"Roar!"
A deafening roar echoed in the corridor, almost cracking the alloy walls and floors.
Meng Liang, who was covering his ears, had a distorted expression because of pain.
He stuck half of his head out to look at the corridor, and could almost see the circles of dust raised by the huge impact force.
"Fuck... This thing is a bit weird!"
After dodging the fatal blow that was whistling, Zhan Di Lao glanced at the door panel embedded in the wall behind him, which was vibrating like a tuning fork, and his face turned slightly pale.
Good guy!
What kind of war goddess is this Sivir.
If this is cut, even Brother Guang will probably be cut in half...
I thought he was facing a shield warrior, but I didn't expect that the corrupt knight to directly bang twice, and smashed the "shield" and "sword" in his hand like a javelin at him and Su Ming.
"Damn..."
A steel bar hit his chest hard, and Su Ming struggled to get up from the ground.
Ignoring the burning pain in his chest, he barely concentrated his hazy mind, grabbed the Gauss rifle that fell on the ground, and aimed at the monster standing at the end of the corridor.
"Go to hell!!!"
The moment his index finger pulled the trigger, an arc flashed!
Countless bullets burst out from the barrel and rushed to the end of the corridor like a torrential rain. For a moment, sparks jumped on the armor of the decayed knight.
Unfortunately, it did not penetrate his armor!
The decayed knight stretched out his right hand and grabbed the door panel of the room on the side. With a sudden force, he pulled it off.
The faces of both of them changed. While Zhan Di Lao continued to pull the trigger and fire, he shouted at Su Ming on the side.
"Not enough power! Can your thing... charge?"
He remembered that Ye Shi's Gauss rifle could increase the penetration of a single-shot mass bullet by charging.
A fatal blow fired with full charge can even penetrate the armor of the Conqueror tank!
Apparently, he also discovered that the evolved body's defense was ridiculously strong. Before the old man in the battlefield finished speaking, Su Ming had already taken a deep breath and raised the weapon in his hand.
The numbers on the battery capacity indicator dropped rapidly, and the front end of the capacitor emitted a pale blue arc of light. The creepy muzzle was brewing terrifying energy!
"I need time!"
"How long?" Looking at the Decayed Knight who was still fine after being shot, the old man in the battlefield asked while gritting his teeth while changing the magazine.
"Ten--"
Before he finished speaking, a gust of wind whistled in, and the Decayed Knight standing at the end of the corridor suddenly exerted force on his feet, and the whole person rushed over like a cannonball.
The big and fierce attack caught both of them off guard.
The door panel swept across and created a hurricane. With just one contact, Su Ming was blown away with his gun, making him unable to move. Soon, another horizontal slash was made towards Zhan Di Lao, knocking him flying and crashing into the wall of the corridor.
"Ahem!"
Zhan Di Lao, who accidentally bit his lip, spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva, looked at the rifle that was broken into two pieces in his hand, and threw it aside.
Fortunately, he subconsciously blocked it just now, otherwise that one blow alone would be enough to send him back home.
Thinking of this, Zhan Di Lao couldn't help but feel a little scared.
Such a terrifying power-
If it is quantified into attributes, it might be over 100!
The most fatal thing is that its speed and defense are not weak at all, and it has the absolute defense as hard as a tortoise shell and the tenacious vitality unique to slime mold.
Even if a bullet occasionally penetrates the weak link of its defense, it is not enough to cause fatal damage to it.
This is not a contest of the same level at all!
"Damn..."
Zhan Di Lao gritted his teeth and pulled out the dagger hanging on his waist. When the Decayed Knight rushed towards him again, he slashed at its head.
There was a dull clang!
He felt that the dagger in his hand was like chopping on a mountain, which caused a short stabbing pain in his palm. Before he could come to his senses, he was picked up and flew out by the door panel against his chest.
The bulletproof armor on his chest was pushed inward, and Zhan Di Lao groaned, and his back hit the ground heavily.
Not far away, the head of the Decayed Knight was only shaved off a layer of dark red fungus blanket by the toothpick-like dagger.
His full-strength attack did not even leave a scratch on the helmet.
But think about it...
That's power armor.
