I Am the Tide!

Through the grayish-green smog, a ten-man squad armed to the teeth advanced slowly. They wore fully protective exoskeletons. In their hands, some carried compact G9 assault rifles, others held Gauss rifles equipped with extended magnetic rails, and still others had two short, thick portable rocket launchers slung across their backs. Right in the center of the formation, an unmanned tracked vehicle roughly three meters wide trundled along. Welded to its roof, a remote weapon station sported a menacing 20mm autocannon barrel, beneath which hung a 60mm short grenade launcher fed by an ammo belt. Its silvery-white coat of paint looked completely out of place against the surrounding atmosphere, yet no one would dare doubt the squad's firepower. Just a few days ago, the Council had finally approved a new equipment procurement program, purchasing the warehouse stock that Changge Group had kept at the very bottom of its reserves. Perhaps shocked by the brutal fighting on the front lines, no one on the Council blathered anymore with idiotic remarks like, "There's no need for Gauss rifles against a bunch of savages who don't even have exoskeletons; our soldiers just need to tell the planes where to drop the bombs." Thanks to this, Tang Feng had finally laid eyes on the "sniper rifle" he had dreamed about for so long. Right now, however, he had lost interest in the gadget. Messy technical specs were all meaningless fluff; for a weapon meant to save his life, what mattered most was that it felt natural in his hands. "...Where are we now?" "Haiya." "Haiya... This is Haiya? I thought we were on Mars." The machine gunner carrying a light machine gun glanced down at the yellowed, battered travel poster in his hand, then looked toward the elevated highway bridge ahead that had snapped in two, as well as the rusted highway sign crookedly jutting out from a pile of concrete rubble— [Laishan City, 5 km Ahead] Laishan City lay just ahead, serving as their very first stop upon entering Haiya Province. Yet there was no city to speak of here; as far as the eye could see, there was only blatant ruin and desolation. It seemed as though this land did not belong on Earth at all, but rather on some dead, silent planet. Beneath the pitch-black soil flowed a dark green slurry like lava cleaving through hell. The corruption of the Na fruit had soaked into every inch of ground. Not a single living tree could be seen, nor even a single blade of living grass. The withered trees standing across the landscape looked like bones weathered over countless years, their nutrients completely drained to feed the master of this land—the Na fruit. Conditions here were far worse than in the Weifu Wasteland. Or rather, the hell they had witnessed in the Weifu Wasteland was merely the tip of the iceberg of this true inferno. With a slight twitch of his lips, he tossed aside the poster he had picked up from who-knew-where. Not far beside him, a rifleman bent down, drew a test tube from the sample kit at his waist, and routinely collected soil rich in Na fruit mycelium. This was one of the tasks commissioned to them by the frontline research institute: collect a soil sample every hundred meters they advanced into Haiya Province. As for their primary mission, it was to "scout the perimeter of the urban ruins in North Sector 1 and confirm enemy positions." It sounded very much like work meant for drones, but unfortunately, drones had flown a couple of sweeps over the area earlier and failed to spot a single human silhouette—or any living creature, for that matter. By all reasonable estimates, the Church of the Torch had most likely slaughtered everything across this territory of nearly 670,000 square kilometers. Of course, another possibility could not be ruled out: those fanatics had hidden the people away. After all, breeding mutants required human bodies, and experiments on Gestalt lifeforms also required people. While clones could solve some problems, factoring in scale, cost, and other considerations, naturally born humans were undoubtedly cheaper. After all, this region had been ruined into such a ghastly state and lacked the bizarre, scattered Era of Prosperity machinery found in the Great Desert. One could hardly expect a large-scale power station, a mass of skilled technicians, and a cloning facility packed with sophisticated equipment to have survived here. If that were really the case, it would actually be simple to deal with. A single missile tipped with a nuclear warhead would be enough to wipe the Torch from this land. Regrettably, however, those monsters had no need for something like "industry." They required neither electricity nor consumer goods. At most, they ran scattered processing workshops to modify weapons suited to their needs. The coalition joint staff analyzed that the Church of the Torch had likely taken control of several vaults as R&D bases, along with a batch of black boxes possessing specialized functions. That would