Ambitions Reduced to Ash

The streaking axe blade flashed like lightning, slamming head-on toward the humiliated, furious Tyr. "You're courting death!" Tyr let out a muffled, raging roar and whipped forward his right arm, which was encrusted in creep. Crimson tentacles shot toward Lao Bai like javelins! Seeing those streaks of red light about to strike him square in the face, Lao Bai unhurriedly raised the bolt gun in his left hand and fired two preloaded airburst incendiary rounds forward. *Bang! Bang!* Two gunshots rang out, and orange-red fireballs instantly erupted in the cramped space! The moment they contacted the flames, the crimson tentacles were ignited by the concentrated fuel, withering at a visible rate and charring into pitch-black cinders! "Aaargh—!" Tyr roared in agonizing pain. The vicious glare in his eyes grew even fiercer as he clenched his outstretched right hand. Crimson tentacles sprouted from the floor like shoots bursting through soil, clawing toward Lao Bai's ankles like hands reaching out from a grave. "You seek your own death! This is my domain—!" Lao Bai paid no heed to the tentacles snaking for his ankles, continuing to charge forward in long strides. His steel boot soles thudded heavily against the floor. Smaller root-like tendrils were torn apart by sheer momentum before they could even weave together. As for the thicker roots, they slammed directly into the titanium alloy combat knife mounted under his bolt gun! Relying on raw physical strength and the power components of his armor, Lao Bai made short work of the obstacles, hacking them to scattered pieces in seconds. At the same time, the energy accumulated in his thermal-melt cutting axe neared its explosive critical threshold! Seeing the steel armor closing in, a momentary flash of panic finally surfaced on Tyr's face. For a human who had yet to fully master the "power of Gaia," managing both internal and external combat simultaneously was simply asking too much. "Don't you dare! Don't you dare touch me with your filthy hands!" A hysterical shriek tore from Tyr's throat. The crimson creep coating his body swelled outward like erupting magma, violently warping his human form in an instant and reducing him to an indescribable mass of flesh. Its pulsing shape resembled a demon's heart—or chaos incarnate. *Utterly profane...* Beyond his shock, only this thought crossed Lao Bai's mind as he remained silent. Rather than say Tyr had become a "broodmother" or "Gaia," it was truer to say that "Gaia" had become him. After devouring his ambition, Gaia—possessing no individual consciousness of its own—used a power beyond the comprehension of human civilization to give tangible physical form to his warped psyche! If this creature were allowed to keep mutating, it might indeed evolve into another form of "broodmother." A broodmother unlike anything anyone had ever seen. However, it ended here. "You talk too damn much!" With a muffled grunt, Lao Bai tightened his grip on the thermal-melt cutting axe and brought it crashing down onto the web of tangled tentacles before him. The whistling blade struck like a comet smashing against an anvil, unleashing a dazzling burst of sparks across the crimson wall of flesh. *Boom—!* The tremendous force rattled the entire laboratory, causing even Tyr's body to sway backward uncontrollably. *Blocked it?* Seeing the "human chariot" finally halt its charge, Tyr felt a surge of delight. Yet that delight was short-lived, severed in the next heartbeat by a torrent of blinding sparks. "Aaaaargh—!" A plume of searing plasma cleaved straight through the tentacles that formed the fleshy barrier, showering his face with flickering embers. That was plasma heated to tens of thousands of degrees! A single thumb-sized plume of light was enough to ignite the carbon-based matter of his body! Tyr howled in agony and recoiled, but unfamiliar with this legless body, he lost his balance and collapsed to the floor. Lao Bai strode forward. Giving the creature no chance for last words, he swung the thermal-melt cutting axe up to charge it once more, then drove it viciously into what remained of Tyr's face. *Boom!!!* Blistering sparks exploded once again! The superheated slag not only obliterated the gore into ash, but cleaved through the alloy-cast floor. The "fire axe" had originally been designed as an anti-armor weapon. Since it could hack through powered armor plate, tearing apart an alloy chamber was child's play! Once, twice, thrice! Swinging the axe with relentless force, Lao Bai battered a sunken crater into the floor, reducing Tyr's mutated body entirely into burning embers and cinders. Deprived of the brain that commanded the biomass, the surrounding frenzy of tentacles began flopping and twitching like headless frogs. After ensuring Tyr was dead beyond all doubt, with not a single functioning neuron remaining, Lao Bai raised the bolt gun in his left hand and swept the room with a volley of high-explosive incendiary rounds. Watching the warped chunks of meat dissolve into the boiling sea of fire, he switched his powered armor to internal circulation and finally exhaled a long breath of relief. "Now... you should be dead for good." Leaning the axe against the wall, Lao Bai smirked, deactivated the various buffs from his Strength-tree talents, and slowly slumped down against the wall