Above the Blood Moon

The blood moon still hangs high in the sky.

Jockley held the Orion laser rifle he had bought a few days earlier, leaning against a bunker made of electronic waste.

He was wearing sunglasses, his eyes closed, as if he were asleep, if it weren't for the silver neural interface behind his right ear that was faintly glowing blue.

"Big Yellow, how much longer until we reach our target?"

"Based on their previous movement speed, they are expected to enter our field of vision in three minutes."

Dahuang's voice rang directly in his mind, with a slightly artificial, hoarse tone.

"Master, are you really not going to open your eyes and take a look? The scenery here is quite unique."

Jockley imagined what Big Yellow looked like at this moment. Its body, pieced together from prosthetics from different sources, should be lurking somewhere beneath the waste mountain.

The gears of time kept turning, and it was now six days after the mine owner's task was completed.

Six days ago, after receiving his payment, Jockley redeemed the mortgaged organs from the secondhand shop owner and used the remaining money to buy a new body for Big Yellow.

The Shadow Warrior's exoskeleton frame is the main body, and the two mechanical legs are prosthetics taken from different corpses, and they are not the same model.

The yellow dog walks with slight incoordination, but its AI core uses algorithms to compensate for this, allowing the body to run and jump.

The core fusion energy source is second-hand, and its range is only 70% of the original, but it's still sufficient.

The combat chip is relatively new; it's a Hound-III tactical support chip that Atlantis somehow acquired, although it's the most basic model.

So Jockley returned the combat chips he'd gotten from Huang Shuangyan at a 70% discount, and also deducted a significant portion of the collateral he'd given Huang Shuangyan for a cybernetic body he'd scavenged from the wilderness.

Therefore, with only 30 Covenant Credits left, she reduced the amount of explosives in the bomb collar around Jockley's neck by a large margin.

At least if he had been prepared, he might have survived the bomb explosion.

Jockley secretly harbored the wicked thought of delaying payment.

"Why are you opening your eyes? You're watching for me anyway."

"You're abusing AI."

Big Yellow protested.

"According to Tayara's terms of service, AI employees have the right..."

"I have the right to shut it down and put it into hibernation when I can't afford the electricity bill," Jockley interrupted. "Stop talking nonsense and keep a close eye on it."

Just then, a slight mechanical whirring sound came from below, and Jockley opened his eyes.

Through the lenses of his sunglasses, he saw Big Yellow rapidly climbing the pile of scrap metal with its two uncoordinated mechanical legs; the guy was climbing quite nimbly.

"Why wear sunglasses during the day to look cool?"

A mechanical arm reached out and directly removed Jockley's sunglasses. A blinding red light instantly flooded his vision; the light of the blood moon always carried a viscous texture.

Jockley squinted at the pieced-together body before him.

"Hehe," Jockley grinned, reaching out to snatch back his sunglasses, "You think you're all grown up now? I shouldn't have put your body all together."

Big Yellow deftly took a half step back, its mechanical fingers twirling the sunglasses.

"Master, your eyes are bloodshot. Didn't you sleep again last night?"

"I slept for four hours," Jockley rubbed his eyes. "When have I ever had enough sleep in the past six days?"

That's the truth. Ever since he took over this new task from At, Jockley hasn't had a proper rest.

The objective of this mission is to hunt down a group of seven people who work as both scavengers and gangsters. Jockley doesn't need to know who the employer is or who the target is; he just needs to take pictures of their heads.

These days, he spends his days surveying the terrain, setting traps, and familiarizing himself with his newly acquired rifle, while at night he meditates repeatedly to maintain his superpowered state.

He dared not relax, because the bomb collar around Huang Shuangyan's neck was due to expire in a day, and he still had to pay 30 Star Alliance coins. These days, it's hard to be a deadbeat.

"They're here."

Big Yellow suddenly lowered its voice, and although it was through a neural connection, Jockley could sense the change in tone.

"There are about seven people about 200 meters ahead. They are moving at a moderate speed and their formation is loose but they are maintaining vigilance."

Jockley immediately dropped his joking expression. He took the sunglasses, put them back on, grabbed the rifle, and crawled to the edge of cover.

Below is a narrow path sandwiched between two mountains of waste.

This road is a shortcut often used by scavengers, connecting several small settlements on the outskirts of Forgotten City with the main waste dumping area. The road surface is uneven and littered with rusty metal fragments and solidified chunks of some kind of gelatinous waste.

Under the light of the blood moon, everything glowed with a dark red hue.

"Master, you should activate your special ability first."

Jockley nodded, closed his eyes, and began meditating, taking a deep breath and focusing his attention on the space between his eyebrows.

For six whole days, he never stopped activating his superpowers, forcing himself to activate them several times each day.

At first, he forced himself to get used to the feeling of expanded perception, but later he found that this ability was really too useful.

As a Level 1 Support-type ability user, Jockley has two abilities.

First, he can sense the heat source of all living things within a range of about 100 meters. He can distinguish the temperature distribution of the human body and even the slight changes in body temperature caused by emotional fluctuations.

