Brother Edge led a crowd of players out of the camp. Grabbing their gear, they piled into the trucks parked by the camp entrance and sped off toward the northern part of Avent City.
Although Dayan, the chocolate-giver, had left, the wonderful legend of the simp and his endlessly towering figure remained etched in the hearts of the young girls.
Later, when word reached the ears of some of the trolls and meme-lovers, they acted as if they had discovered a whole new world. One after another, they eagerly got into doing charity, buying out the stock of chocolate at several respawn points that had originally been meant to replenish sugar and calories for frontline soldiers.
And with all the razzing from the trolls, the tale of the simp gradually morphed into something else entirely...
Just at that moment, Elaina and Elven King Fugui returned from their patrol outside.
The two had barely stepped out of the vehicle when they were surrounded by a swarm of adorable children.
Grinning cheekily, Elven King Fugui was just about to greet them, only for what they said next to strike him like a bolt from the blue, catching him completely off guard.
"Small fry! Candy!"
"Small fry, small fry, hand over the candy!"
"Small fry, small fry!"
Hearing their heavily accented Mandarin, Elven King Fugui nearly choked on his own spit.
"*Cough!* Which bastard... no, who taught you that?"
The girls, around eleven or twelve years old, exchanged looks. The slightly younger one whispered:
"Uncle Mosquito told us not to say his name!"
The words had barely left her mouth when the girl with the ponytail beside her hurriedly slapped a hand over it.
"Shh! You let it slip!"
"Mosquito, huh... I'm not surprised in the slightest," Elaina said with an amused look. She handed some chocolate she was carrying to a quiet, demure girl wearing glasses on the bridge of her nose, smiling as she added, "What else did Uncle Mosquito say? Tell us secretly, and we won't tell him."
The quiet girl's cheeks flushed pink. Clutching the chocolate, she wrestled with her conscience for a moment before finally selling Mosquito out.
"He also said it's a Halloween tradition. On this day, kids in the Alliance only have to recite this incantation to shelter residents, and they'll get candy..."
Elven King Fugui sputtered. "*Pffft*, why can't that guy ever act like a decent human being?"
"Hahaha! But don't you think it's hilarious? It barely costs anything anyway." Elaina laughed until her stomach hurt. Under the innocent, bewildered gazes of the children, she handed out the rest of her chocolate. "Remember, this incantation only works on good people like me. It doesn't work on bad guys."
"Good people?" The quiet girl tilted her head.
Elaina patted the little girl's head with a smile.
"Mmm... basically people who can take a joke. If someone doesn't have candy, or gets scared, or snaps at you, just say 'sorry' and run off to find the next shelter resident."
The wasteland was miserable enough; a little extra joy wasn't a bad thing.
Avent City hadn't had a Halloween before.
Now it did.
...
In northern Avent City, in an alley beside the logistics building, several Death Corps soldiers stood around a corpse clad in an exoskeleton.
The finely crafted gear was visibly not a product of the Southern Legion's rough-and-ready industry.
Thanks to Dayan's chocolate, Brother Edge and his group had found the body lying beside a dumpster without breaking a sweat, all with the help of the local kids.
Perhaps hardened by enduring so much war, the children weren't the least bit afraid of the corpse. One boy, about twelve years old, even gestured with his index finger as he told Brother Edge:
"A really big aircraft landed on the roof of the logistics building. Someone shot at them, and then this guy fell off and went splat."
In Debt God asked, puzzled, "The people on the aircraft didn't come down to save him?"
Another boy, about two years older, shook his head.
"They had nice gear, but they didn't look like good fighters. A sniper far away fired several shots at them, and they didn't even know where the bullets were coming from. They didn't shoot back either."
"Yeah, yeah!" Another kid piped up, staring intently at the remaining candy in Dayan's hand. "They just flew away!"
Construction Site Boy and Bricks asked, "Did you hear which direction the gunshots came from?"
"Over here!"
Several children shouted in unison, only for their hands to point in completely different directions.
Not only were Construction Site Boy and Brother Edge dumbfounded, the children themselves were momentarily stunned, before immediately arguing over who was right.
Only then did a kid standing in the corner sigh and mutter under his breath:
"It was obviously a Gauss rifle... What you heard wasn't even the gunshot."
His father had told him there were many types of Gauss rifles. Some made a sound when the round left the barrel, some generated a sonic boom in midair, and others used specialized projectiles that only made noise upon impacting the target.
Construction Site Boy and Brother Edge exchanged glances.
"The attacker had high-tech weapons... Well, at least that's a clue."
"Could it be infighting within the Academy?"
"How could there be so much infighting? You think this is still Brahma Province?"
"Just a guess, though I don't think it's very likely either..."
In that case, it was probably someone from the Enlightenment Society.
Looking up at the roof of the logistics building, Brother Edge knitted his brows slightly.
"...The bullet probably came from the other side of the building. A few of you, come with me to check it out."
"I'll go with you." Construction Site Boy raised his hand and dutifully fell in behind his captain.
In Debt God distributed the remaining candy to the children still arguing over which direction the gunfire had come from.
