This Game Is Too Real
Chapter 149: Army!

Chapter 149: Chapter 149: Army!

Qingquan City’s northwestern wasteland.

Snow-laden pine trees and elms pierced through the ruined countryside villas, while withered sea buckthorn swayed beneath toppling buildings. The only highway had been buried by time, now invisible, and where one lifted their gaze, a blanket of falling snow merged into one.

This was the boundary between Qingquan City and Tianshui City, as well as the fringe of the southern city cluster of River Valley Province.

Although geographically closer to Tianshui City, administratively, this area belonged to the more populous and industrially dense Qingquan City.

It had a name full of pristine ecological charm: Elm District.

This place used to be planted with a large number of elms and cypresses, and now it was only those evergreen trees that had survived.

In that distant utopian era, this area was a famous summer resort. Because of the South Dynasty Rhombus Lake, the low mountains and hills to the west, and the sporadic clear winds and falling leaves that brushed through the woods, it was always poetic here. Residents from both cities tired of urban life often came here to live a few days of reclusive existence.

Since there were no tall buildings around, every household had a lawn the size of a basketball court, and some cultivated crops with a primitive flavor in their backyards. This led the survivors here to become self-sufficient for a while in the early days of the Wasteland Era, forming family-based agricultural communities.

Of course, it’s long since been abandoned.

Wildly growing vegetation has replaced the traces of civilization, and within a few short decades, this idyllic countryside’s greenery rate skyrocketed from 60% to a full 100%. Now the edge between forest and ruins is indistinguishable.

It proves that once human beings adapt to industrialization, it’s hard for them to be away from industry for too long.

Even though many people clamor about being tired of urban bustle, if they truly returned to an agricultural era, 99% would not be able to stand it.

And those primitive crops grown as hobbies couldn’t even feed the refugees that poured in, let alone the locals. With the harsh winter approaching, those small and large agricultural communities quickly disappeared into the snow.

Lacking recyclable trash and plagued by dangerous Variants, few survivors visited here. Only some merchants who were not afraid of death chose to settle down.

However, this neglected and lost district was unusually bustling today.

A group of unexpected guests had come from the north and entered the area in a mighty procession.

They held uniform bolt-action rifles with cheap wooden stocks, and even the barrels were cumbersome castings. Without protective gear or unified clothing, they barely covered themselves with tattered fur coats and boots adorned with fur trim.

Their only uniform equipment was, perhaps, the electric shock collars around their necks.

These people were undoubtedly humans.

But in those beast-like pupils, there was not a glimmer of civilization’s light nor of reason.

Clutching rifles and wearing collars, they resembled a group of tamed monkeys. And those lower-ranking officers holding remotes, urging them forward from behind, looked more like living beings.

Those in the know could tell at a glance the identity of those wearing collars.

Clones!

And the cheapest kind at that!

Across the Central Continent, probably only one organization could "tame" clones on a large scale and efficiently, deploying them into battle in an organized way.

That would be the Army!

Standing beside a damaged house, a man in a dark blue coat watched the marching troops, his vulture-like gaze as sharp as a dagger.

His name was Vanus.

Whether at the Army headquarters or in his Eastern Legion, it was an unimpressive name.

Yet contrary to that ordinary name, he harbored the ambition to become a general.

Driven by a thirst for honor and power, he joined the Eastern Expeditionary Army, following General Kras’s steps, marching east towards the Grand Canyon in the northern part of River Valley Province.

Legend had it that the "Company" of the Far East had also dispatched an expeditionary corps there but unfortunately met with defeat.

As for the company’s failure, Vanus had no comment and looked down upon it.

In his eyes, those who coveted comfort and curled up within a single province were weak and naturally doomed to fail in understanding what war was.

But the Army was different.

They were warriors born for battle, flesh and blood driven by an iron will.

Whether clones, freemen, or citizens, from the moment of their birth, the iron laws of the Army were branded deep within every one of their hearts.

Even without advanced equipment, they were still able to march in four directions at once, driven by their thirst for victory and glory, and with a will to win etched into their very marrow. On a wasteland of ruins, they carved out a vast territory, making countless tribes bow before them, offering slaves and tributes.

