Chapter 565.2: Dance Of Blood And Fire

Fortunately, the bolts were slow in flight. They were barely subsonic. Hitting a fast-moving vehicle wasn’t easy.

Oge’s mind flashed to a solution. He grabbed the radio and rattled orders into the channel.

At his command, eight jeeps dropped their tails and surged ahead of the infantry, zigzagging in serpentine S tracks across the flats.

Billowing dust and what looked like deliberate exhaust not only masked the convoy’s movement but also gave the charging infantry a screen.

Staring at the rising wall of grit ahead, Midnight Pubg swore under his breath.

So Old White hadn’t been kidding. Those Mutant Humans weren’t simple at all. They adapted fast on the fly and even knew how to throw smoke for cover.

It did, to a degree, spoil the Jungle Corps’s aim.

But...

The green-skinned muscleheads clearly had not expected trouble to come from beneath their feet.

Because all their attention was forward, they did not notice the ground below. The Mutant Humans at the tip of the charge quickly face-planted, rolled several times. Screened by the smoke, they tripped the ones behind them.

"Roar!"

With an angry bellow, a mutant spat out the mud in his mouth and struggled to his feet, only to discover in shock and fury that the clumps of dead grass ahead had somehow been tied into dead knots.

What the hell are these things?!

Not only that. The grass was strewn with nails, nails tied to strings, and scattered pits like burrow holes dug by marmots. The traps were not very damaging and were crudely made, but their insult value was sky-high.

Rounds with licking flames still howled through the air, leaving no time to think.

Every so often someone tripped and went down, followed by a pained roar. The century on the far right slowed quickly.

Watching the green muscleheads topple one after another, Make Me, hiding behind a shrub, let out an excited shriek. "Charge them! Stab their eyes! Bite their throats! Kill them!"

But things went contrary to his hopes. The little mouse underlings did not obey him, nor could they even understand what he said.

Startled by the sudden appearance of the big green fellows, several mice still working on the traps squeaked in alarm, leapt out, turned tail, and ran.

No matter how the fat rat beside them squeaked and squeaked, they did not heed him, caring only to flee for their lives.

"Damn! Cowardly as mice, the lot of you!"

Seeing his little mouse brothers panic and scatter, Make Me cursed, then quickly remembered they were, in fact, mice.

"Fuck! Should’ve known better than to count on them!"

Watching the Mutant Humans struggle to rise, he gritted his teeth, drew the knife at his waist, and charged with a howl.

"Long live the administrator!"

Startled by the fat rat as tall as his knee, the soldier who had just gotten up froze for a beat.

That brief daze let Make Me close the distance. He went to town on the mutant’s calf with a flurry of stabs.

"Ou!"

The blade cut deep into flesh. With a roar of pain, the Mutant Human lashed out with a kick, but his foot struck only air as Make Me juked aside and darted behind him.

"Die!"

While the creature’s weight pitched forward, Make Me clenched the knife in his teeth, used all four limbs, scrambled up the left leg onto the back, and drove the blade hard into his throat.

Rip!

The knife opened the artery. Fire-hot blood fountained out. The Mutant Human, eyes bulging like bronze bells, dropped to his knees, bleeding out in an instant, dead before he knew what had happened.

"

Ptui

! This blood stank like hell!" Make Me spat, clamped the knife in his teeth, and sprang down from the Mutant Human’s shoulder.

But just as he braced to leap at another one, a massive impact slammed him from the side, flinging him away and sending him rolling twice across the ground.

The entire right half of his body went numb, and the knife flew from his mouth.

When his senses returned, Make Me realized that from his right forelimb to his belly he had been torn open by shrapnel, skin split and flesh gaping.

If not for pain suppression, that one hit would have been enough to knock him out cold.

A Mutant Human soldier stood not far away, grinning viciously as he raked the handguard beneath the barrel. A shell two sizes thicker than a thumb popped from the chamber.

"Shit... A shotgun!" Make Me swore, forced his left forelimb to move, yanked the pull ring hidden at his waist, and a tongue of flame darted into the waist pouch.

There hung half a kilo of explosives.

Perhaps that was the proper way to play a rat.

The Mutant Human strode over, reached out with a pincer-like hand, grabbed the fat rat’s thick neck, and lifted him off the ground.

Just as he puzzled over what the fat rat was, the next second the half-dead fat rat flashed a wicked grin.

He would go on ahead.

The rest... He left to the others!

He tore his throat and screamed in a sharp voice, "Long live the administrator!"

Fire blossomed at once!

