Walking into the Trap

The psychic interference device's jamming of long-range communications affected both sides equally. As the field reached peak output, the entire estate felt like a quagmire, trapping all information within. Only at very close range could communication gear barely function. Yet this jamming was nothing to the players. Those who had fallen earlier had already posted the situation to the official website, and after logging off, Fang Chang quickly learned from the mission page that reinforcements were en route. Meanwhile, the Executioner squad inside the estate had no idea that the Alliance's Heart of Iron was on its way to Jinchuan Province, let alone that the Apostles of this settlement had contracted the area out to the mutants for a cleanup operation. Otherwise, the Executioners would have been cursing up a storm. Getting blood-crazed mutants to distinguish friend from foe was harder than teaching a pig to talk. Huddling in the same trench with those beasts was an extremely dangerous proposition. Thus, even though the Church of the Torch and the Qi Tribe were allies, they rarely operated together, usually keeping to their own separate battlefields. Watching the transport fly away from the villa, a flash of irritation crossed Li Jie's eyes. But just then, a crimson flare suddenly rose from the direction of the Annex, hanging suspended in the center of the pitch-black sky. "It's from the Annex." Watching the burning crimson flare, an Executioner standing not far behind Li Jie murmured, "Wu Zhe most likely ran into trouble!" Hearing this, the Executioners exchanged surprised glances. He was only dealing with a little rat that had slipped into the lab... With Wu Zhe's skills and the gear he carried, they couldn't conceive of any reason something could go wrong. Just then, the Alliance transport, which had been heading away from the settlement, suddenly banked in the sky, reversed course, and flew toward the Annex. Seeing the aircraft turning back, surprise flickered across Li Jie's face, followed by a cold sneer tugging at the corner of his lips. "Courting death!" Tapping the side of his helmet with his index finger, he said in an icy tone: "All units, pay attention. The enemy is heading toward the Annex. Squad A, take down that aircraft. Squads B, C, D, and E, follow me to attack the Annex. Stop them at all costs!" Through the crackle of static came a chorus of replies. "Roger!" With the combat order issued, the Executioner squads lurking in the forest moved swiftly. A total of twenty-five soldiers in exoskeletons, divided into five squads and carrying light and heavy weapons, advanced toward the Annex from three directions. The first squad arrived at the garden before the Annex's main entrance, well ahead of the transport. The square Annex resembled a prison. Extending outward from its north, south, east, and west gates was an open lawn, with the fountain garden directly to the north providing the nearest cover. Yet it was still a hundred meters to the gate. For the Executioners equipped with optical camouflage, however, that was no obstacle at all. The optical camouflage modules on their exoskeletons captured environmental imagery and adjusted the color and brightness of the armor coating accordingly, seamlessly blending the wearer into the surroundings. When stationary, it could achieve complete transparency. "Squad B in position." "Prepare to breach." Crouching beside the garden fountain with rifle in hand, the squad leader gave a hand signal. Like chameleons, he and the four soldiers behind him blended into the environment. The five Executioners left cover and pushed toward the Annex ahead. The dark muzzles of their weapons radiated chilling murderous intent, like five invisible daggers slowly edging toward their prey's throat. According to the intel provided by the Bishop, there was only one enemy. They didn't know what had happened to Wu Zhe. But five against one— There was simply no way they could lose! Just then, the squad leader in front suddenly heard a sharp whoosh slicing through the air, like a gust of cold wind blowing from afar. Before he could wonder where the sound had come from, a searing pain punched through his forehead and skull, brutally severing his consciousness. Without even letting out a grunt, he flew backward like a kite with a broken string. Bang—! By the time the rest heard the gunshot, a second man was already hitting the dirt. "Two." On the roof of the Annex. Prone beside the railing, Ye Shi had his sniper rifle mounted, index finger resting on the trigger and right eye pressed against the scope as he lined up his next target. The flare he had fired earlier hadn't been a distress call; it was bait to lure Wu Zhe's comrades here. Rather than playing cat-and-mouse in the dark against hidden enemies, he preferred to be the sniper waiting in ambush. He could pinpoint killing intent lurking in the dark. As long as he had the general direction of that killing intent, locating targets hidden in the shadows wasn't difficult. Optical camouflage was hardly infallible. Especially while on the move... Two teammates dropped in the blink of an eye. The remaining three Executioners panicked; seeing their optical camouflage had been compromised, they abandoned stealth and scrambled across the open ground toward the building. Assisted by their exoskeletons, a hundred meters could be crossed in an instant. Yet before the three of them, that hundred meters of open ground felt like an impassable chasm. The