explain why, despite having no large-scale manufacturing centers, they could deploy equipment with technical specifications far surpassing the practical conditions of Haiya Province. "...I heard Laishan City has a very famous hot spring," said a soldier who picked up the poster the machine gunner had discarded, glancing at it with a grin. "Located on the outskirts... seems to be right near us." The soldier next to him whistled and teased, "You want to take a dip?" "I heard the folks infected back in Yongdong City are still lying in the research institute at Yunjian University." "Haha... pass on that." As the group bantered over the comms channel, Tang Feng, standing on the outer flank of the squad, suddenly frowned with vigilance. The dark green slurry flowing beneath the soil seemed to be surging and gathering toward their position. Although the movement was subtle, the bionic implant fixed to his iris recorded the motion parameters. The shifting numbers before his eyes could not be mistaken. He flicked off his rifle's safety, muzzle tilting slightly toward the ruins shrouded in gray mist. "Contact." The chatter in the comms channel cut off instantly. The soldiers snapped to high alert, fanning out into a defensive posture. A heavy infantryman swiftly unfolded the deployable cover from his back and slammed it into the ground like a fan-shaped shield. The machine gunner moved in behind it, mounting his light machine gun above the shield's central firing port, and shouted to his teammates behind him, "Machine gun bunker set!" Another soldier, a drone operator carrying a specialized backpack, crouched low as two thumps sounded from his pack. Two folded quadcopter drones launched into the air, righting themselves after a few aerial tumbles, and shot into the fog like arrows off a bowstring. "Drones airborne! Searching the vicinity... No active targets spotted!" The marksman peering through his Gauss rifle's thermal display saw nothing. Puzzled, he looked toward Tang Feng, who had first called out the threat. "Did you see wrong?" "On the ground!" Tang Feng took a deep breath and said with certainty, "That dark green slime... it's converging near us. I have a bad feeling about this." The squad leader stepped beside the drone operator and patted him on the shoulder. Understanding immediately, the operator patched one drone's feed to the squad leader. Fastening a goggle-like visual controller to his helmet, the captain piloted the drone in a circle around their perimeter, carefully inspecting the dark green slurry permeating the terrain. His brow quickly furrowed. Just as his squad member had said, the dark green slurry was pulsing at a steady frequency, seemingly channeling some unknown power toward a point beneath their feet. Seen from above, the pattern was even more distinct—and chillingly spectacular. The drone's aerial feed synchronized onto every soldier's tactical visor. A rifleman swallowed hard and muttered under his breath, "I heard certain organs stay dormant until needed, only engorging with blood when called into action... Dammit, I'm getting a bad feeling too." The captain's Adam's apple bobbed, his expression turning grave. He immediately reported the frontline situation to command, then barked into the comms channel, "Mission scrubbed! Prepare to withdraw—" Almost the instant his words fell, a rustling sound cut through the thick fog. Like the sudden chirping of autumn cicadas. Catching sight of a fleeting silhouette, Tang Feng raised his weapon by reflex and pulled the trigger without hesitation. "Rat-tat-tat—!" Orange flames spat from the muzzle as tracers instantly punched through the dark shape lunging from the dense mist. It was a half-human, half-canine creature, gaunt as a sausage, its hairless face and skull appearing scorched by fire. Struck multiple times in the chest, it unleashed a shrill screech as blood so green it was nearly black splattered onto the ground. Even so, the beast never broke stride, scrambling on all fours toward the Enterprise squad's position. Just then, an electromagnetically accelerated slug drilled through its crown and exited between its thighs. As if swallowed by a meat grinder, the creature's entire body ruptured under the immense kinetic energy, detonating into a cloud of dark green mist and gore. Mutilated limbs tumbled across the ground while the dark green mist slowly melded into the fog. "'It's a fungal variant!'" the drone operator reported over the channel after confirming the creature's identity. The term "fungal variant" was a general designation for the fruiting bodies spawned by Na fruit corruption, distinguishing them from the fruiting bodies of mutant slime mold. Depending on their strain, the broad category of fungal variants branched into several sub-classifications, such as common "walking corpses," "corpse hounds," and the like. As for the thing they had just encountered, it resembled the Crawlers spawned by the slime mold fruiting bodies in