Daring to Board My Plane Without Even Knowing My Name?

Hearing the servant's shout, Kong Lingkai froze at first. Soybean-sized beads of sweat rolled down his pale face. "Mu-mutants?! The ones from the urban ruins?!" But how was that possible? He had never heard of those mutants attacking nearby settlements! "Who knows, master! They all look the same, green like ghosts! They suddenly roared out of the woods and started shooting, setting fires, killing people..." The servant was almost in tears, babbling incoherently, but Kong Lingkai, standing atop the gatehouse, had no patience to listen anymore. The roars of mutants were already echoing from not far away. Judging by the sheer din, the town's militia didn't stand a ghost of a chance. He had zero interest in finding out how those man-eating beasts ate people. Right now, he only wanted to get as far away from this place as possible. Reaching out, he grabbed the guard beside him and roared, "Quick! Drag my plane out of the storehouse!" "Yes, sir!" The guard swallowed hard, nodded frantically, and spun around to dash off. The two players standing beneath the gatehouse were completely dumbfounded by the sudden turn of events. Mutants? An airplane?! "There are planes here?!" Starry River glanced around, bewildered. "Where's the airfield?" Luo Yu said nothing, staring ahead with his jaw hanging open. The wide wooden doors swung open, and several serfs clad in tattered rags wheeled out a propeller plane from inside. That plane was none other than a Goblin Technology product—a W-2 ground-attack aircraft! Mounted beneath it were two modified 20mm autocannons! Long ago, he had heard Mosquito bragging that Goblin Technology's planes were selling like hotcakes down south, but he had taken it as a joke at the time. Who would have thought it was actually true?! The farm owner who had previously worn the exoskeleton had already changed his attire and was now seated behind the pilot's seat. There was an extra passenger seat retrofitted there. Sitting in the cockpit's pilot seat was a pilot wearing goggles. The tense look on his face made it obvious he rarely flew under normal circumstances. "That works too?!" Starry River stared, utterly flabbergasted. "Like hell it works... just watch." Luo Yu tugged his sleeve and led the Little Yus aside to clear the way in front of the gate, watching with great amusement to see how these two NPCs planned to get airborne. To be honest, with no obstacles and the winter cold freezing the reasonably flat dirt road rock-solid, taking off wasn't entirely impossible. However, taking off from such terrain demanded immense piloting skill. Once the speed exceeded two hundred kilometers per hour, never mind an airplane—even a ground car would be bounced airborne for a moment by a single stray stone. He didn't believe that fellow, who was clearly a rookie, possessed that kind of skill. Nose-diving into the adjacent fields was by far the most likely outcome. An idea suddenly struck Luo Yu. "Hurry! Get us in the air!" Waving off the serfs who were pushing the plane, Kong Lingkai shrieked in urgency, digging his hands into the pilot's shoulders. "Yes, yes, sir!" Urged and barked at by his employer, the pilot hastily shoved the throttle forward. The propeller spun faster, and the plane slowly rolled forward. At that moment, an elderly butler came running out from the gate, hurrying alongside the aircraft. Looking panic-stricken at the man in the cabin, he asked tremulously, "Master! Master! What are we supposed to do if you leave?!" *Who gives a damn about you!* Kong Lingkai gritted his teeth and bellowed back, "I'm heading to Pinecone Wood Farm for reinforcements! Take everyone and run north! There's an abandoned mine there... take shelter there and wait for me to return!" Run? How could human legs outrun mutants! Those beasts were natural-born hunters; they would hunt them down just by catching their scent! The butler turned deathly pale. His mouth hung open to say something, but his legs could no longer match the plane's speed, and he tripped, sprawling face-first onto the ground. Watching the plane roll away, utter despair filled his eyes as he lay in the dirt. Yet that despair had not lingered in his eyes for even two seconds before the plane suddenly lurched, yanked off course by the propeller, and plowed straight into the field. The blade-like propeller sliced into the frozen earth and snapped with two loud cracks, while the right wingtip plowed into the dirt. The sudden crash battered both occupants half to death. The farm owner in the rear seat suffered especially, his chest violently slamming into the back of the front seat, contorting his face in agony. "Did you... are you trying to fucking kill me?!" "S-sorry! There's something wrong with this plane..." Glancing back in panic at his boss, then at the broken propeller and the jittery instrument dials, the pilot broke out into heavy beads of sweat, paralyzed with terror. He had only undergone twenty class hours of training at the airfield north of Dawn City, which was barely enough to know the basics of taking off and landing. After buying this plane, his employer had stashed it away in a storehouse and hardly ever used it; they had even turned the runway outside the hangar into a wheat-drying yard. