Volume 9 / Chapter 237
TL: LightNovelCafe
Editor: Hungry Panda
Raid captain slapped his cheek covered by his battlesuit, and woke himself up.
He thought he had been dreaming.
He briefly looked over the mission description, but the reward points were 8 billion.
This means the mutant in front of him is a level 8, and a top level 8 at that.
It doesn"t make sense. It feels like he is experiencing all of the bad luck he would have suffered from throughout his entire life right now.
"Cap - Captain…"
"Stay - Stay calm."
The Lifers couldn"t remain calm.
They thought that today could be the last day of their lives.
A level 8 is a nightmare.
"He"s pretty qualified as a captain."
Cha Jun Sung kept an eye on the raid captain"s behavior in the midst of this excitement. He doesn"t know about the captain"s abilities, but he seems to have talent as a leader. He becomes rational rather than panicking. He is thinking.
Papapat!
As the head was blocked, the Lifers who had followed behind were stopped in flight. Hundreds of them have been blocked by Cha Jun Sung.
"d.a.m.n it! They are leaving the allied guild!"
"d.a.m.n!"
Lifers checked the mission description and left the battlefield.
They cannot return immediately, but they intend on running away.
3 forces of personnel got away as soon as Cha Jun Sung appeared.
He didn"t even want to know what they looked like.
They are all Lifers with a lot of experience. They can come up with a rough idea just by looking at the reward points.
Even a mission worth tens of thousands of points is difficult, but this isn"t something in the millions but billions. There"s no answer.
"Sh - Should we attack?"
"No! Wait!"
The captain quickly stopped his subordinate from taking action. Success is the only way for them to survive, but this mutant"s att.i.tude is strange. All he does is watch them.
"If he"s a level 8, his intelligence will be similar to ours. We can just think that we"ve run into another person. Talking to him might work. Battle is our final option."
[He is a wise leader. He wants to get control over the situation rather than challenge Lifer Cha Jun Sung. I think that it will end well.]
Odin translates the Lifers" language for him.
It is hard to say where exactly they are from because they use several different languages, but the captain in charge speaks in Ukranian. He is from a country in Eastern Europe.
Cha Jun Sung looks behind him.
The Queen Bomb Ant, who had run far away, has stopped and is watching them from afar.
Wouldn"t she think of getting her Bomb Ants together and coming back?
She really is a sly b.i.t.c.h.
She is acting as if they had never been running away, to come back and use Cha Jun Sung like a counterattack tool.
[Go back, you stupid b.i.t.c.h.]
Cha Jun Sung"s roar was translated, browbeating the Queen Bomb Ant. This stable atmosphere will be completely ruined as soon as she comes back.
The level 8 vicious roar frighten the Queen Bomb Ant and Bomb Ants and make them retreat.
His roar had this kind of effect even from afar.
There is no need to try to put into words how it was for the hundreds of Lifers near him.
Tang!
Cha Jun Sung felt a stinging pain in his shoulder and turned his head. It is a bullet twice the length of a human finger, from a reinforced rifle.
It didn"t go all the way in. This amount of force cannot get through his skin. It is so weakly stuck that it would fall out if he flexed his muscles.
It is situation that no one had been expecting. The area was swept in silence.
The Lifer who had pulled the trigger realized what he had done and began shaking in fear.
He attacked a level 8. He felt like he might go crazy.
His finger had relaxed under the extreme tension, and he had fired his reinforced rifle. But it had unfortunately hit Cha Jun Sung"s shoulder.
Cha Jun Sung pushed the bullet out with his muscles, and regenerated within 1 second.
A clear metallic sound rang as the bullet hit the concrete floor.
It is volatile.
All of the Lifers were frozen. They had been trying to end it quietly, but one person had messed it up. They cannot avoid it. They need to fight.
"That stung."
"Korean?"
The raid captain asks.
His expression was hidden behind his battlesuit, but he was taken aback. This was the same for the other Lifers.
"If you can understand what I"m saying, listen carefully. I"ll let you live. Go back."
