Chapter Ninety-Two: Deep Waters

The army was expanding far faster than Gao Ning had expected.

The preparations made earlier had gone unused; in the past few days, the recruit camp had been devoted to grueling physical training.

Not to mention combat duty, they had not even reached exoskeleton armor training yet.

With the enhancement granted by the universal medical pod, Gao Ning’s physical condition had nearly reached the limits of the human body, yet he had never undergone any systematic development.

After following the training for a few days, he had expected misery. To his surprise, the opposite proved true: the restless sense of unused strength vanished entirely, and the sweat-soaked exhaustion left him refreshed in a way he had never experienced before.

He even grew somewhat addicted to it, feeling as though every limb had been fully stretched open, all of it intensely satisfying.

Among the recruits, Gao Ning’s ease during training stood out like a crane among chickens, drawing repeated attention from the scar-faced instructor.

By this stage of the war, however, combat had already entered the exoskeleton armor phase. Physical training remained important, but it was no longer everything.

Still, after he had demonstrated his abilities, Gao Ning could clearly feel the change in the scar-faced instructor’s attitude toward him. Even when the veterans habitually bullied the newcomers, they would turn a blind eye to Gao Ning.

Occasionally, when they met in the mess hall, they would even nod in acknowledgment.

All of this meant that Gao Ning had gradually become one of them.

During this period, Gao Ning also found a way to increase his forces. The miniature map covered a vast area, spanning half of France and reaching all the way to the northern coast of England.

Every time lights-out came, Gao Ning would remotely control the savage beastmen on the miniature map, ordering them into a pocket formation to conduct a carpet search and slowly flush out the alien monsters hidden in the Luxembourg region.

The moment the two sides met, battle would erupt, and every time it was fiercely intense.

In terms of individual combat strength, the alien monsters were no match for the savage beastmen. Unfortunately, the monsters were far more numerous and were experts at burrowing and hiding. They often concealed themselves underground and launched surprise attacks at every turn.

Whenever the savage beastmen had driven the monsters to a certain number, Gao Ning would use the gene mutation device to turn them into his own troops.

With a conversion rate of once every ten minutes, the savage beastmen’s losses were nearly negligible.

After three days, the savage beastmen force that had numbered just over a hundred had, without anyone noticing, grown to a thousand.

On the other side, Gao Lao Er had also made considerable gains.

The heroine was indeed somewhat abnormal. It seemed she possessed some unknown ability, and she had been trying to get close to one of the mechanics at the repair factory.

From their conversations, it was clear the mechanic did not know her at all, yet the heroine could effortlessly reveal every detail about him.

Without a doubt, she was the variable.

Three days later, the terror robot force had been replenished to around thirty units. Centered on the heroine’s current location, they disguised themselves as ordinary ammunition crates scattered everywhere.

Exoskeleton armor had extremely strong load-bearing capacity and could carry astonishing quantities of ammunition. Thus, whenever battle drew near, the logistics department would distribute large numbers of bullets.

As a result, these ammunition crates were everywhere in the camp, and practically no one paid them any mind. The terror robots hidden inside remained completely undetected.

Everything had been progressing smoothly, yet the Wolf Fang Squad still showed no sign of appearing.

Although Gao Ning had rapidly accumulated forces, the Wolf Fang Squad lurking in the shadows kept him from fully relaxing.

But as the days passed, the Wolf Fang Squad still endured in hiding, while the heroine could no longer wait.

The mechanic had believed her words and, in a strangely cryptic manner, had also told her of a method.

So, just as in the later plotline, on the sixth day the heroine finally could not hold back any longer. She drove out of the camp and headed straight for the frontline command center in downtown Paris.

Gao Er had remained invisible beside her the whole time, while Gao Ning kept constant watch. The instant he detected any sign of encirclement, the gene mutation cloud would be dropped without hesitation.

At that point, it would no longer matter whether the targets were men or monsters; the heroine’s safety came first.

As long as her position was avoided, tossing the gene mutation cloud into the command post would leave Gao Ning with enough troops to use.

However, before the heroine’s car had even entered Paris, a stretch of road in the suburbs suddenly caved in without warning.

There was no time for her to brake, and car and driver plunged straight down together.

When Gao Ning saw it on the Red Alert interface, his heart lurched. Sure enough, he then saw the two red dots representing the Wolf Fang Squad flicker and vanish.

They were hiding underground.

Gao Er followed closely behind and leaped down after them.

Fortunately, the heroine had seen too much battle to be caught off guard. Sensing that something was wrong, she simply raised her gun and shot herself.

Wolf Fang had transformed into a giant wolf and burst from the prepared tunnel. Still midair, he saw the heroine blow her own head off.

Blood sprayed out, and Wolf Fang’s eyes nearly bulged from their sockets.

Bang!

The sound echoed in the hollow darkness. The world suddenly froze; a flash of white light came and went, and Wolf Fang realized that the two of them had once again returned to the camp.

The black gorilla instructor was delivering his third speech.

Damn it, too slow.

Wolf Fang clenched his teeth in secret.

He was still comparatively calm. After all, he had gone through so many mission worlds that failure was nothing new. He knew some tasks simply could not be forced.

Potato, however, looked as though he were on the verge of collapse. His legs gave way and he knelt on the ground, expression blank.

“Boss, that woman is too cautious. The moment she senses anything off, she kills herself on the spot.

But that’s strange!

Even after being infected with the blood of the alien beast and gaining that save-and-load cheat, the heroine clearly still does not know about the blood’s power. She is in the phase where she fears nothing; if danger appears, she should choose to face it head-on. Why would she use suicide to escape?”

“She’s afraid of being caught,” Wolf Fang said lightly.

“How is that possible? How would she know that a blood transfusion can break the ability?

That problem is a paradox. It should be nearly impossible!

Right after the transfusion, she wouldn’t know her ability had been broken. She would definitely kill herself in a hurry, trying to return to the previous point in time.

But if the ability had failed, she would die outright! How could she possibly draw any conclusion and tell William Cage, later on, about it?”

“You fool. The military must know something. Otherwise, after capturing William Cage, they would never have given her a blood transfusion right away.

Besides, that mechanic has been at the heroine’s side the whole time. He is just an ordinary White House analyst, maybe with some education, but he definitely has no real standing. Otherwise, he would not have been demoted from the White House to do maintenance work.

And yet even such a completely insignificant ordinary analyst knows that the monster species possesses the ability to rewind time.

That means the American high command, and perhaps even the high command of the world coalition, may know that these monsters have that special ability.

Precisely because they knew the monsters had that ability, they developed exoskeleton mechs, weapons designed specifically for close-quarters combat.

Otherwise, why not simply carpet-bomb the area and see whether those monsters could survive?”

Wolf Fang narrowed his eyes. He suddenly felt that the water in this world was perhaps even deeper than he had imagined.