Chapter 377.1: Hidden Killing Intent

"S-Sir, I'm just a traveling merchant. Is there some misunderstanding between us?" As he gazed at the dark muzzle of the gun, Jepp, who sat paralyzed on the ground, dared not breathe loudly. He pleaded with his voice trembling.

However, the man standing before him with a stern expression was unmoved. Toying with a PU 9 submachine gun he had picked up, he growled, "Where did this gun come from?"

Hearing this question, Jepp felt even more distressed but dared not conceal the truth. After all, he had already guessed the identity of those men.

They were like the group in black he saw this morning, all coming from that absurdly large airship, all from that damned Army!

"I-I found it." Jepp stuttered

"Where did you find it?"

"I found it east, about 5 or 6 kilometers towards the edge of the forest, there’s a place called Katin Station... There was a group dressed like you this morning. They got into a conflict with some others and started fighting. Oh, I heard from other mercenaries that they seemed to be from the New Alliance." Jepp stammered as he spoke, and the stern-faced man’s expression sank.

"...The New Alliance."

Being new to the River Valley Province, he hadn't heard of this name before. It was likely a local powerhouse that rose in recent years. Such occurrences weren’t rare.

Humans were creatures that seeked safety in numbers.

However, regardless of what the New Alliance was, they had now not only provoked the Army but also killed crew members of the Heart of Steel.

The last survivor settlement that did the same didn’t just have their leader hung from the bridge. The men, women, and children of the settlement were captured as slaves.

When the airship docked, one in ten who were sold to the mines survived. The rest died en route, and the causes of death varied.

There might be officers who ordered their men to treat prisoners well, but certainly not the respected General McClennan they served. The barbarians in their way only had two outcomes. They could either be subjugated, or annihilated.

A cruel smile cracked across Vito's stern face.

He didn't care about Herrick. In his eyes, Herrick was a weakling who couldn't even beat a few natives. Trash like that wasn’t worthy of sympathy. What delighted him was the prospect of new amusement.

Frightened by that twisted expression, Jepp shivered as he spoke again. "I don't know those people, I just happened to pass by..."

"How many of them were there?"

"3... There were 3 of them..."

"3?"

"And a talking bear! And one that doesn’t talk. They were driving an armed truck, looked like they were heading to Sunset Province, but after what happened, they didn't continue westward but turned back, yes! I remember! They went east! If you follow the edge of the forest eastward, you should be able to find them!" As if clutching at straws, Jepp frantically spilled all he knew.

Vito quietly pondered.

A talking bear...

He had never heard of such a bizarre thing, but this was the wasteland, where anything could happen. It was probably the bear that dealt with Herrick and his guys.

Standing behind Vito, a muscular brute stepped forward half a step, speaking in a dull tone. "It might just be those folks who set the trap that damaged our airship."

He had 2 blood-stained hatchets on his waist and a sawed-off shotgun on his back. Even though he could end his opponents with bullets, he enjoyed the thrill of cleaving their skulls with his hatchets more.

"It’s not out of the question." Vito thought for a moment and spoke calmly. "We must make them pay."

Another lean man spoke up. "What do you suggest?"

"First, we report to Commander Richie, then continue tracking east... The employee of the Enterprise might also be with them.” Pausing, Vito thought for some time before he continued, "If we can catch both the culprits who damaged our airship and that Enterprise employee, General McClennan might personally reward us."

As the 3 cloaked members discussed among themselves, Jepp glanced at the scattered goods and the bleeding oxen, feeling a pang of loss.

His day was really fucking cursed.

He was first blasted out of his tent by a group of soldiers with crooked noses, and then another group started brawling right next to his goods. Before he could grasp what was happening, a truck with mounted guns plowed through, sending his tent flying.

Those people were somewhat reasonable, compensating him with 3 Dinars. Although the money wasn’t nearly enough to cover his losses, it did provide some consolation.

Years of wandering the wasteland taught him that it was no place to linger. Without further thought, he quickly packed up and left the trouble-filled area.

What he realized was that he should have never picked up the weapons and personal belongings from those bodies. That very act brought him deadly trouble.

After he left, 3 cloaked men caught up to him. Someone shot the leader of the mercenary he hired in the head before a muscular freak charged forward, felling the remaining 2 guards with a couple of swings of his hatchet.