Cha Jun Sung could understand what the Lifers were saying as well thanks to Odin.
But he didn"t want them to know that he had understood.
It would be extremely suspicious for a mutant to be able to speak multiple languages. A one-sided warning should have an immediate effect.
"Captain?"
"Let"s go back."
The captain decided to quit the mission.
Cha Jun Sung"s magnanimity and the ability to have a conversation was fortunate.
They can live.
Ring ring!
An alarm sounds.
It is a notice that they have the opportunity to quit their mission.
The Lifers" faces brighten. The mission failure penalty isn"t much. They would just have some points taken away. That"s cheap compared to their lives.
They even thought about trying another mission in a different region, but western America is Black Devil"s territory.
That would be the wrong thing to do.
Cha Jun Sung looked behind him again.
The Bomb Ants went into their advance base, and he couldn"t see them. His dominion will have more effect now.
Cha Jun Sung"s wings flapped and he left the Lifers, flying in the direction the Bomb Ants had disappeared in. He doesn"t care what the Lifers do.
He won"t bother them as long as they don"t inconvenience his mission.
"Uh… Master."
"What is it?"
"I think someone has launched a Universe Eye."
"Universe Eye?"
Tyrant questions his subordinate. The subordinate doesn"t sound sure either.
He wouldn"t have said "I think" if he had been sure.
"I will pull up the screen."
Zing!
The battlesuits became interlocked, and the large city that the Rage guild is staying in came up on Tyrant"s hologram.
Tyrant watched the video carefully.
It is a video that a guild member had filmed moments ago with a micro reconnaissance robot.
The robot, resembling a dragonfly, discovers something and zooms in when it gets a view on something the size of a child"s fist.
"Hu - Hundred Eye?"
Tyrant"s voice quivers slightly. The Hundred Eye is a small search device that the Universe Eye ejects to cover a more extensive area.
It is a level S store item. How is that in this place?
"How was it discovered?"
"By coincidence. One of the guild members got bored and used one of his own micro reconnaissance robots. He says that he found it because he had been pushing it around here and there for fun rather than to do a search."
"Has it been discovered?"
"The robot may have been in the Hundred Eye"s scan, but it shouldn"t have been caught because of our blocking devices."
Radio wave blocking devices are spread out throughout the Rage guild"s camp.
If these are used, equipment of different frequencies instantly become neutralized.
The Rage guild uses these because of other Lifers outside of their guild. Mutant senses are dozens of times more sensitive than those of humans.
Because of that, they hate the sound of neutralized frequencies. They serve as a form of eradication like bug spray to mosquitoes.
"Level S. Is he nearby?"
To Tyrant"s best knowledge, there is only one other Lifer besides him who can own a Universe Eye.
Cha Jun Sung - there is only him.
Not if he is with the World Federation, but what if he is alone or with a small party? It is a chance for him to end it easily.
"Can we avoid him?"
"It may be possible if we take on the bothersome, but even this is uncertain. He moves fluidly, so we cannot predict his movements."
Blocking devices need to be installed, so they cannot protect from movement.
That is why they create damage, but cannot provide that much help. They need to choose between going through blatantly or crushing it.
There are 10,000 people in the Rage guild. There are too many of them. They need to take extremely annoying measures if they all want to avoid the Hundred Eyes.
First off, pa.s.sing through the city is out of the question.
Someone will get caught.
No matter what.
"Fine. Crush it. It"s better than getting caught. A Hundred Eye means that the Universe Eye is somewhere within a 100km radius."
"Yes!"
A subordinate left.
Tyrant became lost in the thought that he might get advancement and Cha Jun Sung simultaneously.
Without knowing what state Cha Jun Sung is in.
/ /
Volume 9 / Chapter 238
TL: LightNovelCafe
Editor: Hungry Panda
Zip!
It isn"t a sound that was really heard.
But Odin heard it. They lost contact with a Hundred Eye in the southeast region of Canada.
There is no way it is from a machine error.
He is 99.9% sure it has been destroyed.
