This Game Is Too Real
Chapter 593: A stray dog, also worthy to be an opponent for the Manager?

Chapter 593: Chapter 593: A stray dog, also worthy to be an opponent for the Manager?

Although he was unsure of the precise location of the mutant corps, for the "Steel Heart", which had its support artillery completely revamped with 155mm cannons, a rough coordinate was already enough.

The moment Chu Guang gave the order, an alert for avoiding shockwaves rang out on the airship’s deck, and the entire crew immediately sprang into action.

Inside the main gun bay, the hydraulic support of the loading machine lifted, pushing an orange-yellow 400mm rocket-assisted projectile into the gun barrel.

At this moment, on the deck—

The voluminous short-barreled giant cannon made clicking sounds as it slowly rotated under the pull of the motor, aligning itself with the precise west of the Pine Cone Wood Farm.

Xiao Qi fully controlled the automatic fire control system.

Based on the charge of this rocket-assisted projectile, the quantum computer had already analyzed various ballistic trajectories under different conditions of air density, wind speed, and humidity.

The gathering of players paused their activities, their eyes filled with curiosity and anticipation as they gazed at the towering cannon.

Seemingly in response to their anticipation, three seconds after the alert ceased, a flame as thick as a dragon burst forth from the massive gun barrel.

The spreading shockwave and smoke swept across the hundreds of meters long steel deck, throwing up into the sky amidst the turbulent air currents, the momentary flash of white light was almost blinding.

Although the "Steel Heart" had participated in numerous battles, not all players had truly witnessed this industrial giant roar skyward.

Seeing that earth-shattering power, many first-timers aboard the ship shouted in alarm and excitement, and some even whistled loudly.

"Awesome!"

"You’re telling me this is a shell?! This is damn well a muzzle-launched missile!"

"The shockwave from this cannon is badass!"

Seeing the group of clueless newbies, Gui Gui, with her hands on her hips and in the tone of an experienced player, laughed teasingly.

"Hey, this is nothing, if you were on the ground, you’d know—the blast wave from the explosion is way more badass than this!"

The newbie swallowed.

"How badass?"

"About this much!" Gui Gui extended her arms as far as she could to illustrate, but realizing she couldn’t properly describe it, she clicked her tongue and scratched her head, "Anyway, it’s strong enough to blow up Trash Lord from a kilometer away!"

Newbie: "Awesome!"

The newbie’s admiring expression was quite satisfying to Gui Gui.

Although she had only been playing this game for a few months, as a regular on this deck, she had long considered it her home.

With a proud curl of her lip, she continued.

"Just pray for those green-skinned beasts, this isn’t a force that carbon-based life forms can withstand—it vaporizes them in an instant!"

Feng Qing put on her wind goggles, leaned over the edge of the deck without a word, just excitedly staring at the ground through her binoculars.

GKD!

She wanted to see the explosion!

...

Meanwhile, dozens of kilometers away from the "Steel Heart", in the wilderness, a slightly rugged gentle slope housed an abandoned wooden house.

Next to the wooden house, two motorcycles with their engines turned off leaned askew.

Lying on the reverse slope, Li Jinrong and Xiao Yue exchanged glances with peculiar expressions as they watched the Alliance soldier napping next to the motorcycles.

The mutant’s main force was advancing less than three kilometers away from them, and a patrol team of about ten had even recently passed near them.

Yet, at this crucial moment, this guy could still sleep!

"...Should we wake him up?" Xiao Yue whispered.

Li Jinrong gave a wry smile.

"If you can wake him up."

Xiao Yue grinned sheepishly, no longer speaking.

When the mutant sentries were scouted in the area a little earlier, he had thought about waking the guy, but no matter what, there was no response.

Frankly, he had never seen anyone sleep so soundly.

And all so close to those man-eating creatures—how could an ordinary person still be sleeping?

"I think we at least need to send someone back to inform the other people in the settlement. With such thick fog, even if that airship flies high, it won’t be seen."

"That number... what difference would it make if we informed them?" Li Jinrong looked at the noise in the distance, squinting his eyes, "He said he’d handle it, so let’s leave it to him."

Perhaps...

The Alliance warrior really had some kind of dream-invoking special ability?

This is the Wasteland, after all.

As everyone knows, anything strange could happen in the Wasteland. Telling survivors elsewhere that the number of mutants in Brocade River City was so vast that they could form a kingdom, strong enough to fit themselves with mechanical prostheses, might not be believed by many.