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been forced to take off from this godforsaken dirt track. "The plane's fine. It's your flying that's the problem." A voice speaking broken Human Alliance language came from beside them. The pilot turned his head and jumped in fright at the sight of someone climbing onto the side of the cockpit. Before he could react, a hand reached into the cockpit and shut down the throttle. The drone of the motor subsided. Dropping down from the cockpit, Luo Yu walked to the nose, inspected it for a moment, and stroked his chin. "...Right wingtip snapped, propeller broken, drive shaft probably damaged too... Tsk, needs a complete overhaul." The pilot asked anxiously, "Is there time to fix it now?" "Are you kidding me? There isn't even a ground crew here," Luo Yu shot him a look, then added, "Do you have any other planes? Or is this the only one?" The pilot replied tremulously, "There's one more... We bought two." Luo Yu breathed a sigh of relief and turned to the farm owner, who was struggling to sit upright in his seat. "Hey, Farm Manager Kong, right? Let's make a deal." Kong Lingkai looked up at the mercenary standing beside the plane, then at the rifle slung across his chest, and swallowed hard. "...What kind of deal?" His private guards were all stationed over by the blockhouse, and his half-blind butler was lying in the dirt as if brain-dead. These bastards... Every single one was more useless than the last! If he were still standing on the gatehouse, he would never deign to negotiate any deal with this guy. Now, however, he had no choice but to listen. "I know how to fly this thing... Or put it another way, I flew one of these in the western desert to bloody the Wilantes' noses." Luo Yu gestured with his chin toward the broken-propeller aircraft and continued, "You want to save your skin, don't you? I'll fly you out of here. In exchange, hand over the people my buddy wants." Kong Lingkai's instinctive reaction was to blurt out that this was impossible. But on second thought, at a critical juncture like this, even if he refused, those people wouldn't survive once the mutants slaughtered their way inside anyway. Besides, from the way this fellow spoke, was he actually good at flying planes? Kong Lingkai stared at him, half-believing and half-doubting. "...Are you really from the Alliance?" Luo Yu put on a helpless expression. "Do you think I'm joking with you? You'd better make up your mind quickly; once it's too late, you're done for." Whether it was true or not, Kong Lingkai had no choice but to believe him. Glancing at the useless rookie sitting in the cockpit, Kong Lingkai gulped and nodded slowly. "Deal..." Seeing the man take the bait, a grin spread across Luo Yu's face. "Splendid. It's settled, then." With time running short, there was no room for delay. Led by the farm owner, Luo Yu quickly arrived at the hangar enclosed within the concrete walls. Through the open doors, he spotted Goblin Technology's industrial miracle (garbage)—another W-2 ground-attack aircraft. Perhaps intending from the very beginning to use these aircraft as escape vehicles, both had retrofitted cockpits, squeezing an extra seat into the already cramped space. Right beside the eastern wall lay a wide concrete runway, though it was cluttered with junk and covered in drying wheat. Kong Lingkai looked slightly embarrassed and coughed softly. "These servants don't know any better..." "None of my concern..." After checking that the plane's ammunition was still intact, Luo Yu let out a sigh of relief and turned back to him. "Where are the people we asked for?" Kong Lingkai shot a glance at a nearby guard, who hurried off and soon returned with two elderly folks and a couple holding a child. Dumbfounded expressions covered their faces as they trembled, eyeing the farm owner and his private guards. They had no idea why they had been brought here, nor did they know what was happening outside. Luo Yu looked over at Starry River. "Are these the ones?" "Matches the photos," Starry River said after checking their identities on his VM. Looking at Luo Yu, he beamed with delight. "Thanks, bro!" "Don't mention it. It's