Zhan Di Lao said with a wry smile, thinking that if he had known that the evolutionary form he met was the Decayed Knight, he would never come here.
However, there was no regret medicine, and he was only glad that he had seized the opportunity to save the game before.
He walked in front of him step by step.
The Decayed Knight raised his right arm high, looking at the door panel tightly held in his hand, and was about to smash Zhan Di Lao into a pulp.
But at this moment, the movement of his hand suddenly stopped.
Zhan Di Lao opened half of his eyes and found that the place where he had been chopped by his sword before revealed half of the palm-sized eyepiece.
Originally, there was a thick fungal blanket covering it.
Behind the eyepiece flashed an unsettling scarlet light, and suddenly circles of pale blue ripples swept across the mirror.
The power armor that had been completely paralyzed and even the reactor was shut down seemed to be awakened after activating a certain program.
The limited power was pouring out of the backup power supply, and the reverse-driven mechanical structure completely stopped its movement, completely freezing the raised right arm.
Even if the flesh and blood under the steel had rotted away -
His remaining will still dominated this invincible armor.
With a "hiss" exhaust sound, the tubular fusion battery popped out from the back of the armor. At the same time, a low roar mixed with the sound of electricity leaked from the helmet.
"Kill... me."
There was no time to hesitate.
Su Ming, who had regained his mobility, gritted his teeth and supported half of his body, and threw a tubular plasma grenade in the direction of the pangolin.
"... The silver pull ring is a switch! Plug this thing into the battery interface of the power armor... behind it!"
Understanding what he meant, without waiting for the sentence to be finished, Zhan Di Lao grabbed the grenade that rolled in front of him, quickly rolled behind the decayed knight, and pulled out the fusion battery on its back.
Then he pulled out the grenade's fuse and thrust it desperately into the loose battery interface.
"Get out of the way!"
Without Su Ming's reminder, the old man in the battlefield, who had completed this series of actions, instinctively rushed forward.
Almost at the same time, a dazzling white light exploded behind the Decayed Knight, and the bursting electric sparks flew along with the jumping arcs.
The solid plasma poured into the power armor, instantly roasting the slime mold filling the armor into charcoal.
"Roar!"
The roar of pain shook the entire corridor.
As if the dazzling white light had drained all the strength of the whole body, the scarlet light stuck behind the tactical eyepiece gradually faded, and the entire armor completely lost power. The body bent forward slightly and knelt heavily on the ground.
Seeing that the evolution was finally killed, Zhan Di Lao, who was lying on the ground, finally breathed a sigh of relief. He panted for a long time before gritting his teeth and dragging his body paralyzed by the electric current to stand up from the ground.
I don't know when he had walked to the front of the power armor. Su Ming, holding the Gauss rifle, looked at it silently and didn't speak for a long time.
After removing the chest armor that was concave inward, Zhan Di Lao walked to his side.
"Acquaintance?"
"Yeah."
Su Ming nodded silently.
Zhan Di Lao's Adam's apple moved.
He had already guessed the identity of this person, but he still asked.
"He is..."
"Captain Lu."
Su Ming didn't say much, he reached into the helmet with the mask open, took out the black card attached to the inside of the helmet, held it tightly in his hand, and finally stuffed it into the interlayer of the exoskeleton.
That was the action record backup of the power armor.
The video inside may explain what happened here...
Hearing no movement outside, Meng Liang nervously walked out of the room next to him.
Looking at the power armor standing there motionless, he swallowed his saliva.
"Is it over?"
"Ah, it's over," the old general of the battlefield looked at the room at the end of the corridor and said with a complicated expression, "The manager's office is just ahead."
The three continued to move forward.
The old general of the battlefield reached out and touched the movable door. He thought there would be some mechanism blocking the way, but he didn't expect that the door opened easily.
Behind the door was a plainly decorated room.
There was only a bookshelf without books, a desk, a chair, and a terminal on the desk.
Meng Liang walked up quickly, turned on the computer, and put his hands on the touch keyboard to operate it, but he couldn't enter the system after trying for a long time.
"Use this." Su Ming walked to his side, patted his shoulder, and handed over the hard drive that Yunyou had given him before.
"Thank you."
Meng Liang took it with an embarrassed hand and plugged it into the port on the side of the terminal.