After all, in most other places, those green-skinned creatures would be considered impressive just for making a thumbtack landmine. If their numbers were just a bit higher, they might end up fighting amongst themselves over food or mates.

Speaking of why they were here, it all started when they were lying next to this guy named Fang Chang from the Burning Corps.

Probably right when the fog began rolling in, as Li Jinrong alertedly monitored the surroundings inside the farm, this gentleman suddenly found them and mentioned that mutants were rushing over from the direction of the city, asking to borrow their motorcycles for reconnaissance nearby.

Li Jinrong had no objections, just feeling a bit strange why, with convenient vertical take-off aircraft available, they would want to borrow his motorcycle.

So he suggested joining them, and that older brother readily agreed.

Consequently, the three of them left Pine Cone Wood Farm and headed west to scout. Just as he had said, they found traces of massive movements of mutants nearby.

The hazy mist made it unclear how many green oily heads there were, and even the approximate location of the group was challenging to determine.

But what can be confirmed is that it was at least the size of a thousand team!

Moreover, this group of Mutants was extremely cautious in their activities, completely different from those noisy fellows who surged forward in a swarm before.

They not only deployed scouts to scatter and search along the march route, but also carefully divided the troops into several waves.

Although these are basic tactics for human forces, they are exceptionally rare among Mutants.

More than death itself, they despised cowardice and weakness, and in their eyes, using those fancy tactics was a sign of timidity.

The powerful individuals worshipped by this group of Mutants were those who crushed their opponents with sheer strength!

Now they were willing to learn human tactics, which showed that those previous battles had deeply hurt these green-skinned guys.

However, this was not necessarily good news for the Alliance.

Feeling the murderous and bloodthirsty aura through the gray-green fog, Li Jinrong felt a tingling in his scalp and found the situation somewhat tricky.

Just then, the long-unawake Fang Chang suddenly twitched and sprang up from the ground without any warning.

Xiao Yue, who was lying next to him, was startled by this sudden movement, looked around, and seeing no Mutant scouts nearby, jokingly covered up his embarrassment.

"Brother, you’ve slept quite long..."

The newly awakened Fang Chang nodded, brushed the grass and dust off his arms, and nonchalantly said,

"Yeah, just chatting a bit with the others."

Xiao Yue: "?"

Li Jinrong: "...?"

Damn?

Both were instantly stunned.

Could he really share dreams?!

"...that’s not the point," noticing the astonished expressions of the two, Fang Chang coughed lightly and glossed over this awkward topic, "Besides... it’s all set."

The reason he had taken so long to return was not just about chatting on the Forum, but mainly waiting for other players to relay the message back to the official website to confirm when the bombardment could begin.

Fortunately, the NPC of the Iron Heart was very reliable and trusted them.

Almost the moment Feng Qing reported the coordinates in the Game, the preparations for the artillery fire in the airship’s gun bay began.

Frankly, this response speed made Fang Chang even suspect that not only players were exploiting the game’s bugs, but Alliance’s NPCs were also surfing their official site.

But he didn’t report this bug to Brother Guang.

It would be a pity to fix such a bug that enhanced the gaming experience; better to silently continue using it.

Li Jinrong looked bewildered at this calm comrade, completely clueless about what he was talking about.

How could everything be settled just by sleeping?

What could be settled like that!

His adam’s apple moved, and he finally couldn’t resist expressing the doubts in his heart.

"...What do you mean? How is it already settled?"

Aware of his confusion, Fang Chang didn’t explain in detail but simply looked toward the direction of the marching Mutant Corps and succinctly said,

"The Alliance’s support will arrive soon, we just need to stand here and watch. Of course, it’s best not to walk in front of those green-skinned guys."

While saying this, he briefly checked his equipment, especially the VM on his arm, ensuring no one had tampered with it, and gave the two NPCs a lingering look.

This time, coming out alone with these two was partly to borrow their motorcycle and partly to test them.

Old White and Li Jinrong had discussed last night that the Alliance would support the Iron Tower Organization’s guerrilla activities in the south, but this did not mean they fully trusted these people yet.

The Holy Land could be hidden in any NPC’s mind.

Therefore, when he logged off last time, he had turned on the VM’s recording and camera functions to see what these two would do.

Now that the Mutant’s coordinates had been reported, even if he got sliced, it would just be three days lost; using a life to understand two NPCs was totally worth it.

But looking at it now, they hadn’t done anything superfluous.

