Chapter 1047: The Light That Purifies All

Chapter 1047: The Light That Purifies All

The dazzling radiance eclipsed the afterglow of the setting sun, and in the fiery red twilight, it seemed as if two suns had appeared.

One hung at the edge of the sky, the other directly overhead.

The one overhead, in particular, blazed like the high beams of a car inside a tunnel.

Every soldier on the Enlightened’s position couldn’t help but lift their heads, gazing toward that blinding light.

And in that single instant, blood seeped from their pupils, and all vision was lost.

“Don’t look up! Don’t look up!”

The commander’s fragmented roar came through the comm channel, and the fighters on the position hurriedly averted their eyes.

Yet—

It was already too late.

That scorching light stole not only their sight but everything they had.

It was a neutron ray tens, hundreds, even thousands of times more intense than a solar flare!

High-energy particles released at tremendous speed formed a cascading plume of light, like a waterfall in the sky!

That lethal beam pierced through the protection of the geomagnetic field and the atmosphere, descending indiscriminately upon the surface, spreading an unprecedented aurora across the sky above the equator.

The Enlightened soldiers crouching in open trenches were the first to suffer.

Exposed to the high-energy neutron plume, they felt only a warmth in their bodies, and then every cell seemed to boil in an instant. Their pupils lost their luster, blood gushed uncontrollably from nostrils and mouths, and in a flash, they embraced eternal death.

Across the hundred-kilometer front, soldiers in exoskeletons fell in droves. Mutants armed with large-caliber rifles writhed on the ground, wailing endlessly against the invisible foe.

Even genetically enhanced soldiers in power armor could not help but kneel in agony, eventually spitting blood and collapsing.

That sustained neutron plume was unlike a momentary nuclear explosion; it was true annihilation, like the relentless bombardment of hundreds or even thousands of neutron torpedoes!

Physical augmentation did not grant them immunity from that lethal strike; it only delayed their deaths.

That included the cyborg soldiers who had undergone modification surgeries.

The removal of some flesh did not truly transform them into another kind of being beyond organic life.

Like the genetically enhanced and the mutants, their mechanical parts merely prolonged the agony of their demise.

“What… is that light?!”

“It itches… something… is growing out of me…”

“Aaaah!”

In the comm channel filled with static, screams and wails rose and fell like a living hell.

And before long, those rising and falling screams and wails fell silent.

The sustained neutron plume successively destroyed the communication facilities deployed on the surface.

At the same time, tens of thousands of Enlightened soldiers and mutant cannon fodder dissipated like dust under that dazzling light, leaving only pure war machines.

Apart from the soldiers on the surface, the officers hiding in concrete bunkers also endured the torment of those high-energy particle rays.

The dozen-meter-thick concrete was no match for the alloy gates of a shelter; facing the all-penetrating neutron rays, it was soon riddled with holes, as if it did not exist.

Blood gushed from mouth and nose. Mung, clad in his exoskeleton, collapsed weakly to the ground, unable to move even a finger.

The lighting systems were completely paralyzed.

The communication systems, and even the exoskeleton he wore, all failed.

He could only watch as blood pooled around him, drowning in the pool of his own unwillingness and regret, finally breathing his last in the dark underground facility without a sound.

It was all over…

That light descending from the sky erased the Enlightened’s lifelong efforts and decades of accumulation from the surface, leaving only some data backed up on scrap metal.

Watching several officers suddenly drop dead on the ground, Tianhong’s face showed a faint trace of surprise, then he looked up at the ceiling above.

“That is…”

Sky Thunder?

He had heard of that weapon, but he never expected the Alliance to use it here, nor did he anticipate that the Lagrange point space station would be completely unresponsive.

Unless—

While the Alliance’s ground forces attacked the Enlightened’s strongholds, the space station at the Lagrange point had also come under assault!

But how was that possible?!

The Orion-class missile cruiser was still parked in synchronous orbit, and its crew were even sightseeing on the surface—

The moment this thought struck, Tianhong suddenly realized, and the red light in his electronic eyes narrowed.

So that was it.

A diversion by the Alliance!

While their attention was entirely fixed on the Orion-class missile cruiser, the Alliance’s armed forces had secretly advanced toward the Lagrange point space station!

Raging currents of electricity surged through his cognitive plug-in. He clenched his fists, suppressing the torrent of fury.

The speaker, scorched by neutron radiation, finally emitted a low, angry curse.

“…Outmaneuvered.”

The dazzling aurora flooded hundreds of kilometers of sky, its brilliance even stealing the spotlight from the setting sun.

On the barren battlefield, rivers of blood flowed, and corpses lay everywhere.

They would not rot.