With the introduction of the intelligent hacking program, after a while of operation, he finally got the password of the terminal in the manager's office.
"The fire protection system in the power room has been activated, and the mother nest has been dormant... It seems that the Weilant and the researchers from the academy are one step ahead of us." Meng Liang breathed a sigh of relief and slumped in the chair with a sense of relief.
In fact, as Yunyou said, the terminal in the manager's office may not be able to bypass the core authority and shut down the reactor in the power room.
Fortunately, they made a second insurance and sent a team to the power room to manually activate the fire protection system, otherwise they might have to face more troubles than the previous evolution.
"Anyway, we need the information here." Su Ming cast an interested look at the terminal, "What's in it?"
"I'm looking at it, don't worry..."
Meng Liang tapped on the virtual keyboard with his ten fingers, quickly unlocked the encrypted file stored in the terminal, and retrieved the information inside.
"Torch Project..."
Looking at the document opened on the screen, the more Meng Liang looked down, the tighter his brows frowned.
Noticing the change in his expression, Zhan Di Lao asked immediately.
"What's written on it?"
Meng Liang was silent for a moment, and finally made way.
"You can read it yourself."
Looking at the text on the screen, Zhan Di Lao was stunned.
Although his daily communication was no big problem, spoken and written language were two different things. With the few words he knew, he was really no different from an illiterate.
Especially for this kind of professional document, he couldn't even understand the abstract.
Fortunately, Su Ming next to him took the initiative to read it out, solving his illiteracy problem.
"... When all the lights have gone out and the world falls into an endless night, we will hold up the torch, dispel all darkness, and rekindle the fire of civilization."
Zhan Di Lao couldn't help asking.
"What do you mean?"
Meng Liang lowered his voice, staring at the screen.
"It means literally... The purpose of the entire "Torch" plan is not to solve any existing problems, but to completely restart the process that has entered a dead loop after all plans fail."
After a pause, he continued.
"This is not a conventional means of shelter, but a shock treatment."
Zhan Di Lao looked at him blankly.
"... Is it necessary to do this?"
Perhaps because he is a player, his mentality is also that of a player, so he thinks that this world is not so bad.
Although compared with the Prosperous Era, the Wasteland Era is undoubtedly like a rotten apple, he believes that it is not rotten to the extent that it needs to be completely destroyed once.
There are still many people living on this land, creating their own civilization on the ruins in their own way.
Meng Liang took a deep breath, stared at the screen and continued.
"I can only try to understand from their perspective... It is indeed difficult to clean up the ruins on the wasteland. Predators, aliens, mutants... And these are just minor problems. There are also more deadly mutant slime molds, which are difficult to completely clean up even with nuclear weapons."
"According to the original plan stored in the terminal, the initiator of the Torch Project tried to customize a special system. The whole system mainly consists of two parts: 'fire' and 'handle'."
"The goal of the former is to remove more than 99% of the organic life on the surface of the planet with low side effects, leaving only a pure and pure environment. The goal of the latter is to turn the organic life that is beneficial to the new civilization into the 1% that survives as much as possible and store it in a container called 'handle'."
"In the envisioned situation, when the 'torch' is ignited, the organic life on the surface will be harmlessly removed, and the organic life stored in the 'handle' after screening will be released. At that time, the ecological environment on the surface will gradually return to the prosperous era - or even before the prosperous era."
Su Ming stared blankly at the text in the terminal, his face full of disbelief.
He couldn't believe it.
The No. 0 shelter, which was rumored to end all the suffering in the world and bring the wasteland era to a complete end, turned out to be such a terrifying thing.
"...So the premise of this plan is to kill everyone on this planet?"
"Yes," Meng Liang nodded, his expression also full of complexity, "To be precise, it is to kill all organic life outside the 'handle'."
"In the era of the Human Alliance, such a horrible plan can actually get a budget." The Battlefield Atmosphere Group couldn't help swallowing.
Even if it is a game setting, this sounds too outrageous.
Meng Liang flipped through the contents of the plan, and after a moment of silence, he finally defended the Human Alliance.
