Marvel Magic Case Files

Chapter 1456 Data Wasteland (Second Update)

"We live in a primitive era where killing is for the sake of peace."

Diderot silently recited the words he had heard from the preacher, and then fired a shot.

One hundred and twenty meters away, the crooked, spider-like body trembled violently before charging towards them. Three more explosive guns opened fire in quick succession, bullets relentlessly peeling away the creature's thick armor, splattering greasy black blood onto the red sand. Several dark figures emerged from the thinning red sandstorm, all rushing towards the source of the gunfire. The veteran sergeant stood indifferently to the side, watching the recruits fire a total of twenty explosive rounds, while he himself gripped a plasma pistol in one hand and a chainsaw sword in the other. When the foremost creature approached the fifty-meter red line, Diderot immediately stopped firing, drew his chainsaw sword, and charged forward—the other squad members, unable to suppress their fighting spirit, immediately stopped firing and followed—they hadn't encountered a target in the days since their parachute landing from outer space, and the belligerent bloodlust brought on by their genetic modifications was impossible to vent; only those of higher rank could control them. They ran across the red sand as fast as a speeding train engine.

It was a deformed product of an over-armed and technologically superimposed Martian Olympus furnace.

The creature lacked any human facial features; a smooth, oval-shaped piece of black iron covered the front and top of its skull, with only a plastic feeding tube connecting it to what should have been its mouth and nose. Bearings and hydraulic mechanical arms replaced joints and bones, energy lines and detectors replaced blood vessels and skin receptors, and layers of armor protected the stripped-off, enhanced muscles and internal organs. Diderot's chainsaw sword severed the creature's whip-like steel forearm, but as the serrated teeth bit into the gaps in its chest and abdominal armor, a black, viscous substance suddenly gushed out, covering its helmet and breastplate. The monster's whip-like arm, like a swift iron snake, immediately coiled around his chainsaw sword and arm, attempting to crush his armor and weapons like a python in the forest.

Diderot instinctively reached for the explosive gun in his other hand.

He pulled the trigger almost at point-blank range. The powerful braking force knocked the thing back several steps, and the rapidly spinning, high-temperature, single-molecule saw teeth had room to maneuver. He swung his weapon almost instinctively, hacking towards the direction of the sound of steel being cut. Before Diderot could wipe the contaminants and toxic blood off his lenses and tear the creature apart with his rage, the other team members had already arrived. Arahik simply slammed the thing to the ground and severed its previously developed and modified electronic bio-spine with his weapon.

Diderot let out a roar, venting his remaining rage on the other monsters that surged towards him.

The other monsters seemed not much different from the one they had first discovered and tracked. Their limbs and heads had been replaced, their blood vessels, muscles, and nerves replaced by complex, grotesque, and bizarre machinery. Relying on hormone-driven, unnaturally grown muscles and steel skeletons, these monsters possessed extraordinary strength. His thigh armor was grazed by the supersonic steel whip's tail; the sand and dust in the air were melted into white smoke by the whip's intense heat, and the outer armor was slashed with a long groove by the whip's thin, iron snake-like tail. The armor integrity indicator on his helmet immediately sounded an alarm—the brief engagement lasted less than thirty seconds; the knights had torn these steel and flesh-and-blood hybrids to shreds in the blink of an eye. But they were still not satisfied. Their belligerent blood, like fuel once ignited, was difficult to extinguish; minor injuries and challenging prey only fueled their belligerence.

"This is my prey, Araishik!"

"This is our prey, if you're even remotely intelligent enough to grasp the concept of teamwork." Alasic's laughter wasn't much better than the veteran sergeant's. "You're like a child whose toy has been taken away. If you'd like a gladiatorial contest here, I welcome it."

"Shut up, Arashik. And you, Diderot, if you can't follow military discipline, I'll throw your airlock out the moment we get back to the space station." The veteran sergeant arrived late. He glanced at the thing on the ground, oozing tainted blood, engine oil, metabolites, and combat hormones, and shook his head. "This thing's been driven mad by too many implants. Those Martian sages won't let go of any opportunity to realize their insane ideas, and the Emperor can't control those people created in the incubation pods. Arashik, cut off this monster's number and give me its brain chip, if you still have it."

As the power armor stopped injecting combat drugs, Diderot felt the hot blood in his veins gradually cooling. He asked the veteran sergeant directly, "Are the other squads doing the same thing?"

The veteran sergeant smiled behind his faceplate.

"For now, that's all you need to know."

The first returning knights boarded gunboats and returned to the landing ship. Once the landing ship reached the space station, they handed the spoils over to their superiors. Lieutenant Nixon nodded, first recording the kill count of the first squad, then issuing a document authorizing technicians from the Immortal City to take this batch of spoils away. The brain chip data would be read by computers in a Level 4 security compartment, transferred to specific hard drives, and then sent back to Earth for research and analysis. This was a procedure that had been in place since the Emperor reached an agreement with Mars, serving both to train the knights and to check for potentially uncontrollable forces in the Martian Data Wasteland. However, until the logistics network between Mars and Earth was established, the first batch of knights traveled to the Martian Data Wasteland via a portal established in the Immortal City. Lieutenant Nixon had participated in at least three comprehensive training programs involving wilderness hunting.

"Tell me, what did you find in all this stinky stuff?"

"Do you know about food sampling? When food is produced in a factory, a batch of samples is left behind, recorded with numbers, and sealed. If any batch of products has a problem, we only need to test the samples to determine the cause," the technical director said casually. "These are the samples. The Emperor has doubts about the experiments on Mars. For some people, technological red lines are meant to be crossed. Through the chip numbers, we can find that restless technological sage."

"Political infighting, there are restless guys on Mars too," Nixon's adjutant licked his lips. "So the Regent sent his technical advisors to oversee the process?"

"Fortunately, Martian protectionism isn't that strong yet, and Martian political developments haven't completely spiraled out of control." The technical director used to be a very cheerful person, but an experimental accident caused him to lose most of his ability to smile. Lieutenant Nixon was somewhat uncomfortable with this guy who used thousands of nerve wires to make his scar tissue smile, but on this space station, the technical director was responsible for the station's daily maintenance and management, and the lieutenant needed his advice. "The Regent needs Mars' consent to relocate some production lines to Earth, including the war engine production line."

"That's impossible, that's the most powerful weapon on Mars."

"Yes...that's what makes it a big problem." The technical director grinned. "So I'm really looking forward to seeing what we can find in these new batches of chips."

(End of this chapter)