The spotlight on the battlefield had been completely stolen by Mosquito.
Barring any accidents, the MVP this time undoubtedly belonged to him.
As the fuses behind the wooden beehive launcher ignited in unison, fifty wooden rockets tore through the night sky riding waves of heat, raining down like fiery meteors onto the marauders' position.
A single kilogram of black powder was not particularly terrifying; unless it landed right beside you, it would at most give you a fright.
However, fifty rockets carrying one-kilogram warheads launched all at once were an entirely different story.
These wildly scattering, wildly inaccurate rockets actually outnumbered the people pinned down out there!
A total of fifty kilograms of gunpowder was dumped across the enemy position in three seconds. The deafening blasts nearly shattered the marauders' eardrums.
It was a textbook demonstration of the saying:
Quantity, if there is enough of it, has a quality all its own!
Billowing clouds of thick smoke detonated across the clearing, and pine trees as thick as a man's thigh were blown to splinters.
Shattered bark, wood chips, and burning sparks flew across the battlefield, scalding the prone scoundrels so badly that they rolled across the dirt and scrambled around like terrified rats.
Even if only a few were killed outright, the sheer chaos was enough to drive anyone to despair.
The players in the trenches, however, reacted in the exact opposite manner, their faces lit by the firelight and plastered with excitement.
"Mosquito, you badass!"
"Holy crap! Katyusha!"
"Bullshit Katyusha, at most it's a nest of bees!"
"Hahahahaha, this feels awesome!"
The barrage of rockets crashing into the position became the final straw that broke the camel's back.
The marauders' morale collapsed in an instant.
Unable to hold their shattered line any longer, they abandoned their burning cover and fled in panic, completely ignoring—and unable to hear—the shouts and curses of their squad leaders.
No one knew when the next barrage would hit, nor did anyone know what else awaited them.
Like a pack of frightened mice, the marauders frantically hurled whatever throwables they had left, not even caring whether they hit enemies or allies, scattering in mad desperation to save their own skins.
And just as they abandoned their positions and scattered in frantic disarray, a sharp whistle pierced the forest.
Figures leaped impatiently from trenches and foxholes, brandishing melee weapons and firearms as they threw themselves at the fleeing marauders like starving wolves.
"Ura!"
"Kill!"
"Long live the Alliance!"
"Ora ora ora!"
"Awoo!"
The battle cries surged like a tsunami, rendering even an order to fight to the death completely redundant.
At the sound of the whistle, the players charged like wild horses slipping their bridles. Looking at the fleeing marauders, all they saw were walking loot drops.
Thoroughly terrorized by the savagery of these bluecoats, the marauders were witnessing for the first time barbarians more savage than themselves.
No.
They weren't even human.
They were practically a pack of Gnawers with guns!
"Mama!"
"Get out of my way!"
"I surrender! I surrender, don't kill me!"
"Boss... we can't hold out here, we have to fall back!"
"Fuck!"
Comrades fell one after another around him, and those who hadn't fallen played dead on the ground. Breaking out toward the northeast, Bear soon realized he was entirely alone.
Carrying a hundred jin of heavy armor, he couldn't run fast. Yet with stray bullets whizzing past, he didn't dare shed his armor to flee, leaving him no choice but to grit his teeth and fight as he retreated.
A target of his size was simply too conspicuous on the battlefield.
He had barely scrambled up and covered less than a hundred meters before the pursuing bluecoats marked him as a high-value target and eagerly swarmed him.
Bear felt a mixture of shock and fury. These bluecoats seemed completely devoid of any fear of death; there was no terror in their eyes, nor did they care in the slightest about their comrades' casualties.
He raised his shotgun and fired two rounds, blowing apart the skull of one charging attacker, only for two more to instantly rush forward, howling as they thrust their spears toward him.
The double-barreled shotgun packed plenty of punch, but it only held two rounds, and at this range, there was no time to reload.
Out of options, Bear discarded the shotgun and took the two spear tips directly on his breastplate. Sweeping his massive arm forward, he caught both shafts and tore them apart as effortlessly as ripping cotton.
"Roar!"
With a ferocious snarl, he bellowed, attempting to intimidate the people surrounding him.
Ordinary survivors would have been paralyzed with fear.
Yet standing before him were no ordinary survivors, but a bunch of players who couldn't care less about fighting fair. Though startled by the roar, they were far from frozen in their tracks.
Instead...
They seemed even more excited?
"Holy crap?!"
"This boss is tough! At least a centurion!"
"Someone come back us up!"
"On it! I'll flank him, you guys keep him busy!"
Bear seethed with rage. The attitude and reaction of these people felt like a direct insult.
