Volume 5: Bottomless Sinkhole Chapter 255 Dead End
Countless "worker ants" continued to pour into the fortress. The corpses under the wall had piled up almost to the same level as the top of the wall. The subsequent armored beasts rushed up directly stepping on the corpses of their own kind and began to slaughter the ordinary infantry standing on the top of the wall.
"Light infantry, retreat! Armored troops, move forward, concentrate the directional mines and explosives, and clean up the corpses of those insects!" Hound commanded the troops loudly. A dozen soldiers in power armor quickly ran behind the wall. The thrusters behind them sprayed out hot tail flames. They jumped onto the wall with a light leap, and started the heavy chain saws in their hands, swinging them vigorously among a group of "worker ants".
Ke Lan noticed that these dozen armored soldiers were definitely not the "fresh troops" under the Hound. The armor on their bodies was stained with a large amount of blue fluorescent blood unique to the armored beasts, and the surface was covered with scratches of varying depths. Several of the armors were so damaged that they no longer had even the most basic protective function. The wearers' vital parts in the chest and abdomen were completely exposed, and they looked no different from a powered exoskeleton made of discarded parts.
These people must have just retreated from the front line where the fighting was extremely fierce - they only rested for a while in the rear and replenished their ammunition and fuel. They didn't even have time to repair their damaged armor before they were thrown into the battle again.
The Hound has few cards left in his hand. His troops, ammunition and energy are all in jeopardy. The entire fortress may be swallowed up by this group of armored beasts at any time.
What's more, as long as the energy of the protective shield above their heads is exhausted, there is no need for the "worker ant" armored beasts to tear open the defense line. The plasma ball projected from a long distance by the "soldier ant class" alone can easily wipe out these hundreds of people.
At this moment, two military transport planes suddenly flew over from a distance, but for some reason, after seeing the two transport planes, Hound grabbed the communicator and shouted at them to "Turn around! Turn around quickly! Turn the rudder all the way to the right!"
The next second, a ball of fully charged plasma spurted out from the mouth of a "soldier ant-level" armored beast, drew a nearly straight arc in the air, and accurately hit one of the two transport planes.
The other plane made an emergency evasive maneuver in mid-air, barely avoiding the aftermath of its companion's explosion. It was the hound's cry that alerted the other transport plane in time, thus avoiding the fate of both planes crashing. Ke Lan was a little puzzled for a moment. Could it be that this guy not only has a very sensitive sense of smell, but also has such good eyesight? Even Ke Lan, who was in a God's perspective, did not notice that a "soldier ant-level" armored beast secretly raised its head and aimed at the transport plane in the distance. Why did the hound in the fortress see it? At his angle, his vision should be blocked...
But Ke Lan couldn't control this dream. He couldn't replay the scene to check for the missed details, so he had to give up.
The remaining transport plane finally passed through the hole in the protective shield safely and landed in the fortress.
"How much supplies did you bring? How many ammunition and crystals are there on the plane? Medical supplies?" Hound walked quickly to the transport plane and asked while clinging to the cabin door.
"No... In order to get to the battlefield as quickly as possible, we didn't carry any supplies." The soldier on the plane said to the Hound.
"Fuck! Didn't I tell you to bring more ammunition and crystals! Didn't you hear me? I told you so many times , so many times!" The Hound punched the hatch hard, making a dull "bang" sound.
"But the order we received is to protect your safety, Colonel. Please board the plane immediately--"
"Board the plane?! Board your fucking plane! I'm not leaving! If you urge me again, I'll kill you!" After saying this, Hound turned to the guards beside him and said, "Have someone carry all the wounded over and put them on the plane. The seriously wounded who can't fight will be given priority!"
Soon, dozens of seriously injured people lying on simple stretchers were carried onto the plane. In addition, a large number of metal dog tags stained with blood and even minced meat were also handed over to the crew.
"Tell the pilot not to fly back immediately after takeoff, but to make a detour to the left first. There are the least 'Soldier Ants' over there. Adjust the direction after you have moved to a safe distance. Remember, turn left first!" At the last second before the cabin door closed, Hound said to the crew with a serious face.
With the dull roar of the vertical thrusters, the transport plane began to slowly rise to mid-air, and then the thruster nozzle began to turn right, turning the direction of the nose to the left...
It was unknown whether it was because it was loaded with wounded soldiers or because the aircraft was damaged in the explosion, but the transport plane was much slower than when it came. Just as it flew away from the fortress, it collided head-on with a ball of plasma that was coming at it at high speed.
"boom!!!"
"Fuck it!" The Hound grabbed the military cap off his head and threw it to the ground.
…
Ke Lan knew that according to the original plot, Hound himself would not die... But it was estimated that few of his soldiers would be able to return to the Ark alive... Rather than waiting for a slow death, it would be better to concentrate the troops and rush to the weakest point of the encirclement. Maybe a miracle would happen...
“If only I could communicate with the Hound… Even if I can’t help him break this deadlock, at least I have to let him know that all this is just a dream…” Just as Ke Lan was thinking this, his perspective suddenly changed… He looked around and suddenly found that he had “traveled” to the body of a soldier, and a personal guard of the Hound!
What is this? Possession? Consciousness invasion?
"… Could it be that this dream world really has a structure similar to a computer program? As an outsider, I only have 'read-only' permissions, but when I assimilate myself into a part of the dream, I can gain the ability to interfere with this dream?"
Ke Lan looked up and saw the hound throwing a tantrum not far away. He thought that if he directly intervened with "violent means", there might be some bad consequences - it would be like waking up a sleepwalker, he might enter a short state of mental confusion, and this dream world was much more real than an ordinary nightmare. Ke Lan couldn't guarantee that directly "waking up" the hound would not lead to some unpredictable consequences.