The fertile Grand Canyon would sooner or later succumb to the iron hooves of the Army, and under the Lion Flag, there would be no exceptions. They would use a seven-day siege to punish those who resisted to the bitter end, to honor the spirits of the fallen.

Although the battle had been at a stalemate for a year, Vanus had no doubts about this.

They were about to win!

Originally, he and his subordinates were to join the winter offensive, but just then, a piece of news that could not be ignored came from afar.

A mobile fortress was moving toward the west!

According to the intelligence gathered, the fortress came from the distant East Coast, ruled over by nobles from the Company—of course, in their own words, they were senior employees. Judging from their route, it seemed they intended to head west, in search of the whereabouts of No.0 Shelter.

Coincidentally, the Army was also very interested in No.0 Shelter.

However, in theory, this was not something the Expeditionary Army should be meddling in, especially splitting forces at this critical juncture to provoke the people from the Company was not a wise choice.

Vanus raised objections with General Kras, but they were overruled.

According to General Kras, to break through the impenetrable Holy Shield System of the Grand Canyon, the Expeditionary Army needed this mobile fortress to handle nuclear materials and produce inexpensive and effective nuclear warheads.

Although he was reluctant to admit it, their tactical nukes were almost used up...

"How far are we from that fortress?"

Hearing his superior’s voice, the aide-de-camp behind Vanus reported solemnly,

"We are 10 kilometers away, sir."

Vanus nodded and said,

"Stop here; if they aren’t blind, they’ve definitely seen us."

The Army lacked dark technologies, but that didn’t mean they had never seen them.

Vanus had a clear strategy.

Construct defensive fortifications, establish positions based on jungle terrain, and use artillery to strike at their rear, ultimately forcing them to surrender.

He believed that once the artillery sounded, those soft-shelled shrimps who had never fought a serious battle would panic.

"Lay down foil paper and heat insulation foam, set up a command post here!"

Stepping on the concrete blocks beneath his feet, Vanus looked toward the south, squinting his eyes into a slit.

"Those tin cans are tough, but they can’t stay there forever."

"We’ll wait for them here!"

...

On the Pioneer, a light fixed-wing drone took off from above the fortress, circling the edge of the Elm District.

At the same time, in the combat command center.

Captain Lu focused on the flecks of brightness on the screen, his eyebrows gradually furrowing.

"The Army’s people?"

The drone operator at the console responded,

"It should be, Captain."

The flickering bright spots were so dense it was hard to count, with more than two thousand of them spread over a front 2 kilometers wide and 2 kilometers deep, like beans scattered on the ground.

Apart from the Army, he couldn’t think of any other possibilities.

Captain Lu had heard that the Army’s people had mastered a DNA sequence that had been banned in the pre-war society, able to accelerate the entire life cycle of clones to eight times that of a normal person.

These mass-produced Clone Slaves only needed 1-2 months to develop from an embryo into a baby capable of leaving the chamber. After being sent to the crowded nurseries, they would complete in one year the childhood phase that took a normal person eight years.

During this year, they would learn language—or it didn’t matter if they didn’t—once time was up, they would be sent to facilities akin to coliseums, where they would spend their second year—that is, their adolescence.

In this stage, their mortality rate was as high as 50%, with some elite selection facilities reaching 70%. These facilities would not teach them how to fight, but merely serve as sieves, screening those who could adapt to the battlefield, or rather, the beasts ferocious enough.

Those who made it out alive would be sent to the front lines on their second birthday, becoming a qualified Cannon Fodder.

Since their developmental speed was eight times that of normal humans, their theoretical lifespan was only between 10 to 15 years.

But this wasn’t a weakness because, in reality, they couldn’t live that long. The Army never stopped waging war, whether against Variants, Barbarians, Mutants, or other Survivor Bases. Cannon Fodder who charged into the front lines had an average lifespan of less than three years, with five years being the maximum.

There was a saying that the dungeons where Looters assimilated slaves were a practice learned from the Army. They locked captured slaves in dungeons, made them fight for food, destroyed their spirit and rationality, and turned the surviving madmen into Cannon Fodder, and the surviving Cannon Fodder into their own...

