Chapter 476.1: A Prisoner Only Counts If They're Officially Acknowledged

As it turned out, technological sophistication and combat power were two entirely separate entities.

On the way to the crash site with Group A, Zheng Hao soon made contact with what he believed were soldiers from the Enterprise, and immediately engaged in a fierce firefight.

At that very moment, Zheng Hao felt an obvious strain.

Those people were strong.

They were too damn strong.

Group B's smooth progress had caused him to misjudge the situation. He had even made the fatal assumption that they could rely on equipment superiority to quietly neutralize the enemy and seize the Mother Body without drawing attention.

Too bad for him, Group B only had the upper hand due to their numbers. They had eight people in total, and they only had three enemies. With a sniper providing support from outside the battlefield, they easily suppressed the enemy.

However... In his case, things were completely different.

The enemy soldiers spread out in teams of three, laying down overlapping suppressive fire. Before he knew it, he realized that one of their squads had already flanked his position.

Their use of tactics was so smooth it was as if rehearsed. There was no hesitation at all.

Their coordination sent a chill down his spine.

What started as a seemingly even match swiftly deteriorated after one of his team members was killed. Gunfire from all directions made it feel less like they were engaging a scattered group of ten and more like they were battling a fully trained company of soldiers. These people were definitely not employees of the Enterprise... They were professional soldiers!

Just as his team specialized in ruin exploration, those people were professionals when it came to fighting.

"Captain, their firepower’s insane! We won’t last long on our own!" One of his team members, shot in the leg, shouted in panic while firing his rifle at a distant rock, trying to suppress the advancing enemy.

But his gunfire didn’t last three seconds before a high-explosive grenade launched from an RPG struck the dirt mound in front of him, sending flames into the air.

The blast wave and shrapnel hit his chest with full force, sending him flying from behind the embankment like a rag doll before he landed unconscious.

“Liang Ping! Damn it!” Seeing another teammate fall, Zheng Hao’s eyes turned red as he punched the dirt in frustration. However, there was nothing he could do.

Then the voice of Group B’s deputy came through the communication channel. “Captain, the Mother Body has mutated! It sprouted a dozen tentacles and captured the leader! Zhao Xiaop has been subdued too... We need reinforcements!”

7V3... One enemy was already down, yet they still lost!

He still had Group C on standby, but Zheng Hao knew even throwing in his last reserves would be pointless.

Maybe the moment the Beehive failed to wipe them out, he should’ve called for a retreat... Those people clearly weren’t opponents they could handle.

Zheng Hao clenched his teeth, and finally forced the words through his sealed lips. "Retreat!"

...

After losing four men, the Academy’s assault team finally realized they’d kicked a steel wall.

"They’re heading back." Gale’s voice rang in the ears of those from the Burning Corps.

Watching via his drone overhead, he had a clear view of their movements.

Aiming toward the smoke cloud ahead, Peepo turned to Old White and asked eagerly, "Boss, should we chase?"

He definitely wanted to. Those guys were even weaker than expected, letting them go without looting their treasures would be a waste.

Old White thought for a moment before he frowned. "No need. The mission comes first."

The enemy vehicle was just five kilometers away.

According to Gale’s assessment, it didn’t look like a tank or a mobile rocket launcher, more like a giant multi-purpose vehicle designed to traverse the swampy terrain.

Those people were clearly from the Academy.

And judging from their gear, it wasn’t designed for anti-personnel use. It was more suited to combating mutants. That meant the squad was likely a Scientific Expedition Team.

Taking them out wouldn’t be difficult, but they were too close to the Wandering Swamp. Forcing their hand could cause unexpected problems.

A little lesson would suffice.

As commander, Old White had more to consider.

Right now, the administrator’s mission was of top priority. They had to avoid creating further complications.

"What if they come back?" asked Peepo.

Old White gestured toward the two barely conscious captives nearby. "We’ve got prisoners, haven’t we? Patch them up... Oh, and you, log off for a bit and update the mission status on the official site."

Peepo lowered his weapon reluctantly. After flipping on the safety, he growled, "Fine."

The battle shifted into a cleanup phase.

Of the four Academy members who had been left behind, two were dead, one was an android, and the other a cyborg. Some components could still be salvaged from them.

The guy who’d been hit by the RPG had miraculously survived and was just unconscious. The players were astonished by his tenacity.

There was also a female prospector who had been shot in the stomach and thigh. She was mostly immobile.

The Orca transport plane had medkits onboard, sprays to stop the bleeding, wound-sealing bandages, and oral blood regeneration boosters, all manufactured by Ideal City's Health Luxury Corporate Group.