Although this did not mean these two were completely trustworthy, cooperating to some extent was still no problem.

Xiao Yue, somewhat impatient, asked,

"How much longer?"

Fang Chang didn’t speak but quietly said,

"Listen carefully... do you hear anything?"

Li Jinrong frowned slightly.

"Sound?"

What on earth was he talking about—

Just as he was thinking this, he suddenly heard a faint sound, like the fluttering of autumn cicadas, accompanied by the vibration of airflow coming from a very distant place.

He hadn’t fully discerned what the sound was when a shocking scene was imprinted in his pupils.

He saw a thick column of smoke pierce through the dense fog, followed immediately by a torrential roar of thunder that swept across the entire wilderness.

Orange-red flames burst out like a blooming mandala; in that instant of bloom, trees were uprooted, slopes were leveled, and rocks and wood chips flew about like shrapnel, carried into the sky by the scorching airflow.

The solid earth was like boiling lake water, rippling with waves from the scorching shockwaves...

Li Jinrong and Xiao Yue stared dumbfounded at the cluster of all-consuming flames rising in the distance, forced to squint against the suffocating hot wind.

Before that apocalyptic force, all organisms seemed so minuscule.

He had once imagined what kind of trump cards the Alliance would use to combat those outrageously strong mutants and The Church, yet he never expected such horrifying and pure power to be unveiled before him.

At that moment, he finally understood.

How the order of the Alliance had come about.

What made it even more inconceivable to him was that he remembered the rumor he had once heard—the indomitable Iron Beast had not originally belonged to the Alliance.

It was their war trophy, seized from the Army by the Burning Corps!

He could not imagine what kind of phenomenal strength was required to conquer such an unmatched Iron Beast.

And even more unimaginable was, if such a monster could be tamed, what sort of monstrous creature would be worthy to oppose them...

Half a day ago, he was still hesitant about the answer to this question, but now he could confirm it without any doubt.

At least the mutants—

They could absolutely not be their opponents!

After a long moment, Li Jinrong swallowed and, as if to confirm his suspicions, began to speak in a trembling voice.

"That is..."

"The main cannon of the Iron Heart."

Fang Chang smiled gently as he looked towards the center of the explosion in the distance, his bangs finally falling back to his brows as the hot wind brushed them.

After a pause, he continued softly,

"How about it? Isn’t it magnificent?"

Li Jinrong did not respond.

Because, at that moment, he was utterly unable to put his shock into words.

Just then, it began to rain.

The charred mud fell from the sky like raindrops, pattering down onto the ground like machine gun bullets, scattering across the battlefield scorched by gunpowder.

Unfortunately, even such apocalyptic power could not destroy the lair nestled in the center of Qingquan City.

That mycelium had long since fused with the concrete debris, and no amount of artillery could shake that "Giant Tree" formed by spore clouds connecting the sky and the earth.

But to handle those creatures, it was absolutely sufficient.

Xiao Yue’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he squeezed out a sentence with difficulty,

"Is it over?"

Fang Chang looked at the distance and smiled.

"Over? This is just the beginning."

Without waiting for the man to continue, he spoke in a tone that was almost nonchalant,

"Watch carefully."

"The real show is about to begin!"

...

The first round of shelling was only the prelude.

The 400mm rocket-extended rounds not only marked the beginning of artillery on the surface but also shattered the entire foggy area, overturning the soil thoroughly and exposing the mutant troops moving between the forest and the wilderness to the gunner’s view.

After the main cannon had completed the bombardment, all positions quickly confirmed the shell fall points and target coordinates, and began the first round of firing correction based on the calculated shooting elements.

"Shooting elements set!"

"High-explosive bomb loaded!"

"Loading complete!"

"Ready—"

"Fire!"

The gunners inside the gun compartments violently pulled the lanyards, and numerous guns resounded in unison, the gun flanks of the airship flashing with streaks of thunder.

Dazzling orange tracers dived towards the ground, exploding into bursts of flames on the battlefield that had been cleared of mist.

Mutant soldiers advancing on the wilderness, who hadn’t yet recovered from the earlier devastating explosion, many still stuck in mud pits, were immediately engulfed by the following barrage.

"Spread out!"

"Get down and take cover—!"

Struggling to prop himself up from the mud, Kulu let out a roaring cry, his bloodthirsty pupils filled with panic.

What in the world is...

this thing?

He hadn’t even seen where the enemy was when the explosion suddenly sounded.

Then a hot blast, like a heavy hammer, struck his back and swept all the mutant soldiers across the plain.

