Chapter 595: Keep Your Heaven for Yourself

Chapter 595: Keep Your Heaven for Yourself

“…The Son is above.”

Beside an abandoned water tank a few kilometers from the battlefield, a man in hunting attire stood by a rusted railing, binoculars in hand, staring dumbfounded at the chaotic scene in the distance, repeating that phrase over and over.

He was a hunter from Hope Town, named Liu Youxiong.

Earlier, when the fog rolled in, the town’s pastor had muttered some cryptic words, and Mayor Ma sent him to Pinecone Farm to check on things.

Liu Youxiong dared not delay.

Not just because it was the mayor’s order, but because Pastor Wei said the Son was wrathful, raining divine punishment on traitors and heretics who had betrayed the Torch.

His heart clenched—fearful that the punishment might reach his own home, yet anxious to know what that punishment actually was.

So he mounted his horse and galloped off. Halfway there, the apocalyptic flames and thunderous roar spooked his steed, nearly throwing him to the ground.

Scrambling up, he quickly found a high spot—climbing the tower-like water tank standing alone beside the abandoned structure.

And then he witnessed what followed—

His pupils reflected the boiling flames and the charred corpses. Liu Youxiong swallowed involuntarily.

So this is…

The Son’s divine punishment?

But—

Wasn’t the location wrong?

Burning in hell were clearly those ugly beasts, the cannibalistic mutants living in the urban district.

He clearly remembered those man-eating creatures were the hounds under the Son’s command.

But why—

The warm breeze parted the gray-green haze, clearing his confusion.

His gaze skimmed past the towering smoke column, and he spotted the steel airship far on the horizon, now flickering with tiny sparks of fire.

Soon another barrage of artillery washed over the ravaged wilderness, like a rapid drumbeat following a heavy hammer blow—flashes of fire swallowed the mutant forces.

Even as devout as he was in the Son’s power, he could now see it wasn’t the Son’s punishment—

It was the fury of the Alliance Administrator!

…

“Roar—!”

His provocation thrown back in his face, rage twisted Kulu’s features.

Raising his axe-spear, he let out a boiling beastly howl.

From the black mire, muscle-bound mutant warriors picked up their weapons and hatred, charging with roars toward the heavily armored human phalanx.

Against ordinary light infantry, the first artillery barrage would have either obliterated them or left them combat-ineffective.

After all, this was open ground without fortifications.

And in that initial bombardment, the Alliance had fired more shells than the number of mutants in that force.

Yet the blood flowing through those beasts was the finest product of the Golden Age’s biotechnology.

Even with limbs blown off, faces burned beyond recognition, hearts ruptured, arteries severed, skulls embedded with shrapnel—as long as they weren’t dead on the spot, they could crawl back from the black mud, even picking up their own broken bones as weapons.

Their twisted faces and bloodthirsty eyes were like demons crawling out of the abyss.

Let alone fighting them—

Anyone who could muster courage before these beasts was a cut above the rest.

Too bad—

Standing before them were no ordinary humans.

They were players.

Faced with that boiling roar and the killing intent that would suffocate a normal person, they only thought: Damn, the devs are insane!

“Holy shit… this is intense!”

A player in the K10 “Iron Wall” heavy exoskeleton, clutching an XB-1 “Howler” bolter, swallowed hard.

Staring at the earth-shaking war cries, his eyes held not a trace of fear, only excitement and soaring battle lust.

He missed the last brawl with the mutants.

But this time, he was in!

Word from the squad leader was they might even appear in the promotional trailer!

Let the surging thrill of battle burn in his chest. Midnight Chicken Killer extended the 19mm bolter barrel welded to his arm.

“Brothers!”

No unnecessary monologue—

For the uncivilized beasts.

For the vermin sucking blood from civilization’s back.

There was only one thing to do.

As he pulled the trigger, he roared with all his might.

“Kill—!”

Answering his cry came boiling, fervent shouts.

“Kill!!!”

“For the Alliance!”

“Awooo!”

The deafening roar seemed to shatter the clouds above, and for a moment, the tidal wave of beastly howls paled in comparison.

Over five hundred mutant warriors survived the artillery, but they were scattered across a front several kilometers wide.

Though the Jungle Corps deployed only a hundred and twenty troops via helicopter, their fighting spirit and organization were at full peak.

The moment those beasts entered range, Midnight Chicken Killer fired first, and over a hundred players in heavy exoskeletons opened up as well.

Orange tracer rounds danced wildly across the battlefield, explosions flashing in the muddy plains.