"This evil plan is not a project funded by the Human Union. Like many private shelters and commercial shelter projects, the main source of its budget is social funds. To put it more bluntly, it is mainly sponsored by a few social elites. Although this plan is supervised by the Human Union authorities like other commercial shelter plans, it is considered safe by the Human Union authorities because the activation sequence belongs to the last level."
"...How can it be safe?"
"Relatively safe. After all, this device will only be activated after confirming that all shelters and other shelter plans have failed. In other words, there should be few living people on this planet at that time. The remaining ones are all aliens or other things."
After a pause, Meng Liang continued.
"It is difficult for such a project to gain public support, so the project planner concealed the entire content of the plan. Most of the people involved in the research only knew part of the plan. For example... if you are a researcher in the 'Fire' project team, then you probably think you are developing a secret weapon for the Human Alliance. If you happen to be in the 'Handle' project team, at most you will only know that you are participating in the development of some kind of sturdy shelter facility."
"However, the plan did not succeed in the end. One reason was that it was too late, and the other was that a researcher discovered a conspiracy concealed by the top leaders... When they realized that they were being used to make a weapon that could kill them, almost everyone stood up to oppose the project."
"Although the initiator of the plan has repeatedly stated that the project will only be launched after all shelter plans have failed, people are no longer willing to believe those elites who are full of lies."
"The Torch Project eventually went bankrupt with less than 20% of the budget consumed... Although there are countless shelter plans that went bankrupt in the last few years of the prosperous era, it is quite rare for projects to go bankrupt due to collective opposition from grassroots personnel."
When he said this, Meng Liang couldn't help but sigh in his heart.
The whole plan was like an accidental product.
Its existence was an accident, and its bankruptcy was also an accident.
As for whether the Human Union authorities had ever been tempted by the "super weapon capable of destroying 99% of organic life on the surface of the planet" mentioned in this unfinished blueprint, no one knows.
All those who participated in this plan, whether they opposed it or supported it, have turned into the dust of history.
"... Where are the unfinished materials now?"
When saying this, Su Ming glanced at the pangolin next to him without leaving a trace, and his hand unconsciously touched the gun on his waist.
Before coming here, he didn't expect that Shelter No. 0 would be such a place.
However, at this point, the box where the devil lives has been opened. Regardless of whether the Torch Plan is completed or not, the information related to the plan cannot fall into the hands of the Weyland people.
Coincidentally, the person he was wary of thought the same as him.
If it were just a few black boxes or a few power armors, it would be fine to let the legion share some of them, and the administrator is not such a stingy person.
But the nature of this thing is completely different...
It threatens not only the alliance, but everyone on this planet.
If it really falls into the hands of the Weilants, there is no guarantee that those big-nosed people will not do more evil things...No one dares to guarantee what will happen in the end.
Staring at the screen, Meng Liang's expression became solemn.
"The data stored in the shelter server has been deleted."
"Deleted?!" Su Ming looked at him blankly, and said with an expression that could not be suppressed, "Only the experimental data was deleted... Is the plan still kept?"
"The plan has been made public after the entire plan failed. It is not a confidential document, and the plan is saved in read-only mode in the main server program. Unless you get full administrator privileges...you can't delete it with just this terminal."
When he said this, Meng Liang, who was tapping the virtual keyboard with ten fingers, suddenly stopped.
Noticing the change in his expression, Su Ming hurriedly asked.
"What's wrong?"
Meng Liang hesitated for a moment, but considering that he was alone here and that the Enterprise was an ally, he finally confessed.
"The means of deleting those data are not very clever. If you spend some time, you can actually repair them... No, in fact, until two months ago, someone has been trying to repair the deleted data. In the archives room of Area X-13, some terminals have records of frequent access to the database. As of two months ago, the repair work has been completed."
"But the repairer did not upload the repaired data to the library... It is probably saved in a mobile hard drive or something like that."
"Area X-13... The crew of the Pioneer seems to be there." Zhan Di Lao said in a low voice, and at the same time glanced at Su Ming's right hand, and unconsciously put his hand closer to the weapon.
A strange atmosphere lingered in the room.
While Su Ming was struggling with what to do, Zhan Di Lao was also struggling with whether to confess his undercover identity.
Is it really a good thing to let the Enterprise know that he is actually an undercover agent of the Alliance?