too early to celebrate yet—our work isn't done... The convoy I'm escorting is still in Hope Town." With that, Luo Yu took off the K-10 "Iron Wall" exoskeleton he was wearing, handed it to Starry River, and lowered his voice to instruct him. "Take the Little Yus and push over there shortly... Designate ground targets for me. Damn, almost forgot... I shouldn't need to teach you how to do this, right?" Starry River chuckled. "You're joking again. Leave it to your bro; just make sure you shoot straight." Luo Yu grinned. "Count on it." Watching the two converse in an incomprehensible tongue, Kong Lingkai, who had already climbed into the plane of his own accord, felt a growing sense of unease. He shouted toward them, "What are you two whispering about? Hurry up!" "Coming, coming," Luo Yu chuckled as he climbed into the plane and strapped on the seatbelt, waving away the serfs who were approaching to help tow the aircraft. "Just clear out and stay out of my way." With that, he nudged the throttle forward slightly. Amid the drone of the motor, the plane rolled forward at a crawl, took a turn, and headed toward the open gates. Sitting behind him, Kong Lingkai stared nervously at Luo Yu's back, pressing himself flat against his own seat rest. Seeing that they had reached the gate and catching sight of the plane wrecked in the field, his voice trembled with fear. "...Is this really going to work?" "Damn right it is! Hold on tight!" Flexing his fingers on the controls, Luo Yu chuckled, set the flaps to the takeoff position, and rammed the throttle all the way to the stop. A massive surge of tractive force pulled from the nose. Caught off guard, Kong Lingkai was pinned firmly against his seat by the sudden acceleration. Terror flared in his eyes as he cried out, "Wait, slow down—" "Shut up!" Snapping at the nuisance behind him, Luo Yu gripped the control stick with both hands, keeping his eyes glued to the dirt rushing past beneath the fuselage. He drew a deep breath, judged the moment, and pulled the nose up hard. The airframe broke free of the ground. Behind him, Kong Lingkai's heart leaped into his throat. Only when he saw the ground dropping away and realized the plane was completely free of the earth's clutches did he let out a thrilled cheer. "Haha! Go to hell, you green-skinned bastards!" Still not satisfied, he spat outside the cockpit and cursed vindictively for quite a while before finally snapping back to his senses and looking at the pilot seated in front. "Ahem... excuse me, friend, how should I address you?" "Luo Yu!" Luo Yu answered cheerily. This NPC was a bit too straightforward. Daring to hop on board without even knowing his name. No player in their right mind would ever dare! "Luo Yu, was it... Please head south. Do you know where Pinecone Wood Farm is? Just land nearby; I need to deliver news about what's happening here." "Pinecone Wood Farm?" Luo Yu chuckled. "Haven't the foggiest." Kong Lingkai paused, failing to catch anything amiss in that laugh, and simply assumed the man had never been here before. He explained patiently, "No matter, just fly south. I'll guide you..." Luo Yu burst into laughter. "What did you say? The wind's too loud up here, I can't hear you!" Kong Lingkai: "???" Before the man in the back could process what was happening, Luo Yu shoved the rudder hard to the left and flipped off the weapon safeties. "Hang on tight—!" Meanwhile, by the gates of Hope Farm, the old butler and the private guards stood around at a complete loss. "What do we do..." a gate guard mumbled to himself, hoping someone would offer guidance. Yet none of the farm's "big figures" uttered a peep. Starry River glanced at them, expecting no help from that quarter. Shifting his gaze, he looked toward the old man named Zhou Daniu. The old man wore a timid, shrinking expression, wondering what these military men wanted with him, and asked tentatively, "...Milord?" Starry River pondered for a moment before speaking in halting Human Alliance language. "Your son asked me to bring you to the Alliance. But truthfully, he paid way too little... Regardless, I'll still take your family to reunite with him. Just make sure to tell him to pay a little more." The old man looked at him, completely baffled as to why the master had agreed to let his family leave. But seeing that the man wasn't joking, he nodded. Starry River then looked back at the dazed old butler. "Relax, you won't die... Just a few elite mobs, look how terrified you all are." *What a waste of all those weapons.