Chapter 48: An accidental ally
Translated by: Chua
Edited by: TN and Elkassar
Faced with Sheyan’s questioning, Mogensha swiftly answered.
“Nothing left. Only 3 Sunken Colonies ahead. I suggest we first deal with the one at the west. That one isn’t covered by the other two. Apart from that, no sighting of flaming beetles. Those things should be concentrated at the other Redliner bases.”
ThHe following events could only be described as breaking a dried twig. More crucially, Reef finally felt a preliminary benefit of working with Sheyan. That was his risk exposure was not greatly reduced. More precisely putting, originally he faced 100% of upfront risk, but now it was shared between two parties into a 50% each pie. This factor would later on be experienced vividly when assaulting the two Sunken Colonies.
Once Reef’s HP dropped beneath 50%, he would instantly retreat out of the attacking range of the Sunken Colony to Mogensha. The two Sunken Colonies would then focus their attention onto Sheyan. When Sheyan’s health was wasted to a relatively severe state, Reef would’ve by then recovered himself with certain medicines and potions; tanking the front once again. This great compatibility immensely enhanced their survivability and ability to avoid sudden mishaps.
After breaking through into the Mother nest, Mogensha took the lead as he mercilessly slaughtered his way into the central region. Bullet clips rolled about as the hardworking drones were condemned into a pool of greenish gruesome death. Because the crystal ore mine had already dried up, the drones weren’t harvesting anymore but merely transporting. They would then then transfer their reserves of Pandora crystals into the digestive pool of the Mother nest, for her to extract its energies. Through a certain method that humans would never understand, the subsidiary base Mother nest would be able to transfer the energies to the main base Mother nest.
After Sheyan and gang had cleared up the enemy’s defence, the ore mine had been completely depleted by the emergency rapid extractions. Yet the reserves stored inside the Mother nest still provided a sense of generous reapings.
After a clean sweep, Sheyan and gang had in total acquired close to 2,800 units of Pandora crystals, 500 units of Vespene gas ores. But a thorny problem occurred. These pandora crystals and Vespene ores weren’t digitized currencies like utility points, they occupied a fixed area! Of course, they could bluntly exchange it to the nightmare realm for utility points, but they would only receive 10,000 utility points; 3 guys sharing that would equate to peanuts. Just solely observing Reef’s thirsting expression would indicate his dying desire for these minerals. Moreover, he had already coughed out 20,000 utility points to help them?
Fortunately, Sheyan had risen to 2nd Lieutenant rank already. His nightmare imprint was vastly expanded, his storing capacity excellently impressive. Although it wasn’t enough to store every single resource, he actually managed to fill up an incredible load of space. The remaining was naturally adequate for Mogensha and Reef to shoulder. Mogensha seemed pretty satisfied, but Reef stared at Sheyan with a look of extreme disbelief.
“What is your current military rank? Don’t tell me you’ve already promoted to a reserve-duty commander ranking? Your personal interspatial area is so huge?”
Sheyan shook his head.
“No, I’m just a 2nd Lieutenant.”
After his sentence was issued, both Mogensha and Reef had their eyes popped open.
“You’re a 2nd Lieutenant!??? Not a reserve-duty 2nd Lieutenant?”
“Yeah?” Sheyan was taken aback. “Is that such a surprise?”
Reef turned around and glanced at Mogensha, earnestly replying.
“Actually, I didn’t really believe you. How could the Metals professor and Fanu, people who possessed incredible aptitude, die in the hands of one Seaman…… but now, I am starting to believe.”
Sheyan then understood afterward. Only a contestant who was promoted to officer ranking without any transacted achievement points, would be able to achieve an official authentic military accolade. Apart from that, once someone uses transacted achievement points to up rank, it would be akin to having a stain imprinted on him. The military acknowledgement would have a ‘reserve-duty’ tag, only allowing one to receive the most basic abilities and privileges.”
Of course, it was possible to remove the damned words ‘reserve-duty’. But the price to pay was relatively costly. Whatever transacted achievement points one purchased to raise their military rank; one would have to wash off those blemished points, and compensate with double that amount of achievement points.
For example, Mogensha was now a reserve-duty Private First Class. His promotion consisted of 10 transacted achievement points. Thus to remove this awful stain, he had to pay double the amount – meaning 20 achievement points. Instead If one was a reserve-duty officer, one had to compensate 3 folds the amount, following this logic. Yet in the end, washing off the stains and reinstatement to the rank would still be incomparable to a legit promotion.
Hearing these words, Sheyan felt deeply moved and joyous. If not for his outrageously fortunate exploration of the ancient goblin kingdom granting him a massive boost of achievement points, how would he be able to promote to a 2nd Lieutenant so quickly? At this moment, Reef suddenly suggested.