The mutant, missing half an arm and part of his head, bristled with countless shards of metal and fell without a sound.

The burst of fire that bloomed in the wilderness was like a stone thrown into a lake. It was quickly swallowed by the tide of the onrushing assault.

But in the eyes of the trembling little mouse brothers, that unremarkable flame shone like a flower of fireworks.

In that instant, their Giant Rat God became light!

"Bro!" Glaring at the explosion with bloodshot eyes, Me Quiet, who was lying prone in the forest, roared as his index finger welded itself to the trigger of the Lance rifle Old White had given him.

The 20mm muzzle spat tongues of flame. Tracer-laced armor-piercing incendiaries bored into the howling storm of bullets, like flickering flames in the wind.

Neither Make Me’s traps and ambush nor the 20mm lance in Me Quiet’s hands managed to stall the Mutant Humans for long.

The lizard lurking in the forest silently rasped his claws.

He was waiting for his moment... A moment to enter and reap!

"20..." Garbage muttered, "Even the rat managed to take two with him. I have to kill at least 20!"

The last 100 meters vanished in a blink. After leaving more than a bunch of corpses, the rifle-toting Mutant Humans finally slammed into the jungle.

The Jungle Corps kept up their fire while falling back, drawing the Mutant Humans fully into the narrow-sighted dense woods.

At near face-to-face ranges, where one could almost smell the other side’s breath, the Cannon Guns with a 10 meter safe distance had lost their utility.

And not just those either...

Aside from large-caliber machine guns or shotguns, ranged weapons that could not reliably make headshots were nearly useless!

Of course, it was the same for the Mutant Humans.

The K-10 Iron Wall exoskeletons gave the 20 Jungle Corps players extremely powerful armor that could absorb kinetic energy by deforming.

Unless they ate two full bursts dead-on, or were unlucky enough to be hit in a critical spot, it was basically hard to die.

The enemy clearly knew it too, which was why they didn’t go prone for a firefight but instead charged in, accepting heavy losses to force close combat.

Midnight Pubg decided on the spot. He let go of the Howler in his hands, and drew the logging axe mounted on the Iron Wall’s frame.

A blade sharp enough to split a pine as thick as a thigh would, of course, split necks and skulls.

Facing the charging warrior, he did not retreat but rushed forward instead, letting out a roar and bringing the axe down in a crushing blow.

The vertical chop fell with thunderous force. The mutant had no time to react, nor had he expected the human before him to dare fight him in close combat. His crown split open on the spot. Red and white sprayed everywhere, even his teeth were chopped loose.

Kicking the heavy corpse aside, Midnight Pubg reached back with his left hand and yanked down a second axe.

His black chestplate was spattered red and white. Bathed in blood, he looked like a forest demon, the twin axes glinting with a cold, murderous sheen.

The Mutant Humans who had rushed up short stopped involuntarily, cowed by the specter before him.

This guy... He was nothing like the ones they had eaten before!

"Roar!"

Pouring fear into a war cry, a heavily armored captain of the Mutant Human army stomped forward and swung his spiked mace with all his might.

The whistling head dragged the wind behind it, carrying terrifying momentum like a shell. It seemed able to dent even tank armor.

If that landed, even if one didn’t die, you would end up as a vegetable.

Just as the fatal strike was about to smash into the human’s face, the captain saw a blur, and then searing pain shot up his forearm.

The hand gripping the spiked mace had been lopped clean off by a sideward chopping axe!

"ARGH!" Screaming in pain, he staggered back a step. Before he could find his feet, a blast smashed into his face.

Clang!

The vertical edge crashed down again, pulping another skull.

Everything took only a few breaths!

"... Two!" Soaked in hot blood and brain, Midnight Pubg glared with bloodlust at the Mutant Humans frozen in their tracks. The thrill in his throat could no longer be contained.

"Berserk!"

He bellowed and charged, whirling his twin axes.

Seeing the figure pounding toward them in meteoric strides, rare panic broke over green faces.

It had always been they who chased the weak two-leg livestock, watching them trip in the woods and then cry and beg.

Never had anyone dared...

Not only did they refuse to flee, but to rush them head-on.

The fighter before them was unlike any human they had ever seen.

No.

He is not human at all!

The real hunt had only just begun.

The 20 players of the Jungle Corps and the green muscleheads who had burst into the forest fell upon each other in a blood-soaked melee. Swinging axe blades turned like rolling meat grinders, harvesting green heads amid the acrid reek of powder.

For the players of the Jungle Corps, chopping necks and chopping trees were no different. It was the job they knew best.

Now... They were in the jungle, and that was their home field!