However, the Army usually didn’t take the last step.

This type of mass-produced Clone could only be Slaves, and their ultimate fate could only be to die in battle.

To ensure the combat power of these Cannon Fodders, each of them would be fitted with an electric shock collar, and every ten Cannon Fodder would be supervised by a junior officer, that is, a Centurion of the Army.

A troop of nearly two thousand seemed vast, but most of the Cannon Fodder actually couldn’t form effective combat power. By comparison, what Lu Yang cared more about was why these men had appeared here.

"Did they say anything?"

"They didn’t respond to our radio requests. Either they don’t have radios, or they just don’t want to deal with us."

Lu Yang nodded lightly.

"The former possibility can be ruled out."

"Then only the latter remains," Li De cautiously said, looking towards Captain Lu, "We still have four Tactical Nuclear Bombs left, more than enough to handle 2000 people."

"That’s the most optimistic scenario, with 2000 people standing in the square for you to bomb," the Marines’ executive officer Yi Hai shook his head, "They’re dispersed in the forest, where they’ve built defensive works. Unless we level the whole forest... But that’s impossible, even a conservative estimate would need 40 bombs."

Not to mention, the enemy was dispersed in a terrain mix of jungle and city ruins, which was rife with obstacles and cover that could be exploited.

With just a few simple Dugouts, they could greatly reduce the threat of explosives. And those beast-like Clone madmen essentially had no morale issues; the electronic locks on their necks would start them raging the moment they were triggered, more effective than stimulants.

Lu Yang mused, "Unless we have one of sufficient yield."

Before Li De could speak, his secretary Wang Jie shook his head and said, "There’s not enough uranium-235. We used too much before. Deuterium can only be extracted by the sea, and to produce it... with the energy we have left, it’s basically out of the question."

By the end of the Prosperity Epoch, the application of nuclear energy on this planet had evolved from the early D-D fusion to the third generation of controlled nuclear fusion.

Pure helium-3 fusion.

Under such reaction principles, the fusion of two helium-3 atoms would produce two protons and one helium atom, with no neutrons being produced in the process.

The Pioneer used such technology and naturally wouldn’t bother storing tritium, with its measly half-life of only twelve years.

Li De rubbed his brow, saying with a headache.

"So what do we do now? Just watch them build fortifications under our noses? They’re less than four kilometers away from our resource gathering site! If they move just a bit eastward, they’ll discover our construction site!"

"Perhaps they’ve already discovered it but are just too busy digging fortifications to care," a veteran of the Marines raised a reasonable hypothesis.

"Let’s move! There’s no need to be polite with them! The longer we drag this out, the harder this bone will be to chew," the Marines’ executive officer pounded his fist on the Table, "A ten-kilometer radius is already dangerous, we can’t let them continue."

Kindness doesn’t mean weakness.

Besides, since they were from the Army, there was no need to hold back against that organized group of Looters.

Lu Yang wasn’t one to hesitate. After a moment’s consideration and weighing the pros and cons, it only took him three seconds to make a decision.

"Launch the offensive at eight tonight!"

The Army didn’t have much high-tech equipment, with the darkest technologies being nothing more than individual nuclear bomb launchers and laser rifles, mainly supplied to elite troops.

As for these people, it was clear they were far from elite; they probably had no more than recoilless guns or Rocket launchers. Not to mention self-guided rockets, they might not even have wire guidance.

The Pioneer’s Marine Corps not only had powerful power armor, but their helmet visors also integrated night vision and thermal imaging functions, and fixed-wing aircraft provided air support from above.

Once it got dark, they’d pound those blind targets!

Lu Yang, eyes narrowed as he stared at the large screen, spoke decidedly.

"Since they’ve refused communication."

"We’ll use our caliber to teach them to speak human language!"

...

Action Camp.

Players returning from scavenging in the Northern urban area were chatting and laughing on their way back from the worksite, handing over shifts to the Africans and newbies who had hurried over from Outpost Base.

Standing in the center of the camp, Teng Teng watched the vast crowd returning in the distance and excitedly shouted at the top of his lungs.

