Chapter 629: The Tide Returns!

Chapter 629: The Tide Returns!

"Roar——!!"

In the center of Qingquan City, the desolate, ruined streets were shrouded in a grayish-green mist, presenting a bleak and miserable scene.

A heavily scarred beast was struggling in a furious rage, yet the iron hand pressed upon its head, covered in crimson fungal plaques, remained completely motionless.

Through the crevice in the center of the helmet, a terrifying red light bled out, resembling the pupils of a demon.

Out of fear and reverence for it, those clamorous two-legged animals referred to it as the "Evolutionary" or the "Decayed Knight."

Yet to the Hivemind that dominated every single slime mold cell in this city, this minuscule one-in-a-billion was merely an insignificant atom constituting Its existence, entirely undeserving of a name of its own.

Xya was actually the same.

However, unlike the other slime molds, It had poured extra care and blood into Xya when creating it.

The newborn maternal entity not only inherited the essence and nutrients It had accumulated through two hundred years of painstaking research on the path of evolution, but also inherited Its will.

And at the same time, it—the one called Xya—bore even more of Its expectations—

Namely, to spread the footprints of the species to much farther places.

To spread to places Its feelers could not yet reach for the time being!

The "little fellow" that had blundered into the territory was still struggling in vain, roaring, attempting to defy the fruits of Its two centuries of evolution with nothing but a body of savage muscle.

It silently watched this uncivilized organism, and instead of commanding Its one-in-a-billion to devour and assimilate it as usual, It cast a downward glance at Xya, who stood in the middle of the broken street.

"Eat it."

Pheromones propagated through the intermingled spores.

Perceiving the call from the mother, Xya nodded slowly, and then raised its crimson tentacles, which resembled rotting mud.

Those tentacles were like its arms.

The cilia at the tips sent out a silent call, rippling invisible waves time and again across the ocean of spores.

A grayish-green color began to gather toward that furry, bear-like beast, wrapping around its body and growing increasingly dense.

"Roar!!!"

Panic began to surface on the beast's face, its struggles growing more violent as its thick-furred muscles heaved like wriggling caterpillars, attempting to break free from the hand pinning its head.

Xya merely stared at it, and then gently clenched the extended "hand."

The thick grayish-green mist expanded outward by a few inches in an instant; the beast's chest suddenly swelled, its eyes bulging out.

It gasped desperately, yet its body grew uncontrollably heavier and heavier, until finally its form completely lost all strength, unable to even resist the gravity on its shoulders, ultimately ceasing its struggle and resistance.

A wisp of gray mist drifted from the seam of the helmet, and the Decayed Knight released the hand pinning its head, stepping aside like a true knight.

"Very good."

Watching Xya, who had already mastered its own power, It revealed a gratified smile, and the spores across the entire city slowly fluctuated with a joyful frequency like ocean waves.

Its child had fully mastered the ability to strip its prey of breath; it would be even stronger than Its previous child.

It could seemingly already see those weak organisms scattering in panic under the pursuit of the young assimilation warrior.

Xya stared at its extended tentacles—or rather, its arms—and spoke after a brief moment.

"My body cannot breathe, and I feel their wailing."

The spores permeating the surroundings and the fruiting bodies under its manipulation were all a part of its body, and simultaneously the conductors and carriers bearing its consciousness.

Facing the bewildered child, It spoke softly.

"Do not worry, my child."

"Your enemies are the same; those feeble lumps of flesh are just like this prey beneath your feet, requiring constant breathing to stay alive. You can endure far more than they can, you are far better adapted to this land beneath your feet than they are, and this world ultimately belongs to those who can adapt to it."

"Now, eat it."

Xya nodded slowly, its skirt-like lower limbs wriggling forward, moving beside the beast that had fallen into unconsciousness.

The flared skirt was like a blood-red, cavernous maw, parting a slit along the contour of the ground.

Countless crimson tentacles lunged from that crevice, instantly impaling the beast into a hedgehog like long, slender leeches, piercing the skin to drain the blood while coiling the remaining organic nutrients into its body all at once.

The surrounding spores fluctuated with a joyful frequency, and the Decayed Knight standing to the side lowered its head even further, though the crimson light in its eyes grew increasingly bright.

At this very moment—

The slime mold fruiting bodies across the entire expanse of ruins witnessed the "coronation" of a new king, cheering and leaping for its birth.

Except for a certain outlier.

Feeling the bloodthirst flowing through the air, it involuntarily held its breath, not daring to make a single "sound."

Fortunately, it did not rely on spores to transmit information; the other mutant slime molds could neither identify nor perceive its existence.

Otherwise, there would be no doubt at all that those fellows would definitely spare no expense to crush this heresy in its cradle...

...

The official website and forum of "Wasteland Online" were as lively as ever today.

And all of this was entirely due to a freshly baked server announcement.