Cha Jun Sung let 3 Universe Eyes go in a sandwich method in order to find a powerful group of mutants. And then he raised a few more on top of that.
It is a sandwich.
Since he already sent in 3, he sent in more to have views on the entire area and to find where Tyrant would appear.
3 Universe Eyes drew an approximate circle and searched a wide area. Odin can see everything.
300 Hundred Eyes.
It doesn"t have much effect that one is gone, but Odin felt importance in the fact that it was destroyed.
It doesn"t seem like the deed of a mutant.
The Hundred Eye is fundamentally a machine. Machines are not alive. They are just inanimate objects that float around.
They do not smell or make noise. They do not have any elements that would draw the interest of mutants. It just has hundreds of lenses that run inside. Even those are hidden behind a special alloy coated in transparency, that the lenses cannot be seen from outside.
A mutant with special sight would be able to see them, but that is the basic idea.
[Check video.]
It is impossible to measure with the tremendous amount of information that the 8 Universe Eyes send in.
However, Odin has the volume to handle this amount of information. He was just a little late in checking the video footage at times because he does what the Universe Eye cannot and the volume is divided.
He doesn"t look at it all together, but plays them sequentially.
Odin made pulling up the footage that was taken before the Hundred Eye was destroyed a priority, and checked it before looking at the other videos.
Papat!
He can adjust the time slot and speed. Odin made the play time on the video a day before it was destroyed. He can"t look at too little or too much of it.
This much is just right.
If there had been signs that it would be destroyed, this is when it would have happened.
Zip!
The video comes up.
Odin did his duty whether he was in communication with Cha Jun Sung or not. Helpers worked harder than anyone else. They aren"t relaxing just because they are silent. The work they do just isn"t made public.
Hundreds of lenses save the direction they are facing in a video.
Mutants wander in the vicinity, unaware of the Hundred Eye"s existence.
[That?]
A figure that resembles a dragonfly.
A micro reconnaissance robot is caught on camera. It is a special alloy that is coated to make it transparent, but micro reconnaissance robots change their perspectives between detection like heat, infrared ray, and sound wave.
Hundred Eye showed the original figure with sound wave detection.
The micro reconnaissance robot that had been by the Hundred Eye"s side for about 10 to 15 minutes left. It will be going back to the Lifer who is controlling it.
The Hundred Eye is unarmed. This is the same for its main body, the Universe Eye. It doesn"t have the ability to attack, so it can only stay still and watch.
After this, time pa.s.sed without anything special happening.
While Cha Jun Sung was busy, Odin supported him and focused on checking the video footage.
And right before it was destroyed, an attack came at the Hundred Eye from somewhere and penetrated it. The video cut off and stopped there. The attack must have been something like sniping.
He knows one thing from watching the video and something that makes him wonder.
What he found out was that in the area that the Hundred Eye was searching, there is an area the size of multiple stadiums that they cannot search.
This kind of case normally occurs when they use equipment with EMP capabilities. Or it could be due to a sound wave series - blocking devices that use sound.
It is also a necessity for Lifers because mutants hate it.
The question here is why they destroyed it.
Was there a reason to go the lengths to destroy it?
Were they bothered because they felt like they were being watched?
That could be it.
But it isn"t logical.
Because they like destroying other people"s equipment and causing them trouble? He cannot explain it clearly.
[Connecting to the Universe Eye"s wide range network. Executing observer mode.]
He had only filtered the footage sent to him until now. He hadn"t controlled the search system himself.
Big mistakes usually come from small mistakes. There are things that one can ignore, but he takes care of everything, whatever it is, because he does not want to let errors pa.s.s that could create bigger issues later.
Odin"s artificial intelligence goes into the Universe Eye of the destroyed Hundred Eye. It can no longer be called a simple equipment geared for searching. He is now able to use more of the micro features due to the observer mode. He left enough abilities in the PDA not to interfere with the mission.
He needs to find out who destroyed it.
A Lifer who advanced all the way to pioneer level in the virtual version will know what the Universe Eye is.
Helpers are artificial intelligence, not humans.
