary mutant tribe." Lao Bai also sank into thought. "Yeah. Especially those vehicles and weapons—they looked tailored specifically for them." The surrounding players exchanged looks. It seemed this mission to recover the nuclear fuel wouldn't be as simple as they had thought... The transport didn't fly back to base; instead, it flew a dozen-odd kilometers into the suburbs, touching down at the edge of a forest where the trees were relatively sparse. The great thing about this jet-powered VTOL was that there were no rotor blades to tangle in tree branches, so it could land almost anywhere. The other Viper sat nearby. The players who had evacuated earlier had built a campfire and were sitting around it. Alongside them were six guerrillas who had retreated with the players; two were critically wounded and unconscious. Seeing Lao Bai's group approach, Kuang Feng tossed the stick he had been using to poke the fire into the flames and stood up. Beside him walked an unkempt, scruffy middle-aged man wearing a scarf around his neck, a cement-gray coat, and an armband bearing an iron tower insignia on his arm, with an assault rifle wrapped in cloth strips and duct tape slung across his back. He looked like an experienced veteran. "Thank you for coming to our aid." "Don't mention it. Though I have plenty of complaints to lodge, and a whole bunch of questions to ask..." Lao Bai studied him for a moment before cutting straight to the chase: "Your name, who you are, and who sent you." Perhaps because the question was so blunt, the atmosphere stiffened. Aside from the two unconscious men, the other three guerrillas by the campfire tensed up. Still, they clearly understood that ragtag fighters like them were no match for these well-equipped "professionals," so they wisely refrained from any provocative movements. The man maintained a calm expression and looked at Lao Bai. "Li Jinrong. You can call us 'Iron Tower'—that's the name of our organization. No one sent us. We answer to no one, and we fight only for ourselves... When I saw you opening fire on those mutants, I assumed we could be allies." Lao Bai smiled faintly. "Whether we can be allies depends on your sincerity." Li Jinrong looked at him. "I believe sincerity goes both ways." Lao Bai stated his identity concisely: "Lao Bai, the Alliance. As for anything else, no comment. We saved your lives; I'd say that counts as enough sincerity." Hearing those key terms, a look of surprise surfaced in Li Jinrong's eyes. He stared at Lao Bai in disbelief. "The Alliance... You're from the Alliance? The Alliance from southern River Valley Province?" "That's right. Nothing proves our identity better than this baby," Lao Bai said, patting the LD-47 assault rifle mounted on his power armor and raising an eyebrow. "You've heard of us?" Li Jinrong gave a slow nod. "I heard you whipped the Legion in Sunset Province with shoddy, makeshift gear... Though it seems the part about shoddy gear was just a rumor." While the rifle looked rather vintage, power armor and VTOL aircraft... could hardly be called shoddy by any stretch of the imagination. Lao Bai could tell that upon learning they were from the Alliance, the man's guard, while not entirely dropped, had lowered considerably. Clearly, reputation carried its perks—just as traders from Yunjian Province liked to claim they were from Enterprise, whether they had ever set foot in Ideal City or not. Ye Shi chuckled and chimed in, "The shoddy part is definitely a rumor, though on the whole, those big-nosed bastards did have slightly better gear than us." Not wanting Ye Shi to derail the conversation, Fang Chang cut in, "Why the Champion Biopharmaceutical Research Institute?" Li Jinrong hesitated slightly. "Why, as in..." Staring into his eyes, Fang Chang continued, "If your objective was the mutants, that isn't their only outpost in the city. What do you know about that facility?" Li Jinrong curled his lip. "Mutants? We don't care about those green-skinned freaks. Our target is the torch-waving zealots." Jieyan: "The Church of the Torch?" "Yes... They destroyed our homes and butchered my family," the man said, every word dripping with venom as hatred flared in his eyes. "I don't care what their grand plan is. As long as I can tear a piece of flesh off them, I'll do it." "What a coincidence. We're not on good terms with those zealots either. They backed the Bone Chewer Rebellion; back in the Alliance, they're branded a cult." Pausing, Lao Bai looked at him and continued, "Our reason for coming to Jinchuan Province happens to be connected to those plague-spreading bastards. Does that facility have something to do with the Church of the Torch?" "I don't know, but after they arrived in Jinhe City, the very first place they visited was that institute. We trailed them all the way from Haiya Province to here... Unfortunately, we were too weak. The locals preferred them over us, leaving us to watch helplessly as they allied with the mutants and turned this land into a foul quagmire, doomed to repeat our tragedy..." As he spoke, Li Jinrong stared intently at Lao Bai. Lao Bai knew what was running through his mind. But this exceeded his authority; he needed to report the matter to the Administrator and let him decide. "We share a common enemy, so cooperation is possible. But I'm only a corps commander; I can't give you an immediate answer." "That's fine, we can wait!" To add weight to his side, Li Jinrong quickly added, "We have more than just the men here—we've got outposts near various settlements!" Lao Bai nodded. "I will report this faithfully to our Administrator." "Haiya Province? Where's that?" Ye Shi exchanged a glance with Jieyan, muttering under his breath. Jieyan scratched his head, completely clueless. Fortunately, Brother Fang Chang was there. "South of Jinchuan Province, located in the tropics. It has a long coastline, sprawling hills and mountain ranges, and only a handful of plains... That's supposedly the headquarters of the Church of the Torch." Looking out at the southern night sky, Fang Chang paused before adding, "The Death Coast is right there." That was probably the closest the Alliance could get to the sea.