Qingquan City, though it was slightly smaller in size, strength, and speed. Lowering his muzzle, the designated marksman with the Gauss rifle cursed under his breath, "Dammit, didn't the drones already sweep this sector? How is there still crap crawling out?!" Tang Feng kept his eyes glued to his scope, aiming in the direction the monster had charged from. "It's probably like in the Weifu Wasteland—they're crawling up from under—" "Fuck! Under us!" The startled cry over the comms cut him off. By instinct, he glanced behind him and saw a withered, skeletal hand thrust up from the soil, grabbing the calf of a comrade not far back. The grip wasn't particularly strong—certainly not enough to breach the exoskeleton's greaves. Yet the startled rifleman hastily drew the sidearm at his waist and emptied several rounds downward with loud bangs. The arm emerging from the dirt was blasted to pieces in an instant, though ricocheting fragments nearly grazed his own chest plate. Witnessing their comrade's ordeal, panic flickered in everyone's eyes. They had not anticipated that danger lurked not only from every direction around them, but directly beneath their feet. Right then, shrill shrieks erupted from all sides, and the thrum of charging feet surged like a rising tide. "Three o'clock! Machine gunner, suppressive fire!" "Copy!" The captain roared the command to engage. Hugging the deployable shield, the machine gunner gritted his teeth, his index finger practically welded to the trigger. With the thunderous roar of the machine gun, the silence and the fog blanketing the wilderness were torn asunder together. "Roar—!" Scrambling on all fours, corpse hounds howled as they charged, flanked by a sea of walking corpses. The riflemen scattered along the perimeter opened fire immediately, gunning down the surging fungal variants. At the same time, the tracked vehicle stationed in the center of the formation entered combat mode. The 20mm autocannon on the remote weapon station spat long tongues of flame, pouring fierce firepower into the densest clusters of walking corpses under the marksman's laser guidance. Yet even though this mechanized squad possessed overwhelming firepower—and the savage fungal variants couldn't last two seconds before them—the soldiers still felt distinctly hard-pressed against the unrelenting onslaught. There were simply too many! They oozed from the ground like pus from a wound; beyond those visible on the surface, who knew how many more remained buried beneath the earth, waiting to burst free! Watching the fungal variants grow denser by the second, the machine gunner crouched behind the mobile shield and yelled while swapping drum magazines, "How much longer until our extraction bird gets here?!" Keeping his finger on the trigger, the captain bellowed through the comms, "Already en route! Inbound within twenty minutes!" "Twenty minutes?!" "Dammit... are they planning to collect our corpses?!" Cursing flooded the comms channel. The captain snapped back with another shout, "Cut the bullshit! Watch your sectors! And watch your damn feet—" The enemy attacked not just from all sides, but from right beneath their soles. Arms broke through the dirt every now and then, sprouting like grotesque shoots. While putting them down wasn't difficult—a combat knife or a rifle butt was enough to smash them—they simply came in wave after relentless wave. Even having packed three times their standard combat load of ammunition, the soldiers could hardly withstand such overwhelming numbers. Ten minutes left— Tang Feng stared at his last magazine, gritted his teeth, and slapped it into his rifle. If extraction didn't arrive soon, they would have no choice but to engage these twisted abominations in hand-to-hand combat. Right then, the captain's ecstatic shout broke over the comms channel: "Cloud Dragonflies! It's our air support! They're here!" Tang Feng instinctively looked up, but the murky gray mist obscured the sky; he couldn't see a thing. Just then, a voice laced with static crackled through their comms: "This is Raccoon. We are overhead. Deploy attack beacons to guide our strikes." Without needing further prompting, the squad's marksman acted immediately, firing a flare beneath the broken elevated bridge where the fungal variants swarmed thickest. The reassuring voice returned over the channel: "Beacon confirmed. Maintain a safe distance... 