Drawing the long-handled battleaxe strapped to his back, he swung it in wide cleaves, driving back anyone who drew close. Yet these suicidal bluecoats kept pressing in relentlessly.
Just then, Bear sensed a sudden pulse of danger. He snapped his head toward the source and spotted a cold-faced man standing there.
A deerskin coat hung from a nearby tree branch, fluttering in the northern wind.
The man wore an exoskeleton, leaning casually with both hands resting over the pommel of a massive, long-hafted warhammer planted upright before him.
A spark of challenge flickered in his eyes.
As if asking:
*Want to try me?*
The thick muscle on Bear's jaw twitched into a vicious, sneering grimace.
"Heh, let's see what you've got!"
When it came to contests of brute strength, he had never feared anyone.
Even an exoskeleton would buckle before his monstrous power!
Seeing their NPC make eye contact with the marauder boss as if triggering a pivotal cutscene, the players stopped their eager advances.
Since the Administrator showed no sign of wanting them to interfere, it was better to stand by and enjoy the show.
If they barged in blindly and got caught in the crossfire—getting scripted to death—that would be a terrible loss. Quite a few of them had seen firsthand just how devastating the Administrator's hammer blows were.
"Damn, Jayce versus Darius?"
"What Jayce versus Darius? Can that hammer shoot cannonballs? It's clearly Poppy!"
"What are you guys talking about? Isn't that the Fatui electrohammer guy?"
"...Get out of here!"
"..."
*Tsk, these idiots.*
*All the atmosphere I spent so long building up for you went straight down the drain.*
*Whatever.*
*It doesn't matter anyway.*
Intending to end things quickly, Chu Guang wasted no words. He dialed the exoskeleton's power output straight to maximum, adjusted his grip on the hammer, and rested his thumb on the Mode B switch.
Fully prepared, Chu Guang strode toward Bear with measured, steady steps.
Watching the approaching man expose flaw after flaw, Bear's mouth curled into a cruel grin.
He had no idea where this man found the confidence to challenge him to a duel, but he wasn't about to pass up such a golden opportunity.
Instinct told him that as long as he subdued this man, he still had a chance at survival!
Scraping his right boot against the ground, Bear pushed off with both legs, roaring like a real grizzly as he charged straight at Chu Guang.
Admittedly, that suit of full-body heavy armor was genuinely imposing. In a full sprint, he resembled a tank at full throttle, sending subtle tremors through the earth.
"What a coincidence."
"My hammer happens to crush tanks!"
Mode B—
Activate!
High-pressure nitrogen was compressed into a razor-thin layer adhering to the curved strike face.
Chu Guang stepped forward, swung the warhammer around, and struck with all his might.
Watching that slow, cumbersome hammer swing toward him, a sneer crept onto Bear's face. He raised his battleaxe and swung it upward in a sweeping arc.
He could already envision that clumsy, comical hammer being swatted away by his axe like a baseball.
Yet what happened next caught Bear completely unprepared.
The instant his axe collided with the hammer, something seemed to detonate, blasting the axe blade right off the haft and sending it spinning away into the air.
A searing pain shot through the crook of his thumb, and his knuckles felt as though they had fractured.
Clutching the empty haft, Bear was completely stunned, failing entirely to comprehend what had just happened.
"Goodbye."
Stabilizing the warhammer after the recoil pushed it back, Chu Guang grinned. Giving his foe no room to breathe, he put everything into the swing like a blacksmith at an anvil and whipped the hammer around in a horizontal sweep.
Trailing recompressed nitrogen armor, it slammed ruthlessly into Bear's chest!
*Boom!*
Before Bear could even react in that flash of lightning, the blow sent him hurtling backward.
His two-meter frame flew like a cannonball, crashing directly through the thigh-thick pine tree behind him.
"Ugh... *cough*."
A mouthful of fresh blood erupted from Bear's lips, and he had no idea how many bones throughout his body had shattered.
His eyes went wide as he stared down at his chest in disbelief.
The thumb-thick steel plate, originally curved outward, had been smashed inward until it cracked and caved in! Even the structural ribs holding the armor lining had snapped alongside it!
*What was that?*
*That power couldn't possibly belong to a human!*
*No, that wasn't just brute force!*
Watching the man walk toward him with the hammer lowered, a rare flicker of terror surfaced in Bear's eyes.
Extending a hand that was nearly broken from the impact, Bear gritted his teeth, tore away the steel plate that was pressing into his fractured ribs, and struggled to his feet.
Like a cornered beast, his eyes turned bloodshot, his ragged breaths puffing out in clouds of white vapor, every cell in his body trembling.
All of a sudden—
As his emotions peaked, Bear felt a sensation he had never experienced before surge from his chest through his entire body, coursing through every blood vessel, every inch of bone, every shred of muscle and skin.