"Alright, stop arguing. Set the gunshots aside for a second... Which way did the aircraft fly off?"
The children looked at one another, and this time there was no disagreement. They all pointed upward in unison.
"It flew straight up into the sky!"
"Yeah! Just like an airship! It only started spewing fire once it got into the air, and then it disappeared!"
*Vertical takeoff, huh.*
In Debt God held his head in exasperation, while Drum Hairwasher clapped him on the shoulder with a chuckle.
"Don't lose heart. Who knows, maybe they flew right out of the atmosphere? That counts as a clue, too."
On the other side, Brother Edge and Construction Site Boy circled around to the other side of the building and looked toward the northeastern outskirts of Avent City.
There lay a cluster of abandoned apartment buildings. Their shape somewhat resembled the Alliance's low-rent housing, but judging by the dismantled scaffolding, construction on these buildings had likely been halted for a long time.
Resources on the wasteland were limited, and resources meant not just mineral deposits, but also industrial capacity, construction output, labor, and more.
Even with colonies spanning 2.7 million square kilometers, the Southern Legion could hardly manage both war and development at the same time. If they chose one path, the other had to stop.
After all, they didn't have immortal players.
Sometimes, Brother Edge couldn't help wondering what the Alliance would be like without players, or if it would have been born at all.
He didn't have these thoughts to boast about how important he was or to demand gratitude from Alliance citizens; he was simply worried that if one day they left this place, how would the people left behind face the challenges the future might bring?
Without realizing when it had started, he found it increasingly difficult to treat this world merely as a game.
Or to put it another way:
He had grown emotionally attached to this game.
"...Spot anything?" Construction Site Boy and Bricks glanced at him, interrupting his train of thought.
Brother Edge shook his head and lowered the binoculars in his hand.
"The buildings here are too dense. The bullet could have come from anywhere... I don't know why those researchers chose this building. It's practically a sitting duck."
"I'm guessing it's because this building has a view of the World Tower." Construction Site Boy and Bricks glanced toward the city center. "I doubt those researchers expected to get flanked when the war was already practically over."
He paused for a moment, then seemed to think of something else and added:
"I wonder if it's possible that while they were investigating the 'suspected broodmother organism' at the World Tower, someone from the Enlightenment Society or another faction was watching them."
Brother Edge shook his head.
"Whichever it is, tracking them down will be harder than reaching the heavens... Anyway, let's recover the poor bastard's corpse first."
As he spoke, he was about to turn around when an alarm suddenly flared in his mind.
Time slowed down in an instant—
Or to be more precise, his brain's information processing speed multiplied several times over in a split second!
It was the Perception talent he had unlocked at Level 30!
Upon sensing danger, adrenaline surged, passively triggering an effect akin to bullet time!
Brother Edge snapped his head back, raising his binoculars toward an unfinished window in the cluster of buildings.
Almost at the exact same moment, a man bracing a Gauss rifle hurriedly pulled his weapon back in shock, dodging away from his sniper perch.
Brother Edge clearly caught the bewildered look on the man's face—the sniper obviously hadn't expected to be spotted.
Without a moment's hesitation, Brother Edge opened his communication module and contacted rear command.
"...This is Death Corps. We've spotted a suspicious target. Requesting a drone."
After a brief pause, a reply came through the channel:
"Command copies. Drone coming online."
"Copy that!"
Hanging up, Brother Edge tossed the binoculars to the utterly bewildered Construction Site Boy. He tapped the map icon on his VM screen and drew a box around a wide area on the pop-up display.
"All Death Corps units, seal off every exit in the marked area. Target may be equipped with optical camouflage. Make sure you bring infrared detectors."
Confirmations immediately echoed over the comms:
"Copy!"
Meanwhile, the man who had just retreated from the sniper nest wore a shaken expression.
His name was Flynn, a disciple of the Enlightenment Society and one of its deep-cover agents planted in Avent City.
A long time ago, the upper echelons of the Southern Legion had colluded with the Enlightenment Society. It was precisely because of this connection that Martin and his "Death Agent" had been favored by Tyr.
However, only a handful of top brass in the Southern Legion were aware of the contact with the Enlightenment Society. Even Chief of General Staff Augustus hadn't known the full picture, let alone the vast majority of officers.
While the disturbance at Evernight Port had briefly brought the Enlightenment Society's name into the public eye, the lack of evidence and leads had reduced it to an absurd farce about "druggies getting too high," making little splash.
In reality, inside the World Tower—where Tyr's "decisive battle weapon" was housed—over half the researchers had been directly supplied or trained by the Enlightenment Society.
Beyond researchers, the Enlightenment Society's leadership had also sponsored the Southern Legion with plenty of immediately applicable results.
For example, the "Seed of Gaia" obtained from the Celestials.
Flynn was not a professional researcher, nor did he understand what the Seed of Gaia was used for; he only knew that the organization's leaders were keenly interested in its field combat data.
On the other hand, the Celestials wanted them to procure an Academy research vessel to facilitate direct material exchanges with the space station at the Lagrange point.