That is why they do not have biases. They leave open all possibilities. The only difference is whether the probability is large or small.
It could be an ordinary Lifer, but there is a high possibility that it is Tyrant who has entered the Black Devil mission. Odin knows where Tyrant"s initial summons area is.
Helpers communicate with each other.
That communication isn"t constant. It continues roughly for a month or so and then gets cut off. So with time, not even helpers know each other"s locations.
Gabenu will know.
He doesn"t get involved directly. This is what Jigneon wanted. He created this situation in order to clean up the mess Borteth has made, but he only gets involved up until Cha Jun Sung enters the mission.
Zing!
Odin called in the subsets of the Universe Eye he is controlling with his authority.
Since he is managing them himself, searching becomes more thorough.
If it is Tyrant, he will have guessed that it is Cha Jun Sung"s equipment. He must know since it is a level S store item.
He would never guess that Cha Jun Sung knows of his ident.i.ty.
It was impossible to know that the one who destroyed the Hundred Eye out of countless Lifers, is Tyrant. If they throw bait, he will probably take it right away.
[Lifer Cha Jun Sung, we"ll have to get ready.]
They need a battlefield for Cha Jun Sung. They will create a scene for their unwelcome guests.
Odin gave all of the information he acquired to Cha Jun Sung. Helpers are in tandem with the Lifers they are a.s.signed to.
They have the obligation to grow their Lifers in the midst of top level missions. This is a partnership that the supervisors created in order to have a little more balance. Odin needs to help Cha Jun Sung with whatever he needs as long as it does not break the rules, so he just needs to tell Cha Jun Sung everything he saw and thought.
"Pick ones with wings."
Cha Jun Sung orders the Queen.
He needs a lot of flying Bomb Ants. The ones on ground become useless if Lifers change their battlesuits to flight mode. They might as well be sandbags. They are not completely useless, but there is a lot lacking in using them as their main means of attack. They desperately need something to cover this.
He can know just from watching the last battle.
They can suffer damages in a battle with mutants, but they were devastated by raid level Lifers.
Queen Bomb Ant understood what Cha Jun Sung meant. She must have felt something too because she didn"t argue with him.
Flying Bomb Ants are born at a rate of 1/100 of that of ordinary Bomb Ants.
If the Queen Bomb Ant takes the sacrifice, she can control the probability. It is consuming stamina and nutrients. In the aftermath of the battle, the number of Bomb Ants was reduced to 20,000. They have gone to less than half, since they were 50,000 before.
Cha Jun Sung decided to maintain the current number of ordinary Bomb Ants and to fill up the rest with flying Bomb Ants if they could. They made about 200 per day.
Queen Bomb Ant complained because it was tiring, but he had no intention of considering her comfort. Tyrant could come barging in at any moment.
As long as Cha Jun Sung didn"t hide and the size of the land they were on was limited, they would come face-to-face at some point and that time was approaching.
"We need at least 5000. The more, the better."
There are 10,000 people.
They will all be levels B and C, the elite of Rage guild. In mutant terms, they will be levels 5 and 6, and Tyrant will be a level 8.
It"s a virtually impossible power.
He needs to be smart about it if he is to face off against a power like that. Of course Cha Jun Sung thought of an operation that could work.
It is a very basic and primitive operation.
First, he needs to strike powerfully when they don"t know anything in order to have a chance of winning.
He is doing that work in advance right now in a nearby city.
That place will become Cha Jun Sung and Tyrant"s battlefield. They won"t go elsewhere. They need to do it whether he lures them there or something.
[A Hundred Eye was just destroyed. This is the 4th one.]
"He"ll think he"s luring me to him, right?"
[He could be.]
When Odin couldn"t find Tyrant"s exact location, he cleverly exposed the Hundred Eyes to find an approximate area.
To predict Tyrant"s thoughts, he could be destroying Hundred Eyes to make Cha Jun Sung suspicious and to come looking for him.
Both sides are baiting the other.
