Chapter 44: Cleaning the Battlefield
Your reaction is quick, but hidden dangers are harder to guard against.
Sianweistan is not a panacea. After learning from a previous loss to this type of prosthetic with the Tiger Claw Gang, Lin Miao has become especially cautious. He doesn't want to end up failing in an unexpected situation, having his chicken stolen by someone using Sianweistan.
So even though the front line was in the heat of battle, he only fired from the second floor, hidden.
When Tariq finally couldn't hold back and charged out, the battle came to an end.
The death of the commander and overseer made the morale that the Night Wanderers had just mustered crumble completely. Without anyone holding them back, they started fleeing in their vehicles one after another. The shift from disadvantage to rout was almost instantaneous.
It's no wonder they were so fearful. Have you seen anyone dare to stick their head out under machine gun fire to shoot back at you?
Have you seen someone who, even after half their body was blown apart, laughed while trying to bring you down with them with explosives?
There was even one guy whose forehead was slashed by shrapnel, scalp flying, yet he was still there smiling as he exchanged fire with you.
These corporate dogs average four people per team, fearless, covering each other, performing alternating shots, and trusting their comrades unconditionally. It's as if they've fought countless battles together before, their coordinated combat effectiveness way better than the chaotic Night Wanderers.
The defeat was like a landslide. Had the Night Wanderers stubbornly resisted, they might have inflicted greater casualties on the players, but their choice to flee resulted in them being ruthlessly attacked by the pursuing players, causing severe casualties, trampling, and collision.
In the end, only a field of corpses and wounded were left. Very few managed to actually escape.
Of course, even if they had chosen to fight to the death rather than flee, it wouldn't have mattered. Each player was equipped with Semtine explosives, though some hadn't made remote detonators yet, requiring manual detonation.
Everyone here is like a mad Ivan.
"Awesome! So awesome!"
Water Moon Cave Heaven burst out of a collapsed cover, cheering with his gun raised high. This was his first battle, and it turned out like this—intense and exhilarating, fully immersive!
The experience was way more intense than Superdream combat.
"Wildman and Natural Curl died terribly. I thought I was done for. So close. Luckily I was at the back and didn't run into the BOSS."
Egyptian Beauty still felt a lingering fear. Just moments ago, Tariq's swift actions were terrifying, taking out two veteran players with two shots. They were just enjoying an undisturbed assault, but then it felt like the next second they would become cannon fodder.
Water Moon Cave Heaven: "It couldn't be a BOSS, right? Our boss took it down with one shot to the head. I think it must be an elite monster."
"What elite monster." A bighead, having lost a leg to an explosion, hobbled out with Potato's support, "You don't know our boss's combat power. These small fry BOSSes are no challenge at all. Don't gauge our boss's strength with your limited mindset."
For the bighead, flattering people seemed second nature. He knew no shame.
"I tell you, this BOSS is at most level 10. Our BOSS starts at level 20, okay? I could take down ten....."
"Ahem....."
He talked such a big game that even Lin Miao, who had reached the front line, couldn't take it. He's still quite a bit away from level 20.
"Stop with the nonsense. First, count our casualties, see how many of our people died, tend to the severely injured first, and then round up the surviving Night Wanderers. The matter of splitting up the spoils can wait."
Even though without checking, Lin Miao already knew that the current situation was 8 dead, 4 heavily injured, and 6 lightly injured. Everyone except Pandora had wounds.
But procedures must still be followed.
After sending the critically injured players to the transformation pod, they started tallying the battle results. In this battle alone, 32 Night Wanderers were killed, leaving 9 injured, and seven or eight managed to escape.
The gains could only be called average.
As time goes on, the value of guns, ammunition, and low-grade prosthetics will sharply decrease. Lin Miao even designed a prosthetic recycling price fluctuation line for this. When the number of prosthetics of the same part and level exceeds 50% of the current number of players, both purchase and sale prices will start to decrease synchronously. When the number exceeds 200%, it will trigger a circuit breaker, with prices dropping to as low as one-fifth of the original.
Admittedly, when stock reserves are insufficient, shop prices will increase accordingly, up to 200%.
The price of ammunition has also changed from one euro per round to five rounds per euro, gradually nearing market prices. Only firearms maintain a relatively high original price.
This is mainly because firearms can be considered hard currency. If there's an excess, Lin Miao can sell them on the black market or dump them at Wanderer tribes.
Future equipment prices will also be adjusted based on this algorithm, with W actively controlling them.
The only issue is that there are just too many models of these firearms, resulting in a large variety of ammunition, like a thousand-country brand.
The logistics department is sure to suffer in the coming period.
Rising from the ground, Bunhead was a bit perplexed and dizzy, with a constant ringing in her ears.
She shakily got up, looking at the charred, burning battlefield in front of her. The sounds of fire burning and the cries of wounded Night Wanderers filled her ears, along with the two corpses wearing the exoskeletons she made. However, both of their heads were blown off by a shotgun, making it hard to identify the deceased by anything other than the exoskeleton model.
Bunhead knelt among them, her gaze filled with bewilderment and helplessness, the joy of firing a machine gun previously now completely vanished.
She reached out to nudge the bodies but got no response, her lips trembling... "Are they both... dead?"