onto the floor. At the very least, the visible Tyr was dead. As for the ghost lingering over the Wilante—the invisible Tyr—that was another matter entirely. Still, he held high hopes for them. Like Boulder City, they possessed the ability to correct their own course, and they held sufficient respect for history... even if their own history was brief, unable to trace its lineage back to the Era of Prosperity or earlier times as other survivors could. Just then, a crimson shoot poked out of the ashes, morphing into a rounded antenna beside him. Lao Bai's fingers reflexively closed around the axe handle at his side, but a faint, familiar sound drifted from the mimicked vocal cords. "Ee-woo..." Recognizing the voice, surprise washed over Lao Bai's face, and he relaxed his grip on the weapon. "Hey, your fruiting body survived." Xiao Yu's main body was in Shelter 404; there was likely no safer place on the entire planet. The slime mold clinging to the fighter Luo Yu piloted was merely one of its fruiting bodies. "Ee-woo!" The rounded tentacle gave a spirited chirp, sounding like a dolphin in an aquarium. However, Lao Bai had not undergone biological prosthetic implantation, nor was his relationship with Xiao Yu close enough to allow "telepathic communion," so naturally he could not understand what it meant. "Haha, good to see you're all right, but I have no idea what you're saying. If you're asking about Luo Yu, he's probably waiting to respawn in Dawn City right now." The rounded tentacle straightened up, swaying left and right for several seconds like a mute gesturing wildly with their hands. After straining for a long time, it finally squeezed out a halting sentence in the Human Alliance language. "...Thank... you... Tyr... is dead... Now I... control this body." Lao Bai looked at Xiao Yu in surprise, only then remembering that it could actually speak; it just rarely did. After a brief pause, Xiao Yu gathered its words and continued. "This is not... our... broodmother... It is... something... else." *So that's it.* A look of realization crossed Lao Bai's face. What they had encountered truly wasn't a standard broodmother, but something else entirely. As for where this thing had come from, perhaps the Alliance's Institute of Biological Research could provide an answer. "Tell Luo Yu what you found; he can pass it along to us." Pausing, Lao Bai added, "By the way... can you pull the tentacles outside back into this building? Leaving them out on the streets will cause a lot of trouble, both in terms of explaining things and cleaning up the mess." "Ee-woo!" The rounded antenna nodded downward, then obediently retracted into the charred ashes. Watching the scattered embers die down, Lao Bai picked up his weapon and stood up. Stepping over the blackened cinders littering the floor, he walked over to the breach blasted open by the anti-ship missile. The tentacles flailing around the skyscraper had already snapped like dead branches. The distant, smoke-choked city streets were gradually falling silent as gunfire and artillery ceased, and along the far horizon, the dawn was breaking through the long night... Stopping to admire the breathtaking sunrise for a moment, Lao Bai raised an index finger to tap the side of his helmet and spoke in a clear, resolute voice. "Calling Command, this is Lao Bai..." "Tyr is dead. I took him down with my own hands." "The war is over." ... With Baldwin's surrender and the fall of the World Tower, the last unit still fighting for the Southern Legion raised their hands and surrendered to Alliance forces. Simultaneously, the flag of the Alliance fluttered at the highest point in Avent City—the roof of the World Tower. The victor had been decided, and the end had come far faster than anyone anticipated. The gloomy sky lightened to pale white. The first rays of dawn pierced the gloom, casting their light across the smoke-veiled concrete ruins. Tyr was dead. Augustus was dead as well. Along with Tyr's confidants and the myriarchs of five stars and above who had driven the war forward. Some were found to have committed suicide in their homes; others had died in bunkers, or even amidst debauched orgies. Evidently, not all Wilante regarded honor as life itself. At least the vermin around Tyr held no such notions in their heads—only winning and losing. Likewise, not everyone possessed the courage to face defeat. Rather than suffer the victor's humiliation, taking one's own life was an easier choice to accept. Yet there were exceptions. For instance, Dickens's superior, Geoffrey—head of the Southern Legion's Supreme General Affairs Department. This man was a four-star myriarch, equal in rank to Augustus and only half a tier below him in position, overseeing all logistical supply and military industrial production for the Southern Legion. He had originally intended to kill himself as well, having already placed a cyanide capsule in his mouth. Yet in the end, fear stayed his jaws. Before he could bite down, soldiers stormed inside, pinned him to the desk, and dug the capsule out of his throat. Weighing well over two hundred jin, the man resembled a bloated pig dragged into a slaughterhouse, requiring three soldiers just to hold him down. Almost everyone in Avent City was gaunt and emaciated, even Tyr and Augustus, yet he alone was packed with grease and fat. His