Chapter 794.1: EXTERMINATE

With the Burning Corps’ mighty exoframes joining the battlefield, the precarious situation facing Peepo’s first unit was instantly reversed.

Amid the shattered ruins, pale-red arcs of light flashed again and again. With every flash, a Holy Knight’s armor was split open by a searing jet of molten metal!

Wielding his Thermal Cutting Axe, Old White took down one enemy with every swing. After just a few heavy blows, he sent the Holy Knights’ exoframes staggering in every direction and tore a gap straight through their line!

The Holy Knights were quickly split into two groups, thrown into complete chaos amid the dark, cramped ruins.

The entire battle turned into a one-sided massacre!

And that wasn’t all. The Cloudfly ornithopters lying in ambush near the city also launched their attack! Guided by the fire support of the ground troops, rockets poured out from their launch pods. Amid a succession of deafening explosions, the Holy Knights’ positions were instantly transformed into a sea of fire!

The scorching blast waves even melted the steel buried inside the concrete, while corpses clad in exoskeletons lay sprawled across the ground.

Looking at the countless comrades killed and wounded in an instant, the commander of the Holy Knights turned his hate-filled gaze toward the Dragon Cavalry holding the short axe and forced a sentence through clenched teeth. “Long live the Kingdom of Heaven!”

His pupils gradually turned scarlet. Wisps of scorching white vapor drifted from his mouth, and the skin across his entire body twisted as though scalded by boiling water. Fleshy-red strands spread outward from his body, fusing with the armor covering him from head to toe. He offered everything he had to the Kingdom of Heaven, including his mind and flesh, in exchange for supreme power.

Having fused with the unstable genetic serum, he had completely transformed into a monster, but he no longer cared. If he could not live to see the Kingdom of Heaven descend upon the land beneath his feet, then he would die in the final second before it collapsed!

“RGRROAAA!” His furious bellow echoed through the ruins as he charged toward the Dragon Cavalry with heavy steps, pouring all his strength into his twisted right arm. Scarlet tendrils extended outward from that arm like a razor-sharp spear, stabbing viciously forward amid his enraged roar!

He was completely confident that he could tear the insignificant insect standing in his way into pieces!

However, just as the scarlet tendrils were about to slam into the Dragon Cavalry, something happened that he simply could not believe. That unremarkable short axe smashed into his face at an impossible speed.

Clang!

In his daze, all he heard was a heavy, dull impact punching through the steel over his forehead. Immediately afterward, a stream of heat as hot as molten lava poured into the top of his skull and extinguished the last remnants of his consciousness.

“Rest in peace.” Old White casually left those words behind as he looked at the monster that was already deader than dead, then kicked it aside.

Gunfire still echoed throughout the ruins, but the battle had already entered its final stage.

After fighting to the last man, the Holy Knights were soon completely annihilated. The only remaining pressure now fell upon the Flame Cave Tribe.

Faced with the players’ increasingly ferocious offensive, even the several thousand Mutant Humans scattered throughout the ruins were finding it harder and harder to resist.

After all, they weren’t on Ten Peaks Mountain. There were no sprawling, twisting tunnels for them to maneuver through and hide inside. Concrete ceilings only one or two meters thick were like paper in front of 155mm bunker-buster shells, while the New Alliance’s artillery rounds seemed to have eyes of their own. A single heavy shell would often mow down entire groups of Mutant Humans like wheat.

Watching more and more of his subordinates die and the flames of war finally reach his own doorstep, Boruto had no choice but to grit its teeth and step forward, no matter how unwilling it was to face these terrifying enemies.

Wearing heavy ballistic armor designed by North Island Heavy Industry, it held a 10mm assault rifle and sprayed a burst of fire toward the New Alliance’s positions. The concentrated barrage reduced an entire concrete wall to rubble, exposing the rebar inside.

However, the New Alliance soldiers were no longer behind it. They had moved away long ago.

Before it noticed, a 19mm explosive round slammed into Boruto’s shoulder. The searing jet of metal burned straight through its shoulder bone, drawing a pained scream.

Given a Mutant Human’s terrifying vitality and regenerative ability, an injury like that clearly wasn’t enough to kill it. However, the first explosive round that struck its shoulder was only the beginning. Bullets hammered into it like rain, bursting into showers of sparks against its ballistic armor.

Unable to withstand the concentrated assault, Boruto could only retreat miserably behind cover.

What it did not expect was that once he began retreating, there was no stopping. Both it and its followers were driven deeper and deeper into their lair by the ferocious firepower.

Seeing that there was nowhere left to retreat, Boruto finally went completely berserk and charged out from behind cover once again with a roar. “THE FLAME CAVE TRIBE WILL NEVER SURRENDER! NEVER!”

Its deafening roar failed to frighten anyone. In fact, the players surrounding him did not even take it seriously. In fact, Old Six raised an RPG launcher and fired without hesitation, cursing loudly. “Who the fuck asked whether you were surrendering? Hurry up and die!”