* Wearing Luo Yu's exoskeleton, Starry River chambered a round in his rifle, gestured to the Little Yus waiting nearby, and marched toward Hope Town. Brother Luo Yu's convoy was still in the town. Before escorting these quest-objective NPCs away, he had to take care of the mutants attacking the town. As for whether the landlord might renege on their deal, Starry River wasn't worried in the slightest. Their boss was in their hands. Once in the sky, he was no longer calling the shots. ... "Oge—!" A deafening roar erupted outside the walls of Hope Town as a barrage of bullets rained down on the entrance, pinning the town militia behind cover. Explosions echoed from time to time, tearing at their fraying sanity. Mutants! The brutes from the urban ruins! Their bullets struck the green-skinned monsters like toothpicks stabbing into cotton; hardly any fell. Whenever a militiaman poked his head out, the volley of incoming fire blasted his brains across the barricades. Having never witnessed such firepower, the faces behind the barricades were pale with fright, and the faint-hearted were trembling from head to toe. Although na fruit could help them overcome fear, without the Emissary's holy water, consuming it would only turn them into sheep waiting for slaughter. No one dared eat it right now. They had nothing but their own willpower to fight against the dread... "Hahaha! Cowards! Cry, scream, run for your miserable lives!" "Your mutant granddaddy is here!" Standing on an off-road vehicle, Oge gripped the machine gun with both hands and roared at the top of his lungs, his index finger clamped tight on the trigger as though welded in place. The glowing-red barrel sprayed wild fire toward the gate, thumb-thick tracer rounds sweeping haphazardly across the air with reckless abandon. Seeing those terrified eyes, he felt an indescribable thrill; his spirit seemed to quiver with delight. Indeed. *This* was how two-legged cattle were supposed to act! As if venting all the terror from his previous defeat into this battle, he bellowed at the top of his lungs with manic glee, "Hit them hard! Crush them to pulp!" The underlings around him cheered in frenzy. "Awoooo!" While gunfire thundered outside, chaos engulfed the inside of the town. The mutants outside did not seem in a rush to swallow them in one gulp. Instead, they intended to torment their will to resist with sheer terror, waiting for their morale to shatter completely before devouring them piece by piece. Outside the Town Hall, a crowd of mercenaries and caravan guards had swarmed the entrance, tying down a large contingent of militia. A furious mercenary leader lunged forward, grabbed the Town Hall clerk who had come out to placate the crowd by the collar, and roared in his face: "Damn it, you told us these were marauders?!" "I-I didn't know either..." The clerk stammered in panic, blinking frantically at the militiaman beside him. Acting on impulse when he saw the clerk being grabbed, the militiaman immediately leveled his rifle to rescue him. Seeing this, the surrounding mercenaries and caravan guards darkened their expressions and drew their weapons as well, leveling them at the militia. What a joke. The men standing here were hardened veterans who had roamed the wasteland for years; how could they be intimidated by a few guns? The atmosphere instantly grew explosive. While fighting raged outside, a brawl was on the verge of erupting inside as well. Watching the outraged crowd, Mayor Ma Hechang, hiding inside the hall, broke out in a cold sweat. His original intention had been to keep these people here to help fight off the mutants. Instead, the defenses outside were on the verge of collapsing, and an armed clash was about to erupt inside. Knowing he could no longer hide, he gritted his teeth, stepped out the door, and snatched the gun from the militiaman's hands. "Enough! Stand down! What do you think you're doing?! What time is it—" "Yeah, what time is it?! Mutants are at the gate, and we were kept in the dark!" Shoving the clerk aside after releasing his collar, the mercenary leader stepped up to Mayor Ma, glaring at him with narrowed eyes. With the man's nose practically touching his face, Mayor Ma was panicking on the inside, yet he forced himself to maintain composure. "What do you want?" "I want an explanation!" Glaring at him intently, the mercenary leader bit out every word. Mayor Ma took a step back and said nervously, "Go ask the mutants for that! H-how am I supposed to know why they came?!" "How do you know? If you didn't know, why did you put up barricades at the gates, silently blocking the road and refusing to let our vehicles leave?" Glaring murderously, the mercenary leader stepped forward again. "Cut the crap! You knew everything—you just wanted to drag us down with you!" Mayor Ma's face turned ashen. Unable to refute the accusation, he could only brazen it out: "No matter what... we're all grasshoppers tied to the same