Chapter 1.1 - Foreigners

This time, Su selected a completely new route. After departing from Dragon City, he traveled diagonally in a northwestern direction. He was going to make a detour through the northeastern Pendulum City and then reach N958. From the olden-era map, this route would pass through many village ruins as well as interweaving roads. Of course, these roads had long been abandoned and unusable.

However, this route was still much closer than entering Saratoga before making his way through the grasslands, and passing through Roxland Company which already had a base established in Pendulum City, which made replenishing N958 much easier. Along these towns and villages, he could also build new supply points. The only bad part was that this route involved making a detour around the northern part of the grassland and mountain range before it could reach the base’s entrance.

After the dialogue he had with Ricardo before leaving, Su already took note of the various creatures in the wilderness. Even though he didn’t notice any creatures with outstanding intellect yet, it was still impossible to get the shadow of that wolf leader from back then out of his head. Su understood what the true danger Ricardo was talking about was. If one intelligent rotting wolf could appear, then a thousand more might appear, or even ten thousand. Meanwhile, the other races also had a chance of evolving to the point where their intellect could match humans’.

This wasn’t a good thing.

Su wasn’t an expert on the field of creature competition, but just from his intuition, he knew that in this land, it was impossible for two intelligent races to coexist.

Su maintained a constant speed of 20 kilometers an hour as he advanced. The efficiency of running was naturally weaker than that of riding an off-road vehicle, but this was the way he preferred to move about. It wasn’t because driving required fuel, the main reason was because Su felt that doing this would make him more intimate with the wilderness, more intimate with this world. Almost every minute change that happened to the places he had previously travelled through were noticed by Su. As his legs landed on the great earth again and again, it sometimes almost made Su develop the illusion that he was running on the chest of this world, as if he could feel the beating of the world’s heart and the pumping of its veins!

After running for a long time, the inside of Su's mental map allowed him to see that Pendulum City was less than 100 kilometers away. He had entered Roxland Company’s patrol range.

In front of Su was a fissured and ice cold land. In the distance was a dried up river, and several eye-catching dried up trees lined the sides. Their intertwining branches seemed to have frozen time itself. Even though it was already winter, it rarely snowed in the new era. Due to the drought, the ground was covered in small cracks.

Deep tracks stretched out as far as the eye could see. From the rotating designs, these most likely came from the military off-road vehicles allocated by Roxland Company.

There were a few tracks that were especially deep, revealing an intense turnaround. The hard ruined earth was shoved to the sides of the tracks. As the cold wind blew over, some of the loose earth would fly about. It seemed like it hadn’t been long since the patrol car passed through this place.

Su stopped his footsteps and gazed into the distance. Within the ruined earth in that direction, there were more than ten dark and inconspicuous spherical metal chunks scattered around within a several hundred meter range. These metal spheres were only five centimeters in diameter, and from 1000 meters away, they simply looked like insignificant dots, so those without sight strengthening couldn’t see them at all. Metal pieces like these could be found practically everywhere in the wilderness ruins. However, what made Su become vigilant was that he heard a certain strange high frequency sound wave. This type of soundwave exceeded the range at which normal people’s ears could hear, but when it detected a human body, it would bounce back and form a new sound wave. Countless data flashed past his mind, and Su already locked onto the source of these high frequency sound waves: they came precisely from those inconspicuous metal pieces.

Several seconds later, Su came to a conclusion. After analyzing this sound wave, he found that it had the greatest reaction with humans.

Su walked towards the closest metal piece. When he was five meters from it, the metal piece suddenly lit up with a faint red color, and the outer shell revealed five small openings before releasing faint blue-colored flames of various sizes. The metal piece immediately flew outwards, drawing an arc through the sky before flying towards Su!

The speed of the little thing was extremely fast, startling even Su. He suddenly lowered his body, and after exerting force with his legs, his body shot towards the side, pulling apart the distance between himself and the metal piece. The opening around the metal piece quickly adjusted the angle and intensity of the flames, allowing it to nimbly draw an arc in the air before flying towards Su once again!

The organization of Su’s body suddenly tightened, greatly reducing the reflection of the high frequency sound wave that landed on his body. At the same time, he quickly moved to the side, instantly adding speed to the point where he exceeded that of a leopard. The distance between Su and the metal piece was instantly pulled another dozen or so meters further.

The metal spherical piece lost its target, and after flying a few circles in the air, it slowly descended onto the ground. After its core flashed a few times with red light, it made a light pu sound before exploding apart! Hundreds of shrapnel pieces flew in all directions, covering at least five meters all around it. If the distance was a bit farther, these fragments wouldn’t pose much of an issue for the Black Dragonriders’ field combat suit, but this was something made specifically for dragonriders. Even the standard field combat suit was extremely pricey, and ordinary dragonrider subordinates could not afford something like that. If the target were ordinary people, then this intelligent land mine’s power would be absolutely horrendous.