[Server Announcement: "The Tide Returns" Expansion Pack Released!]

[Introduction: Spring has arrived, and it is once again the season for animals to breed; naturally, the asexually reproducing slime molds are no exception.

Once upon a time, we naively thought the hives were incubation chambers that naturally mutated after spore concentrations exceeded a threshold; however, more and more evidence indicates that hives are born from maternal entities, which are in turn hatched from old hives. The newborn maternal entities inherit not just the genes of the old hives, but also the experience of fighting us; compounded by the impact of a warm winter, this round of the tide will likely be fiercer than in previous years!

According to the forecasts of the Biological Research Institute, the tide is expected to arrive around March 1st in-game time! Players, please be prepared!

This may well be the most severe test since the launch of the server!]

[Event Rewards: Completing event missions and killing Evolutionaries will grant event point rewards. Points can be exchanged for limited equipment and titles, and can also be used to participate in the final lucky draw! The prize pool is rich with rewards, containing not only mysterious items that even the chief planner doesn't know about, but also many expensive prizes such as the DLZJ-1 "Dawn" Power Armor! Everyone is warmly welcome to participate actively!]

After a gap of more than half a month.

Following the "Firefighting Operation," "Wasteland Online" had once again launched a brand-new expansion pack.

Such an astonishing update speed truly shocked the eyes of many players.

And just as Chu Guang had anticipated, the announcement immediately triggered an eighteenth-magnitude earthquake on the official website, and discussions regarding the new expansion pack instantly claimed the top spot of hot topics among players and cloud players alike.

"Holy crap! What about Beta version 0.6?!"

"I remember during Alpha version 1.1, the tide was just a sub-item of a server update? They just changed the skin and now it's an expansion pack?!"

"This event is way too perfunctory!"

"Negative review! This is even more outrageous than Paradox copying mods or CA raising blood pack prices!"

"Brother Guang, you are my father, just give me a helmet, please! T.T"

"Thirty thousand helmets in two years, this production capacity is freaking absurd, Ah Guang, can you even do this!"

"I don't think this is Brother Guang's fault. Could it be that the cows and horses in the factory are slacking off? Come open a factory in our village! I'll ask the village chief to help you recruit people!"

"Better come to our place, I am the village chief, I'll bring people to work for you for free!"

"I'll let you work for free!"

"???"

"Holy shit, brother, your tastes are a bit extreme!"

"Pass it on, someone wants to take down Brother Guang."

"Madness, they've all gone mad!"

"Trash! Is a broken helmet really worth it? You've got to be joking, even a dog wouldn't play this!"

Seated in the browsing room, Chu Guang scrolled through the official website, letting out a soft chuckle without uttering a word, long since accustomed to the banter of these fellows.

Yet truth be told, the Alliance now boasted a population of a million, a figure that continued to swell steadily; by contrast, the daily release of fifty to a hundred closed beta slots was indeed failing to keep pace with the Alliance's developmental needs.

Counting the slots already distributed, he held a mere thirty thousand accounts in his hands, and even if he released them all, players would constitute less than three percent of the total population.

Though that number sounded substantial, when spread thin across a multitude of affairs throughout the various regions of the Alliance, this workforce began to seem somewhat insufficient.

Chu Guang suddenly realized he was playing a strategy game that felt like kneading dough: one moment he lacked grain but had plenty of hands, yet the moment grain was abundant, hands became scarce. When both were secure, they lacked territory, and once territory was secured, they lacked people once more.

"...If we eliminate the broodmother in the city center, I wonder if we might unlock a new floor."

By then, a new batch of "activation codes" should surely be released, right?

Gazing at the "starving" little chives on the holographic screen, a faint smile inadvertently crept onto Chu Guang's face.

There was no need to rush.

The opportunity to be harvested as chives was a privilege everyone would share!

Everything would come in due time!

Just then, Xiao Qi, perched atop the pen holder, suddenly lifted her head and spoke in a pleasant, melodious voice.

"Master, your little players have reached the second ring line of the city center!"

Chu Guang's heart stirred, and with a flick of his index finger, he closed the web page on the holographic screen.

"Switch the feed to their side."

Xiao Qi offered a playful, spirited military salute and spoke with boundless enthusiasm.

"Understood!"

...

At the exact moment the official website published the event news, two Viper transports took off from the tarmac of Dawn City, and after a period of flight, arrived at the edge of the second ring line of Qingquan City, slowly hovering beside the rooftop of an abandoned skyscraper.

A dozen or so gnawers with drooping shoulders loitered aimlessly on the roof, while a lanky, long-limbed crawler lurked between the abandoned water tank and ventilation pipes, watching the two spheres of flame flying near the high-rise with wary intensity.

"Hostile units marked: nineteen gnawers, one crawler, no evolved forms or other high-threat targets detected."

