Chapter 728.1: Battle For Ten Peaks Mountain!

Wasteland Online forums.

Garbage: ?

Quit Smoking: ?

Tail: ⊙ω⊙?

Me Quiet: ?

Garbage: ?????

Mosquito: Pffft hahahahaha!

Garbage: Holy crap! What the hell are you laughing at?! ୧(๑•̀ᗝ•́)૭ ୧(๑•̀ᗝ•́)૭ ୧(๑•̀ᗝ•́)૭

Night Ten: You didn't say anything either. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Irene: Although I can probably guess what happened... Anyway, my condolences, Garbage kun. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Mosquito: Do you even need to guess? ✧｡٩(ˊᗜˋ)و✧*｡

Elf Wang: Sigh, this game is way too realistic. (｡﹏｡")

Garbage: @#％&!

...

At the foot of Ten Peaks Mountain, thin wisps of steam rose from the riverbed. The blazing inferno was like a miniature sun that had crashed onto the earth, instantly evaporating nearly a hundred meters of the river channel!

The lush green reeds along both banks had been reduced to ash, drifting away amid the smoke from the explosion.

A massive crater had been blasted into the center of the 100 meter wide river, and the shockwave had swept all the way out to a distance of over a kilometer!

As for the Mutant Humans who had been standing there, not even ashes remained. Only a few lying near the riverbank still possessed enough strength to whimper and cry out.

And that was all.

A 1,000-strong mutant force had lost half its numbers in an instant without even having the chance to prepare! The casualties among the smaller goblin-like creatures that had accompanied the green-skinned brutes were even more incalculable.

Watching the battlefield from behind a protruding rock halfway up the mountain, Make Me stood there completely dumbfounded.

If someone told him a meteor had struck, he would have believed it. While it wasn't a nuclear weapon, its destructive power wasn't much weaker than some low-yield tactical nukes.

In terms of that crater alone, its effectiveness against fortified positions might even exceed that of conventional nuclear weapons!

After all, while explosive yield and destructive effect were correlated, they were not identical. One also had to consider damage mechanisms, transmission mediums, effective radius, energy efficiency decay, and numerous other factors.

Looking at the crater slowly filling with river water, he silently drew the symbol of his self-created Great Rat God Cult across his chest.

"Mother of God, Mother of God..." He muttered repeatedly.

He prayed for Garbage’s safety for half a second...

...

The ones watching the battle weren't just the little rat halfway up the mountain. A research vessel floating over a dozen kilometers away was also observing.

Watching the towering smoke column rising hundreds of meters into the sky, Yang Kai clicked his tongue and sneered dismissively from the pilot's seat. "So that's what they're so proud of. Looks like those fools can only use barbaric toys."

Just as he had expected. The explosive filling inside those 902mm shells was probably modified from armor-piercing shells used by starships.

In space warfare, nuclear weapons had very limited effectiveness. Especially when directional shields could effectively block neutron radiation, leaving little more than thermal radiation as a meaningful source of damage.

Thus, when the Human Federation designed fleet weaponry, the warheads of explosives and guided munitions primarily relied on chemical explosives carrying oxidizers, high expansion coefficients, and extremely fast detonation velocities.

Those weapons were mainly used against dense swarms of sub-entities and for orbital bombardment operations.

After inheriting the relevant technologies, the Wislanders had apparently modified them according to their own ideas and created this strange blend of primitive and advanced technology.

Calling it primitive felt unfair because the warhead itself was genuinely impressive. Calling it advanced felt equally wrong because people from the late Industrial Age or early Atomic Age could have built the launch platform.

Perhaps there was only one scenario in which the Wislanders could successfully conquer the world, and that would be two centuries from now, when Ideal City collapsed under its own decadence and when the Academy completed its preparations and departed the star system.

They also needed every shelter left behind from the Prosperity Era to vanish and there was no remnants of that age remaining anywhere on the planet. At that point, perhaps the Wislanders could leverage their immense industrial and military capabilities to rapidly unify the world, rebuild a militaristic and xenophobic Human Federation dominated by Wislanders, and officially declare the end of the Wasteland Era.

According to Dr. Conclusions' simulations, such a future did exist as a possibility. Though exactly how likely it was remained unknown.

After collecting the explosion data, Yang Kai finally connected to the Academy headquarters in the Wandering Swamp through a series of communication relays established along the route, enduring enormous latency and packet loss.