At least not for a while.

The scorching neutron plume had not only taken their lives but also sterilized the bacteria on their bodies, penetrating several kilometers into the soil!

No one survived except for those in the shelters.

While the punishing “Sky Thunder” continued to shine upon that sinful land, the ruins north of the Ravenca Industrial Zone were bustling with activity.

Pairs of eyes, filled with doubt and uncertainty, gazed toward the distant horizon, watching the second sun that had risen from the aurora.

They were wastelanders living in this area, scavengers migrating with the dust storms.

Faced with that unprecedented phenomenon, their reactions were no more farsighted than those of the natives on the Gaia planet.

Some stood bewildered, others hid in panic under eaves, and still others prostrated themselves on the ground, praying devoutly to some unknown entity.

A grimy child, his face dirty, looked up at that never-before-seen aurora and tugged curiously at his father’s sleeve.

“Dad… what is that?”

The scavenger, his face etched with wrinkles, lifted his head. Under his cloak, his eyes fixed on the ever-brightening light, and a hint of surprise flickered in his murky pupils.

There—

Was that the heart of the Great Wasteland?

He did not know what that blazing radiance signified, only that the sky exuded an indescribable sense of sanctity and majesty.

For ages, that place had been regarded by countless wastelanders as the heart of chaos and a forbidden zone of life.

It teemed with grotesque aberrations, murderous mutants who struck without blinking, mysterious armed forces that captured survivors, and mechanical bodies that attacked all living things indiscriminately.

Thus, even though it was once the center of a prosperous world in the old era, few scavengers dared to approach it.

Who would have thought that even the deepest abyss could one day witness the sun rise.

Perhaps, as the wastelanders in this region have passed down by word of mouth, the Wasteland Era is about to end...

...

At the outpost in the western Great Desert, an Eastern Empire soldier on duty cradled his rifle, his eyes fixed and vacant, staring toward the direction where the second sun had risen.

Not far from the checkpoint, on a sand dune, two chiliarchs of high rank stood side by side.

To see more clearly, Symes reached up and adjusted the brim of his officer's cap, then simply took it off.

Gazing at the seething sky, he muttered to himself after a long pause.

"So that is the power of the 'SOG' system..."

General MacLennan, standing beside him, nodded, his expression complex.

"Yes."

That weapon had originally been in the hands of Boulder City, and at one point nearly fell into his grasp.

For a long time, the Emperor of the Eastern Empire had been unable to sleep or eat because of that weapon hanging over his head.

And now, the Alliance had finally drawn this great sword, leaving His Majesty and his ministers even more restless...

Symes wiped the sweat from his brow and spoke with a hint of relief in his voice.

"As expected of a weapon from the Prosperity Era—even the aftershocks of its attack are so astonishing... Fortunately, this thing is one-time use, and the Alliance only holds one."

General MacLennan glanced at his colleague, pondered for a moment, then suddenly spoke.

"General Symes, if you were the Alliance commander, how would you use this weapon?"

Symes answered without hesitation.

"Use it? I wouldn't use it at all. Leaving it on the launch pad is the best use."

"I share your view."

Adjusting his officer's cap, General MacLennan squinted, gazing into the distance at the aurora that resembled the morning glow.

"The deterrent power of a strategic weapon resets to zero the moment it is used... especially for a weapon with only one bullet."

There was something profoundly meaningful in his words.

General Symes frowned, suddenly struck by a thought, his pupils contracting in an instant.

"Do you mean... the Alliance has already acquired a new means of deterrence?"

MacLennan did not answer the question, only squinting at the burning sky, giving an ambiguous reply.

"Perhaps it's more than that."

At least in his view, what was truly alarming might not be that the Alliance had gained a new deterrent, but that they no longer needed strategic deterrence to maintain their influence.

Unlike those survivor factions still clinging to the glories of the past, they had stepped out from the shadow of the Prosperity Era.

And they had brought others along with them...

...

That dazzling light lingered in the sky for only a quarter of an hour.

Yet for the Enlightened, scorched by that radiance, that brief quarter-hour felt as long as a century.

Having lost their target to follow, tactical drones lay on the ground like headless flies, bewildered and helpless.

Three-meter-tall humanoid combat armors rebooted their systems, attempting to take over the trenches that now held only corpses.

But the bulky metal shells, standing in the infantry trenches, either got their left legs caught or their waists stuck, looking awkward no matter how you saw it.

That was not all.

Without agile infantry to fill the battle lines, the once-sturdy defenses became riddled with holes.

Though those combat armors boasted greater firepower and mobility beyond infantry, firepower and mobility were not the whole of war.

