novellk Chapter 28 The Last Strength
Chapter 28 The Last Strength
The battle ended faster than expected; the enforcement team, under Lynn's strategy, held out for less than fifteen minutes.
The smoke and pungent smell hadn't dissipated yet, and the players who were like cold-blooded killing machines a second ago seamlessly switched to wasteland scavengers the next.
"Holy crap! Stop fighting over it! I saw this half of the breastplate first!" The little snail pushed aside the whole roasted lamb next to it and hugged a piece of iron plate covered in blood like a protective mother.
"Bullshit! There are clearly my footprints on it!" The whole roasted lamb pounced on it without backing down.
Meanwhile, the agent was making a fortune in silence, squatting in the mud and skillfully pulling the military boots off a corpse's feet.
Not only that, he even took the other person's slightly intact belt.
At the edge of the ruins not far away, Xiaoyu walked around expressionlessly, carrying an iron sword. Whenever the greyhound George growled beside a "corpse," he would not hesitate to plunge the tip of the sword into the gap in the armor, completing the physical finishing blow.
Dozens of indigenous laborers huddled in their shacks, shivering as they watched this scene.
In their worldview, killing was merely a matter of beheading. But these outsiders not only killed, they stripped the corpses down to their underwear. These freaks didn't even spare the blood-stained rags!
Just as the players were about to start fighting amongst themselves over the unequal distribution of spoils, Lynn finally emerged from the shadows.
"Quiet."
Without wasting any words, he issued the order directly in his GM capacity, instructing the old laborer who had eaten his bread to lead a few bolder young workers forward to collect all the spoils they had stripped off and put them into storage.
Although the players were heartbroken, they still obediently handed it over to the highest-ranking NPC in their faction.
The next second, the adventurer emblems on all players' left arms started to move.
That was a reward issued by Lynn through his backend privileges.
"Ding!"
Blue luminous characters appeared on the surface of the emblem:
[Battle completed. You have earned 500 faction contribution points, equivalent to credits.]
Looking at the string of numbers, a few whispers rippled through the players.
"Wasn't this game supposed to be switching to a completely new economic system? This is supposed to be a fairly large-scale campaign, so why are they still giving out virtual credits as rewards?"
"Yeah, what happened to the promised currency system? What's the developers stalling on?"
"Brothers, you're too narrow-minded!"
The climbing snail struck a pose as if it had seen through the truth, instantly transforming into a professional game streamer and launching into hardcore logical reasoning:
"Think about this carefully! What's the main selling point of this game? 100% hardcore realism! We're currently in a remote ruin, and our faction doesn't even have a treasury. How are we going to print physical currency? Mold it out of mud?"
The surrounding players were taken aback: "So you mean...?"
"Physical currency needs a general equivalent as an anchor!" The little snail's eyes lit up as it pointed towards the Upper City. "Bolton, that local tyrant, definitely has a gold mine! If we take over her base and seize all her assets and trade routes, won't the government have enough real money to promote the physical economy? This isn't just a delaying tactic; it's using the worldview to subtly suggest we rob... no, we should attack Bolton!"
"Holy crap, that makes sense!"
"As expected of a hardcore game, it even has a closed-loop logic for transitioning to a market economy!"
"For real money, let's kill Bolton!"
"Dried to death? Which kind?"
Hearing this grand speech from the high steps, Lynn couldn't help but smile.
These players have such amazing imaginations; they've even come up with excuses for promoting physical currency.
The little snail directly transforms the player's greed into the motivation to expand their faction, which is simply perfect.
"GM! One was spared alive, the rest have been killed."
Just as he was devising his next plan, he heard the sound of someone carrying a bucket and running away.
"Bring it up." Lynn snapped out of her thoughts and looked at the center of the open space.
The man carrying the bucket and running away, along with the man stewing in the iron pot, dragged a man who was bound hand and foot and threw him into the mud.
Judging from his attire, this should be the only survivor of the entire enforcement team: the team's adjutant.
The agents just professionally severed his tendons in the chaos of battle, ensuring he was completely incapable of resistance.
He was also lucky; as the only prisoner whose lower body wasn't pierced, the enforcement team's adjutant was spared.
Although his tendons had been severed and his face was deathly pale with pain, the adjutant gritted his teeth and stubbornly endured it: "You lowly commoners... Lord Bolton has countless elite soldiers under his command, you will all die!"
It was that same meaningless trash talk again, and Lynn couldn't even be bothered to respond.
The agent remained silent, dragging over the body of a law enforcement team member from the side and throwing it in front of the adjutant.
Then, he took out a small bottle of highly concentrated waste liquid left over from boiling goose from his waist.
In front of his adjutant, the agent expressionlessly poured the waste liquid onto the corpse's face.
Accompanied by pungent white smoke and a tooth-grinding dissolving sound, the corpse's face instantly turned into a pool of foul-smelling blood, revealing some cheekbones and upper jawbone.
The adjutant's pupils suddenly contracted, and his teeth chattered with fear.
The agent crouched down, looking directly into the adjutant's eyes, his tone extremely rational and ruthless: "Brother, I have extensive experience in this area. Now you only have two choices."
The agent extended two blood-stained fingers.
"First, tell me the truth. If you disappear here today, Bolton will only assume that you were melted down like them, leaving not even ashes. He won't seek revenge on your family, and you can change your identity and live as a laborer in our camp."
"Second," the agent shook the remaining half-bottle of waste liquid in his hand, "if the information you provide is false, or if you refuse to say anything at all, I will dilute this stuff tenfold and drip it onto you drop by drop. I guarantee that for the next forty-eight hours, you will experience what it truly means to be worse than dead."
Seeing the agent's unwavering gaze, the adjutant's psychological defenses completely crumbled.
He wasn't afraid of dying, but he was afraid of being tortured to death by this group of lunatics who had no sense of morality whatsoever.
However, what the madman on the other side said was not wrong. Bolton must have thought that he was dead, and even if he had defected to the enemy, his family would not be in any danger.
"I'll talk! I'll tell you everything!" the adjutant shouted hoarsely. "Bolton is bluffing! She only has about fifty elite soldiers under her command, and thirty of them have been lost here today. She's at her limit! At least for the time being, she definitely won't dare send anyone else down!"
Lynn's eyes sharpened; the intelligence verification was complete.
Bolton's reluctance to act has given Pearl Harbor a precious window of opportunity.
This can not only be used to develop the camp, but also to guard against the real behemoth behind Bolton—the Treasure Island Trade Arbitration Committee.
"Tie him to the pillar and get some herbs to treat his wounds," Lynn ordered.
This serves both as a deterrent to potential spies and as a way to leave players with a trophy to admire.
He then accessed the system backend and precisely sent the edited main quest to the emblem on each player's left arm.
"bite"
All players' emblems simultaneously emitted a faint red glow.
[Large-scale regional interconnected main storyline triggered: The Dawn of Pearl Harbor - The Era of Mega-Infrastructure!]
Objective: Over the next week, utilize all available resources to transform the shipwreck area into an impregnable armed fortress.
[Rewards: Huge amounts of credits, unlocking Bolton's Vault.]
After a brief silence, a deafening celebration erupted from the ruins.
"Long live the Liver King!"
"We have a job coming in! We have a job coming in!"
"My liver is on fire!"
Along with this almost frenzied wave of infrastructure construction, the night wind dispersed the slight acid mist over the shipwreck area and reached the villas in the upper city.