Chapter 562.2: Die For Daddy

The blood loss could rival a rated movie...

No, compared to the scene before him, a movie like that was nothing!

Is this what Light calls a cheerful game?

Silently roasting Light in his heart, Night Ten picked his Gauss sniper rifle up from the pooled gore and flicked off the blood.

The barrel had been bent by the mutant, but the Model 15 Python used a detachable barrel anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal.

He slung the Gauss sniper rifle back on his back, snapped a few photos of the cybernetic mutant’s corpse, grabbed some scraps as trophies, then hurried out of the car toward the stairwell.

Although the Mutant Human named Oru had come down alone to duel him, the ones surrounding him were clearly more than just that single brute.

Four or five Mutant Humans squatted at the stairwell entrance, their murderous intent almost overflowing from Night Ten’s retinas.

But murderous intent aside, those small fry were far weaker than the cybernetic elite he had just fought.

Figuring he couldn’t force his way through them, Night Ten backed out of the stairwell to level B1, slapped a block of C4 on the ceiling, and ducked into a nearby room.

"Come on down!" With a wicked grin, he clenched the detonator.

A thunderous blast rolled through the corridor. The shockwave shattered the ceiling and blew the old concrete slab into a full collapse.

The mutants guarding the first-floor stairwell exit didn’t even have time to react before they fell with it, dropping into a billowing cloud of dust.

If they had been ordinary people, they would probably have been blown to pieces on the spot, but the Mutant Humans just shook their heads and could recover after a short rest.

Without giving them a chance to breathe, Night Ten stepped over the concrete rubble and walked up to them, putting a bullet into each of their heads.

The explosions in the building drew the attention of mutants patrolling the street. Night Ten didn’t dare use the front door and circled out to the street from the back.

However, almost the instant he got onto the street, headlights flared on both sides bright enough to blind him.

Through his tactical visor Night Ten saw two steel-plated technicals, their rooftop machine guns pointed straight at him.

"Shit!"

His face changed slightly as he looked for cover, but two missiles whooshed down from the night sky, and in a flash the blasts swallowed both technicals whole.

Mutant Humans stumbled out of the vehicles, and gunfire rattled from the opposite side of the street.

At the same time, gunfire chattered from the other side of the street. Ample Time, who had covered the guerrillas’ retreat earlier, had brought his people back into the fight.

A familiar, long-missed voice came over the communication channel.

"Night Ten! What’s your status there?"

Hearing that voice like heavenly music, Night Ten replied excitedly, "Bro..."

"Cut the crap and get over here!"

The rough bark cut his rising emotions in half.

"Heh, roger that!" Night Ten chuckled apologetically and sprinted toward the rendezvous marked on the map.

In the distance he could hear Mutant Humans shouting. The booming gunfire chased the group around the street corners like fireworks.

Night Ten quickly linked up with Ample Time’s Team 2, and together they headed for the extraction point.

The extraction point was an open-air lot in an abandoned building’s parking area, only 300 meters away, with the Viper transport plane sitting in the center.

They scrambled aboard, and the pilot immediately pulled for altitude, flying toward the outskirts.

The danger was finally over.

Watching the half-lit district recede into the distance, Night Ten exhaled and looked at Ample Time across from him.

"Weren’t you guys withdrawing? Why did you come back?"

Before Ample Time spoke, Quit Smoking grinned and clapped his shoulder. "Brother, your exoframe cost a whole million silver coins! Leaving you behind would’ve been a huge loss!"

Another squadmate teased with a laugh. "Yeah, at least we had to bring your corpse back."

Night Ten’s eyebrows arched in shock. "Damn! Are you guys really that heartless?"

Ample Time rolled his eyes. "Quit yapping. What the hell were you doing just now?"

Thinking back on the nerve-wracking ordeal, Night Ten sighed. "Long story. Mutant Humans made it to the floor beneath me and tried to sneak up on me. I sensed it early and figured I should go down the elevator shaft, but those bastards played dirty. They must’ve heard something in the shaft and cut the cable from above..."

"The idea wasn’t wrong. Move fast enough and they might not react. But with your gear..." Ample Time gave his exoframe a pointed look. "Weren’t you afraid of getting stuck?"

Night Ten scratched the back of his head in embarrassment, then suddenly remembered something and changed the subject. "Right, those creatures were a bit weird."

As he spoke, he pulled a piece of wreckage off his armor.

The thing was black, gummy with charred blood and meat scraps, was impossible to tell what part it had come from.

Several players leaned in for a look and still couldn’t figure it out.

Ample Time frowned slightly. "That is...?"

With eyes shining, Night Ten said, "Cybernetic augmentation! I tore it off that elite... No, that boss creature!"

At his words, the players all gasped in surprise.

"Holy crap?! Cybernetics?!"

"Mutant Humans?!"

"You sure you’re not seeing things?"

Seeing they didn’t believe him, Night Ten got flustered. "How could I see wrong? I stuck a knife in his head."

He then vividly described the appearance of the cybernetic Mutant Human and how perilous the situation had been.

Only after his mouth went dry and he felt satisfied did he share the photos he had taken to the team’s terminals, earning another eye-roll from Ample Time.

Quit Smoking, for his part, listened intently. He usually believed whatever people told him, and his eyes went wide, especially at the brutal elevator fight.

𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

When Night Ten finally finished bragging, Quit Smoking said with lingering awe, "Good grief... since when could Mutant Humans get surgery?"

"It wasn’t hard to understand. The Torch Church leadership weren’t pure believers in the simple sense, they were Shelter residents. Religion was more like their tool."