optical camouflage deactivated amid the violent, jarring movement. Then a third and fourth shot cracked in rapid succession. One took a round through the chest, while the other had his head blown open. The five-man squad was reduced to just one survivor in seconds. He was right at the threshold. A flicker of euphoric relief crossed the Executioner's face—only for his boot to catch on a faint resistance the moment his foot crossed the Annex's north gate. Almost like— he had tripped a kite string. Boom—! Before he could react, plastic pellets the size of glass marbles showered over him like hail, followed by a staccato crackle of firecracker-like explosions. Ordinary fragmentation mines did little against exoskeleton-clad soldiers or mutants, but these plastic explosives—infused with X-4 fibers and N10 azide compounds—produced an unexpectedly devastating effect. Each submunition packed the equivalent of 100 grams of TNT. Fifty submunitions detonating densely in an enclosed space was enough to ruin even a power armor wearer's day. These heavy-yield tripwire mines had originally been prepared for mutants. Using them on humans was perhaps a bit overkill. When the smoke and dust settled, the Executioner lay on the ground like a mangled rag, armor and flesh blasted together until he barely resembled anything human. Looking at the plume of dust billowing from the north gate below, Ye Shi clicked his tongue on the roof, held half a second of silent mourning for the poor sod, and swiftly withdrew from the roof to a room below. Meanwhile, out on the lawn before the north gate, only static hummed across the unanswered comms channel. "Squad B! Come in! Repeat, come in!" "Damn it!" Receiving no response after several tense moments, Li Jie cursed under his breath, cut the transmission, and glared murderously at the Annex looming close by. Squad B was wiped out. He had known something was wrong the second the first gunshot rang out, and that final explosion had sent his heart plunging straight to rock bottom. The enemy had spotted them far too quickly! It was as though the sniper had been waiting right there, watching them walk straight into the crosshairs. Curtains were drawn over every dark window, obscuring any view inside. The direction of the gunshots roughly gave away the sniper's former position, but the roof was completely empty now. Although their scouts were equipped with thermal imagers, the devices were of limited use against targets in exoskeletons. Many high-end exoskeletons placed their heat dissipation units in the lower limbs or even boot soles, leaving almost no thermal contrast between the upper body and the surrounding environment. What was supposed to be a game of cat and mouse now felt like a hunter facing off against wolves. Having lost an entire squad in a single contact, Li Jie had to proceed with caution. He ordered the drone operator to deploy their reconnaissance drones. Two disc-shaped drones launched from a bulky drone backpack and drifted toward the Annex. However, disrupted by the psychic interference field, the two drones turned into sluggish flies the moment they neared the Annex, while the controller terminal screens dissolved into snowy static. "The electromagnetic interference ahead is too strong. We can't get any closer..." the drone operator said, sweating profusely as he looked at his grim-faced squad leader. Li Jie gritted his teeth and waved his right hand forward. "Smoke screen for cover!" "Copy!" The moment the order came through, a support soldier waiting in the woods deployed the stabilizing struts on his Destroyer Type I exoskeleton. Planting both hands on the ground, he propped up the 120mm heavy mortar mounted on his back. Crawling behind cover at the edge of the lawn, the four Executioner squads braced for the assault. Then came three sharp thumps from the distance, followed by pillars of smoke raining down and bursting across the open lawn into a milky-white wall of smoke. Another mortar volley followed, extending the smoke wall right up to the Annex's edge. "Holy crap, they're even using mortars?!" Seeing the thick smoke, Ye Shi clicked his tongue from a third-floor room, sweating inwardly. Over a distance of three to five hundred meters—especially with the enemy having no line of sight on him—his perception of killing intent had grown slightly blurred, yet he could still sense at least a dozen people lurking in that forest. At the same time, another team had flanked around to his side. Under these circumstances, a sniper rifle was no longer useful. Setting the sniper rifle aside, Ye Shi took a deep breath, chambered a round in his LD-50 carbine, and prepared to engage the hostiles outside in close-quarters combat. Just then, a familiar voice came through his earpiece. "...Ye Shi, can you hear me?" The voice was faint and accompanied by static like sandpaper scraping across a wall, but it was just barely audible. A delighted grin spread across Ye Shi's face. "Fang Chang?!" "It's me... We've evacuated the main building and are close by. I need to confirm your position." Before Fang Chang could finish, Ye Shi cut in: "Wait, hear me out first... The Church of the Torch hid an underground lab in the Annex, and the psychic interference device is inside! That damn thing is what drove the survivors crazy!" A burst of static hissed over the channel. Ye Shi wasn't sure if Fang Chang had caught that. Just as he was about to repeat himself, Fang Chang's voice came through again: "...Pretty much what I