Chapter 630: An Unusual 'Fog'

Chapter 630: An Unusual "Fog"

“…Recently, the spore concentration in the air of Clearspring City has continued to rise. According to the analysis results from the Alliance Institute of Biology, it is confirmed that the Wave will occur within two weeks.

Currently, the Alliance Army Command has designated parts of Clearspring City as temporary strategic preparation zones. Residents of Boulder City and Dawnlight City must pay close attention to their personal safety, avoid activities in these areas as much as possible, and refrain from prolonged stays outside settlements, especially within the city, unless necessary.

However, there is no need for excessive panic, especially for newcomers. The annual Wave has become a tradition in Clearspring City. No matter how fierce it comes, the final victory will surely belong to us, united as one!

The Survivor Daily will bring you the latest frontline reports firsthand!”

In Boulder City, at Pirate Bay Tavern, the lively atmosphere blazed like a roaring hearth fire, with the clinking of glasses and clamor of voices never ceasing.

Staring at the old-fashioned radio with a holographic screen embedded on the bar, a man who had drunk too much let out a burp and suddenly sighed with emotion.

“How nostalgic.”

A nearby drinker looked at him.

“Nostalgic for what?”

“House’s broadcast,” the man chuckled, cleared his throat, and raised his voice, “…My dearest, dearest listeners, the Wave is coming. The bumpkins and beggars outside the Great Wall are staring longingly at us, living in abundance. Of course, we won’t open the door. Instead, we can watch their misery from beside a warm fireplace—watch them howl with hunger, watch them roll in the mud with the corpse-eaters. And our boys, under the brilliant command of the Militia, suffer negligible casualties. Sure, a few died, but those people didn’t have a single chip in their pockets, so they can’t really be considered citizens of Boulder City.”

He mimicked House’s exaggerated voice, and the imitation was so ridiculous that everyone burst out laughing after hearing it.

“House, hahaha!”

“If you hadn’t mentioned him, I’d almost forgotten that guy!”

Days were getting better.

But occasionally, they still recalled the unpleasant times of the past and those who had long since scurried away.

Some things only become clear when you look back.

No annotations were even needed; just reciting House’s words again brought a knowing smile to everyone’s face.

“Speaking of which, where did he go?”

“I heard he first went to Red River Town, but the mine bosses there wouldn’t listen to his broadcast, so he moved on to Garbage City. As luck would have it, he found his audience there, but they thought the Alliance had exiled him, and the local councilors were so scared they wouldn’t even let him through the door.”

“Haha, I think the Administrator wouldn’t bother with someone like him. If he did, House wouldn’t even have made it out the door here.”

“I heard later he went to the Free State of Bugra. Over there, they don’t care who he is, so he can keep doing his old job.”

After that great upheaval, many inner-city nobles and merchants who had worked for the nobility fled north to that fine place where money could buy everything.

Take Vega, for instance—rumor had it he was doing well. Once a sycophant, he’d now taken on the airs of a respectable man.

That guy was like a loach, slipping from murky water into a muddy pond, living even more comfortably than before.

But they didn’t envy him.

For most people here, they’d had enough of the “winner-takes-all bitterness.” Whoever wanted to taste it could go ahead.

They wouldn’t envy the winners, nor pity the losers. From now on, they would only walk their own path.

Just then, the wind chime at the door jingled, and wet footprints pressed onto the wooden floor. Joe, the militia regiment commander, just off duty, strode over briskly.

“It’s not fair to dump this mess on our militia. We’ve done our work, even if I admit we didn’t do much before.”

Everyone’s gaze turned toward the voice. Seeing Joe, the man who had imitated House earlier lit up with surprise and laughed heartily.

“Joe? We’re not targeting you, of course. We all know you’re a good man. How’ve you been lately?”

With that, he pulled out a chair for Joe.

Sitting down gracefully, Joe took a hot towel from the bartender and wiped his face.

The air quality had been terrible these past few days.

Though the survivors here were long used to the musty air, it still left their faces and hair grimy.

Returning the towel with a thank-you, Joe ordered a hot honey wine and spoke in a casual tone.

“…Same as before. We’re mainly on defense duty. The Alliance hasn’t given us a hard time. As long as we can pin part of the Wave near the Great Wall, they’ll launch an offensive from the North Third Ring Road to put pressure on our enemies.”

The man placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, speaking earnestly.

“Don’t bear the burden alone. Tell us—we can fight too.”

The others nodded, looking at him without a hint of jest.

Joe paused, then burst into laughter.

“Haha, come on, you’ll fight with a bottle? Leave the professional work to us professionals.”