It would be better to follow the development of the dream and find a way to help the hound get out of this predicament. Maybe the hound will wake up on its own... If that doesn't work, then use brute force to crack it -
"Colonel, if it really doesn't work, let's find a way to break out." Ke Lan turned around and spoke to the hound as a "personal guard."
But what he didn't expect was that the hound, who was just in a state of rage, suddenly became a different person. He grabbed his arm, his face livid, and asked in a deep voice, "Who are you?"
"I... I am..." Ke Lan subconsciously lowered her head to look at the dog tag hanging around her neck, but the hound reached out first and pulled the dog tag off.
He used so much force that the edge of the metal dog tag even cut the skin on his palm, but the hound seemed to feel no pain at all.
"Answer my question," the Hound spoke again.
"Colonel, those bugs are about to break through our defense line..."
"That's not important. I just want to know who you are... or what are you?" The Hound pulled out a pistol and pointed it at Ke Lan's head. "You are not Gates. Gates would not talk to me like this... and he would not say such a thing to me at this time."
The Hound's words were filled with hatred and murderous intent without disguising: "So, tell me, who exactly are you... and why did you appear in my dream?"
"You...you know this is a dream? You were awake?!" Ke Lan looked at the hound in surprise. Although the hound did not answer immediately, Ke Lan already knew the answer from the hound's eyes.
"...Of course I know...Although I have been troubled by this nightmare for more than ten years, it is also because of this that I know every detail of this dream clearly. I know what each character will say and do at what time...And you, you are as conspicuous as a drop of black ink splashed on white paper...It's really too abrupt."
"I'm Ke Lan."
"What did you say?"
"Whether you believe it or not, I am Ke Lan!" Ke Lan met the hound's gaze and looked at him.
"I don't believe it." The Hound shook his head vigorously, but let go of his hand. "Reason tells me that Ke Lan can't be here, but reason also tells me that in a dream, reason is bullshit!"
“No matter if you are Ke Lan or something else, I will just fucking treat you as Ke Lan.” The Hound said, spitting on the ground, “Pah—it’s just a dream anyway, the worst that can happen is I will go crazy… Maybe, if I died here with those little bastards, it would be a relief.”
Ke Lan: “…”
"Okay, let's pretend you are Ke Lan. Tell me how you got into my dream." The Hound turned around and took out two bottles of soda from a supply box nearby. He knocked the bottle mouths on the edge of the box, and the bottle caps flew out.
He handed one of the bottles of soda to Ke Lan and said, "Alcoholic beverages are prohibited during the march. This is the only thing we have. Just drink it."
Ke Lan looked at the soda bottle in his hand. There were still a few spots of blood that had already solidified on the bottle, and bubbles were coming out of the dark brown liquid. He had just raised the bottle when a piece of steel fragment that came from nowhere brushed past his arm armor and smashed the soda bottle in his hand into pieces.
"What a pity, this is the last bottle." The Hound said calmly. The fragment was less than 20 centimeters away from him and almost cut his throat.
Not far away, a dozen "worker ants" rushed forward and knocked over a soldier who was completely exhausted. Countless sharp limbs pierced into the gaps in the power armor, tearing and chopping the soldier's body...
The hound, on the other hand, pretended not to see anything, tilted its head back and drank the soda from the bottle in big gulps.
Ke Lan glanced at the upper half of the soda bottle left in his hand, threw it aside helplessly, and roughly described what he had encountered in the dream world.
"It seems that our situations are similar. The only difference is that you can control your dreams at will, but I can't." The Hound threw the empty bottle out of the wall. "If I could, I would really like to conjure up a fleet and crush these bugs."
"But, since you knew this was a dream, why just now... you looked like you were completely immersed in it?" Ke Lan asked the doubts in his heart.
"I just...sigh." The Hound sighed, "I just wanted to try to see if I could change the outcome of that day, even if it was just in my dream...I wanted to know if there was a better battle plan, one that could allow more people to return alive...even if it was just one more person..."
He squatted down, looked at the gradually collapsing defense line and said, "I treated this nightmare as a sandbox, simulating the battle of that day over and over again... But in the end I found that I couldn't change anything... Even in my dreams, I couldn't change anything..."
The Hound's tone was extremely frustrated, and he clenched his fists so tightly that his nails cut into the flesh of his palms.
"Things have already happened . Even if you kill all these armored beasts in your dream, the dead won't come back." Ke Lan said, "It's better to think about how to get out of this dream world... This is the most urgent task."
"Didn't you say that you can control your dreams at will? What? Are you trapped in it too?" The hound raised his head and looked at Ke Lan in the image of Gates with some confusion.
"I forgot to tell you that I can do everything in my dream, except two things - one is to find anything related to you, and the other is to wake up completely from this dream."
"I'm clearly conscious, but I just can't get rid of this nightmare... It seems that those crazy relic hunters are experiencing the same thing as us." The Hound said, "But why did you come into my dream? Just because you... 'thought about it'?"
"I'm not sure either. I guess it's probably because of a mental attack that connected our dream worlds together... It's also for this reason that in my own dreams, everything related to you can't exist. I think, in your dreams, things related to me can't appear either..."
"Then you are now... That's right, you are Gates now, not Ke Lan..."
"However, on the other hand, following this clue, I have deduced two pieces of news, one good news and one bad news."
"Don't make me choose which one to listen to first, just say them all at once." The Hound waved his hand.
"The good news is that everyone except us should still be alive. The bad news is... we in the real world are probably trapped in this S-level ruins right now."