In this, Cha Jun Sung has an advantage because he knows the other"s ident.i.ty. He isn"t sure. It"s just what he thinks.
"Ant h.e.l.l."
Operation name Ant h.e.l.l.
He will bring them all in and squeeze them to death.
/ /
Volume 9 / Chapter 239
TL: LightNovelCafe
Editor: Hungry Panda
Dozens of tanks the size of buildings go down the road in a line. There were no lane boundaries because of the size of the tanks.
After riding for a while, they arrived at a city with no life to be found as per usual.
"Stop."
Lifers reverse their tanks at Tyrant"s signal.
These large tanks will draw too much attention, so they need to go on foot. The Rage guild checks their gear. Their faces are hidden behind helmets, but their expressions are unusually grim. Even Tyrant retreated from his madness and acted with caution.
"That"s the axis."
As a result of calculating the activity radius of the Hundred Eyes, there is a high chance that the Universe Eye is currently in that city. It could be a base.
Tyrant destroyed the Hundred Eyes in order to hide the Rage guild and to lure Cha Jun Sung.
At some point, they used the Hundred Eyes as indicators to find Cha Jun Sung. It had been easy to find the Hundred Eyes because they had micro reconnaissance robots everywhere.
That"s how they calculated the radius and arrived here.
[Master. We found the Universe Eye 600m above sea level.]
Tyrant smirks.
It is as he expected.
This is where it started.
2 raids, 2000 take the sky. 8 raids, 8000 are on ground.
[Shall we destroy it?]
[Do it.]
Bang bang bang!
A meteor falls from far away. It is a phenomenon that formed as the Universe Eye fell. It lost its functions.
[Split into 2 raids and surround the city. Scourge everything that leaves.]
They block the air from east and west. It"s a small city.
The 2000 Lifers wearing battlesuits in the air couldn"t find anything. They have no doubt that Cha Jun Sung entered in a small group.
"That"s right. You never liked going around in large groups. That"s the type of guy you are."
He will postpone progress on Black Devil for now. There is no time limit.
It won"t be too late to finish it even after killing Cha Jun Sung.
There are only gains even if he fails.
Bang bang bang bang!
The small city becomes completely devastated due to weapons of ma.s.s destruction like white phosphorus sh.e.l.ls and cl.u.s.ter shots. The fire power becomes concentrated, creating a big explosion. The buildings didn"t just come down, they were reduced to ashes. Mutants also disappeared. That kind of fire power would be dangerous even for a level B Lifer.
It would have little effect on Cha Jun Sung and his party members, but he isn"t trying to kill them. He is trying to cut off their flow with a surprise attack.
[Go in. Aim for a break.]
The 5 groups that had been surrounding the small city kept closing the distance.
They entered the city and inside the city, they got close enough to see each other. Even still, they couldn"t find Cha Jun Sung.
"Did I guess wrong? With the route that the Hundred Eyes were destroyed, he should be able to figure out that the person doing it is coming this way…"
Cha Jun Sung will know that someone is destroying his gear. He will definitely be curious, and he could be tracking them instead.
That is this place.
If he came here, they should have met or there should have been a sign that they would run into each other.
The guild members who had been in the sky, came down.
The city is small, so they basically searched the entire place.
Tyrant looked at the buildings nearby.
"He"s either coming from another region, or he"s hiding somewhere here."
They just need to wait and see if it"s the former. If it"s the latter…
[Search everything.]
As soon as Tyrant"s search order fell, everyone went in except the 2 raids protecting him.
No. They were about to move.
Rumble.
"Earth - earthquake?"
"This feels similar to the earthquake in my country."
An earthquake is a natural disaster.
The small city shakes crazily.
The Rage guild members aren"t taken aback. They would have been scared if they had been bare bodied, but they trusted that they could take on even nature if they were in their battlesuits.
The earthquake became stronger and cracks began to form on the surface like a web.
Tyrant watched and decided to get away. If the ground breaks and crumbles away, the guild power will be scattered.
As if it read Tyrant"s mind, the ground fell away before he could give his order.
It fell deep.