Fortunately, the impact point of the shell was far enough from them, a few hundred meters away at the edge of their formation.

Nevertheless, even at such a distance, that apocalyptic power left countless minions feeling a bone-deep fear and shiver.

That was not a power of this Mortal realm.

They had never seen such terrifying artillery before!

Kulu’s roar had just erupted when a series of whooshing sounds tore through the silence of the battlefield.

The blast of fire and billowing smoke swept over like a ruthless harrow, plowing from behind them.

Even though lying prone on the ground was a disgrace for the strength-worshipping and barbaric mutant warriors, Kulu knew this was not the time to show off, and he could only humbly bury his proud head.

The advancing barrage slowly pressed closer, the grey-green fog barely healing before being violently torn apart, exposing the muddy battlefield.

Shells were scattered across the wilderness as if they were free, spawning sparks everywhere, vowing not to spare an inch of this soil.

Cradling the back of his head, Kulu finally began to feel a trace of panic.

Especially when the boiling firelight exploded just ten meters away from him, especially when the hot shrapnel tore into his flesh, he, who was normally fearless, couldn’t help but pray to the Saint Heir.

This was completely different from last night’s air raid—the sky and earth seemed to shatter under its imposing aura, and what terrified him most was that he had no idea how to counter this power.

When the shelling finally ended—

It was much later.

He pushed himself up from the mud, nearly buried, and looked blankly around at the chaotic battlefield, feeling not a trace of joy for having survived.

Instead, he felt an unprecedented despair.

The battlefield, spanning several kilometers, looked as though it had been flipped over, with scorched black mud strewn with limbs and torsos everywhere.

He had no idea how many shells had fallen here or how many of his soldiers were still alive.

What were they...

fighting against?!

He blankly looked up at the sky, towards the north of Brocade River City, searching for answers towards the direction where the Iron Airship floated, but his vision was blocked by the gradually healing fog.

This brought him a fleeting joy, but soon after came a deep sense of humiliation and powerless frustration.

To vent the fear in his heart and to prove to his subordinates that he was not a coward, he raised his head and let out a reluctant roar.

"Cowards!"

"Cowards!"

"Hiding in the fog, what skill is that!"

"If you have the guts, come out and face Kulu in a real fight!"

He knew those two-legged beasts didn’t have the courage.

Those guys only dared to shoot at them from atop those wildly flying flies, never daring to face a mutant grandfather!

While he swaggered, they could only watch from a distance!

Thinking this, Kulu’s lips curled into a satisfied smirk.

Just as he was about to stand up and regroup his forces, warriors clad in heavy armor appeared at the edge of the thick fog, walking straight from the north.

Their long gun barrels emitted a chilling cold light, each person uniformly carrying a logging axe, their breastplates covered in green camouflage paint, and their shoulder armors bore indistinct badges.

The leader was even more exaggerated.

Standing on the wilderness like a black tower, his body nearly entirely covered in steel, from his toes to his head, with a thick gun barrel like a python welded directly to his arm.

Even though he couldn’t see the man’s eyes.

Kulu could still feel the intense thirst for battle emanating from him.

His pupils contracted slightly, and his chapped lips, along with his twisted muscles, drew up into a ferocious, bloodthirsty sneer.

Is this one of the Alliance’s managers?

He had heard about it.

The leader of the northern Alliance’s tribe, wrapped in iron, seemed to be a powerful Awakener.

But Kulu didn’t care, whether it was power armor or a tank—in front of his pure power, they were all as flimsy as paper.

Even if they wore armor, two-legged beasts were still beasts, and he would prove this with his fists and teeth.

He picked up the axe-gun that had fallen to the ground, and Kulu raised his head and let out an earth-shattering roar, standing like a rampant beast, furiously glaring at the man.

"Come on!"

"Alliance leader—"

"Let me see what you’re really made of!"

His gruff roar swept across the wilderness.

The muddy battlefield quieted down for a moment.

The black-tower-like man seemed to finally realize that the upright beast was addressing him.

Ignoring the arrogant challenge, the lips under the helmet slightly curled.

"A wild dog, fit to be an opponent of the manager?"

A joke!

Thinking of ascending to the springs without even dismantling a tower?

What a ridiculous notion!

Raising his chin, Midnight Chicken Killing emotionlessly watched the green-skinned beast, his bomb gun already aimed at his chest.

"Widen your dog eyes."

"Your opponent is me!"

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.