face flushed crimson, he still refused to accept his fate, thrashing futilely against the hands pinning him down. The arrest had been assigned to the First Division of the Wilante Expeditionary Force. Stepping in right behind the breach team, Battalion Commander Kuluan walked up to Geoffrey's desk and tossed a wanted poster printed on a flyer in front of him. "Mr. Geoffrey, you are under arrest." Geoffrey strained with all his might to lift his head, glaring at the man standing before him, his expression freezing in bewilderment for several seconds. Panting heavily, he forced words through gritted teeth. "...You're a Wilante." Kuluan made no attempt to hide it, replying flatly, "Former centurion of the 34th Myriad. Thanks to your grace, after being discharged, I had the fortune of being assigned to customs at Evernight Port." Geoffrey glared fixedly at him, wheezing from his fleshy throat. "Then why did you betray us... Did the Southern Legion... ever wrong you?" Kuluan looked him in the eye and chuckled faintly. "Have you ever heard of snake oil?" Geoffrey froze for a few seconds, looking utterly bewildered. "...What is that?" "Something that immerses people in sweet dreams. Once people fall into it, they can never climb back out, like ants drowning in a jar of honey. And I was once one of those people—I was even an accomplice to your crimes for a time." "We were deceived by your ambition, exploited by it, using Marshal Julius's name to do things that would make the Marshal turn in his grave, using Marshal Julius's name to enslave our own brethren... You lot are nothing but rot, and that is why you lost." Kuluan leaned both hands against the desk, staring dead into Geoffrey's eyes until terror surfaced in the fat man's pupils. Only a guilty conscience fears a knock at the door... and Geoffrey was unmistakably guilty. Perhaps he had never personally taken part in a single massacre or sold a single bottle of snake oil, but every ounce of fat on his body came from that bloody persecution. He was the consummate criminal, and the most venomous... The poison he peddled was an evil far filthier than snake oil. Looking at the pale-faced Department Head Geoffrey, Kuluan lifted his hands from the desk and gave a curt nod to the three soldiers pinning the fat pig down. "Take him away." The three soldiers acknowledged the order respectfully and hauled Geoffrey toward the exit. This time, the man offered no resistance, his entire body going limp as he allowed the three young Wilante men to drag him out. Only as they brushed past Kuluan did the battalion commander pause, adding in a casual, matter-of-fact tone, "As for the snake oil, perhaps you should ask Department Head Dickens of the Bolo Province Theater General Affairs Department." "I imagine... the two of you won't have to wait long before you meet again." ... Following the fall of the World Tower, the Alliance's flag was raised over the Southern Legion's council building as well. Along with the hospital on Veterans Road, and the Ministry of War... Just as everyone had hoped, the war had come to an end. Survivors hiding in basements and cellars carefully poked their heads out through cracks in the rubble. The gunfire and artillery outside had fallen silent, and Tyr's hysterical rants no longer blared from the broadcast speakers. In their place came a voice they had never heard before— "...Survivors of Avent City, survivors who have suffered the agonies of war, survivors who were deceived by evil—your war is over." "Your supreme commander, Tyr, clinging to stubborn resistance in hysterical madness, has been slain by the Burning Corps. Chief of General Staff Augustus committed suicide to escape his crimes... That shameless scoundrel not only murdered the children of countless families, but murdered his own children and wife. We despise such cowardly acts." "A person must answer for their own deeds. I believe we are not alone in this conviction; you too share our deep revulsion toward cowards who vent their own incompetence upon those they hold most dear..." "That being the case, think carefully of your parents, your children, your lovers, and your friends. Is it worth throwing your lives away for two cowards hiding behind the people, dying for an illusion of glory, and leaving your loved ones to live out the rest of their days in remorse and agony? You are not merely soldiers of the Legion; you are someone's child, someone's husband, someone's father. You are living human beings." "We promise that the perpetrators will face open and fair trials in a court of law. The mistakes already made are not beyond redemption. We will find a standard acceptable to both our societies and walk together toward a brighter future." "I, Archon of the Wilante Alliance, solemnly declare to you here and now—you may lay down your weapons with dignity. Triumph City guarantees that your lives will remain inviolable by anyone." To the vast majority of Wilante, Triumph City was both their spiritual sanctuary and their cultural homeland. Even though Tyr had repeatedly hurled abuse at Triumph City's "betrayal" in the *Southern Legion Victory News*, he could never alter what was etched into the souls of the Wilante. Over the broadcast, the Archon of Triumph City not only promised to guarantee the safety of surrendering soldiers, but also pledged to provide