The priest said this was "Heat Source Perception," a basic ability of Level 1 Support-type Ability Users. Any Level 1 Support-type Ability User could use this ability.

Secondly, he and Da Huang discovered it by chance three days ago when they went to the black market to buy a prosthetic left leg.

That day, they encountered a group of scavengers who wanted to double-cross them. There were five of them, all carrying rudimentary weapons. At the time, Jockley only had a dagger, and Huang Shuangyan had given her rifle to repair. Huang's mechanical arm was not yet installed, which greatly reduced his combat effectiveness.

In a life-or-death situation, under extreme tension, Jockley unintentionally reduced his supernatural perception to its limit.

Then he suddenly sensed the location of the nerve interface at the back of the neck of the man running towards him with a knife. Almost instinctively, Jockley swung his dagger and precisely stabbed it into the gap of the interface at the back of the neck.

One fatal blow.

The priest later explained that this might be a variant of the ability to sense weaknesses, using supernatural abilities to scan the target's physiological and mechanical structure to find the most vulnerable parts.

But Jockley felt it was more than that, because in that instant he could even sense the flow of energy within the other person's body, so he named this ability "Weakness Perception".

However, this ability is extremely taxing; using it once will leave him feeling dizzy and disoriented for half a day.

"Focus," Jockley silently repeated to himself.

The burning sensation between his eyebrows gradually spread, flowing through his body like warm water. He could sense all the heat sources within a radius of one hundred meters centered on himself.

Hidden in the waste pile were several radiation-mutated rats. In the distance, an abandoned generator was still running weakly. Further in the sky, the blood moon itself had no temperature, but the light it cast seemed to carry some kind of energy field, appearing as a hazy dark red background in the perception of supernatural abilities.

Then there were those seven people.

Seven bright red, humanoid heat sources are slowly moving along the path.

The one in the middle of the group of seven was the most unusual. His right arm was extremely hot, as if it had some kind of high-powered device installed, while his left eye was completely cold, probably a prosthetic eye.

The person walking in the middle was carrying a package. The package itself was cold, but the contents of the package made Jockley frown.

In my perception, that thing appeared as a strange low-temperature heat source, a contradictory state of being extremely cold yet still emitting weak heat radiation.

"Boss, that woman among the scavengers we raided the other day was really hot, especially with her husband right there. Tsk tsk, I still can't forget that feeling."

Jockley's fingers tightened slightly.

"Shut up, you idiots." The man called the boss lowered his voice. "This path is lined with piles of waste on both sides. It's too easy to ambush someone. Be on your guard."

"Boss, you're being too cautious," another man laughed. "This place is the middle of nowhere, who would be here? We've walked this road countless times."

"Shut up when I tell you to!" The gang leader kicked the man. "Hey, Indian, go up and check out the route."

One of the heat sources broke away from the group and jogged forward to explore the way.

Chokley held his breath. The trap he and Big Yellow had set up was fifty meters ahead. Ten ordinary landmines were buried in a fan shape, with a "shattering" type trigger mine hidden in the middle.

These landmines are outdated products from the company's security system. They are not very powerful, but they have a wide fragmentation range, making them suitable for dealing with unarmored targets.

Of course, these things weren't cheap either, costing a full eighteen Star Alliance coins, which Ate had paid for in advance. Jokeri didn't want to incur another debt after paying off one, so he took this mission very seriously.

Ah San walked forward cautiously, each step firm and deliberate. He reached the edge of the trap zone, crouched down, and poked the ground with a metal rod. Jockley's heart began to race.

But the Indian man just poked at it a few times, then stood up and turned around to shout.

"Boss, no problem! Safe!"

"Are you sure?" the gang leader asked.

"Confirmed! There's not even a mouse hole!"

The gang leader then waved his hand and led the rest of his men over. Jockley deactivated his superpowers, reopened his eyes, and looked down through the scope of his rifle.

The seven people gradually entered the trap zone.

The gang leader walked in the middle, clutching the package tightly in his arms. He was flanked by two guards, with three more following behind. Although the formation was loose, the distance between them was about two meters. It wasn't too dense, but it was still within the effective killing range of the shrapnel mines.

Jockley adjusted his breathing and aimed the crosshair at a point on the ground.

"Rhubarb," he whispered through the neural link, "get ready."

"Ready in position."

When the seven men had fully entered the trap zone, the gang leader seemed to sense something. He suddenly stopped and looked around, his prosthetic eye flashing a faint red light, as if scanning the environment.

Without further hesitation, Jockley swiftly pulled the trigger.

"Bang!"

Gunshots echoed through the wasteland, bullets striking the ground and hitting the trigger precisely.

next second.

"boom--!!!"

The fragmentation mine exploded, releasing hundreds of fingernail-sized metal fragments that splattered in spherical shapes in all directions. Immediately afterward, ten pre-buried ordinary mines were triggered by the shockwave and exploded in succession.