guessed. Is there any way to shut it down or blow it up?" Ye Shi swallowed hard and spoke rapidly: "Useless. I checked the lab log. The device's brainwashing of the settlement's survivors is already complete; the current broadcast frequency only keeps them in that 'trance' state. If we shut it off, they won't all wake up at once. They'll wake up gradually over twenty-four hours, and then suffer sporadic relapses..." Fang Chang: "Tsk, troublesome. Did the lab log mention a solution?" Ye Shi answered at once: "Yeah... We just need to input a different signal frequency to overwrite the brainwashing broadcast. But I'm in a bit of a bind here—a squad has closed in on me, and their gear is ridiculous." At that, hearty laughter rang out over the comms. "Isn't that perfect?" That was Lao Bai's voice. And not just Lao Bai—others chimed in too. "Brothers, time to farm their loot!" "Awoooo!" ... At the same time Squads C, D, and E breached the Annex, Squad A, lying in wait outside, finally caught sight of the Alliance transport circling the perimeter. "Enemy aircraft within range." "Fire!" An Executioner stepped forward, dropping to one knee to shoulder a rocket launcher. His translucent optic locked onto the silhouette gleaming in the night sky, and the instant lock was acquired, he pulled the trigger. Boom—! A missile trailing exhaust flared out, rocketing toward the aircraft once again. Just as the missile was about to slam into the Alliance aircraft's tail, the unexpected happened. As if suddenly blinded, the missile sheared past the transport and exploded into a ball of fire over a hundred meters away. Watching this bizarre scene, the Executioner shouldering the launcher stared wide-eyed, completely bewildered by what had just occurred. On the other side, crouching at the edge of the cabin, Fang Chang lowered his longbow, Daybreak. Watching the explosion bloom in the distance, Jieyan crouched beside him, eyes equally wide. "Holy shit... You can do that?!" Beside them, Luo Yu was completely dumbfounded. "What the fuck... An arrow shooting down a missile?!" How ridiculous is that?! "No way..." Fang Chang chuckled at Luo Yu's overreaction. "It's just an EMP arrow fitted with a proximity fuse. The warhead was modified from an EMP grenade." It was mainly designed for dealing with drones. Who knew it would work so well against missiles too? After all, nobody would bother engineering EMP shielding for a man-portable missile with an effective range of only two or three kilometers. That single arrow had fried the missile's guidance system on the spot. That brief instant of malfunction was all it took for the missile to overshoot the transport. And that was more than enough! In the cockpit, cold sweat soaked the pilot's back. When he had seen that missile lock onto them, he had thought he was a dead man for sure—yet somehow, they had survived! Before he could even breathe a sigh of relief, he eased back on the throttle and shouted back to the cabin: "How are we going down? On the roof or the lawn outside—" Tapping his helmet with an index finger, Lao Bai, who had just finished coordinating with Ye Shi, said immediately: "Drop down through the courtyard!" The pilot froze. "The—the courtyard?!" Lao Bai said without hesitation: "That's right! The courtyard right in the middle of the Annex! We're landing directly inside!" Realizing he wasn't joking, the pilot's eyes bulged in shock. "Are you insane?! This is a transport, not a tank!" "Trust me!" Lao Bai rested a hand on the back of his seat and met his eyes with deadly seriousness. "The courtyard is definitely wide enough for us to land... wide enough for two!" "We don't know how many more anti-air missiles they have. We can't rely on getting lucky every time. Using the Annex's walls as cover is our safest bet!" The pilot gritted his teeth and pushed the control stick forward. These lunatics! He swore this was the last time he would play along with their suicidal stunts. Next time, no matter what they offered, he wouldn't take the job! ... Just as the Alliance's Viper transport approached the skies above the Annex, fifteen heavily armed Executioners breached the north gate and entered the building. Having learned from the earlier disaster, they were far more cautious this time, scouring every corner for booby traps and not daring to let their guard down for an instant. They soon reached the central courtyard. The ground was a scene of carnage, littered with severed limbs and corpses. Before their arrival, a slaughter had already unfolded here. The entire Annex had been wiped clean, and sticky pools of blood gave the place the look of hell. Scanning one side of the courtyard, Li Jie immediately spotted Wu Zhe tied to a pillar. He was drenched in blood from head to toe, looking like a crimson husk. His limbs were bound tight, and a blood-soaked garment was pulled over his head, concealing his face. Seemingly hearing footsteps entering, Wu Zhe began thrashing violently against the pillar, muffled groans coming from his throat. Seeing his comrade in such a wretched state, rage surged into Li Jie's head. At the thought of the five brothers who had just died, he wanted nothing more than to hack the sniper hidden in this building into pieces and feed him to the dogs. "Go untie him..." "Sir!" An Executioner approached with caution. Only after carefully verifying that no booby traps were rigged nearby did he reach out and pull the garment off Wu Zhe's head. The moment he did, he froze in utter shock. Wu Zhe was