Ample Time stared at the photo on his VM, brows knotted, and continued, "To be honest, I’d already had a similar feeling... Those Mutant Humans, in both tactics and gear, weren’t like an ordinary tribe."

Old White also fell into thought. "

Mm

, especially those vehicles and weapons. It’s like they were tailor-made for them."

A few players traded looks. It seemed that the nuclear-fuel recovery mission wasn’t as simple as they had imagined...

The helicopter didn’t return to base but flew to the suburbs more than 10 kilometers away, landing at the forest’s edge where the trees were more sparse.

One nice thing about a vertical lift off plane was not having to worry about rotors snagging branches. It could land almost anywhere.

Another Viper was parked nearby. The players who had withdrawn first had lit several fires and sat by them.

There were also six guerrillas who had retreated with the players. Two were badly injured and lay unconscious.

Seeing Old White and the others approach, Gale tossed the branch he had been poking the fire with into the flames and stood up to meet them.

Beside him was a bearded middle-aged man with a scarf around his neck. He wore a cement-gray coat, an armband bearing a tower emblem, and an assault rifle on his back wrapped with cloth strips and tape.

He looked like a seasoned veteran.

"Thank you for saving us."

"You’re welcome. I’ve got plenty of complaints and a pile of questions..." Old White stared at him for a moment, then went straight to the point. "What is your name, who you are, and who sent you."

Maybe he was too blunt, the atmosphere tightened for a moment.

Other than the two unconscious, the three by the fire went taut with nerves.

But they clearly understood that as scattered remnants they weren’t a match for these well-equipped professionals, so they wisely avoided any moves that could be misread.

The man’s expression stayed steady as he looked at Old White.

"My name is Li Jinrong. You can call us the Iron Tower. That’s our organization’s name. No one sent us and we’re under no one. We fight for ourselves... When I saw you open fire on those Mutant Humans, I thought we might be allies."

Old White smiled faintly. "Whether we can be allies depends on your sincerity."

Li Jinrong replied, looking him in the eye. "I think sincerity goes both ways."

Old White introduced himself succinctly. "My name is Old White, and we’re from the New Alliance. As for other details, I have no comment. We saved your lives. I think that’s sincerity enough."

At the keywords, surprise flickered in Li Jinrong’s eyes. He stared at Old White in disbelief.

"The New Alliance... You’re from the New Alliance? The one in the south of River Valley Province?"

"Yes. Nothing proves it better than this," Old White said, patting the LD-47 assault rifle hanging on the exoframe, then lifted a brow at him. "Sounds like you’ve heard of us?"

Li Jinrong nodded slowly. "I heard you used shoddy gear to give the Army a beating in the Sunset Province... As it turns out... The talk of shoddy gear was mere rumor."

The rifle looked retro, sure, but exoframe and a vertical take off transport plane... None of that was weak by any measure.

Old White could feel that once the man learned they were from the New Alliance, his vigilance, though not gone, had eased considerably.

Reputation did have its perks.

Like the traveling merchants of Among Cloud Province. Whether or not they had ever been to Ideal City, they loved to claim they were from the Enterprise.

Night Ten chuckled and cut in, "Calling it shoddy is definitely a rumor, but overall, those big-nosed folks’ kit is still better than ours."

Before Night Ten could derail the topic, Ample Time jumped in with a question. "Why Champion Biopharmaceutical Research Institute?"

Li Jinrong hesitated slightly. "What do you mean why...?"

Ample Time locked eyes and pressed on. "If your targets are Mutant Humans, they have more than one base in the city. What do you know about that facility?"

Li Jinrong curled his lip. "Mutant Humans? We don’t care about the green-skins. Our targets are those cultists."

Quit Smoking piped up suddenly. "The Torch Church?"

"Yes... They destroyed our home and killed my family," the man said, eyes flashing with hatred, pronouncing each word. "I don’t care what their plan is. If I can take a piece of flesh off them, I will."

"Conveniently, we don’t get along with those cultists either. They backed the Bonechewer Clan. In the New Alliance they’re a cult we need to get rid of." After a pause, Old White continued, "Our mission in Brocade River Province is related to those plague-spreading bastards. So, does that facility have any connection to the Torch Church?"

"Don’t know, but after those people arrived in Brocade Lake Municipality, their first stop was there. We tailed them the whole way, from Ocean Edge Province to here... Sadly, we were too weak, and the locals liked them better than us. We could only watch them ally with the Mutant Humans, watch them foul this land, and finally watch it repeat our own tragedy..."

As he spoke, Li Jinrong stared hard at Old White.

Old White knew what he was thinking.

Too bad that was beyond his authority. He needed to report to the administrator and let the man decide.

"We have a common enemy. Maybe we can cooperate, but I’m just a corps commander, I can’t promise you anything right now."

"No problem. We can wait!" To bolster his case, Li Jinrong added quickly, "We have more members than these. We have safe houses near various settlements!"

Old White nodded. "I’ll report it truthfully to our administrator."

"Ocean Edge Province? Where’s that?" Night Ten and Quit Smoking exchanged a glance and muttered.

Quit Smoking scratched his head, baffled.

Fortunately, Ample Time was present.

"South of Brocade River Province. It’s a tropical place, has a long coastline and broad hill ranges, with only a few plains... It’s said to be the Torch Church’s old nest."

He glanced south at the night sky, paused, and added, "That’s where the Death Coast is."

That should have been the closest place the New Alliance could approach before they reached the sea.