His cracked ribs seemed to knit back together in an instant, his blood surged at breakneck speed, and he felt clearer and more invigorated than ever before.
At the same time, thick, coarse hair began to sprout wildly across his flesh, rapidly spreading over his entire body.
The surrounding players gasped.
"Holy shit, the boss is evolving?!"
"What is that?!"
"Did he get moldy?!"
An awakening!
Recalling the rumors he had picked up over the years, Bear understood in an instant what was happening to him. A surge of wild ecstasy overtook him, and his face twisted into a grotesque, hysterical laugh.
"Hahahaha, you're all going to—"
Before the word "die" could leave his mouth, the howling warhammer slammed squarely onto the crown of his head.
The bursting nitrogen crushed his brain to mush, driving his shattered skull down into his chest cavity. A spray of white matter and gory blood erupted behind him.
Bear's body swayed, turned limp, and collapsed onto its knees before slowly slumping to the side.
Watching the cutscene play out, the surrounding players were left dumbfounded.
"Damn!"
"Our Administrator really doesn't fight fair!"
"He didn't even wait for the transformation to finish!"
"Hahaha, I love it, I love it."
"By the way, does this count as finishing the quest cutscene?"
"There's definitely something weird about this native. Maybe it's tied to the next expansion. Just wait, there's bound to be a follow-up, though probably not today—the guy's dead as a doornail."
Chu Guang slung the hammer onto his back, fished a sheet of paper from his pocket, and wiped the scattered debris from his exoskeleton and collar. Looking at the corpse on the ground, his eyes held not a shred of pity.
"Go repent in hell."
If you want to blame something, blame yourself for having too long a wind-up.
Of course, dead men told no tales, and they certainly couldn't answer back.
The rest of the marauders crumbled like an avalanche.
Especially with their chieftain dead, the few remaining marauders who had still been putting up resistance tossed aside their weapons, abandoning all thought of fighting.
Eighty-two players had joined the battle: seven dead, three critically injured, and eleven lightly wounded.
Fifty-six marauders had taken part: twenty-seven dead, ten critically injured, and the rest lightly wounded.
Every single wounded marauder was taken prisoner; under the combined tracking of the Perception-type and Agility-type players, not a single one managed to escape.
It was a resounding victory!
Even so, this was the bloodiest battle since the closed beta began, and the only one so far to result in player casualties.
Although the players had fought exceptionally bravely, charging forward without regard for their lives, the stubborn resistance of some marauders and the stray bullets flying across the battlefield had still inflicted casualties on their ranks.
Especially that "Bear."
Out of the seven players who died, two had been killed by him.
On top of that, he was responsible for two of the critical injuries, one of whom had an arm severed, leaving him permanently crippled.
With no way to perform surgical reattachment, they could only persuade the little player to log off, save a backup of his gene sequence, and toss his mangled body into the active substance extractor for recycling so they could synthesize a brand-new body...
"I don't want to! I don't want to spectate! I think I can still be saved!" Makka Pakka protested loudly.
"All right, all right, the Lord Administrator said you'll get compensation. Your gear can be stored for free these next few days too; I'll carry it back for you."
"Damn it! Don't you dare swipe my stuff!"
"Am I that kind of person?!"
Watching these bluecoats knock their critically wounded companion unconscious with a brick and strip off his clothes, the prisoners gathered near the brick kiln wore expressions of sheer terror.
These people...
They were absolute devils!
All corpses, friend and foe alike, were loaded onto handcarts and hauled load by load to the outpost's morgue to await processing. As for the prisoners, Chu Guang temporarily confined them to the brick kiln by the river, planting torches around the perimeter and stationing several players to stand guard.
Perhaps thanks to the experience accumulated from earlier team fights, the battlefield cleanup proceeded swiftly and smoothly.
Looking at the massive brute being hoisted onto a stretcher, Chu Guang mused that this single corpse alone might yield a full unit of active substance.
Yet compared to the active substance on him, what intrigued Chu Guang far more was the sudden growth of hair.
Was it some kind of special ability?
Like an atavistic regression triggered under extreme duress, boosting all attributes across the board?
At the thought, Chu Guang felt a sudden chill run down his spine.
Thank goodness the talent he had unlocked was normal enough. If casting an ability required growing a coat of fur all over his body, he would rather not have it at all.
Leaving behind a portion of the players to clean up the battlefield, tend to the wounded, and watch the prisoners, Chu Guang assembled twenty able-bodied elites and addressed them.
"The enemy's main force has been annihilated! All that remains back at their camp are the old, the weak, and the wretched souls they took captive."
"Forward!"
"It's time to end this war!"
Chapter 91