3, 2, 1—" The moment the countdown ended, a torrential storm of tracer rounds rained from above, grinding the fungal variants sprinting across the concrete rubble into paste within seconds. Over a dozen rockets followed close behind. The detonating inferno blasted open a vacuum straight through the heart of the fungal tide. At the center of the flames, a walking corpse missing half its body screeched in agony, but its voice was quickly snuffed out. Deterred by the searing heat wave, the walking corpses jostled and hesitated, none daring to advance directly. Instead, they surged around both flanks of the blazing wall of fire, attempting to bypass it. "Beautiful work!" The marksman cheered with excitement, then repeated the procedure, launching a second and third beacon. Triangulating the area mapped out by the beacons, the six Cloud Dragonfly ornithopters loitering above confirmed their allies' location. Unshackled, they unleashed full fury, hammering away with their 20mm autocannons while emptying their rocket pods! Roaring curtains of fire erected a barrier between the raging fungal variants and the soldiers within. At that exact moment, roughly ten wooden gliders punched through the smoke screen above the blazing inferno and slammed heavily onto the boulder-strewn wasteland. Some forty to fifty soldiers tumbled out from the wreckage of the gliders. They wielded Scythe assault rifles fitted with bayonets at their muzzles, every single one of them wearing a gas mask, with entrenching shovels hanging from their belts. Evidently, they belonged to the Alliance. Judging by the insignia on their uniforms, they were none other than the renowned Death Corps. Yet for some reason, none of them wore exoskeletons, carrying only crude, rudimentary gear. They shouted and hollered in a noisy racket, spouting phrases he couldn't comprehend, yelling gods knew what... "Fuck! You call this piece of crap a plane?!" "My ass is split in two!" Watching the rowdy noobs, Fawai Kuangtu couldn't help but recall himself a year ago. Back in Sunset Province, when they had charged against Battlefield Guy, they had been just as loud and chaotic. Yet thanks to that very "live-fire training," in less than a month they had transformed from completely clueless newbies into battle-tested soldiers. Now he had climbed into the ranks of "veteran players," becoming a backbone of the Death Corps. This operation had been personally entrusted to him by Regiment Commander Brother Edge: to lead these greenhorns to their deaths—ptui, to receive their baptism by fire! "It's a one-way trip anyway... quit your fucking whining and strip the machine guns! That hardware is still good!" Carrying a shotgun, Fawai Kuangtu ambled to the front of the line and barked unhurriedly at the rookies, stomping down with one boot to crush a palm jutting from the dirt reaching for his ankle. A player still fumbling around the glider finally found his rifle and shouted back, "Captain, what about the ammo crates? Drag them out too?" Fawai Kuangtu rolled his eyes. "No shit! Do you even have to ask?" Right as the words left his mouth, another player called out, "Captain! The planes are wrecked! How do we get back?" Seeing the questions grow progressively dumber, Fawai Kuangtu snapped back impatiently, "When did I ever say we were going back?" What a joke. These gliders didn't even have engines; how the hell could they fly back? Hearing that, the rookies froze on the spot. I'll Form the Head: "Holy shit!" Gourmet Ingredient: "This is a fucking unlicensed scam bus!" Death by All-Nighter: "I'm crying! Cap, is it too late to get off the bus?" Retreating Dwarf: "Locked out of the game for three days... Anything but that, nooooo!" Watching the howling, weeping noobs, Fawai Kuangtu nearly spat, roaring at the top of his lungs, "Did you clowns not even read the rules before joining the regiment?! Snap out of it!" "Use your bullets, your bayonets, your rifle butts, your trench shovels, your fists, even your goddamn teeth! Use every trick you can think of and every tool you can find to cave in their skulls until either their hearts stop or yours do!" "There are no cowardly retreaters in the Death Corps! No matter what the enemy is, we have only one whistle blow—and that is forward! Always forward—!" "Flip off your safeties and chamber your rounds! Show me where your limits lie!" His roar indeed fired up the blood in some of them, and the clamor finally subsided. Even so, he couldn't help grumbling inwardly: rookies these days had too many complaints; each batch was worse than the last! Fawai Kuangtu roasted them in his head, conveniently tossing aside the memory of how foolish he had looked when he first joined the game. Realizing it was far too late to step off the bus anyway, the rookies could only resign themselves. Even if only to survive a few minutes longer, even if only to claim that hefty quest reward, they had to bring out whatever skills they had. Perhaps because their fate was already sealed, these first-time combatants lost the jitters they had felt upon crashing; one after another, they grew strangely eager for the battle ahead. Watching two soldiers haul ammo crate after ammo crate out of a glider's fuselage, looking prepared to hold the line to the death, Tang Feng stood by a concrete wall in a daze, then shouted toward them, "Hey! What are you guys here for?" Fawai Kuangtu grinned and shouted back, "Here to help!" "To... help? We're about to evacuate!" Tang Feng replied, utterly baffled. Fawai Kuangtu laughed. "Covering your retreat is what we're here