The shaped-charge rocket trailed a thin streak of white smoke before striking Boruto squarely in the chest. With a deafening blast, the scorching jet of molten metal punched a huge hole straight through his body.

“AAAAARGH!” Boruto howled in agony. The index finger of its right hand remained clenched around the trigger as its rifle continued spraying bullets, though its accuracy was becoming increasingly pathetic.

At that moment, it was like a wild beast trapped in a cage, capable only of making futile struggles against its bars.

In the end, its fate was no different from the countless other boss-level creatures the players had killed before. With one final unwilling roar, it breathed his last and collapsed heavily to the ground, bringing its sinful life to an end.

With their chieftain dead, the Flame Cave Tribe’s final shred of resistance was forcibly extinguished.

Looking at the bullet holes covering the walls and the corpses scattered everywhere, the players standing amid the ruins felt the blood surging through their chests.

They had won!

They had not merely won this battle and defeated an opponent that had once seemed impossible to overcome. They had achieved final victory in the entire war! They had driven the Torch Church, which had spread chaos and plague across the land, completely out of the region!

The sheer exhilaration of the victory was intoxicating. The blood plastered across their exoskeletons felt like medals of honor.

Countless people of vision from south to north had fought and bled for this moment, and now their struggle had finally borne fruit.

“Long live the New Alliance!”

No one knew who shouted first, but the blood-stirring cry immediately echoed across the battlefield from every direction.

“LONG LIVE THE ADMINISTRATOR!”

“RAAAAH!”

Dawn rose over the horizon, dispersing the final traces of darkness shrouding the ruined city. Only then did many of them suddenly realize that they had been fighting for the entire night.

After confirming that no enemy survivors remained on the battlefield, Old White began arranging for people to recover the equipment of fallen teammates and gather the loot dropped by the enemy, while also making a rough tally of each squad’s casualties.

The losses suffered by the first unit could only be described as horrific. Originally at full strength with 400 men, barely more than 50 remained, and most of them were wounded. Although the original plan had already called for the diversionary force to be prepared for total annihilation, seeing casualty figures like that still made one’s scalp tingle.

As for the elite unit led by Old White, only 30 men had been killed or seriously wounded in total, including 6 heavy units wearing exoframes. Even that was enough to show just how brutal the battle had been!

On the other hand, the achievements of the Burning Corps in the battle were equally extraordinary. A total of 5,221 Mutant Humans had been killed, including 200 Warriors, Plague Champions, and other elite Mutant Humans. In addition, 437 Torch extremists had been killed by the players during the fighting.

Beyond the kills they had racked up in combat, the players also discovered a large number of black boxes inside Shelter 20. They included not only the black boxes the Torch Church had originally taken from Shelter 117 for synthesizing bionic organs, but also others they had acquired from elsewhere.

For example, there were black boxes capable of producing Optical Camouflage Modules, as well as black boxes for manufacturing Annihilator Type 1 exoskeletons, among others.

Although the New Alliance’s current industrial capabilities had long since advanced beyond the point of relying on black boxes, to the extent that even sophisticated and complex equipment such as exoframes could be independently researched and manufactured, no one was going to reject such convenient and useful wish-granting machines.

Besides, even the New Alliance still had things it could not manufacture like bionic organs and implanted chips.

Apart from the black boxes, the New Alliance’s greatest haul was the 571 researchers captured inside Shelter 20. Some of them were bluecoats from other shelters, while a very small number were even Academy E and D-class Prospectors! There were even D-class Researchers among them!

The Torch Church had always treated its prisoners differently depending on their value. Prisoners with knowledge were generally put to use. After all, the Kingdom of Heaven was a massive systems-engineering project. Completing it could not possibly rely on only a dozen or so Pathfinders. They needed lower-level researchers to carry out basic research.

Only wastelanders with no useful value whatsoever were fed Na Fruit and sent to the Mutant Humans as breeding stock.

For convenience of management, the Torch Church had gathered nearly all the most brilliant minds it had scavenged from across the wasteland inside Shelter 20. That, in turn, made it extremely convenient for the players to cash in their loot.

Standing inside a Viper transport aircraft, Karen, whose consciousness had been connected to an android, looked uneasily at Ample Time and asked nervously, “You’ll help me restore my body, right?”

“Of course. We keep our word,” Ample Time replied concisely from outside the cabin.

There was still a trace of doubt in Karen’s eyes, but at this point, she had no better choice than to trust them. Seeing that the aircraft was about to take off, she seemed to suddenly remember something. “Wait. Aren’t you coming with us?”

Ample Time replied, “We still have things to do here.”

Karen said, “I could actually stay and help too. My brain is still here anyway, so I can’t exactly leave...”

Looking at the woman who seemed capable of talking endlessly, Ample Time sighed and patiently explained, “There’s someone who wants to see you. To put her mind at ease, we need you to meet her first.”

Karen looked at him blankly and asked, “Who?”

“Hyrja.”

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