Planet of Sand and Oasis of Iron

Chapter 13 13. Existence is reasonable, even if it seems unreasonable to think about it

Lin Shenxue was feasting there, while Cypher was constantly scanning for threats.

As a result, there was nothing going on, and he couldn't even find the mercenary who fell into the pit with him... Logically speaking, everyone fell down, so it didn't make sense that he would be the only one on the train.

He waited for Lin Shenxue to take a few bites, then opened the beer bottle before asking, "You've been repairing machinery for so long, so you should be able to contact the other people on the bus, right?"

She nodded slightly and said nothing.

"Then can you help me ask if they've encountered any other strange people on the train? Like me, fully armed, carrying strange weapons, and with an attitude unlike the people on this train?"

Lin Shenxue changed her hand to hold the food and wrote on the board for a long time. Then she held the bottle, tilted her head back and started pouring beer into her mouth. Her eating habits were really wild and inconsistent with her quiet and literary appearance.

Of course, it is also possible that the cup was not found.

"It's quite normal for the message to fall on deaf ears after it was sent, because the mechanics' work is very heavy, and it's difficult to communicate unless necessary."

Lin Shenxue drank half a bottle of beer, and her originally pale and sleep-deprived cheeks were slightly flushed. The alcohol took effect quickly.

She lowered her head and ate slowly. Seifer stood at the door and waited for a moment, then suddenly squeezed into the room and looked outside through the window behind the small table.

"I have a question."

He pointed to a spot in the window. "There seems to be a red glow somewhere between the snow-capped mountains and the sky. My scanner isn't far enough, but I can vaguely see it... Is that your pioneering team?"

Hearing him say this, Lin Shenxue frowned slightly. She stuffed her mouth full of food before standing up with the help of the table and looking outside for a while.

Then he sat down, grabbed the bottle and tried hard to wash down the food in his mouth, and wrote down what he wanted to say quickly with his hand.

"That's the trouble you're talking about, the reason this train has to keep running forever. It's a dangerous enemy, a metal monster that emerges from the endless winter."

"If you're looking for companions, head to the front carriage. The armory and the human-machine interaction combat unit are all preparing the attack platform in front."

She tapped the tablet and suddenly handed a metal card to Cypher.

Then she continued to eat, but with her eating efficiency, she probably wouldn't have finished eating by the time Seifer got to the next car.

Nodding slightly, Seifer took the access card and said, "Then I'll go to the front to provide support. Ms. Lin, as long as the defense team here is not defeated, the train will not be threatened, right?"

Lin Shenxue nodded calmly, looking shaky, as if she really intended to leave everything to fate after eating.

She had already done everything she could, and it seemed useless to force her. After all, mechanics were not combatants and did not know how to fight.

Seifer left the room, considerately closing the door for her, and immediately ran to the area she indicated.

However, the attack came sooner than he expected - just as he passed another huge residential area, the sound of such a huge train running and the roar that even the thick walls could not block suddenly reached his ears.

The direction was the one where he had just seen the strange red light. He quickly accelerated and rushed into the next carriage. The first thing that rushed towards him was a freezing wind that could make one's hands and feet stiff.

There was heavy snow that covered people's faces, and above the moving ground of this snowy scene was a ground crew wearing dark uniforms, working very busy.

The roar echoed in my ears. It was the fixed turret on the opened car body. After the train switched from running mode to war fortress mode, it immediately opened fire towards the distance like a fire-breathing hedgehog!

Not only that, what appeared before Safe's eyes were a number of bipedal robots with almost identical shapes, about ten meters tall in the scanner.

Yes, not tracks, nor tires, but two legs, two legs that can be said to be an insult to the concept of weapon structure and armor projection.

Cypher was silent.

He really wanted to turn around and leave, find a quiet place to stay, and wait for the strange phenomenon to dissipate so that he could do what a mercenary should do, instead of watching the bipedal robot fight in a pile of monsters.

If they have the time to build something like this, why not spend that energy on designing a main battle tank or a more advanced fighter jet?
But his past experience in designing weapons made him stop where he was, trying to analyze the meaning of what he saw before him.

The artillery fire from the front and back of the car did not stop. Every loud noise caused a discordant vibration throughout the car, causing the area where the red light gathered in the snow and fog to be severely blown apart.

He was silent for a moment, then suddenly walked over to the person who seemed to be dispatching.

The man's thick cotton coat was covered with frost and snow, and the original color of the dark coat was almost unrecognizable, but the luminous sign in his hand could not be faked.

"Excuse me, how can I help?"

Straightforward, no pretense. The man suddenly turned around and looked at Seifer suspiciously—where did this guy, dressed in glittering silver, taller than him, with a weapon hanging from his back, come from?

He spoke slowly, his voice as rough as he'd imagined. "Another one who bought a weapon and plans to be a hero? Get into a defensive position and be wary of any lumps of metal that approach the carriages."

