Ambush
Elder Lee and a bunch of military higher-ups frowned as they contemplated at the thick forest in front of them. Their plan of following the highway smoothly straight to Lu Zhou from Pear City was cut short, as n.o.body expects a forest in the middle of the highway.
The surrounding of the highway was originally patches of farmland, now barren. Soldiers found corpses in the ditches nearby.
These farmers that were now corpses have marks of torture on them.
The evolutionaries gathered at the front, seeing what made them stopped moving.
"Oh, Lin Xii. You came right on time."
Elder Lee came over, "Both helis flew over the forest but they could not make clear what"s inside it. I would like to invite you to fly over and make sense of it."
Lin Xii raised his head and gazed at the trees in front of him, "I"m afraid I"m most likely unable to get anything out of it, the trees are too thick, blocking most of the sunlight."
"Oh, it"s alright if it doesn"t works out, might as well just try."
His biological energy flared and red mist form by RC cells sprout out from his back, forming into the half gaseous half liquid wings, growing from 2 meters to 10 meters in an instant. Lin Xii rushed into the air, the people surrounding him looked in awe at his brilliant, vibrant red wings that dragged in the sky.
"So he flies like a rocket, instead of flapping those wings."
"So cool. I wonder when I could fly like that, conquering the skies!" w.a.n.g Wei eyes flashed with longing hope under his thick eyebrows.
Wu Yan whitish eyes glowed brighter, Su Xiao Wan that was beside him was totally shocked.
"It really is an Ukaku? How could it be!"
Everyone looked at Lin Xii as he left, flying. Using the thrust provided by the RC cells, he flew above the forest and what he saw was just a vast deep green "sea".
What"s worse was the fact that the deep green sea was seemingly endless, even with his eyesight that was 10 times the normal human.
After 5 minutes of flying, he went back down and spoke with a grave tone, "The forest is vast, endlessly vast. It"s also too quiet, only hints of bird noises in there, far too little for a forest that huge. I flew into the forest a little while but I noticed nothing."
Everyone obviously knew that the forest was definitely dangerous.
"Let"s go around it then."
"Around it? Not realistic, we are unable to determine how wide the forest is. Also, all we know is just two mountains on each side and if the forest totally covered the area between these two mountains, what are we going to do next? Climb those mountains?"
"Can we use incendiary bombs?"
"Nope, it"s too hard to set fire on such a humid and large forest. Plus the fact that we can"t wait too long as our ration would run dry."
"Well there"s nowhere around it then, we will just have to force our way through. Luckily the highway road"s still intact in the forest, we can still drive our trucks and tanks through the forest. Tell the soldiers to stay on high alert on all times and protect the civilians." Elder Lee made his decision.
The helicopters landed and was placed into the huge delivery-type truck at back of the line.
The large troops started their way into the forest, with the large trees blocking the sunlight, it gave off a twilight feel even though it"s in the middle of the day. Adding on the fact that there isn"t any bugs or birds activity, the forest gave off a pressuring feeling.
The civilians were already tired after walking half a day, most of them can"t stand it anymore as they entered this sort of repressed area.
But there"s no way that that can leave or head back now, the only way left to them was gritting their teeth and continue. The supports that were in the midst of the civilians cheered them up and gave them extra food, improving morale.
After walking yet another 3 and a half hours in the gloomy forest, they were forced to stop yet again. This time it was because the highway was broken off.
A huge hole appeared in the middle of the highway, towering jagged stones sprouted from the road everywhere. Normally when roads were cut off in the apocalypse, they were done so by robbers that sets these up for robbery. But now, no matter Elder Lee or the evolutionaries they all wished that it was the robbers that had done this.
"Go around the road and cut a path using the tank by mowing the trees down. After pa.s.sing by this hole, only then we can go back to the road. Split the trucks and surround the civilians on their left and right."
The seventeen tanks that were sponsored by the tank academy were those that were used by the students there for practise. They were all retired models.
After going through years of work that weathered the tanks and rusted the main cannon, other than one of the tanks that was flipped and destroyed by a strength-enhanced abnormal t.i.tan, 5 others went out of order. This p.i.s.sed Elder Lee off royally that he started cursing.
The other 11 working tanks started carving a path out from the forest, the evolutionaries vans and the trucks that carries other stuff like food and civilians followed behind. The very few civilians that managed to get their hands on fuel drove their car too, following the tanks.
Slowly, trees started toppling, mowed down by the tanks.
The noises gives rea.s.surance to the civilians behind them. As these tanks could blast a t.i.tan of its feet.
As for Fi Fi and the rest that are in the cars, it wasn"t so comfortable for them due to the fallen trunks. The b.u.mbling ride hurt their bottoms.
This intense shaking also prevents Annie from sleeping in the van. She held her forehead, struggling to keep down the low blood pressure that came from her being woken up. Getting down from the van, she followed Qing, Mai, Sui and Rui, treading in the mud together.
Annie"s harmless behaviour for the past two days lowered the wariness that the girls had towards her. As Qing saw she was empty handed, she pa.s.sed a weapon over to her, a crowbar.
