Chapter Ninety-Four: The Con

After the world restarted once again, the terror robots lurking around the perimeter of the training ground sprang into action.

Just as the heroine was about to rise and rush out of the field, they surrounded her in layers.

More than twenty terror robots, each unfolding to a height of roughly five feet, with eight sharp claws like daggers driven into the ground. Every movement left shallow, uneven pits in the concrete.

Their sudden appearance shocked her.

After more than a hundred cycles of death and rebirth, nothing like this had ever happened before. What was going on? Had the repeated deaths somehow altered something unseen and caused such an enormous change?

But something was wrong. This time she had not even left the barracks, let alone done anything else. How had robots already closed in on her?

And why were these models so unfamiliar?

Gao Ning's plan was simple. Since this was meant to protect the hero, the first thing was to put him in a stable state.

What kind of nonsense was all this repeated rebirth?

Of course, if he could lure the heroine in front of the Wolf Fang Squad and let her clash with them in a desperate, murderous struggle, then with the assistance of the terror robots, he could wipe out the remaining two members.

That would be the outcome Gao Ning most wanted to see. He would not have to lift a finger, and the Wolf Fang Squad would be annihilated. The mission would be completed outright.

By then, the mutant brute corps could be brought out, and under the heroine's leadership, counterattack the alien monsters.

Anyway, by the Red Alert interface's classification, the monster brain Omega ought to count as a dimensional relic too.

After turning it in, there might even be some reward for it.

For example, the opening of another hero template, or something of the sort.

After tasting the sweetness of that old trick, Gao Ning had long wanted to bring Tanya over.

Or give him another special card. If not to a main base, then a barracks would do.

The appearance of the terror robots alarmed everyone in the training camp.

They quickly gathered, fully guarded, ready to attack at any moment.

The terror robots took up a defensive formation, ringed around the outside, guarding against intrusion and trapping the heroine within.

She was still in the middle of physical training, with no gun on her body and not even a knife. For the moment, all she could do was raise her bare hands in a vigilant posture, staring warily at the terror robots and ready to dodge at any instant.

The terror robots looked nothing like the alien monsters, and at a glance one could tell they were human-made.

Although they had appeared abruptly, they never launched an attack. After several tense minutes, the soldiers around them gradually relaxed, all of them assuming this was some new unit the logistics department had come up with.

Even so, they still remained outside, not daring to let down their guard in the slightest.

At that moment, one of the terror robots stepped forward, aimed its round head at the heroine, and several beams of light intertwined in the air to form a luminous screen.

Qi Shan appeared on the screen, smiling as he gave the heroine a slight nod.

Sergeant Vrataski, the legendary Angel of Verdun. Forgive me for visiting in such an unorthodox manner.

The heroine replied cautiously, "Who are you?"

"You can call me Gao Ning. I suppose I am part of humanity's defensive line, though not within the joint armed forces. I belong to a branch laboratory under the Scientific Defense Corps, specializing in biotechnological units.

My records are top secret. Only relevant military leaders are authorized to view them, and even they must sign confidentiality agreements.

Unauthorized disclosure of the existence of the Scientific Defense Project carries a prison sentence of up to sixty years. In severe cases, it is punishable by death."

Just as the heroine was about to speak, Gao Ning cut her off directly.

"You can doubt what I am saying, but there is no need to challenge it right now. Please let me finish.

The live monitoring department detected an abnormal signal band on your body, very similar to the band emitted by the monster Omega.

The frontline intelligence has already been sealed off, and we cannot obtain any more useful information. Right now, I only want to ask you one question: have you repeatedly experienced the same span of time? Every time you die, do you return to a day earlier, or a few hours before?"

The heroine exclaimed in shock, "You can detect that?"

"So it really is you? Excellent, we've found the target at once. Listen carefully now."

Gao Ning's expression turned grave.

"Do not make drastic changes to your established path. Every death may create a different timeline.

The blood of the monster Omega possesses the ability to rewind time, allowing a stretch of time to be refreshed again and again.

But the key is not how to kill the monster. The key is to alter the anomalous node in spacetime."

The heroine immediately asked, "What do you mean by a live anomalous node?"

"It means something that should absolutely never appear within this reality, yet suddenly emerges in our world.

In fact, the Omega-series monsters were captured by the Scientific Defense Corps as early as three years ago, and effective temporal fragments were extracted from their blood.

Using special methods, those fragments were implanted into chimpanzees, where gene-induced mutation developed them into a special bioweapons branch.

For two full years of experiments, the number of bioweapons produced had never been high enough to break through the laboratory stage and be truly deployed to the battlefield."

The heroine raised an eyebrow, sensing there was more to the story.

Sure enough, Gao Ning continued.

"But during the period when the temporal interval became abnormal, the bioweapons clearly changed.