The man grinned back, but his expression still showed some unease. After all, for the past two hundred years, the inner-city residents had handled the Wave. This year was not only their first time facing the threat themselves, but it also coincided with the most ferocious Wave after a warm winter.

“Do you have enough people?”

Joe smiled.

“We’ve never been short, especially this year with a batch of useful fellows.”

“Useful fellows?”

“The scum from the slums—those who did business with the raiders.”

Hearing this, the tavern’s patrons quickly recalled the crackdown earlier that year.

Those gangsters were foolish enough. The Alliance had long had its eye on them but had considered it Boulder City’s problem and couldn’t be bothered.

Now that Boulder City had joined the Alliance, the filthy slums beneath the Great Wall became the Alliance’s problem. Those blind idiots, instead of lying low, even set their sights on the shelter residents.

Word had it that the Administrator was in Boulder City at the time. Upon hearing the news, he waved his hand, and a dozen tanks fresh from the front line turned around and surrounded the slums under the wall, leaving no escape. Suspected gang members were taken away for interrogation; those who resisted with weapons were executed on the spot.

No one knew exactly how many died, but at least five thousand were captured.

After that day, the entire slum fell silent. Boulder City’s orphanages and welfare homes were overflowing with the rescued children.

“…I heard the Administrator organized them into a punishment battalion and gave them three months of military training in Bluestone County.”

Taking the honey wine from the bartender, Joe took a sip to wet his throat.

“Time for them to pay their debts.”

…

Near the geological park in Bluestone County stood a closed-off camp.

Unlike the neighboring geological park, which had been turned into a mine, the people here didn’t have to spend all day in sunless pits like the raiders, since their crimes weren’t as severe.

So they only had to work ten hours.

The rest of the time was spent undergoing brutal military training—learning bayonet drills and rifle handling with wooden sticks, crawling through the snow, steeling their nerves under machine-gun fire and artillery blasts inches away, all in preparation for the coming Wave.

Some couldn’t take it and died during training or collapsed in the mines, but those were few.

Even though the terrifying training load bordered on madness, the resilience of wastelanders was itself tenacious, so over five thousand survived.

In just three months, these once-thuggish men had completely transformed. Even those who had been fat enough to have fatty livers now had necks visible.

Only after losing freedom and dignity do people realize their value—and that is the meaning of prison.

After the punishment battalion’s conditioning, even if it wasn’t enough to teach these scoundrels civilized manners or shame, it at least made their bodies remember the penalty.

As usual, after a day of training, an officer from the First Legion’s Thousandth Company called a group of about a hundred convicts into the mess hall and announced their mission for two weeks later.

Though it was expected, when they heard they would be sent to the battlefield as cannon fodder, fear and panic still showed on their faces.

Yet, in the face of the crowd's timidity, the officer continued speaking with an expressionless face.

"This year's tide is different from previous years. Many of you will die—perhaps even the vast majority."

A prisoner swallowed hard, gathered his courage, and looked at the officer as he asked,

"And if we survive?"

The officer glanced at him, knowing what he truly wanted to ask, and continued,

"If you survive, you will earn the right to be called human. Whether you can become residents of the Alliance will depend on your performance."

"However, the Administrator has promised that after the tide ends, regardless of whether you win the recognition of the Alliance's residents, you will not have to return here. You may go south as 'supervised persons' to reclaim wasteland and establish new settlements there."

"If you perform well, you will have the chance to become residents."

Hearing this, many prisoners' faces lit up with joy. No matter how bad the south was, it was still better than here—and besides, wasn't there Singularity City there?

As long as they weren't exiled to the wasteland to fend for themselves or thrown into mines to work like beasts until they died, they could accept it.

Yet some knew the situation in Jinchuan Province, which might well become the Alliance's next battlefield, and so they wore grim expressions.

Watching the prisoners whispering among themselves, the officer continued with a blank face,

"I'm not bargaining with you. You have only two choices: either give up being human like those raiders and work in the mines until you die, or pick up the last shred of your pathetic dignity and at least show us you're willing to die for the right to be called human."

The mess hall fell silent for a moment.

A prisoner stepped forward first, raising his right hand.

"I'm willing to go."

"Your name?"

Faced with the officer's question, the man hesitated for a moment, then lowered his head and said,

"...Dagger."

There were many people with that name in the slums of Boulder City. Those who originally had no names often ended up with names like Dagger, Cleaver, or Axe after joining a gang.

Looking at the wrinkled, scarred skin on his arm, the officer frowned.

Members of the Dagger Gang tattooed a dagger on their arms as a mark of identity, and other gangs had similar customs. Previously, the Alliance had used these tattoos to catch many low-level gang members.