gagged, and around his neck hung a collar of black rectangular blocks wired together in a loop. The instant Wu Zhe saw him, there wasn't the slightest joy of rescue in those bloodshot eyes—only pure, bottomless despair. Though the Executioner couldn't identify the unlabelled blocks hanging from his comrade's neck, every instinct screamed that it was nothing good. Before he could react, he heard a faint click, and a flash of blinding white light severed his consciousness. Boom—! A deafening roar ripped through the air as the blast wave swept across the entire courtyard. The two standing at ground zero died instantly, their bodies hurled through the air along with the surrounding corpses. A scorching gale laden with smoke, pulverized flesh, and charred debris charged like a wild beast at the surrounding Executioners, forcing them to shield themselves with their arms and stumble back in disarray. A rain of blood seemed to fall across the courtyard! Even the dust was steeped in the smell of blood. "I'll tear you apart!!" Li Jie roared at the top of his lungs. He was certain the sniper was lurking in some corner of this building, quietly watching them step into the trap before detonating the explosives on Wu Zhe. He ground his teeth with enough force to shatter them. Just then, a gust of hot wind blew down onto their heads. Two blazing arcs of fire emerged at the fringes of the smoke like flaming swords piercing the night. Before anyone could make out what the fire was, the wide fuselage dropped into plain view. Li Jie's pupils contracted sharply. The Alliance transport! But how— Before he could fathom how this aircraft had bypassed Squad A's shoulder-fired missiles, streams of orange-yellow tracers poured out from the open side hatch. Descending upon the Executioners along with the torrential barrage came an ecstatic roar: "Hahaha! Eat lead and die!" Clutching the mounted machine gun with both hands, Hao Gou held the trigger down for dear life, spraying wildly. His face, warped with manic excitement, was illuminated bright red by the muzzle flashes. The Executioners hadn't even regained their footing from the earlier explosion before this sudden hailstorm of lead caught them completely off guard, mowing down several in an instant. Several soldiers in exoskeletons leaped from the other side of the cabin, splitting into two teams as they closed in on the Executioners pinned down in a corner of the courtyard. Like a flaming pair of pincers clamping down on red-hot iron! An Executioner raised his rifle to return fire, only to find an axe cleaving straight toward him. Panicking, he reflexively raised his rifle to parry, but a blinding spark effortlessly sheared the weapon in two, followed immediately by the blunt edge of the axe slamming into his face. Crack—! Feeling the helmet crumple through the haft of the axe, Lao Bai pulled the thermal fusion cutting axe back and smoothly swapped to his rifle, laying down fire on the cover where the surviving Executioners were hiding. On that final strike against the helmet, he hadn't activated the charge, choosing instead to bash the man unconscious with the unsharpened edge. The prisoner Ye Shi captured was already dead. They needed to bag a couple more! Fortunately, there were plenty of targets here—more than enough. These arrogant bastards had strutted right out of the shadows; if they hadn't delivered themselves to their doorstep, wiping them all out would have actually taken some doing. As the dust settling in the courtyard cleared, the battle inside the Annex drew to a close. Out of fifteen Executioners, eleven were killed, three severely wounded, and one lightly injured surrendered. There was likely another squad outside the Annex, but they were still some distance away. If they dared come, all the better. Though Lao Bai figured they probably didn't have the guts to keep feeding themselves to the grinder. Hearing the gunfire outside cease, the pilot huddled in the cockpit let out a breath. Sitting up from his reclined seat, he popped open the cockpit side window and hollered to the army boys clearing the field outside: "Hey! Are you guys still evacuating or what?" Lao Bai glanced back at him with a grin. "Forgot to tell you: change of plans. The Administrator told us to locate the psychic interference device hidden in the estate. Once found, we hold our ground and await reinforcements." "The Heart of Iron is en route. A wave of reinforcements will arrive by glider soon... Why don't you head back to refuel and resupply first? Bring back a few more boys and extra ammo while you're at it." The pilot blinked, and Ye Shi, who had just come down the stairs, paused as well, blurting out: "Wait... really? When did that happen?" Fang Chang nodded. "You'd know if you logged off and checked the quest log." Logically speaking, cut off in a comms black zone, they shouldn't have been able to receive mission updates. But besides their VMs, players also had the official website to check the quest board. Then again, could this count as abusing a game exploit? Thinking of this, Fang Chang couldn't help wondering whether the NPC issuing their quests knew they could exploit the game like this. If he did, that would be truly fascinating. The pilot didn't understand a word of their banter, nor did he have any idea how they had received orders from the Administrator. He merely grumbled under his breath and started the engines. "Next time, give me a heads-up first!" Lao Bai smiled apologetically and looked at him. "Will do."