Their numbers surged exponentially without warning."

"The last time we confirmed it, their number had already come infinitely close to three hundred thousand, and they had even seized a substantial territory within the occupied zone."

"Three hundred thousand?"

The heroine's voice changed, her eyes widening.

Gao Ning nodded.

"Yes, but that is only one side of the matter.

The explosive growth of the bioweapons is, of course, beneficial to the human battlefield.

But on the other hand, we also discovered that during the early operational stage, time abnormalities emerged as well. Two rookie units underwent mutations.

At present, we have only confirmed that one of them can transform into a werewolf. Its fangs carry a highly contagious werewolf virus, capable in an extremely short time of turning humans into werewolf beasts driven only by bloodlust and slaughter, with their minds in complete chaos."

"Sergeant Vrataski, because of the abnormal signal band on your body, you are the only person capable of handling the spacetime anomaly. The terror robot squad of the Scientific Defense Corps and the gathering brute army will temporarily transfer command authority to you. Please eliminate the spacetime anomaly point as quickly as possible, or humanity is finished..."

The signal twisted a few times on the screen, then cut off entirely.

The heroine was startled and called out several times, but the screen gave no response.

At last the screen vanished. A scanning beam shot from the terror robot, and a mechanical voice said, "Identity confirmed. Rita Vrataski, sergeant. Temporary management authority granted. Hello, Sergeant. This is the location of the spacetime anomaly point. Please issue your orders."

A map was projected in the air. The red-marked location was exactly the frontline, where the barracks representing the Wolf Fang Squad stood.

The heroine narrowed her eyes. After a few seconds of thought, she ordered, "Enter standby mode."

The terror robots immediately withdrew. Their eight sharp claws folded away, and they disguised themselves as plain, unremarkable metal spheres, lined up neatly in a row.

Like ordinary roadblocks left on a street, no one would look at them twice. Who could have guessed that these were the terror robots that killed without leaving a trace?

Gao Ning had played his part well, and his plan was excellent.

The appearance of the terror robots, together with the objective existence of the brute army, provided powerful evidence for the lie he had woven.

He was not afraid that the heroine would be careless. Once she set out to verify these facts, she would fall into the trap he had carefully laid.

But there was one thing Gao Ning had forgotten.

As someone with high-level authority, the heroine had permission to access all rookie records.

When she entered Gao Ning's appearance into the search system, what came up clearly showed the identity of a new recruit who had recently entered the camp.

The heroine was somewhat puzzled and continued investigating.

Sure enough, she discovered that, just as that man had said, the so-called Scientific Defense Corps did not exist at all.

News about bioweapons flew everywhere, but most of it was rumor. No one had ever truly seen what a bioweapon looked like.

Reports about monster rampages and the frontline also piled up one after another.

People in the rear enjoyed the safety of their environment, supplied materials and weapons, and yet still had the leisure to worry themselves sick about whether the tactics used by the soldiers at the front were right or wrong.

But these were only data stored in advance. During wartime, communications were severed, and the network could not connect in real time.

Even so, the heroine had found part of what she was looking for.

After some thought, she decided once again to go find the mechanic.

At the same time, she sent one of her subordinates to the rookie camp to verify Gao Ning's existence.

Fortunately, Gao Ning had long been prepared. Faced with the sudden inquiry, he answered without the slightest hesitation.

In truth, he had not lied. During this period, he had been undergoing training in the camp while remotely operating the gene mutation device to expand the brute army.

That recording had also been prepared in advance, merely disguised as a real communication broadcast.

Gao Ning was confident that no matter how the heroine investigated, everything would ultimately lead back to the brute army. Once she saw an army numbering in the hundreds of thousands, she would believe in the existence of the Scientific Defense Corps and then go on to destroy the spacetime mutation node.

As for the two members of the Wolf Fang Squad, they had also been unusually quiet these days.

After every world restart, they would dive underground at the first possible moment.

Not to capture monsters and create werewolves.

Without the protection of the Red Alert interface, no matter how many werewolves they knew of, those werewolves would vanish when the world restarted.

All that effort would be wasted.

So the two of them simply hid themselves and trained separately.

After all, they were both capable men, each with his own specialty. Spending some time to become familiar with their abilities would bring at least a little improvement.

But compared with Gao Ning's brute army, it was hardly worth mentioning.

No one knew what answer the mechanic had given. After exchanging a few words, the two of them drove straight out of the barracks and headed for the rookie camp.

It seemed that after more than a hundred failures, the stubborn heroine had finally grown somewhat discouraged.

No matter what, the apparatus at the frontline command center could not be brought out, and the repeated deaths and rebirths had even caused problems with spacetime itself.

Whether true or false, caution was still the better course.

The heroine felt she needed to go and verify it for herself.