Under the bolter barrage, the mutants advancing while firing fell one after another, but soon the line spread from the Jungle Corps’ front to both flanks.

These green-skinned brutes weren’t truly brainless—they just disdained thinking when brute force sufficed.

Seeing the Alliance’s firepower and heavy armor, Kulu roared orders, commanding his minions to close in at all costs and engage the human soldiers in melee.

In his experience, once his warriors got within ten paces, these two-legged cattle would lose their will to fight.

And the battle would quickly become a one-sided slaughter!

The gray-green haze provided cover for the mutant charge. Though they suffered continuous casualties, their momentum did not slow.

And this time, the mutant force the Jungle Corps encountered was completely different from the bunch they had faced before.

Still green-skinned beasts, but most of these had undergone cybernetic enhancements and were far better armed and equipped.

Some carried heavy machine guns, others bore mortars on their backs, and still others hauled wooden crates stuffed with grenades.

With their powerful muscles, they could unleash strength rivaling exoskeletons, hurling cannonball-like fragmentation shells over a hundred meters.

The mutant soldiers, converging from all corners of the battlefield, descended like a great bowl clamping down on the Alliance’s narrow position.

Gazing at the battle line so close at hand and those suits of steel armor, Kulu let out a cold sneer, his eyes gleaming with bloodthirsty malice.

He swore.

He would kill the one who had challenged him in the most brutal way possible.

Yet what gnawed at him with a faint unease was that, faced with their unstoppable charge, this unit before him showed no sign of retreat.

What were these bastards up to?

Did they really think a few exoskeletons could stop them?

A shadow of doubt crept into Kulu’s mind—these two-legged beasts seemed different from the ones elsewhere.

But there was no time left for hesitation.

On this battlefield, where visibility was less than a dozen meters, the two sides collided in the span of a few breaths, engaging in close-quarters slaughter on soil churned by artillery fire.

“Die—!”

A two-meter-tall mutant stepped out of the mist, its shotgun spraying a fan of sparks that slammed into the chest of the Alliance soldier before it.

Thumb-sized lead pellets dented the black breastplate.

Yet the man who took the shot didn’t even flinch; he raised his muzzle and fired back a 19mm armor-piercing round.

At a mere ten meters, it was just within the safe range of the bolter.

The explosive shell struck the mutant’s shoulder, and a searing jet of molten metal burst through its scapula, scattering flesh and bone fragments across the ground.

The mutant’s bloodshot eyes went wide; without a sound, it collapsed to its knees.

Watching the beast fall, Fudi Laomo curled his lip.

“Motherfucker! You’re still wet behind the ears to trade shots with me!”

But alas, his glory lasted barely three seconds.

He had only half-finished savoring his moment when three or five more mutants slogged through the mud and charged at him.

Calmly raising his gun and pulling the trigger, he heard a click. Fudi Laomo’s brow twitched violently; without hesitation, he dropped the bolter and yanked the lumberjack axe from his exoskeleton.

Almost at the same moment he swung the axe, the nearest mutant was already upon him, brandishing a long, crude chainsaw.

A bloodstain marked its metal-plated skull, its twisted face a mask of savagery—this one was an elite, a cybernetic mutant!

Dodging sideways to evade the whistling fatal blow, he slid past the chainsaw buried in the dirt, stepped forward with practiced ease, and swung his axe upward from below, hacking viciously into the mutant’s ribs.

From the feel in his palm, he sensed the grating separation of bone and flesh—that strike had surely snapped a few of its lung tubes.

“Roar—!”

True to a mutant’s resilience, the sinewy green beast let out a pained bellow, its bulging eyes nearly bleeding.

Every muscle swelled to its limit; it wrenched the chainsaw free from the ground and whipped the grinding, clattering chain toward the human soldier beside it.

But that lethal second blow was again dodged by the cunning bastard, who ducked low.

“Is that all you’ve got, bro?”

The spinning chain scraped against his shoulder plate with a teeth-grinding screech. Though a cold sweat broke out on his neck, Fudi Laomo still managed a taunt.

Not caring whether the mutant understood, he pulled out an explosive shell, jammed it into the metal clasp on the creature’s chest, and then slammed it home with his axe.

The blunt edge struck the primer; in an instant, smoke burst forth, followed by a dazzling flare from the shell’s tail.

The mutant staggered back a step, reaching to yank the scorching shell from its chest, but its foot caught on a corpse that had fallen moments before. It lost its balance, toppled backward, and forfeited its last chance to live.

“Boom—!”

A searing metal jet pierced its chest, tore out through its scar-ridden back, and jerked its massive frame upward.