"Prepare to attack."

"Copy that."

One Viper transport swung its nose around, training the machine gun in its side cabin toward the rooftop, ready to provide fire support at a moment's notice.

The other hovering Viper transport advanced rapidly, flying directly above the rooftop, less than five meters away.

Crouching in the shadows, the crawler let out a low, hissing growl, its thick, powerful limbs beginning to flex, preparing for an active strike.

What it did not know, however, was that the players flying in the sky had spotted it long ago.

Before it could gather enough strength to leap upward, a massive dark silhouette descended from the sky, dragging a burning red glow as it crashed straight toward it.

The crawler had no time to realize what was happening before an unsharpened, blunt axe slammed into its face, followed immediately by bursting sparks that split its body open in one fluid motion.

Without even a chance to utter a single shriek, the ill-fated crawler turned into a mushy puddle on the ground, accompanied by the muffled thuds of pairs of feet planting themselves upon the rooftop.

A total of ten warriors clad in exoskeletons had completed their deployment, and one after another, they racked their bolts to chamber rounds, flipped off their safeties, and raised their barrels.

Noticing the commotion nearby, the gnawers lifted their heads one by one, their clouded pupils gradually staining with a bloodthirsty crimson.

Shuffling their frozen legs, they opened their decaying maws and let out hiccup-like roars at the landed warriors.

"Ugh—"

Shaking the black slime from his axe, Lao Bai hung it onto his power armor while giving a crisp, clean wave of his hand forward.

"Fire."

The moment those casual words fell, thick tongues of flame instantly turned the fog-shrouded rooftop into bright day.

Amidst a burst of rapid gunfire, the nineteen gnawers on the roof, along with a dozen more rushing up from the stairwell, were instantly riddled with bullets.

According to the plan, the ten players swiftly divided into two squads.

One squad rapidly searched every corner of the rooftop to ensure no fruiting bodies of the mutant slime mold were left behind, while the other pushed quickly to the entrance of the stairwell, slamming a steel plate slightly wider than the door against the opening, before pulling out the safety pin and punching the red button.

With a series of loud bangs, steel rivets drove into the concrete walls, firmly embedding the steel plate into the doorway.

This alone was not enough.

Several players pulled out their portable drills, rebar, and welding torches, giving this wall-embedded door plate a secondary reinforcement, crisscrossing a layer of tic-tac-toe-shaped steel bars over the exterior.

Muffled thuds of door-banging echoed from behind the steel plate sealing the stairwell entrance, yet the plate remained utterly motionless.

Let alone a few dozen gnawers, even a tyrant could not break through this thing now. Having successfully secured the stairwell, Squad B lowered their weapons and flipped on their safeties, while Squad A, also having finished their task, fanned out to the four corners of the building’s edge, keeping watch against any flying alien species that might harass them.

Though they had ventured deep into the territory occupied by the mutant slime mold, neither the players nor the NPCs betrayed any signs of excessive nervousness.

With the Alliance's Biological Research Institute conducting ever-deeper investigations, the Alliance now possessed a growing grasp over the secrets of the mutant slime mold.

Conclusions that had once relied purely on experience or even speculation were now backed by more scientific and rigorous theories.

Every slime mold fruiting body in Qingquan City was connected to the broodmother consciousness, but this did not mean the broodmother could monitor the condition of every single fruiting body at every waking moment, much like how the administrator of the Alliance could not constantly watch every player, managing at most to pull up VM or official website logs when necessary.

The slime mold's broodmother functioned the same way.

Minor, passively generated threats that amounted to nothing were mostly routed to sub-server rooms like the "incubation chambers" for processing, and only when unrecognizable organic matter invaded the territory on a massive scale would the broodmother’s direct vigilance be aroused.

Just like now.

The broodmother in the city center would, at most, feel as though a few small flies had landed upon its body, behaving no differently than usual, never dreaming that the actions of these few small flies might threaten its very life.

Looking at the packed equipment in the cabin and the staff members dressed in protective suits, Jiang Xuezhou, who had practically strapped herself to her seat with safety belts, could finally no longer contain her curiosity and spoke up.

"What exactly are you guys doing?"

Seeing the utterly uninitiated look on her face, Ye Shi, sitting beside her, could not help but curl his lips in pride.

"That’s where you're clueless. We plan to deliver a little Alliance shock to that big fellow in the city center when the tide is at its liveliest... The shock is already prepared; right now is just the staging phase."

Jiang Xuezhou was left completely bewildered.

What on earth?

Offering no detailed explanation, Ye Shi glanced at her and continued.

"By the way, speaking of which, what did you tag along for? Aren't you supposed to be helping us deal with that Nanguo thing?"

Compared to the "self-limiting" broodmother, the chaotically expanding Nanguo was clearly what made the fallen empire to the north far more vigilant.