"It's like hunting. You either let them rip you off the car, or you just beat them up."

The people in this vision seem to trust others unconditionally, perhaps because other than humans, greater threats are simply impossible to communicate with.

Cypher nodded and continued forward on the non-slip metal floor. The cannons seemed to have completed the defense. When some scattered objects approached the vehicle not far away, Cypher finally saw them on the threat scan.

But...what is this?
A small sickle robot? A medium-sized bionic robot crawler?
Running towards the defensive firepower point, Seifer had more questions in his mind - he held the weapon in his hand, checked the ammunition and the charge in the chamber, leaned on the protective plate and looked out, finally seeing those things with his "eyes".

It was a high-speed chasing mechanical creature that was not very similar in shape or category, but was operated by three, four or more legs.

They were rusty and mottled in color, and might have been painted in the past, but that didn't matter. They had complex metal limbs that could move at high speed, and dark red light mist that continuously emanated from pipelines and even from behind metal armor plates.

All of this indicated that once these things were on board, they were definitely not there just to be seen. The sharp weapons folded up above and even under the limbs were definitely there to see blood.

As the distance got closer, Seifer aimed at the mechanical monsters running towards the train body and waited until they were at a suitable distance before shooting. However, he never expected that there were mercenaries who were even more anxious than him.

Several pitch-black objects flew through the air filled with flying snowflakes and smashed into the group of monsters that were rushing in like a stream. The sudden roar and flames engulfed the surrounding objects in an instant.

Those that were a little further out were blown away directly, but they just fluttered around a few times before getting up and rejoining the team to continue moving forward.

The vehicle-mounted close-range artillery also began to fight back. The flames spurting out of the muzzles were like sickles harvesting wheat ears. The mechanical monsters hit by the exploding bullets were either pierced and sent flying, or torn into pieces and scattered all over the ground.

The deafening roar made this continuously running rail train like a mobile fortress, leaving no chance for those things to take advantage.

But... since it's a mechanical monster, there shouldn't be only units that attack at close range and only intend to rush onto the vehicle, right?
Aiming at the mechanical monster that had finally broken through the perimeter, running wildly across the frozen ground and charging at close range, he pulled the trigger.

Unlike the paintball gun-level recoil in the arena, weapons specially made for mercenaries are inherently more powerful.

Cypher pressed it against the protective plate, the gun faithfully spewing flames as he pounded specialized ammunition into the monster's body.

Their metal plates shattered, their structures collapsed, and strange "humming" sounds were heard, causing small explosions, which made the entire attacking group confused and anxious.

But the monsters that came later jumped over the wreckage one after another, and the whole group still maintained the low sound and the rushing, slightly faster than the speed of the train, and continued to get closer.

While changing the magazine, Seifer looked at the train in front of him as the train turned slightly towards the direction where the monster was coming. Under the lead-gray sky, countless fire points were pouring out fire from the dark body of this huge train.

The red lights of the mechanical monsters that were rushing all over the mountains were constantly being eliminated on the sides of their routes, but more monsters continued to rush.

The cannons fired continuously, but as Seifer expected, in the distant "tide" facing the cannons, there were also things that were making long-range attacks on this side.

Those were clusters of dark red light, most of which couldn't hit the train. Seifer thought that at such a long distance, those things were also being blocked by artillery fire, so it would be difficult for them to hit them...

Besides, there are a lot of unreasonable things in the vision. Maybe this car has an energy shield or something.

He was thinking leisurely, and after changing the bullets, he continued to pour fire on the monsters - a ball of red light passed by the edge of his vision, and he immediately turned his head to look over while shooting.

Where several mercenaries had just been heading down to destroy the mechanical monsters, only an irregular, twisted metal pit remained.

The explosion was small, but the impact was huge. At least the mercenaries who were there just now were killed, and their firing points were destroyed as well.

The light corroding the pit slowly dissipated, and Seifer immediately continued to ignore the roar of various cannons around his ears, and continued to shoot at the mechanical monsters in front of him that were trying to climb onto the train and enter the maintenance body.

At this moment, those bipedal robots that he paid special attention to, which were about ten meters tall, were finally no longer iron blocks in the cold winter, and seemed to have finally been completed - the upper part of the back of two of them suddenly gushed out hot air, melting the frost and snow.

The loud roar made all the workers around run away. Cypher didn't have time to see if anyone went up... but they did start.

The huge machine slowly stood up, and its feet, which were made up of complex hydraulic load-bearing devices, held up the body steadily. The weapons that had been folded in the armament area and the external weapons were activated in sequence.

There are quite a lot of deformation areas on the entire device... It looks pretty good, but appearance cannot be used to measure combat effectiveness.

Especially the attack just now made Sefer realize that this vision did not have the legendary "energy protection" system, but only solid armor and structural resistance.

(End of this chapter)