Wiping the blood from his helmet, Fudi Laomo tried to catch his breath, only to see another towering mutant charging at him.

This one had a cannon welded to one arm and a spiked mace in the other—these beasts never repeated their cybernetics!

“Holy shit… How many more of these bastards are there!?”

He lopped off the cannon aimed at his chest with one axe stroke, took a mace blow to the shoulder, grunted, cursed into the comm channel, and then savagely retaliated with his axe.

They’d already blown through several waves—why were there still so many?!

A squad voice crackled over the comm.

“Mission brief said five to six hundred.”

From the noise, you could guess how fierce the fighting was.

Watching the green head fly off, Fudi Laomo tossed aside his grease-clogged axe and picked up the spiked mace the elite had dropped.

“You sure it’s only five or six hundred?!”

Static hissed in the comm channel.

“…Who cares how many are left? Let’s just fucking finish this!”

True.

Who gave a damn how many were left.

Caught up in the bloody atmosphere, gradually finding his rhythm, Fudi Laomo’s expression turned savage.

A rare chance—

So let’s kill to our heart’s content!

“Roger that!”

Gunfire on the open field had almost faded; at point-blank range, axes, hammers, and chainsaws worked far better.

For mutants with their tenacious vitality, a half-finger-wide bayonet seemed like a toy, not even as hard as their bones.

Even if their bellies were slit open and guts spilled out, they could still swing their clubs and fight. Only by smashing their skulls to pieces or punching a hole clean through their chests could they truly be killed!

And the same went for Alliance soldiers, armored to the teeth in exoskeletons: piercing damage from blades and rifles couldn’t breach the defense of the “Iron Wall” heavy exoskeleton.

Even overloaded shotguns could only kill them with a headshot; standard-caliber rifles required sustained fire to shatter the armor through metal fatigue.

Such a drawn-out style was clearly not the mutants’ way, and as luck would have it, the muscle-bound men of the Jungle Corps had no interest in kiting and trading shots either.

So both sides, without a word, chose to settle the fight with flesh-to-flesh combat, slaughtering each other in the most primal manner.

The chaotic battle was like a rolling meat grinder, mercilessly devouring one vivid life after another, spewing out shredded pulp.

Kulu’s expression twisted first into savagery, then madness. Finally, as he killed his second Alliance soldier, that madness uncontrollably gave way to bewilderment and panic.

In both numbers and strength, his side clearly held the advantage—yet his brothers, one after another, were being cut down.

Hand-to-hand was supposed to be their turf!

This was supposed to be their hunt!

These creatures...

Are they really human?

When the hot blood splashed onto him and he licked it into his mouth, he could be certain that the animals before him were those weaklings.

But when he saw the warrior, whose armor he had sliced open with his chainsword, not flee but instead charge at him with a ferocious grimace, the whirring blade still screaming, Kulu was utterly stunned.

On this ever-shifting battlefield, any lapse in focus could be fatal, and he soon paid the price for his confusion.

The shockwave of an explosion destroyed his chainsword, and shattered steel fragments, mingled with shredded flesh, slammed into his chest.

"Ah—!"

Kulu let out a pained roar, stumbling back two steps. He stared at the shard embedded in his arm, then yanked it out in fury and threw it aside.

If the Torch's experts hadn't reinforced his cybernetic frame, that single blow would have been enough to incapacitate him.

Using his axe-spear for support, Kulu staggered to his feet. He was as strong as a two-headed ox, yet the steps he took forward were like those of a hobbling donkey.

These people were insane.

No—

They weren't human at all.

They were something else wearing human skin!

Those weak two-legged livestock couldn't possibly fight like this. These creatures were more... more like beasts than he was!

The clamor of battle began to wane.

Not because the enemies blocking his path were spent, but because more and more mutants were falling before those steel-clad bodies.

Normally, they had to sacrifice three or four of their own to take down a single soldier in an exoskeleton.

And that was the best-case scenario.

In reality, three soldiers formed a squad, supporting two other squads, and they often left a dozen or more corpses behind without claiming a single head.

Even in the chaos of melee, those men maintained a minimum of teamwork, thinking of their comrades even as they went berserk.

This was something Kulu could never understand!

Yet, though his heart was filled with confusion, one thing he knew for certain—if they kept fighting to the death like this, total annihilation was only a matter of time!

His wolf-like gaze swept across the battlefield, and soon, through the shifting mist, he spotted a figure that stood apart.

That black-tower-like steel frame stood at the very center of the battlefield, like an insurmountable wall.