"Thanks."
Annie swung it around, feeling it was just right in her hands. As you know, changing into t.i.tans consume energy from them.
There are ways for them to recover these energies, one, eat humans. Two, get some sunlight and change it into biological energy by some process akin to photosynthesis. But she doesn"t like eating humans, and there"s not a whole lot of sunlight here.
Having a weapon in her hands feels much more better than being empty handed.
Forging ahead through the forest, Qing doesn"t hold her Execution blade in her hands. The only reason for her in using that blade before was to face against t.i.tans, now she was using a shield sword. The sheath of the sword as the shield, it"s a weapon from the "Fire Emblem" series, a weapon used by the job hero. (TLN: I imagined it"s something like this. )
The Hero"s sword.
As a 5 star talent user, after killing t.i.tans and obtaining that huge amount of points for the last couple of days, Qing redeemed a number of weapons.
There"s currently an uncountable number of weapons in her storage s.p.a.ce.
Even though there"s nothing too expensive, but looking at the huge pile of weapons made her happy. This wasn"t because of her weapon master talent, it was just due to this flat-chested girl being a h.o.a.rder……
Sui grabbed onto her kris with her shield on her other hand, wearing the leather armor, gloves of strength and boots of speed on her.
Rui was the same, but having 2 claws on her hands instead.
Beside the two girls was Mai that"s holding on to her b.u.t.terfly fan and constantly looking around vigilantly. As for Lin Xii, he"s now sitting on the shoulder of the Tyrant, gripping his Orge"s axe and gazing around.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t see very far due to the thick trees that"s blocking his vision.
It"s a mystery whether the road had disappeared or not, but the troops could not find the follow up to the broken highway. They had to continue trekking in the forest.
Night soon fell, and the originally gloomy forest became pitch black.
The troops that stopped for the night uses logs that were mowed down by the tanks to light up bonfires. If there were any monsters in the forest, this would definitely attract them but there was no other choice.
Adding on the fact that there will be no fire in the pitch black forest to their hunger and tiredness would break down the mental state of most people.
With the warmth provided by the rising flames, it managed to provide some extra energy to the tired civilians. Under Elder Lee"s order, they took out slightly more food from the depleting supplies and cooked watered porridge with some meat sc.r.a.ps.
With eighty thousand people, even if they had slaughtered several pigs there would only be hints of meat in each pot that"s cooking.
The soldiers ate the same thing as the civilians. There are some that were unsatisfied with that arrangement, but looking at Elder Lee that"s eating the same thing left them no room for complain.
After drinking that meat tasting porridge, the mental and physical state of the civilians improved. They laid down and went to sleep, to survive the trip to Lu Zhou they have to preserve as much energy as possible.
None of the evolutionaries slept as they are sure that there"s something wrong with the forest, they gathered around the bonfire preparing for an attack.
Unsurprisingly, the attack came during the middle of the night.
The very moment the soldiers at the outer perimeter consisting of the tanks and trucks noticed the attack it was already too late. The colour of the night and the trees allowed the attackers to perfectly covered themselves, large amount of rocks came flying out from the forests of trees.
If it was only rocks it wouldn"t be a problem, but large fireb.a.l.l.s and shards of ice were mixed in between the rocks.
"Ahhhh……!"
Screams sounded everywhere. Some of the soldiers were lighted on fire, some impaled by the shards of ice, both scenarios led them screaming in agony.
The forest lighted up slightly, illuminated by countless pairs of eyes gleaming in the darkness. Accompanying by the "Uu, laaa, waaa" and "haaa" noises, short, green monsters appeared from the darkness, each of them holding a wooden club.
Amongst the large crowd of monsters were minotaurs that held humongous metal axes, and short, red skin monsters that held sticks that flashed with magic.
"Enemy attack, enemy attack!"
The noises of gunshots, screaming, and chaos mixed about.The evolutionaries was startled as Zhen Tian yelled out with surprise, "It"s goblins! Green goblins, red goblins and Taus, this is the Grand Flores from Dungeon and Fighters!"
HIs words suddenly turned into wails as a thick lightning bolt slammed into him. Most of the flesh on the fatty was blown off, pale yellow fat dribbled out from the black scorched wound.
"Careful! There"s a boss that"s making sneak attacks!"
Lin Xii shouted as he threw his axe away, attracting a lightning bolt away that was aimed for the girls.
Without the need of his reminder, they had already spotted a small monster that"s holding a curved knife with electricity all over it. With it was two witch that floated in the air, one in blue and one in red.
Lightning Kinoll!
Flaming Binoche!
Ice-Locking Keraha!
The two witches that had smoking hot body was holding a staff each, red and blue magic swirling around their respective staff.
The ground started trembling, a black-skin, red hair, with two bone white horrifying looking horns, skull necklace on its neck, giant size Taus appeared. It used its large axe and swept apart trees, showing itself.
"It"s the Tau King Shauta! The boss of Grand Flores!"
The faces of the evolutionaries was not pretty, so much monsters, so many bosses. This ambush would most likely wipe out their whole troop.
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