No matter how fierce the firepower of those behemoths, there were always places they could not cover.

In the end, war was never a simple calculation of combat power numbers, but a clash between systems.

The neutron plume that fell from the sky did not merely annihilate tens of thousands of soldiers and cannon fodder; it directly erased the ecological niche once occupied by infantry.

These vacant positions could not be immediately filled by intelligent weapons.

Though the strategic concept of fully replacing infantry with intelligent machines was not impossible, it required matching tactics.

Otherwise, no matter how many intelligent machines were thrown in, they would only serve as slightly tougher cannon fodder.

As the strategic strike ended, the aurora in the sky faded with the departing sunset, and the whole land gradually drew the curtain of night.

At the same time, flares rose into the sky, replacing the blood-red sunset to illuminate the corpse-strewn battlefield.

Scorching dust boiled at the edge of the earth, and the sand kicked up by tank treads and armored wheels was like a sandstorm swallowing the sun and moon.

Spotting the anomaly in the distance, the humanoid combat armors deployed on the first line of defense immediately raised the 20mm heavy machine guns mounted on their sides, spitting tongues of fire with a rattling roar.

Long tracer rounds scraped dazzling sparks off the front armor and turret of the Alliance's latest Type 4 tanks, but left not even a fingernail-sized dent.

The only threat to these armored forces were the homing missiles.

But the Alliance had prepared for that, with Cloud Dragonfly ornithopters flanking the armored columns, carrying both infrared and radio countermeasure sources for guided weapons.

Not only that!

The "Thunder" fighters roaring overhead dropped two EMP missiles, unleashing a round of electromagnetic pulses across the entire area.

The missiles that burst from their tubes immediately became like headless flies, either shooting into the sky or diving into the sand, less threatening than unguided recoilless rifles!

In just a few breaths, the Alliance's steel tide had advanced to the edge of the combat zone.

Seeing those rows of iron lumps stuck in their "radish pits" like living targets, the Mole Brother sitting in the Chimera armored vehicle grabbed the communicator and shouted with fervent excitement.

"Open fire—!"

The formation of Chimera armored vehicles launched the attack first!

37mm armor-piercing incendiary shells, like rows of burning feathers in the night, instantly blasted the humanoid combat armors trying to retake the trenches into scrap!

At the same time, the Cloud Dragonfly ornithopters flanking both sides let out a "Woo!" as they soared up, pulling altitude while dumping tons of rocket rain onto the line that the Celestials had barely taken over from the Enlightened!

As for the steel spearhead formed by the tanks, it drove relentlessly toward the Celestial defenses!

The blaze of explosions merged into one on the Celestial positions, and the symphony of metal and gunpowder had played for less than a dozen minutes; as far as the eye could see, the rolling yellow sands were filled with burning steel!

But—

These iron lumps did not sit idly by.

They had no concept of morale, nor did they know what death or destruction meant.

Seeing that the collapse of the first line of defense was only a matter of time, Tianhong immediately halted reinforcements to the first line and pulled back the remaining humanoid combat armor and ground fire vehicles toward the second line, leaving only vast swarms of drone hives and anti-air fire points scattered and hidden in the depth between the two lines.

That was a stretch of ruins filled with reinforced concrete debris, some belonging to pre-war houses, others to space stations.

Ordinarily, the Enlightenment Society would incite mutants to scavenge alloy materials from these ruins to build their war machines, but now these endlessly dismantled ruins had become their natural cover!

Once the Alliance’s armored units and aircraft entered this area, they would inevitably be attacked by suicide drones from all directions!

However, the Celestials still underestimated the psychological pressure they had placed on the surviving factions of the wasteland, as well as the Alliance’s determination to completely eradicate them from this land.

At the very moment the Alliance’s armored forces were about to breach the first line of defense, two dazzling flames streaked across the pitch-black night sky, then exploded into a searing ball of plasma in the air!

Those were cruise missiles launched from the South China Alliance missile cruiser deployed in the western waters!

An electromagnetic pulse several times larger than before enveloped the entire area in an instant, and tens of thousands of suicide drones, just taking off, crashed to the ground like falling raindrops.

It wasn’t just the small drones that suffered heavy damage; the humanoid combat armor withdrawing from the battlefield was also affected to varying degrees, and the originally orderly retreat gradually descended into chaos.

And at that very moment, the Alliance’s armored spearhead had pierced through the Celestials’ first line of defense. One by one, the Type 4 tanks, halted on the high slopes, raised their vehicle-mounted electromagnetic cannon barrels and began precision strikes on the retreating humanoid combat armor and self-propelled artillery!

Before that naval-grade kinetic energy, even the ceramic steel salvaged from space stations was as fragile as paper.