"As planned, the New Alliance's frontline forces have made contact with the Torch Church's forward units. At the moment, the battle appears entirely one-sided. Unless something unexpected happens, they should conclude the engagement within two hours."

After a brief pause, a calm and dignified voice emerged from the communication channel. "Has the Torch Church revealed any of its trump cards?"

The speaker was the Academy's Chief Technology Officer, their highest-ranking leader. He was the highest-ranking authority of the Scientific Committee and direct superior of the four department directors. That meant he was directly accountable to Dr. Conclusions.

One could even say that whenever Dr. Conclusions was absent, he effectively embodied the leader’s will.

"There are some cybernetically modified Mutant Humans, along with a few degraded variants. Probably some new creations from the Torch Church..." Yang Kai reported respectfully. "If those things can even be considered trump cards."

"Never underestimate our opponents or competitors." The Chief Technology Officer immediately detected the trace of contempt hidden beneath Yang Kai's respectful tone.

His reply carried deeper meaning.

After a pause, he continued, "This is a valuable experimental opportunity. I need you to collect every piece of data you can obtain, whether from our people or the coalition forces."

"The Army, the Enterprise, and the New Alliance..."

Many years ago, long before the Army’s Eastern Expedition, the Academy, whose influence stretched throughout the Central Continent, had already begun monitoring the Torch Church. The deeper they investigated the organization, the more wary they became.

If the Enlightenment Society merely exploited the darkness within the bluecoats and their despair toward the wasteland, then the Torch Church exploited the despair all idealists felt toward human nature itself.

Its corruption extended beyond technology. Its influence was so pervasive that even ordinary wastelanders focused solely on survival could become potential targets for assimilation.

If the Wislanders won the competition, human civilization would merely transition from material egalitarianism toward militaristic xenophobia or military authoritarianism.

But if the Torch Church won, the entire planet might become a hive organism resembling Gaia.

Humanity would achieve the ascension they preached, a new species possessing a unified consciousness and overwhelmingly powerful bodies.

Most disturbing of all, something very similar might already have happened on Gaia itself.

According to research documents supplied by the colonies, evidence suggested that before the Gaia consciousness emerged, the planet had once hosted a highly advanced civilization that existed prior to FTL technology.

A civilization roughly comparable to the mid-Prosperity Era Human Federation.

In other words, if the various factions of the wasteland continued fighting among themselves indefinitely, the Torch Church genuinely had a chance to win.

After evaluating the risks and rewards, the Academy had implemented numerous measures to contain their expansion. These included secretly supporting local survivor factions in the River Valley Province and guiding the New Alliance's southern advance.

According to the original plan, the local survivor forces of River Valley Province would launch an offensive against the Torch Church around the 214th or 215th year.

However, numerous variables had disrupted the timeline.

There was the opening of Shelter 404, the Pioneer incident, the resurgence of the Army’s eastern expansionists, the Bonechewer Clan, and the Sunset Province’s campaign.

All those events pushed reality far from the Academy's original projections.

Not only did they drag the Academy directly into affairs it had intended to influence only indirectly, but they also reunited the three major powers that had previously been at odds.

Whether that was good or bad remained difficult to judge. For the Academy, however, it presented a valuable opportunity to watch from the sidelines.

An opportunity to see how the other powers beyond the Wandering Swamp had developed over the past century and a half.

After hearing the Chief Technology Officer's instructions, Yang Kai's expression turned serious. Immediately abandoning his earlier contempt, he answered respectfully. "Understood."

...

While Make Me was busy comforting, or rather, mocking, Garbage on the official forums, Gary had already reached the foot of the mountain. His ugly face was filled with confusion and terror.

Over a thousand Mutant Humans had descended from the mountains, yet by the time he reached the bottom, the hundreds of brothers who had come down first had seemingly vanished from existence.

Blood had been baked into black stains. Broken limbs resembling charred sticks lay scattered everywhere.

Even the Guardian River seemed narrower than before, and far deeper.

A mouthful of hot saliva rolled down his throat as he swallowed both blood and fear. However, the panic on Gary's face was soon replaced by burning fury.

His exposed gums glowed crimson like fresh blood.

Human filth!

All of them must die!

Seeing the shadows drawing ever closer in the distance, he threw back his head and unleashed a roar to drive away his fear. "Spread out! Charge!"

Despite losing more than half their number, these creatures were still Mutant Humans.

Their flesh itself was a byproduct of unfinished Singularity-level technology known as Project Complete Human.

The Torch Church had further modified them, granting even greater strength beyond their already formidable biology.

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