food, medicine, and other daily necessities to displaced refugees. Though the speech had been recorded by the Archon, it was being broadcast by Alliance forces, clearly carrying the Alliance's endorsement. Survivors began emerging one after another from cellars and crumbling buildings, heading toward centralized relief encampments with the help of nearby patrol units. There they found tents brought in from the Ravanka Industrial Zone, alongside compressed biscuits, instant noodles, ham sausages, and hot water. As for why instant noodles were served, it was mainly because large cauldrons for cooking meals had not yet been set up; currently, only the water-boilers were operating, so instant noodles had to suffice for now. Besides, distributing them was convenient: one line queued for noodles and ham, while another queued for boiling water. Even if someone wanted to go through the line a second time, it didn't matter; the cost of these rations was negligible anyway. Yet while instant noodles were merely something Alliance soldiers made do with, to the survivors of Avent City who had lived under severe rationing for so long, they were an unimaginable delicacy. Looking at the steaming tubs of noodles in their hands, shock showed on those emaciated, hollow faces. Several young conscripts who had been forced into the ranks even broke down in tears. They had never lived through the days when the Southern Legion's rations were at their best. By the time rifles were thrust into their hands, all that was left in their bowls were rock-hard bread and blackened nutrient paste. Rumbling stomachs chorused throughout the camp. Had the scalding water not been too hot to swallow, those fifteen- and sixteen-year-old boys would have gulped down the broth before the noodles even softened. In fact, someone truly intended to do just that, only to be stopped by a quick-handed player. [Brother Scrambled Eggs] of the Burning Corps walked through the camp, banging an iron basin with a ladle as he shouted to the famished survivors. "Take it easy! There's plenty of instant noodles and hot water for everyone, and better food's coming tomorrow! Don't go stuffing yourselves to death!" Seeing these people treat cheap instant noodles like precious treasures, he couldn't help recalling the days long ago when they skinned mutant hyenas in Linghu Wetland Park. In terms of how desperately they ate, these Wilante weren't so different from the refugees they had picked up off the wasteland back then. A Southern Legion millurion with tangled hair, looking as though he had just crawled out of a chimney, held a tub of noodles with both hands in front of the boiling-water furnace. Looking at the Wilante Expeditionary Force soldier managing the spigot, he asked tremulously, "...Is this our last meal?" He didn't dare speak with Alliance soldiers, but he had finally found a familiar face. The expeditionary soldier gave him a glance and joked, "Of course not. Grains, vegetables, and frozen meat are still at the port in northern Batoya Province. Until the relief supplies arrive, you'll just have to make do with instant noodles for a few meals." *Make do... with instant noodles for a few meals?* The millurion stood dazed for a long time, caught between laughing and weeping. How the hell was anyone supposed to fight a war like this?! Though he had never bought into the drivel printed in the *Southern Legion Victory News*—such as Boulder City suffering a famine, or survivors at Settlement No. 1 revolting—the enemy's supplies were ridiculously abundant. The war was already over. He believed the Alliance wouldn't bother posturing just to deceive them. He could only marvel at how absurd Tyr's lies had been—so absurd that even he, a millurion, had almost fallen for them! While the millurion stood speechless with his noodles, several Skeleton Corps players were chatting nearby. [Construction Site Boy and Bricks] stretched with an unfulfilled look on his face. "Wait, it's just over like that?" [Brother Edge] glanced around and replied succinctly, "Obviously. Tyr's dead, the Southern Legion high command are either dead or captured... whatever's left is basically right here." At this point, the Legion had completely become a relic of history, and a reborn Avent City would never want to see it return. Come to think of it, what should the Southern Legion be called from now on? The name 'Wilante Alliance' had already been claimed by Battlefield Guy, while 'Southern Alliance' overlapped too closely with the South Sea Alliance and didn't stand out. Brother Edge scratched the back of his head and pondered for a while without reaching any conclusion, eventually giving up. Better to leave that question for the Wilante to figure out themselves. There was no need for them to walk the exact same path as the Alliance, so long as they didn't wander down the wrong road again. Gazing at the scarred ruins in the distance, [Fawai Kuangtu] wore a lingering, reluctant look, though it was hard to tell what he was reluctant to part with. "Damn it all! These top players are ridiculous. I didn't even get to see what the final boss looked like, so how the hell did we win already?!" [I'm Responsible for Dying First] chuckled and clapped his buddy on the shoulder. "Forget about it, taking part is what counts! If you're curious, go check the official forums later."