for!" Hearing this, Tang Feng was even more bewildered, but once he processed it, warmth and shame rushed through him simultaneously. What moved him was how fiercely reliable their allies were—their brotherhood was beyond dispute. It had been the same during the assault on Mount Fu; without their help, who knew how many more lives would have been thrown away on those slopes. What shamed him was that, just to save his squad of ten, they had dispatched nearly a third of a company... What noble, selfless people! He was not the only one feeling this way; almost every soldier present shared the sentiment. Torn between gratitude and guilt, they rallied their spirits. With reinforcements crashing into the fray, the tide of battle miraculously swung in their favor. Even so, lingering in this meat grinder offered no benefit. They had gathered the required samples and confirmed the local situation through this initial skirmish; it was time to take their findings home. At the twenty-minute mark sharp, the silhouette of an Orca transport emerged in the sky. Two plumes of azure plasma thrust into the soft earth like spears. Billowing dust kicked up as the rear ramp slammed onto the ground. An exoskeleton-clad soldier stood at the hatch, both hands clamped onto a rotary cannon mounted inside the hold. "Fall back!" The Enterprise squad captain bellowed through the comms, waving his men toward the open ramp. Including the tracked vehicle with its roof-welded weapon station, the ten-man squad retreated into the cargo bay. Though exhaustion showed on every face, miraculously, not a single man had been lost. Standing at the ramp, Tang Feng yelled out to the allies still outside, "We're lifting off! Get inside!" To his bewilderment, the man outside merely grinned and shouted back, "No need! Have a safe flight!" With that, the cargo ramp slowly raised shut. Tang Feng's eyes went wide, watching powerlessly as that figure vanished beyond the rising ramp. "Wait, why are we leaving?!" His face filled with disbelief, he strode over to a crewman, grabbed him by the shoulders, and yelled, "Our allies aren't on board—" "That is their mission!" A voice behind him cut him short. Tucking his helmet under an arm, the captain walked up and placed a heavy hand on Tang Feng's shoulder. "Their mission is to test the limits of the 'Tide.' They will fight there to the last man, until the 'true enemy' emerges... That's the hypothesis from the field research institute. The Na fruit has no broodmother, but there should be analogous incubation organs. They need to observe the entire process from start to finish." Beyond that, they had been inoculated with bionic prosthetics incorporating "Type-B strain implants." How much effect that would yield remained to be seen. "...Carry on with respect for them in your heart. This war isn't over yet; it's far too early to grieve." Looking at Tang Feng's stunned, wide eyes, the captain sighed softly, patted his shoulder without another word, and returned to his seat. Though his words carried little weight, he could not help but reflect at times: those living in the Ideal City truly owed the people of the wasteland a great debt. Their ancestors had achieved miraculous feats, and they considered themselves vastly superior to those wastelanders, yet that should never have become an excuse to enjoy their comforts with a clear conscience. When one group gave their lives for a shared catastrophe, the survivors had a duty to shoulder responsibilities and obligations equal to the weight of that sacrifice, rather than treating survival and affluence as birthright privileges. The only reason they could survive was because others had died in their place... Just like right now. While the young men from the Ideal City sank into somber reflection, the players left behind on the battlefield were growing more pumped by the second. The fungal variants' assault grew fiercer and fiercer! A stark contrast to their earlier hesitation! Perhaps seeing part of the enemy withdraw, they felt bold again, confident they could tear apart those who remained! At first, only Danger Level 1 fodder like walking corpses or corpse hounds appeared, but soon, more and more Danger Level 2 to 3 beasts began crawling out. These were rookies after all, and casualties had already begun to mount. Watching the swelling "Tide," Fawai Kuangtu's face twisted into a savage grin. Bring it on! It had been too long since he'd had this much fun! Shaking the slime and blood from his arm, he racked his shotgun and let out a final roar: "Brothers! Show those cowards hiding behind the curtain who only know how to plot in the dark! Show them who the real Tide is!!!" Roars of raw excitement answered him. "Awoooo!" Looking at his fired-up subordinates, a grin tugged at the corner of his lips. These noobs... They couldn't even yell in unison—so damn embarrassing! And yet— It seemed they were finally getting a taste of the fun of the Death Corps. This life was well spent!