Taking away the data as a legion and letting Ye Shi bring it back to the alliance is not a bad option... After all, the outside world may not know what happened here.
Compared with those ancient survivors, the alliance is still too weak... But if the weapon described in the Torch Plan can be mastered, it may allow the alliance to have enough capital to stand on equal footing with the fallen empires.
Of course, it may also completely anger them.
Zhan Di Lao found that the button that determines the direction of the world line seemed to be stuffed into his hand again.
What should I do?
Countless thoughts flashed quickly in his mind.
When Veric instigated him to assassinate Griffin, he had never been as entangled as today.
"It's really weird."
Without noticing the two people beside him who were thinking about their own things, Meng Liang stared at the screen and muttered to himself.
"... I thought they had deleted the data."
...
Shelter power room.
In the reactor room where the reactor was placed, the dark red mother nest was beating regularly like the human heart.
The reactor in the center was almost completely swallowed by it.
It can be clearly seen that the amplitude of each beating of the mother nest increased slightly compared to the last time, and the frequency also increased.
Looking at the follicles being hatched through the floor-to-ceiling window, Wall-E, holding an assault rifle, felt a tingling scalp.
At this moment, they were only separated from the mother nest by a floor-to-ceiling window.
Although the newly hatched fruiting body could not smash the window and rush to his face, it was not a problem to cut off their retreat along the corridor outside the power room.
Seeing one of the follicles burst and an unknown life form crawling out of it, Wall-E couldn't help but urge.
"Hey, from the academy, how long will it take?"
"Soon."
"If you were my subordinates--"
"Shut up."
Ignoring the rude Willant, Jiang Xuezhou stared at the console expressionlessly, her hands clacking and operating.
Finally, the last firewall broke through, and a relieved expression finally appeared on her face.
"Done?!" Wall-E asked immediately.
"Yeah."
With his hands off the operating interface, Jiang Xuezhou cast his eyes on the French window on the side.
Almost at the same time, in the reaction room separated from them by a wall, the partition of the ceiling opened outward, and milky white mist crystals poured down like a waterfall, pouring on the mother nest attached to the reactor.
The agitated mother nest shrank in an instant, dodging to the side as if it had been electrocuted, and at the same time stretched out its fleshy tentacles to try to block the source of the coolant.
It must be said that this guy is indeed very smart, and his idea of self-rescue is also very clear.
However, in the face of the coolant that is enough to cool the reactor, this degree of struggle is just futile.
Including the follicles connected by the tentacles, the mother nest that was still alive and kicking a second ago was instantly frozen into ice.
The entire room, even the water vapor in the air, was frozen into ice crystals, and a layer of white frost condensed on the inside of the French windows.
Seeing the mother nest frozen, Wall-E finally breathed a sigh of relief, and while pressing down the muzzle of the gun, he finally relaxed his tense nerves.
"Well done."
Jiang Xuezhou ignored him, but stared at the world where time was suspended by the frost, and was a little dazed for a while.
So beautiful...
Although it snowed a lot in the Wandering Swamp, she rarely enjoyed it like this.
At this moment, an untimely cough came from the side.
"Hey, I know you don't want to pay attention to me, but I still want to tell you that I plan to go to the manager's office to meet my servants next. If you want to stay here, it's up to you. If you want to go with me, hurry up."
"Who wants to go with you." Jiang Xuezhou rolled his eyes, but thought that his destination was also there, so he gritted his teeth.
Wall-E grinned and put the rifle on his shoulder.
The crisis has been resolved.
The mother nest is the biggest threat here.
However, at this moment, a dangerous omen suddenly surged into his heart, and he almost reflexively raised the muzzle of the gun and opened the safety.
"Lie down!"
Looking at the sudden action of this Willant, Jiang Xuezhou widened his eyes in surprise.
"What are you doing--"
Before she finished her words, gunshots suddenly rang out in the corner of the room without warning.
"Bang, bang, bang--!"
Almost at the same time, Wall-E quickly turned the muzzle of the gun and pulled the trigger, but the bullets seemed to hit a wall of air, only knocking away circles of twisted ripples.
Hit three times in the chest and one in the shoulder, Wall-E groaned and fell backwards to the ground.