He even felt that those 3 who caught up to him were fiercer than the 20 or guards he had seen at Katin Station.

These men were not only awakeners but had also likely undergone genetic modification surgery or something similar. He distinctly remembered the muscular brute being shot but he looked like nothing was wrong. He didn’t even use a bandage.

It seemed that they even reached a consensus to leave.

Jepp heaved a sigh of relief, thinking he was finally saved. However, just as he thought that he would live, the stern-faced man pointed the PU 9 submachine gun at him.

"Sir?" Jepp's heart leapt to his throat as he frantically began to beg for mercy, but before he could finish his plea, the rattling gunfire turned him into a sieve.

Looking at the wastelander lying in a pool of blood, Vito casually tossed the submachine gun aside.

The muscular brute glanced at the scattered goods and the fallen oxen, clicking his tongue in pity.

"What a waste."

"Don't waste time, the mission is more important."

Without another word, Vito and his team hastened eastward.

...

"Directional shield?!"

At Camp 101, Looking at the image on the screen, Pai, having listened to Chu Guang's description, blurted out a foreign term that was somewhat foreign to Chu Guang.

It took a long while for her to digest the shock, then she whispered softly, "How did you guys provoke that kind of monster?"

Chu Guang sighed with a pained expression. "It's not that we provoked them. They came straight for us. This is the wasteland. Even if we do nothing, trouble will find us.”

30 W-2 Mosquito attack planes, none survived!

Those 15 rockets were the pilots' last defiance.

Although they ultimately didn't damage the airship, thanks to those players' sacrifices, the shelter obtained valuable intelligence.

If it came to laying all their cards on the table only to find that their weapons couldn't breach the opponent's defenses, it would truly spell doom. Now, he at least had time to think of a countermeasure.

However, the concept of shields was beyond Chu Guang's knowledge and also beyond the players' expertise.

Mosquito were still exclaiming how unscientific it was on the forums, frantically tagging him to nerf to the new boss.

Chu Guang wished he could. but alas, he was not the real creator, and the wasteland wasn’t a real game. There was no console he could use to weaken the boss!

Most of the prizes drawn from the shelter were non-lethal weapons, and the occasionally strong equipment was only suitable for personal defense. It was often less effective in large-scale warfare than the weapons the players crafted.

After much deliberation, he could only seek help from his friends at Camp 101.

Hearing Pai call them a monster, Chu Guang's expression turned grim.

"Is the directional shield hard to deal with?"

"Hmm... where should I start?" Pai pondered seriously for a moment, then continued, "Directional shields were standard on every starship during the Federation Era. They were mainly used to defend against meteor impacts and some illegally modified armed transport ships launching kinetic and chemical propulsion missiles. The principle of the shield is based on gravitational field-related effects, and the efficiency of deflection depended on the momentum and direction of the flying objects."

"... What does that mean?" Chu Guang asked as he felt his head starting to ache from her use of technical terms.

Pai didn’t stop there. "Simply put, the faster the object and the smaller the angle of incidence, the greater the deflection force it receives on the shield's horizontal plane. The more noticeable the change in the vector direction.”

Nodding as though he understood, Chu Guang asked simply, "Do you have a way to break it?"

Pai nodded. "Of course, directional shields aren't omnipotent. For example, particle weapons are almost ineffective against directional shields, including but not limited to neutron bombs or optical weapons!"

"Also, some objects with huge mass that travels at low speeds can effectively breach the shield's defenses, but such weapons typically perform poorly in practice. Most vessels are equipped with at least 1 point-defense cannon or electromagnetic gun to complement the shield system."

"However, the simplest and most brutal method will still be to use kinetic weapons."

"Kinetic weapons?" Chu Guang hesitated slightly, "Didn't you just say that the shield has a strong deflection effect on high-speed objects?"

Pai blinked and continued her explanation as though it was simply elementary. "Yes, but energy is conserved."

"The interference of a directional shield with a flying object consumes a lot of energy, and the cost of launching a mass projectile with an electromagnetic accelerator is much cheaper than deflecting a mass projectile."

"A short burst of intense fire can not only potentially exhaust the shield capacitors but also cause the shield generator to overheat, thereby physically breaking through the shield's defenses. Oh, right, this approach might not be of much reference to you."