I summoned the Fourth Scourge in Warhammer

Chapter 42 Let the flames purify everything!
At the forefront of the suicide squad, a small, disheveled group of cultists fled for their lives, with the players in hot pursuit. These cultists were clearly not elite; aside from leaving behind a few corpses struck by lasers, they put up almost no effective resistance. Their sole purpose seemed to be to escape even deeper into this dark and complex tunnel.

Just when they were about to wipe them all out, the cultists suddenly turned into an inconspicuous side passage.

"Keep up! Don't let them get away!" JK roared, leading the other players in without hesitation.

However, the moment they stepped into the passage, everyone froze.

"Holy crap? What's going on? Is there a rendering bug?"

The scene before the players was utterly unbelievable—the entire passageway, from top to bottom and left to right, was covered in the bright white, a hallmark of the enemy/ally identification system. At a glance, this tunnel, which should have been dark and gloomy, was now a blinding white, as if the entire space had been identified as a "hostile target." No wonder the player blurted out that he suspected a bug in the game engine's rendering.

Meanwhile, JK, who was also walking at the front, narrowed his eyes. After observing carefully for a moment, he said in a deep voice, "No, look closely, the four walls are covered with mushrooms."

"Mushrooms?" a player repeated in confusion, "Mushrooms are enemies too?"

As he spoke, he raised his laser gun and fired a shot at the nearest wall. The cluster of mushrooms hit by the high-energy beam carbonized and lost its vitality due to the instantaneous high temperature. At the same time, a small portion of the white area representing friend or foe in the player's field of vision disappeared.

However, this small patch of extinguished white light, compared to the vast area covering the entire tunnel, is as insignificant as a mayfly compared to the bright moon.

Obviously, it's impossible to clean it up completely by using laser guns to clear it one shot at a time.

“Those cultists are hiding inside; we have to go in.” One player stepped forward, chest puffed out. “I’ll go in first and scout ahead.”

With that, relying on his ability to resurrect infinitely, he strode into the eerie "mushroom passage".

As a result, he had only taken a couple of steps inside when his behavior began to turn strange. He started swaying from side to side, and without warning, he fired his laser gun at the empty wall, shouting, "I see it! It's over there!"

Seeing that something was wrong, the girl in the high school outside the passage immediately shouted, "Hey! Are you alright? What are you hitting?"

He could definitely hear them at that distance, but the player seemed to be hallucinating, ignoring his teammates' calls and continuing to stagger forward, firing wildly. Just then, from behind a thicket of mushrooms, a cultist suddenly sprang out, his rusty machete flashing across the player's neck with lightning speed, taking advantage of the player's momentum.

The player's body stiffened, and then, like a puppet with its strings cut, he collapsed to the ground and fell asleep on the spot.

The players who hadn't gone in exchanged bewildered glances, instantly realizing the danger lurking within.

"Young people sleep so well," someone couldn't help but remark.

"So it was hallucinogenic spores... Those cultists were lying in ambush inside, waiting for us to inhale the spores and experience hallucinations before launching a sneak attack."

"How long will it take us to deal with this?"

"How about... we just rely on dying and resetting our status to tough it out?" "But what about our company commander? The company commander can't die!"

This problem stumped everyone. They could force their way through using the resurrection mechanism, but Ruan Wenbo couldn't. This path had to be cleared.

Just when everyone was at a loss, a player squeezed out from the middle of the line and let out a hearty laugh: "Haha, it's my turn to step in!"

Everyone looked in the direction of the sound and saw that the guy was wearing a heavy full-body protective suit and holding a huge weapon that was integrated with the suit's power system - a promethium flamethrower.

It turns out that this guy was immediately drawn to the impressive flamethrower suit in the shop when he first entered the game. Perhaps because the flamethrower could be operated by only one person, albeit with some inconvenience, the developers lowered its usage restrictions to the level of ordinary soldiers, allowing individual players to use it. So, this player saved up all his merit points, just to buy this dream set of equipment.

As it turned out, he only realized after buying it that it was a complete rip-off.

First, by the time he bought the equipment, the siege of the chemical refinery was long over. This meant he completely missed the defensive battles and secondary assaults that were best suited for the flamethrower, and instead had to fight rapid assaults that required mobility while wearing this incredibly heavy flamethrower suit. After several charges, let alone achieving any merit, just keeping up with the main force was already a result of his utmost effort.

He had originally thought that once the chemical refinery was captured, the promethium fuel would be produced in abundance. However, this mission turned out to be a long-distance rescue and escort mission far from the front lines, which meant they had no logistical support. Normal players using laser guns and melee weapons were fine, but he was in a terrible predicament—every drop of fuel in the promethium fuel tank had to be replenished with his own merit points.

But now, he has finally found the perfect scene for himself—a place with narrow passages, dense enemy forces, and the need to clear environmental threats over a large area. Isn't this the perfect stage for a heavily armored flamethrower soldier like him?

All those frustrating experiences from the past seemed to find their answer at this moment. It's clear the official reason for putting this equipment in the system shop: there are no useless weapons, only useless operators!
So he pulled the trigger without hesitation.

"call--!!!!"

A viscous, orange-red fire dragon roared, breaking free from its shackles and instantly engulfing everything in sight. Nearly a hundred meters long, its scorching breath brutally filled the entire tunnel. The sizzling sounds of burning, the crackling of the air being scorched, mingled with the mournful howls of those hidden in the mushroom bushes, burning from the flames, creating a raging symphony of destruction.

On his control panel, the white markers representing enemies melted away rapidly like snow under the scorching sun, and the system kill notifications kept ringing in his ears. The crisp sound was like the most beautiful symphony in the world.

The player felt that everything he had suffered was worth it.

All the frustration of lagging behind and eating dust because you couldn't keep up with the main group, the heartache of watching your hard-earned merits turn into fuel like flowing water, and the tense looks from your teammates... all vanished in the raging flames at this moment!

He straightened his back, which had become slightly hunched from carrying heavy loads for a long time, and an unprecedented sense of satisfaction and power filled his entire body. The expression hidden under the full-face helmet gradually became arrogant.

"Ha ha ha ha! Let the flames purify everything!"

He let out a long-suppressed maniacal laugh, took a step forward, and the flamethrower in his hand once again spewed out angry tongues of fire, turning this passage, which bred filth and illusions, into a scorching furnace leading to hell.

(End of this chapter)