Ye Shi remembered quite clearly that Jiang Xuezhou and her never-showing-his-face mentor had come to help them resolve research topics related to Nanguo.

As for the broodmother of Qingquan City, it lay entirely outside their scope of work.

In response to Ye Shi's question, Jiang Xuezhou cleared her throat and said with an air of utmost seriousness.

"Based on our analysis of the samples, the gene pool of the Nago fungus strain has a large amount of DNA highly overlapping with the mutated slime mold of Clear Spring City. It can be basically concluded that this biological weapon was crafted from the mutated slime mold of Clear Spring City... My mentor suspects that the residents of Vault 117 once explored the ancient battlefield in the center of Clear Spring City, where there might be clues we need. Rest assured, I've applied with your Administrator, and he has approved my participation as a research fellow in the Wave-related operations."

From her observations, the Alliance residents held an extraordinary reverence, even worship, for the Administrator. Many people constantly brought him up, wishing him a long life.

She had little interest in that man, but since she was on their turf, she followed local customs and showed some respect.

What she hadn't expected, however, was that someone didn't care about the latter half of her sentence at all, instead fixating on some trivial detail.

"Wait, you said the residents of Vault 117 might have gone to the city center?!" Yoshi stared at Jiang Xuezhou in surprise, his face looking like he'd discovered a new continent.

"I..."

Realizing she had let something slip, Jiang Xuezhou cursed inwardly. She had just been about to close her mouth when she saw the exaggerated expression on Yoshi's face and quickly realized this wouldn't be easy to brush off.

"I, I didn't say that..." Out of guilt, she added a superfluous whisper at the end, "Don't go spreading it around, okay?"

Yoshi grinned slyly, giving her a knowing look.

"Don't worry, I get it, I get it. You didn't say anything."

Good grief!

Another freebie of contribution points!

When he first woke up on the Steel Heart, a mission had popped up in his task bar: to serve as a bodyguard for a visiting D-level researcher from the Alliance and report any intel he heard from her about the Academy.

Based on the value of the intel, the Alliance would reward him with contribution points. Yoshi still remembered that day when he mentioned it in the group chat, and Fang Chang's envious, jealous glare.

Seeing that Yoshi clearly didn't understand, Jiang Xuezhou grew anxious.

"I really didn't say that! Don't go spreading it around, okay? If it gets back to my mentor, I'm dead, really dead..."

Yoshi: "Relax, relax. Our Administrator has a tight lip."

Jiang Xuezhou: "???"

In the brief moment of their exchange, the battle on the skyscraper's rooftop had already ended.

Standing beside the corpse of a Crawler, Old Bai reached up and lightly tapped the side of his tactical helmet, switching to the command channel.

"The landing zone is secured. Ready for deployment at any time."

A crackling sound came through the comms, followed by a crisp reply.

"Copy that."

As the words fell, two "Viper" transport planes descended one after another toward the skyscraper's rooftop, their scorching plasma plumes blowing away the thick residual snow and dust.

Once the aircraft had stabilized, twelve staff members in hazmat suits, gas masks, and oxygen tanks on their backs disembarked onto the rooftop.

Along with them were deployed a communication radio, an air detection device, and parachute packs disassembled into parts.

The Alliance's Biological Research Institute would calculate the approximate location of the central hive in the city based on spore concentration changes during the Wave and the movement patterns of slime mold fruiting bodies.

As long as they obtained an approximate coordinate, the Alliance could directly drop ground forces there, under the cover fire of "Dragon" missiles and 400mm naval guns, for a surgical precision strike on the central hive!

Even if that thing hid in a nuclear crater or bunker, able to withstand conventional bombardment, it couldn't fend off a frontal assault by the Burning Legion.

The Alliance would take advantage of this surging Wave to once and for all end the threat that had plagued Clear Spring City for two centuries.

Old Bai was full of confidence.

Even if this year's Wave was different from previous ones, it didn't matter—the Alliance of today was no longer the Alliance of old.

The survivors of Clear Spring City no longer fought alone, nor did they have to face the Wave's threat by themselves. Survivors from Luoxia Province sent endless supplies of grain, while those from Dawn City provided them with weapons and steel.

Not only had the NPCs united,

but the scale and quality of the players had also become incomparable to earlier versions.

If he remembered correctly, the Administrator had been under level twenty back then.

Now, the average level of the entire Burning Legion had surpassed that number, and he himself had reached LV43.

In terms of raw strength alone, among all players on the server, only that "inhuman" Trash Brother could rival him.

As for combat experience beyond stats,

each of them was a battle-hardened veteran.

"Come on."

Gazing at the eerie, shifting gray-green mist in the distance, he felt his fighting spirit burning like a flame, a slight grin curling at the corner of his mouth.

"Let's see what new tricks A-Guang has cooked up this time!"