Later, these men were sent to penal battalions, where, under the supervisors' orders, they either burned off or sanded away their marks, but the scars remained.

The officer roughly guessed the man's background but said nothing.

"From today, your name is Bit. You'll be in charge of this group of over a hundred men."

Glancing at the time on his watch, he continued, "Before lights out, give me the count of those who choose to stay."

Bit let out a sigh of relief, memorized his new name, and saluted.

"Yes, sir."

...

With two weeks left until the tide, war preparations had entered their final stage.

Large quantities of military supplies were transported by rail into Dawn City, then by truck to various positions within Clear Spring City.

After uniting with Boulder City, the Alliance repaired the main traffic arteries within the urban area—both above and below ground.

At the edge of the North Fifth Ring Road.

Clad in power armor, Chu Guang, accompanied by Wrench, inspected the frontline positions.

Though the defensive line was still the same as a year ago, it had undergone earth-shaking changes, much like Dawn City itself.

If before the Alliance's army was just a motley crew mixing World War II and Cold War weapons, now standing here was a genuine regular force.

Automatic weapons had been issued not only to the entire army but even down to squad level.

Rows of 155mm howitzers, with their long, thick barrels, stood like a forest on the positions.

It was hard to imagine that just a year ago, most of the Alliance's artillery was either third-hand loot from raiders or homemade knockoffs crafted by Mosquito and his fellow convicts.

Not just artillery.

There were also exoskeletons and other auxiliary equipment.

Back then, the "KV-1" exoskeleton welded with a few steel plates was considered decent gear. Now, even workers loading and unloading goods wore "Miner" exoskeletons from Ideal City.

But it wasn't just people and equipment.

The most obvious change was the position itself.

Rows of high-rises were connected by concrete walls topped with barbed wire, forming the innermost line of defense. From there, fire support points were extended outward, relying on the natural cover of skyscrapers, leaving only a few main roads with operable gates.

Those skyscrapers serving as fire support points were like the bastions of classical fortresses, providing nearly all-around fire coverage over the adjacent streets.

The entire defensive line covered almost the whole area of active survivor activity—south of Dawn City and north of Clear Spring City. If the slime mold entities wanted to bypass this line, they would have to go around the city from the east or west.

However, since the slime mold's information exchange rate was tied to spore concentration, conversely, the activity of slime mold entities in a given area was also affected by spore concentration.

It was like a server that could only handle 100 players at most, with limited information processing efficiency and channel bandwidth. If an administrator forcibly modified the server protocol and lifted the online player limit, letting 10,000 people flood into a server designed for 100, the result would be everyone stuck in a slideshow.

The same applied to the mutated slime mold that operated through "node organisms." The flaws in their DNA prevented them from extending the hive mind's will into areas with thin spore clouds, forcing them to concentrate their forces in waves to break through civilization's defenses.

Thus, the entities that took detours would be few; most would concentrate on the main front. This was one of the conclusions drawn by the Alliance's Institute of Biology through rigorous scientific research.

The Alliance didn't need to follow the Post-War Reconstruction Committee's method of encircling the entire urban area with giant walls.

Instead, building a defensive line that "extended from areas of high spore concentration to areas of low concentration" was sufficient.

"...The positions we built during the last tide are still here. This time, we've reinforced them and improved the defense model!"

"Based on the General Staff's recommendations, we divided the defensive line into twenty sectors, each assigned to a thousand-man unit. Each sector was further split into ten positions arranged in a front-middle-rear three-tier layout, deployed in a '334' pattern to ensure fire coverage over every inch of ground before the positions!"

The finer details of the improvements, of course, went beyond that—firepower allocation, logistics, and support methods were all carefully considered—but these weren't things that could be explained in a short time, so Wrench didn't list them all.

During the last tide, the Alliance lacked experience in large-scale operations. This time was different.

After the campaign in Luoxia Province, Alliance officers and soldiers at all levels had gained considerable experience in mobile warfare, positional warfare, and other combat modes.

Looking at Wrench, whose face was glowing with enthusiasm, Chu Guang nodded approvingly and gave a positive assessment.

"Well done."

Wrench smiled modestly, the flush on his weathered face growing even brighter.

Most of the Alliance's first batch of officers, like him, were wastelanders rescued by Vault 404 from the jaws of raiders.

He didn't have lofty ideals or grand thoughts, nor did he usually dwell on such things.

For a man of simple convictions, the Administrator's approval was the highest honor.

Watching Wrench's glowing face, Chu Guang paused for a moment before continuing,

"But there's something I need to discuss with you."