Old White asked Sun Ze for a few medkits, handed them to his teammates, and then walked over to the injured woman lying by a crooked tree.

Seeing the towering man approach, Chen Yutong’s faint breath quickened. Her eyes showed panic as she tried to move back, only to wince from the pain of her wounds. Staring at the armored brute, she spoke in a trembling voice, "What... What are you going to do to me?"

Across the wasteland, nearly everyone, human or not, treated people like her as prized trophies. Even if they weren’t interested in her knowledge, android prosthetics fetched a hefty price.

She heard plenty of horror stories about prospectors or researchers captured by hostile factions. She never imagined she would end up like them.

What came next, she didn’t dare imagine.

But the man before her didn’t do anything strange.

"I’m going to bandage your wounds. Or you can do it yourself."

"Why... Why are you helping me?" she asked warily, eyes full of distrust.

Old White replied casually, "No reason. We don’t kill prisoners."

Well... Other than boiling marauders and mutants alive.

Blame it on the game being too realistic! They sometimes lost control.

That said, ever since Bluestone County’s mine opened, they rarely executed marauders either.

Leaders who refused to surrender were hanged publicly. Small fry were usually sentenced to centuries of hard labor based on victim testimonies.

As for raw materials in the active matter and nutrition paste industries, they had mostly been replaced with Slime Mold. There was a low conversion rate, but they were cheap and abundant.

Chen Yutong looked at the armored man in a daze.

Since when did Enterprise forces operate like this?

Seeing that she could still talk, Old White tossed the medkit to her. "Since you can still move, I won’t help you."

He didn’t want to crush her with his mighty exoframe.

Chen Yutong stared at the kit, hesitated, then slowly reached for it. As she lowered her head, she murmured a soft thank you.

Old White didn’t respond and walked over to check on the other captive before heading to the edge of the makeshift camp.

The support team had returned with the pilot and his SSSR god-tier pet. Along with them came a mud-covered sniper and a trussed-up android.

"I knew it... They really are Academy." Sun Ze muttered as he looked at the emotionless android in shock.

Old White turned to him and frowned. "How can you tell?"

Sun Ze chuckled. "Easy. the androids of the Health Luxury Corporate Group are way more advanced."

Old White blinked.

He never really paid attention to androids’ battlefield expressions. It was their first real encounter with them.

More advanced than the Academy’s? Is that true?

Lying motionless, Xuan Feng showed no reaction to the petty mockery.

But Zhao Xiao, standing nearby, was visibly agitated. The moment someone dissed Academy technology, especially comparing it to models from the Enterprise, he jumped like a scalded cat.

He spat out some mud and glared at those before him. "Bullshit! How are your models more advanced than ours?!"

"Then what do you call it?" Sun Ze chuckled, sarcasm dripping from his voice. "Can’t even program emotional responses or facial expressions... And you call that cutting-edge technology?"

"More bullshit! Who told you we couldn’t? You stole your AI cores from us!" Zhao Xiao turned red with anger. "We just don’t waste time on meaningless features."

What use were fancy facial expressions on robots? Androids just needed to work.

Sun Ze picked his ear lazily. "Stealing, huh? That’s ancient history. We’ve updated Endpoint Cloud over ten times since then. You’re still stuck in the past."

"And AI cores were Federation technology to begin with, you’re just caretakers."

Though such historical disputes were rarely brought up, they weren’t secrets in Ideal City. Anyone could dig up the declassified records with some effort.

Sun Ze didn’t really care about the details. As far as he was concerned, the present road beneath his feet was good enough.

When he got back to Ideal City, he would boast on the Endpoint Cloud, or rather, share his new adventure.

Not only had he flown with the legendary Burning Corps, but also fell from the sky alongside them.

It was way cooler than a 2,000 point Battle Royale match.

Still, the captive’s smugness was annoying.

He looked at Old White and asked, "Can I kick him?"

Well, he was asking because he was polite. After all, he wasn’t the one who caught him.

Old White shrugged. "We don’t mistreat prisoners, but I could let him go for a fair one-on-one fight if you want it."

Sun Ze shrank back instantly. "Forget it then."

Zhao Xiao looked eager but deflated when his verbal sparring partner chickened out. He clicked his tongue in disappointment.

Not that it stopped them from quarreling. Soon, the two resumed bickering. Unsurprisingly, the veteran Endpoint Cloud troll from the Enterprise had the upper hand.

Zhao Xiao was left red-faced, completely outclassed when it came to verbal battles.

Since the Orca clearly wasn’t getting fixed anytime soon, bystanders joined in the fun.