string now! If those green-skinned bastards break through, none of us will survive!" Fleeing was out of the question. No one could outrun those monsters. What those beasts loved most was hunting down prey until their targets collapsed from exhaustion, groveling on the ground for mercy. Evidently aware of that, the mercenary leader gritted his teeth, spat on the ground, seized the rifle slung over his shoulder, and marched toward the west gate. "I'll settle the score with you once the fight is over!" Having clashed with mutants elsewhere before, he knew full well how formidable they were. If he had known from the start that they were facing mutants, he wasn't sure whether he would have taken the boys and abandoned the pay to flee. Still, that didn't diminish his fury at being kept in the dark. Standing among the visiting merchants, Wu Wenzhou's face was etched with anxiety as he glanced around. Luo Yu was nowhere to be found, absent despite such a huge commotion outside. A thought suddenly flashed across his mind: *Did that fellow...* *Could he have run off?* Just as the thought crossed his mind, a piercing whine abruptly shrilled through the air. Like the scream of the Grim Reaper, it grated against everyone's frayed nerves. *Wroooom—!* It was the howl of a dive siren! The crowd looked up in unison, only to see a cross-shaped aircraft with spinning propellers shrieking down from the sky in a dive. "...Master Kong's plane?!" Mayor Ma looked up in shock, eyes wide with bewilderment as he recognized the familiar craft. Although the farm owners of Jinchuan Province had no love for the Alliance, they were all fond of trading grain for Alliance weapons. Long ago, he had heard that the master of the neighboring farm had imported machine guns and heavy equipment from the Alliance. Yet never in his wildest dreams did he imagine that stingy miser would actually come to wade into this mess! While he stared skyward in a daze, the thick, long barrels of the autocannons suddenly spat tongues of flame. The people before the Town Hall ducked instinctively. Lines of tracer rounds rained down toward the west side of the town, and the aircraft's nose pulled up nimbly amid the roaring gunfire. In that fleeting blur, Ma Hechang seemed to catch a glimpse of a familiar face. A face contorted by the howling wind. "What are you doing?! Have you lost your mind?!" Kong Lingkai's eyes were bloodshot, his mouth forced open into a grotesque funnel by the roaring gales as he screeched at the top of his lungs. Watching the nose suddenly plunge toward the ground, he had genuinely thought he was about to crash and die! "Hahaha! What a rush!" Bullets whistled past the plane, trailing behind it. They posed little real threat, however. Glancing back at the mutant warriors thrown into chaotic disarray on the ground, Luo Yu adjusted the nose with immense satisfaction, preparing for another strafing dive. Kong Lingkai wanted nothing more than to strangle the bastard, but didn't dare reach out. He could only glare murderously at the back of Luo Yu's head, his consciousness reeling as the plane banked left and right. Having weathered a round of strafing, Oge scrambled up from beside the wreckage of his ruined off-road vehicle and glared venomously at the craft in the sky, a flicker of wariness in his gaze. What was that thing? Instinct—or intuition—told him that this guy was probably cut from the same cloth as the humans he had faced before... none of them feared death. Just then, flickering muzzle flashes erupted from the flank, catching the squad on the right completely unprepared. Having never expected those humans to dare leave cover and counterattack, Oge hastily bellowed at his subordinates, leading a squad over to reinforce the right flank. Yet the moment they rushed forward, another barrage of autocannon fire poured down onto his men's heads as if guided by unseen eyes. Before the 20mm autocannons, tree trunks as thick as a man's thigh were shredded like paper, to say nothing of flesh and bone. In the span of a single breath, more than half of the ten-man squad sent to reinforce the line was wiped out, severed limbs and shattered remains blasted across the ground. "Damn it!" Gritting his teeth, Oge wrenched the mounted machine gun free from the off-road vehicle, intending to aim and shoot the plane down during its next dive. Just then, however, another dense volley of gunfire erupted from their rear, accompanied by shrieks of agony echoing through the forest. A rare flicker of panic crossed his bloodthirsty eyes. Oge whipped around to look behind him and swung the machine gun's barrel around. *More of them?!* *Just how many people are here?!* A chilling foreboding gripped his chest. They were surrounded!