Wrench immediately replied,

"Please, give your orders!"

"It's not an order. It's about future arrangements."

Chu Guang smiled and spoke in a casual tone.

"Our army's scale is growing ever larger, and the original command structure has grown somewhat cumbersome. So I plan to wait until after the tide ends to reorganize the troop formations, changing the old thousand-man and ten-thousand-man units into the structure of the Human Alliance era."

There had been considerable discussion on the forums about the Alliance's military organization. He had previously synthesized opinions from some professionals among them and discussed the matter with Vanus.

The Legion used thousand-man and ten-thousand-man units to charge forward because they had three-year fast-track clone cannon fodder, and the Vellant officers themselves were military nobles with fiefs. The entire society's promotion path was based on military merit, so there was no need for additional ranks. This simple and crude structure was easier for them to manage.

Although other survivor settlements in the wasteland didn't have three-year fast-track clones, human life was cheap and cannon fodder was abundant, so these settlements copied the system as well.

In truth, there was nothing wrong with this imitation.

The Legion's weapons were bestsellers across the wasteland, and as the strongest survivor faction, it was only natural for other survivor factions lacking military strength to learn from them.

As for raiders, they followed primitive laws and worshipped the Legion's brutality. Among raider tribes, the titles of decurion and centurion were not just symbols of power but also emblems of honor and valor.

With most survivor settlements and raider tribes choosing this system, the thousand-man and hundred-man unit structure became the mainstream in the wasteland.

But mainstream didn't mean the only option. For instance, the Corporation's structure was the complete opposite of the Legion's.

Most private armed companies in Ideal City operated in squad-sized units, more extreme than real-world battalion tactical groups, streamlined to the level of "company tactical groups."

The Corporation's direct forces were composed of hundred-man commando units.

But Ideal City didn't expand outward. Its direct forces only swept up surrounding mutants, and major troubles were usually solved with money. This compact and efficient structure suited them fine.

Neither the Corporation nor the Legion's military philosophy fully met the Alliance's needs.

Chu Guang planned to strike a compromise between the two.

That is, using the sequence of army, division, brigade, regiment, battalion, company, and platoon, along with the "three-three system" principle, to reorganize the existing NPC corps.

The reorganized Alliance First and Second Corps would be renamed the Alliance First and Second Group Armies, each comprising 10 to 20 standard brigades of 2,000 personnel.

This structure was not only simpler and clearer but also more convenient for granting ranks.

As for the players, they would continue using the original "corps" structure.

So far, each corps' combat efficiency had been quite good, with no need for large-scale reform, only minor adjustments in battlefield roles.

These corps essentially functioned as the Alliance's "battalion tactical groups," responsible for high-risk, more thrilling special operations.

It was impractical to demand that players, with their individual combat prowess, fight entirely according to standard military regulations.

Based on his own experience, Chu Guang knew players could accept being "harvested" and even derive pleasure from it, but they could not tolerate being told how to play the game by the operator.

So he never taught players what to do; he only set rules telling them what not to do and what penalties would follow.

Taking this opportunity, Chu Guang briefly outlined his plans for the future Alliance's four branches: land, sea, air, and space.

Although two of them didn't even exist yet, Wrench listened intently, never thinking he was joking.

After hearing him out, Wrench immediately saluted without hesitation and spoke with loyalty.

"The Alliance First Corps resolutely follows your orders! Your will is our army's will."

Seeing Wrench's earnest display of loyalty, Chu Guang smiled faintly and said,

"No need to be so serious. Just keep the reorganization in mind after this tide; no need to inform the troops for now. I'm telling you in advance so you can explore in the direction I mentioned during the upcoming battles. Later, I'll hold a meeting at the General Staff and solicit opinions from officers at all levels."

Just as he finished speaking, a prolonged alarm sounded from the southeast.

Both of them turned to look.

The gray-green fog, previously still as a lake, suddenly surged like a mountain flood, rolling along the streets toward their defensive line.

The fog was rising!

It was the tide!

Seeing the menacing gray mist, Chu Guang's brow lifted in surprise.

The tide had come earlier than the Bioresearch Institute had predicted.

But that was normal.

No weather forecast was ever one hundred percent accurate.

At the sight of the rolling fog, Wrench's pupils contracted, and he quickly turned to Chu Guang.

"Administrator, please step back."

His battlefield-honed instincts told him this fog was no ordinary thing.

But Chu Guang didn't move. He simply nodded toward the defensive line and said succinctly,

"Don't worry about my safety. Worry about everyone behind this line."

"Now go do what you must. I will witness your valor here."