These metal spheres seemed to be an intelligent landmine that could sense humans. It could activate on its own when a target emerged within five or so meters around it, and it could continue its pursuit for over 50 meters. Su gave the range of the landmine’s damage a look and decided that it was most likely released through gunpowder or other special projectile releasing mechanisms.

Su’s eyebrows jumped. He crouched down and picked up one of the metal fragments to slowly feel it between his fingertips. This was a piece of shrapnel created from a metal alloy, and even though it was small, it was heavy. Its irregular shape allowed it to quickly move through the human body and produce astonishing destructive force. In addition, the alloy fragment was made of a metal unknown to Su, and inside of it was powerful radiation. Once it entered an individual’s body, if it wasn’t extracted within a few hours, it would turn into permanent damage.

Both inside and out, this landmine was not something Roxland’s technology was capable of producing. The level of technology was close to the standard equipment provided to the Black Dragonriders. Su had, however, never seen a mine that possessed this type of intelligent sensor from the Black Dragonriders’ catalog.

When he thought about the flames of war that could be seen behind Persephone while he was receiving the body examination, Su’s mind suddenly became more tense. The rifle on his back entered his hands and he inserted the magazine that was already resting in his hand into the gun. Apart from long range and high precision, its ability to accomodate three magazines was also a unique feature. This made it so that Su was able to easily switch between highly explosive bullets, armor penetrating bullets, and all other types of special bullets without changing magazines, as well as allowing him to fire at much faster intervals than with ordinary sniper rifles. However, apart from snipers with five levels or higher of ability strengthening, only Su could use this gun.

He looked around him, and soon after, he saw several glaring car vehicle traces. These were not markings of Roxland’s off-road vehicles, and were instead half-track styled vehicles with weight much heavier than that of Roxland’s vehicles. From the amount of vehicle traces, there were two tanks in the other party, and after making a slanted turn, they chased after Roxland Company’s off-road vehicles.

Su bent his body at the waist and entered a sprint. He quickly arrived in front of the unfamiliar vehicle traces. The impression it left him with was rather deep. The ruptured surface and topsoil that was sent flying when it made a turn meant that the tanks’ movements were extremely crude and violent.

Deformed metal bullets were scattered all about the surroundings of the vehicle traces. Su picked one up, and after looking at it, he tossed it back onto the ground. The 7.92 caliber heavy machine gun bullets couldn’t do anything to the tanks’ armor, and even the 12.7 caliber anti-aircraft machine guns’ uses were limited.

Su tightened the combat suit’s various bands and increased his speed. He followed the vehicle traces in pursuit at a constant speed of 40 kilometers per hour.

After running roughly half an hour or so, the vehicle traces turned towards the north. Another set of car traces departed from Pendulum City towards the distant mountain area. This was probably Roxland Company’s rescue team. The reinforcement group didn’t head straight for the mountain area but instead made a turn, entering the mountains from another direction.

At the top of the mountain in the distance, he could already see occasionally rising fire as well as smoke. Su increased his speed once again and ran towards the mountain region that was currently embroiled in war!

When Su carefully entered the battlefield from the side, the intense battle had just came to a brief standstill. Two light tanks resting in the mountain valley aimed their cannons towards the areas where the fighting was most intense and fired from time to time. This mountain region’s topography was complex without many small mountains less than 100 meters in height. This mountain region wasn’t very high or steep. The cavalier of the tanks’ cannons weren’t especially outstanding, but the power of the cannon fire was extremely great, completely enough to match standard tanks. The precision of the artillery barrage was also extremely high, already blasting two snipers who were prepared to fire high into the sky.

Between the two tanks, a dozen or so fully armed fighters were currently carrying two injured companions behind the tank. These soldiers had peculiarly shaped dark blue armor on their bodies that protected various key areas of their bodies. There were bullet holes everywhere on the injured soldiers, but even though their armor was riddled with holes, not a single place was blasted through, so all of the injuries rested on the arms, thighs, and other areas. As such, even though their injuries were severe, none of the attacks were fatal.

The wounded individuals’ armor and combat clothes were undone bit by bit, and their wounds were treated. From the skilled movements of the soldier that applied first aid, it was clear that he was at least a medical soldier holding concurrent jobs. In just a few minutes, the wounded individual was already treated. Under the cover of the tanks, they set up a battlefield tent and protected those two wounded individuals.

On the other side, a soldier carrying a gun watched over six captives. The captives were all gravely injured and lying on the ground in a disorderly state. Many of these captives were still bleeding from their injuries, so even if no one was watching over them, they wouldn’t run far. Even though their uniforms were covered in blood, Su could still tell that these captives were all Roxland Company’s troops.

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