“Seaman, I wonder if you have any intentions of forming a party after this world concludes? I heard that an official authentic military rank would possess an innate party ability. Moreover, there should be many other advantages, excelling in every aspect when compared to a reserve-duty party.”
Sheyan laughed.
“I originally hadn’t thought of that yet. But since you’ve put it like this, It really piques my interest.”
The trio then started to wreak havoc in this seemingly defenseless base. Actually describing it as defenseless wasn’t fair, the Mother nest here was still trying her best to spawn out zerglings and hydralisks. But this degree of sporadic reinforcements wasn’t the least bit useful at all. After destroying all the nearby Spore Colonies, Blackthorn mutalisks suddenly swept in after receiving news. 5 other Overlords even transported several squads of zerglings to join the foray. Not even half an hour later, the entire base was a heap of flaming ruins. Moreover, destroying a fully developed base was considered as a pretty excellent feat, hence Sheyan and his gang all received close to a 20,000 reputation points bonus.
At present, the Overlord suddenly received the latest information. For some unknown reason, Overmind Mozi had unexpectedly taken the initiative to declare war. Relying on his aerial superiority, he segregated his arachnid fleet to exert an all round pressure over the Redliner tribe! He even begun mixing in transporting Overlords within his mutalisks to airdrop his arachnid troops, expanding his full force against the Redliner tribe.
In a flash, massive clouds of smoke drifted up from the periphery of the Redliner tribe. Although the Blackthorn main fleet had an overwhelming advantage in terms of hydralisk and zergling quantity, flexibility was relatively lacking. If the entire army were to attack at one go, it would leave an empty void at the back. If something were to cut off connection to the main base, causing them to lose their steady flow of reinforcements; then undoubtedly defeat would come quicker than victory!
“We have to seize this moment.” Sheyan gazed towards the distant sky as he murmured to himself.
Currently, the Redliner tribe main base was roughly several hundreds of kilometres from here. Occasionally, a dark green splendor would rapidly rip apart the horizon, like a multicolored sunset. Following close were 3-4 gigantic clumps of emerald balls catapulting at breakneck speed towards the starry skies; leaving a trace of swirling colorless trajectory spirals following it across the atmosphere.
The glowing balls were at least close to a hundred meters; although it was witnessed from afar, it still carried a tyrannical destructive force!!! Just merely observing it from this safe distance, one could feel that threatening might of the glowing balls sweeping against their faces; causing one to hold their breaths unconsciously.
Reef gazed towards the source of those tyrannical destructive balls, and said.
“That should be from the one of those Spore Colony that the mission entails to eradicate! Shit, we couldn’t really sense its extreme terror back in the transport shuttle, but from the way it looks now, I’m afraid it won’t be such an easy task.”
Sheyan’s expression was also sullenly heavy.
“if I didn’t guess wrongly. The reason Overmind Mozi dares to initiate such a sudden assault, is because he had obtained a formidable ally! That is why he dares to release his full wrath of army in a total frontal collision. This signifies one thing – if we want to destroy those Spore Colonies, they we have to hastily rush back to the Blackthorn tribe. If not, we definitely wouldn’t stand half a chance!”
“A formidable ally?” Mogensha was shocked. “Yeah shit! Who would be willing to help these bugs?”
Sheyan seriously replied.
“Since Overmind Mozi would be willing to cooperate with us and Lieutenant Colonel Dundee representing the Homeland, then why can’t it make alliances with other human powers?”
This train of thought that Sheyan tossed out was like an abruptly detonated explosion, blasting their minds away. Both Mogensha and Reef were slightly dumbfounded, but they couldn’t find any retort against his argument. Sheyan gaze was increasingly deepening as he continued.
“The Blackthorn tribe’s territory occupies that superior abundance of Pandora crystal resources, if not it wouldn’t have become a hot public enemy. Hence, the resource it’s lacking in is not minerals, but time. From their behavior we can infer, it doesn’t really possess a great reverence for the arachnid race’s Blade Empress, but contains a thriving ambition within it.”
“Moreover, there are examples of this. Having established their colonial powers over this planet, they humans here wouldn’t wish for the Homeland to interfere; going by their own would present better benefits. Therefore, it is logical for both parties to chime together easily. The Blackthorn tribe has very possibly paid a relatively exorbitant price of Pandora Crystals and Vespene gas ores to purchase weapons. The humans wouldn’t pose any rejection for this, because of such extravagant alluring economic benefit. Especially when the weapons they loaned would be used solely for an internal stifle between arachnid tribes and not against humans!! They would be able to acclaim their actions as justifiable to the higher ups, and become absolutely unrestrained!”
Reef frowned bewilderedly.
“But this is just your conjecture, there’s not a single proof!!”
Sheyan smiled slyly.
“The evidence…..is very simple……..”