Over a dozen soldiers had already fallen before him, and the chainsword embedded in his left arm swung without pause, the motion of cleaving heads as practiced as chopping wood.

Flying blood drenched the man entirely, turning him crimson from head to toe, like a living banner.

Though that bastard denied being a commander, he was undoubtedly the leader of these humans.

"Haha, utterly mad!"

He seemed to be shouting something in excitement.

But Kulu couldn't make it out, nor understand it. He only felt that the surrounding Alliance soldiers seemed emboldened by the roar.

Kulu's eyes grew dangerous, fixed straight on that man. He picked up a still-spinning chainsword from the ground.

If he killed that one...

These people would surely collapse and flee!

Coincidentally, as if noticing his gaze, the man looked back at him. Through the blood-caked helmet, he bared a cruel grin.

Kulu couldn't see his smile, but the moment those eyes locked onto him, his heart trembled for no reason. Then the flames of humiliation surged within him.

He, a named warrior, was frightened by the food on his plate!

"Die!"

He roared and charged.

The man, seeing this, did not dodge or evade. Proudly thrusting forward the chainsword welded to his left arm, he howled and charged back at him.

"Madness!"

"Utter madness!"

Contrary to Kulu's imagination, Brother Chicken had completely forgotten about command at this point, even forgotten he was a legion commander.

His mind held only the last record.

He had gone utterly berserk.

...

Standing in that sanctuary that did not exist on earth, Luo Qian watched the battlefield expressionlessly through mortal eyes.

How barbaric...

How ugly...

He had been curious before about how the Alliance would fight the pieces he had placed on the board, but he never expected they would degenerate into beasts themselves.

His face bore a trace of disgust, and also a hint of pity and sympathy.

The wasteland was exactly that kind of filthy thing. To survive, people had to plunge headlong into the jungle, turning themselves into blood-drinking beasts.

And in that process, humans had unknowingly become part of the jungle, turning every inch of soil into a hell where civilization could not grow.

"...This twisted civilization might as well start over." With a hint of resentment and vindication, he stared at the mass of flesh writhing together and uttered this monologue in a cold tone.

But he quickly realized this was a resentment he should not have—he was meant to guide those lambs toward a glorious sacrifice for the great vision, never to judge a life or death based on personal feelings. To do so would be a desecration of life and ideals.

And even more, a desecration of divinity.

"Indeed, my cultivation is still insufficient..."

Luo Qian lowered his gaze. As he reflected inwardly, he couldn't help but ponder the reason for that "resentment that should not have been."

Was it because of Yin Yin?

That little girl was like his granddaughter who had died young many years ago—naive but not evil at heart, innocent but eager to learn, occasionally willful, but deep down she hated doing things that hurt others... For a farmer's child, this quality could be called kindness, or perhaps cowardice.

He had been curious about what the child would grow into, so from the standpoint of an elder, he casually gave her a few pointers.

But sadly, before he could see this budding flower bloom, it withered in the flowerpot by the laboratory window.

"Indeed, barbaric soil cannot sprout the shoots of civilization, let alone a beautiful, delicate flower. Even if she had survived, she probably wouldn't have lived well... Death might have been the gentlest ending for her."

He spoke to himself in the empty sanctuary, as if comforting himself, or convincing himself.

"Sorry I couldn't save you."

"But I swear to you, when everything is over, you will live a carefree life in the new world, running freely under the sun."

"Everything that once bound you will no longer exist. Your worries will vanish with the old world... That will be a paradise more prosperous than the Age of Prosperity, a true utopia descended upon the mortal world."

He let out a soft sigh.

But just then, a contemptuous sneer, from a place beyond his sight, suddenly intruded upon this sacred, inviolable domain.

"Promising an earthly paradise to the dead, covering up your incompetence with daydreams and lies... How laughable—the way you think to end this jungle is to kill everyone here? You're no better than those big-nosed bastards; at least they set a fire, and fire could truly destroy these woods."

"Who?!"

Luo Qian snapped open his eyes and looked around, but could not see the source of the voice. Suddenly his pupils contracted slightly as he thought of the chip left in Yin Yin.

Those bastards were using her body to spout such nonsense without shame!

A flash of anger passed through Luo Qian's murky pupils. He reached out to snuff out that annoying voice, but his withered five fingers froze in midair.

That majestic voice carried a hint of contempt and disdain, ignoring that frail, powerless dead branch.

"Even if we degenerate into beasts, fighting this wasteland with stones, tree branches, or even fists and teeth, we will never forget what we are or where we are going."

"Keep your paradise for yourself."

"We are going nowhere—we will rebuild our own kingdom right here in the mortal world!"