"Group leader! Fang Chang! Wild Wind! Night Ten! Where are you guys?"

He shouted for a while, and not long after, four little players who looked like they’d just emerged from a coal mine approached him, laughing and slapping his shoulder.

"Not bad, buddy, you’ve finally made it up here."

Quit Smoking: "Man, it’s a long story of sadness! Wait, who are you?"

Fang Chang smiled and said, "I’m Fang Chang! The one without the beard is Old White, the showiest one is Night Ten, and the quietly showy one is Wild Wind."

Night Ten, with a playful smirk, said, "I disagree! Who says I’m the showiest? Isn’t Wild Wind the showiest? Don’t let his silence fool you; the fact that he can climb to the first tier with an Intelligence System is proof enough of his sleaziness, isn’t it?"

Wild Wind: "Get lost."

Old White went up, patted Quit Smoking on the shoulder, and spoke with a hearty laugh.

"This has really been tough on you! I remember when the game was at version 0.1, you’d reserved your spot, right? Back then, it was easiest to get in. Later on, with more people, it became much harder to get a spot!"

Quit Smoking, his face filled with excitement, said, "Ah, don’t get me started! I’ve watched as the reservation quiz went from 10 questions to 100 questions. I entered the lottery seven times and never won once; I’m about to split open from frustration."

Old White sighed, "It’s okay, there is more than one person from Africa. Haven’t you seen many folks on the Forum starting to post ’Queueing Diaries’? The game’s closed beta access is indeed a bit scarce, but it should get better when the open beta starts."

"Actually, it’s not that scarce," Fang Chang said with a laugh, "Which game company is willing to lend out so many Devices for free to players? 400 helmets already, right? People are impatient mainly because the game’s completeness is rather high. The fact that we’ve only encountered one bug during such a long closed beta has really surprised me."

Night Ten, grinning, said, "Brother Light said, ’I’m working overtime right now, even if you butter me up, I won’t be able to hear what you’re saying.’"

Fang Chang: "Dammit! Do you think I’m that kind of person?"

Old White placed his right hand on Quit Smoking’s shoulder.

"Enough chit-chat. Quit Smoking, my brother, in a bit we’re heading back to Outpost Base; there’s a dungeon we haven’t raided yet. A few days ago, Teng Teng unlocked the weaving skill, and with so many people waiting to exchange for armor, the demand for Devil Moth’s Cocoon is definitely going to rise. Since we’ve also finished the tasks here, we plan to take some time to conquer Level B1 of the Greenhouse Ruins."

"Just follow the main force for now, get used to the controls; the game’s processes are quite simple."

"After you get back to Outpost Base, we’ll take you to level up in the dungeon!"

Hearing that he’d be carried by a strong player, Quit Smoking immediately nodded happily, his face all smiles.

"Got it, boss! I’ll do good work on grinding, get my gear together, and make sure not to drag you down!"

Night Ten spoke with a touch of emotion.

"You newbies are quite lucky, launching right into an expansion, and it’s a major one that opens a New Map! A single reward from this expansion lets you graduate right from Novice Village. Unlike back in our day, where we had to make furnaces out of clay blocks, burn concrete, smelt iron, and fight with Bow and Arrow and Spear."

"Right, compared to ’Landship,’ ’Winter is Coming’ was just a little brother. No equipment, no food, not even a pretend-promising PV, and all we had to carry was bricks," Fang Chang also said with emotion, "You guys are truly chosen by fate, having everything right from the start."

Quit Smoking, embarrassed, touched his nose and chuckled.

"Low profile, heh heh... Now that you mention it, I do suddenly feel pretty lucky."

Night Ten chuckled.

"Do you feel touched inside?"

"Absolutely!"

At that moment, a rumble like rolling thunder suddenly came from afar.

The group of five friends from the Cattle and Horse Brigade all looked curiously toward the north, wondering what was happening beyond the veil of snow.

But just then, Night Ten’s face suddenly changed.

The sense of impending doom made him almost instinctively shout loudly.

"Get down!"

-

(Next Chapter updates at 11 o’clock! 2/30 of daily tens of thousands in October!)