Boom boom boom!
The Rage guild members turned on their boosters and maintained their balance. They increased their output and flew high.
"Phew! It looks like it could be hundreds of meters deep."
One of the guild members whistles and changed his view to night mode, looking down into the abyss.
It looks endless.
"It"s weird."
"What is?"
"Look around. Doesn"t the shape of the collapsed ground look strange?"
"Not that you say that, yeah. It"s really clean."
The person questioning and the person agreeing.
Lifers look around.
They couldn"t tell while it was falling, but the shape of the collapsed grond really is unique.
It looks like a tool was used to dig out the area underneath where they were standing.
"Look up!"
This was blurted out.
The Rage guild members who had been trying to get out of the abyss looked up. Something dark red was falling on them.
Thousands of flying Bomb Ants.
The Rage guild members hadn"t been able to get out of the abyss yet.
They narrow as much as they get out.
The two groups collided without even greeting each other.
Bang!
Bomb Ants self-destruct.
With explosions everywhere, the next round of Bomb Ants exploded, creating a chain explosion.
The Rage guild members who had almost escaped the abyss were stopped by the explosions. They could withstand one or two explosions, but their bodies were swallowed up with explosions raining down on them.
The battlesuits had only been getting scratched up, but slowly began to crack until they were completely destroyed. Guild members on board outside were either hit by the Bomb Ants" wreckage or plummeting to the ground. They were dying one way or another.
Ack!
"Get through! Get through and get out!"
The cadres urge the guild members.
Their disadvantage in terms of the terrain is too severe. They cannot find a path out. The only way to survive is to face it head on.
Bang bang bang!
The top was still a mess - there was no progress.
The guild members" abilities were high though, so they weren"t getting pushed back even if they weren"t able to push forward.
"You idiots! I"ll get through. Follow me!"
"Yes!"
Tyrant was frustrated with the way they were hesitating, and took the lead.
Bombs were alit in both of his hands. One of these can get rid of a radius of dozens of meters. If he throws them, it"ll clean up everything within that radius.
Bang!
"The side!"
"They"re coming from the sides too. Ex - explosion! Ack!"
Inside the collapsed ground, a hole forms in the wall and ordinary Bomb Ants throw their bodies to attack the guild members.
They self-destruct once they get close, and the Rage guild was getting attacked from two places - the ground and sky.
There was a lot of damage.
Cha Jun Sung had planned the larger frame of the plan, while Odin planned the details.
This is the moment when the Ant h.e.l.l, a plan that can cause a lot of damage at once, can succeed.
"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. They"re giving so many."
Cha Jun Sung can hear notifications of the points he is earning.
Level C is 500,000. Level B is 5,000,000.
It is more than twice the amount of points for mutants. It is reflective of the fact that it is not easy to kill Lifers. On top of that, he got PK points separately and that was the real deal.
[You have earned 7,000,000 points and 4,200,000 achievement points.]
[You have earned 5,000,000 points and 3,000,000 achievement points.]
[You have earned 18,000,000 points and 10,800,000 achievement points.]
PK points are 10% of the points that the Lifer had. As time with Life Mission went on, Lifers acc.u.mulated a lot of points.
He gained points at an incredible speed.
He was just sucking up the points.
If he completes the mission, he might never have to worry about points again.
[The number of flying Bomb Ants has been reduced to the hundreds. Tyrant or the Rage guild will jump out soon. You must get ready.]
The Universe Eye searching this area was destroyed, so it was impossible to see inside the hole. However, they had a basic idea of what was going on.
Cha Jun Sung has a couple micro reconnaissance robots as well. Those robots checked the situation inside the hole for him.
Beep beep!
The inside of the hole shows up hazily on the PDA hologram. It was full of dust because of the Bomb Ants" self-destruction and Lifers" response. The view is very shaky because of the impact as well.
Papat!
Cha Jun Sung had gotten an understanding of the flow, and left for the battlefield.
He didn"t interfere in the battle, but stood next to the hole in the ground.
"Shall I do some fishing?"
/ /