Watching the completely collapsing front line, Tianhong stood in the command room with a stunned expression on his face.

These guys…

Were they really just wastelanders?!

Even with the help of Vault Dwellers, the combat proficiency they displayed was far too unbelievable.

Tianqi had been with the Torch Church before; maybe he wasn’t good at commanding battles, but he was at least a quasi-active officer of the United Human Federation’s regular army!

These garbage-picking beggars—

These bandits messing around with the legacy of the Prosperity Era—

How could they fight on equal terms with him, who had participated in the Three-Year War?!

Anger surged through his cognitive plug-in. Tianhong, who had been expressionless, could no longer contain his fury, and the flexible parts of his face twisted along with the distorted intelligent program.

And just as he was raging, a group of cavalry riding Deathclaws had already broken through his second line of defense.

“Prepare for battle!!!”

Bianyuan Huashui roared loudly, leading his mount forward at the forefront, and fired a portable rocket at the nearest humanoid armor!

Before that humanoid mecha, brimming with high-tech aesthetics, these players carrying rocket launchers and riding on lizard backs looked like a joke no matter how you saw it.

And across the entire desert, probably only the Wilants, who had learned of their skills, couldn’t laugh.

The 20mm autocannon struggled to adapt to close-range strafing.

Coupled with the obstacles, even if those humanoid mechas drove all their computing power, they could hardly keep up with the Deathclaws’ tails darting like ghosts.

What a pity.

On this chaotic battlefield, there was no central processor to oversee the overall situation and provide computing support for these units, and the only combat personnel who could replace the central processor to guide them had been exhausted in the earlier strategic strike.

In contrast, their opponents—each Deathclaw clad in exoskeleton—moved as fast as lightning.

Driven by life instinct and the lust for slaughter, these beasts born for combat erupted with immense combat power and battlefield adaptability, almost merging with their riders, madly reaping one war machine after another that couldn’t coordinate front and rear!

Soon, the third line of defense deployed by the Celestials at the entrance of Vault 13 also began to totter, and the tightly shut alloy giant door seemed dead, refusing to open for a long time.

That door might never open.

Or perhaps, the fortress had already fallen from within, and there was no need to continue defending.

Tianhong, who had taken command from Molton, had gone completely mad.

Facing an irredeemable defeat, he issued the order to “fight to the last moment,” then led Molton’s personal guard to the battlefield, betting the last chips on this already decided gamble.

Actually, even if he didn’t bet, it wouldn’t have made much difference.

The Alliance had no reason and not a millionth of a chance to show them mercy.

After all, those guys had already wiped out all the living beings on the entire battlefield as a first move.

And those who remained, in the eyes of those wastelanders, couldn’t even be considered human.

They just looked human.

“You’re courting death! We won’t let you go! When we descend, we’ll slaughter you all! Including you blue rats!”

Tianhong, fighting on the front lines, fired at the advancing Deathclaw legion while roaring through the few remaining broadcasts at the tide-like forces.

Perhaps his cognitive plug-in had burned out, as he even used the Wilants’ nickname for Vault Dwellers.

But he never expected that his roar not only failed to dampen the morale of these organisms but instead made the charging players even more excited.

“Brothers! Put in more effort!!!”

“Boss fight!!!”

“Oooh!!!”

“Mine! All mine!!!”

Those players, who had been getting tired from the charge, now all seemed injected with adrenaline.

Feeling the increasingly fierce assault, Tianhong’s face showed a stunned expression, completely at a loss.

But that shock didn’t last long.

Soon, an armor-piercing incendiary round pierced his shoulder, tearing his right arm from his body.

Sparks flew wildly. With a roar, he tried to reach out his left hand to pick up the fallen gun, but another axe flew in and severed his other arm.

Looking at the person approaching him, he stopped his futile struggles and only sneered two sentences.

“…Heh, don’t celebrate too early. The Enlightenment Society… is just a pawn.”

“We… will return.”

Hearing this last words, Talan, who had been uninterested, suddenly brightened. He grabbed the axe on the ground and, with a clang, chopped off the android’s head, afraid someone else would beat him to it!

Holy cow!

He thought it was just an ordinary elite monster, but it had two lines of dialogue!

Must be a big fish!

Holding that lump of metal in his hand, Talan immediately opened the communication channel and eagerly shared the joy of the moment with his good brothers in the Desert Legion.

“BOSS!!! I got it!”

No surprises—

The channel echoed with the brothers’ friendly blessings.

Desert Eagle: “Damn! My BOSS!!!”

Emikawa Junichiro: “MMP! How did you, you dog, snatch it?!”

Talan: “?????”