According to their judgment, the Academy—which held partial data on "Para-Gaia lifeforms" and didn't want it leaked—would definitely hide in some corner unbeknownst to the Alliance, secretly observing and gathering data.
Hence today's operation.
Everything had gone as smoothly as planned.
Under his cover, his partner Luo Yi had successfully infiltrated the research vessel, eliminated all the researchers, hacked into the vessel's server, and seized control of the craft.
Having finished his part, Flynn had intended to pack up and pull out. Yet out of damned curiosity, he had taken an extra glance at those two guys in gas masks—only to be locked onto by one of them.
He had never seen anything so eerie. Even for an Awakened's special talent, acquiring a target across such a distance was absurd.
Perhaps there were still "Singularities" in this world that they did not understand.
Watching the fixed-wing drone circling at low altitude, Flynn carefully concealed himself in the shadows, warily eyeing the nearby street.
The entire district was like a boiling cauldron. Trucks and off-road vehicles sped through the streets, kicking up towering plumes of dust that signaled a massive stir.
Whether for the research vessel or their dead allies, these people were playing for keeps.
Taking a deep breath of chilly air, Flynn pressed a hand to the side of his helmet.
"I ran into a problem on my end... I can't reach the extraction point for now. Move outside the settlement and standby. I'll find my own way out."
He paused, then added:
"The Alliance soldiers are weird. I don't know if it's instinct or what, but one of them caught my position with a single glance... Just be careful."
"Unless you're certain you can take them down in one shot, don't casually aim at them."
...
The Academy had lost a research vessel.
When Chu Guang heard the news, his first reaction was that the old geezers in the Wandering Marsh had dropped loot again.
And right on cue, too.
The gravity well had already been deployed, and the "seal" placed upon this planet was about to be lifted. The Alliance happened to lack a vehicle capable of operating in outer space.
Although the Scientific Expedition had recovered plenty of technical data from pre-war ruins, schematics were naturally no match for a ready-made craft.
However, after listening to the explanation from Li Ke, a B-rank researcher from the Academy External Affairs Department's Special Projects Team, Chu Guang quickly realized the waters ran deeper than he had imagined.
A report that had landed on his desk a very long time ago was pulled back out from the depths of his filing cabinet.
That went back to the Torch War.
Based on the Guards Corps' investigation into Shelter 20 and intel disclosed by the Academy, the Alliance had first learned that an Era of Prosperity starport at the Lagrange point housed descendants of the Human Alliance Expeditionary Force.
For some reason, these people had inherited the legacy of the Church of the Torch and were suspected of sponsoring certain operations of the Enlightenment Society.
The Academy called them "Celestials."
Because there had been no direct contact, Chu Guang had once put the matter out of mind. But the Academy losing this research vessel suddenly brought it all rushing back.
Just who was so desperate to travel between the sky and the surface?
It couldn't possibly be the Eastern Empire.
"I've already notified the frontline combat personnel. They're currently investigating."
Seeing Chu Guang return to the reception room, Li Ke straightened up from the sofa and looked at him urgently.
"Any leads?"
Chu Guang sat down across from him, gesturing with a calm glance for him not to fret, before saying:
"By the time our people arrived, the fight was over. According to the locals, they saw the research vessel rocket straight up into the sky and fly off. The materials used on your research vessel are too specialized; our radar didn't pick up a single ping."
Seeing Li Ke's disappointed expression, Chu Guang pondered for a moment before continuing:
"Fortunately, though, they left behind a loose end on the ground. Our troops have already cordoned off the district where he might be hiding. If we can capture him, we might pry something out of him."
The majority of Avent City's population were Wilante. If the culprit belonged to another ethnicity, filtering him out shouldn't be too difficult.
Of course, nothing was guaranteed.
Everyone was a descendant of the Human Alliance; who didn't hold a trump card or two that others didn't know about?
Himself included.
Hearing Chu Guang's words, Li Ke sighed. "We've caused you trouble."
"You certainly have," Chu Guang replied without pulling punches, looking at the embarrassed Li Ke as he got straight to the point. "We're already looking for the man. Now, what I want to know is what your people were doing there in the first place."
At this demand, an awkward look crossed Li Ke's face, and he averted his eyes, stammering, "We..."
Chu Guang raised a hand, signaling that there was no need for such hesitation.
"I know you have your difficulties, but I also want you to understand one thing... It was precisely because you didn't inform us in advance about your operation in Avent City that this happened."
"Furthermore, assuming the enemy has already cracked the data stored inside while seizing the vessel, your secrecy serves no purpose other than creating obstacles and difficulties for your ally—us—during the investigation. Do you understand what I mean?"
Li Ke wiped the sweat from his forehead, nodding with a wry smile.
"I... understand. But the project involved has too high a classification level. I cannot decide on my own to disclose it to you; I must request instructions from my superiors..."
Chu Guang nodded.
"As long as you understand. I trust you will properly convey my meaning to your superiors."
With that, having barely sat down, he rose from the sofa again.
"Don't waste time here either. Hurry and contact your superiors."
"Or have him come see me directly!"
Chapter 969