And at the position where the assault rifle in his hand swept a volley, a slender figure appeared from behind the spreading ripples.
The man was wearing a light exoskeleton, and under the chest armor that was cracked by the bullet, there was a blue coat.
She held a silenced pistol in her hand, and her well-proportioned muscle lines and the scar under her neck showed that her strength was obviously extraordinary.
At this moment, there was a trace of embarrassment on her wheat-colored face, and it was obvious that the volley that Wall-E had swept over earlier did not have no effect on her.
But compared to Wall-E lying on the ground, her condition was much better.
Optical camouflage? !
Jiang Xuezhou was shocked and immediately ordered.
"Xiao Wang, kill her!"
However, just as her voice fell, before her robot dog fully deployed its weapon system, an EMP grenade had already rolled next to her robot dog.
At the same time, the man stepped forward and kicked the self-defense pistol in her hand away, and then a strong hand firmly grasped her neck.
"Woo Ka--"
It was difficult to breathe, and her face instantly turned liver-colored.
She only felt that her neck was clamped by a pair of pliers, and no matter how she struggled, she couldn't bend it at all, and then the whole person was lifted up by that hand.
The smooth movement was so fast that she couldn't react at all.
But it was originally.
She was not a front-line combatant at all, and the man in front of her was far from her level in terms of speed, strength and experience.
After taking a look at the little sheep in her hand, the woman made a mocking sound.
"Too weak."
Lying on the ground panting, Wall-E quietly grasped the pistol hidden in his waist and looked for an opportunity, while squinting his eyes and staring at the strange face, he could not remember where he had seen her.
The only thing he recognized was the coat that no wastelander would be unfamiliar with.
Although not everyone who wears it is a resident of the shelter, it is undoubtedly the standard equipment of every resident of the shelter.
"Who are you?"
"Guess?"
Having said that, the woman did not give him a chance to guess, and did not intend to leave any flaws for this dishonest guy.
Holding the silenced pistol in her right hand, she casually raised it, aiming at his upper body and pulling the trigger until the last round in the magazine was emptied.
Half of his face was shot into a bloody pool, Wall-E lay silently in the pool of blood, and the pistol in his right hand fell out.
Seeing her teammates dead in the blink of an eye, Jiang Xuezhou's face completely lost color. She looked at the man who pinched her neck in horror, and her whole body couldn't stop shaking.
Especially when the man looked at her again, she even felt that her heart stopped beating for a moment.
"Well, your face is pretty."
Looking at the face full of horror, the woman's eyes turned, and a creepy smile suddenly emerged on her wheat-colored face.
"Now it belongs to me."
Ignoring Jiang Xuezhou's desperate struggle, the woman took a C-shaped pair of glasses from her waist and forced it on her face.
The green signal light flashed.
Jiang Xuezhou, who was wearing the neural connection device, trembled as if he had been electrocuted, and then the tense muscles and nerves relaxed together.
After confirming that the victim had entered the virtual world, the woman smiled and patted the fair face, and threw her in the corner.
"Enjoy it slowly."
"Don't thank me, I'll let you recall some beautiful moments at the last moment of your life."
As she said this, she reloaded the silenced pistol that had been empty of bullets. At the same time, her wheat-colored skin was gradually replaced by the whiteness of not seeing the sun for a long time.
The changing optical image not only changed her appearance and hair color, but also changed her clothes, not even a tiny detail was missed.
However, compared with the broken optical camouflage, this holographic face-retouching system is not easy to use.
It doesn't work if it's too far away, and it doesn't work if it's too close. It can only be dealt with for a short time.
If you really want to completely become another person, you still have to read the other person's memory carefully and have a plastic surgery.
After returning, she will consider doing so.
If the respected Lord Guixu thinks it is necessary to make use of the identity of the female researcher...
Take out the time bomb hanging on her waist, and the woman sticks it on the floor-to-ceiling window not far away.
After taking one last look at the frozen reactor, she turned and left the power room, heading towards Area X-13.
The surface operation should be over.
The phase guns deployed nearby are enough to paralyze the two airships, and the troops led by Lord Guixu will also launch an attack at the same time.
Now, it's time for her to wake up her dormant compatriots and take back what belongs to them from this ancient ruins...