Will the kemonomimi encounter Alien Ranch Story?

"Damn it, everyone retreat! Their reinforcements are here!" The Shield Guards hurriedly led the Patriots to the truck's location, boarded the truck, and fled out of the excavation site. Most of the infected had already scattered and fled; those who remained were those whose hatred ran too deep and refused to leave.

In the distance, the silhouette of Ursus's mobile combat platform had already appeared.

What followed was a three-and-a-half-day chase. The three combat platforms, led by the elite of the First Legion and a large number of regular troops, pursued relentlessly under the guidance of the scouts. The Shield Guards sacrificed more than half of their men to destroy one of the combat platforms, creating enough time for the rest of the men to break out with the Patriots.

They only managed to escape their predicament temporarily by fleeing into the valleys and hills at the edge of the snowfield, places unsuitable for mobile platforms to deploy.

However, they encountered many small groups of Ursus ambushes and pursuing forces along the way, and in the end, only about ten people were left when they met the White Rabbit hunting party near the Valley of Oblivion.

[PS]

The flashbacks are the main plot, lol, after all, the protagonist is just a farm owner... hilarious.

The reactions of various factions to these things are the starting point for the subsequent plot... Otherwise, would characters pop out of the void and perform a deus ex machina?

Chapter Thirty-Five: The Hunting Operation

Chapter 35

To prevent the fleeing Shield Guards from hiding in the Valley of Taboo, the vanguard of the Ursus Fourth Army established a sentry post at the entrance to the Valley of Taboo, and deployed two light ballistae and more than one hundred regular soldiers, including crossbowmen, heavy infantry, and vanguard troops.

Meanwhile, the elite troops of the First Army, led by the guerrillas, took a back path to outflank these people. They destroyed an important excavation site of the Empire and seriously wounded General Boris, which was a huge slap in the face to the Emperor and every military noble.

Even if it's just to maintain the dignity and deterrent power of the Ursus Empire's army, they have to find these guys.

Otherwise, after the propaganda spread by the tens of thousands of infected people who escaped and the civilian slave laborers, who will still take Ursus seriously in the future?

Putting aside other issues, the pro-war faction in Sami will definitely spread the message that Ursus is a paper tiger, which is a major blow to Ursus's strategy of using military threats to politically annex Sami.

Even the two army groups that have always been at odds have cooperated closely this time, almost completely sealing off the entire border snowfield, determined to find these guys and hang them.

However, these things at the top were meaningless to the soldiers at the bottom, especially to Captain Vesalion of Ursus, who was guarding the Valley of the Dead outpost.

As long as those damned thugs still have a bit of brain matter left in their skulls, they won't turn around and attack the outpost consisting of two mobile combat platforms and makeshift roadblocks.

"Mud, pine trees, pine trees, mud, what a disgusting place. This godforsaken place is only fit for those damned diseased cockroaches." Captain Vesalion forcefully lifted his boot and pulled his foot out of the thick mud.

Two Ursus "Grizzly" light mobile combat platforms were positioned one in front of the other in a figure-eight formation. The front of the platforms, equipped with ballistae, was aimed at the valley entrance. The platforms were separated by a roadblock made of metal pipes, barbed wire, and simple sandbags. Several Ursus crossbowmen sat behind the cover, cigarettes dangling from their lips.

The light platform is about the same size as the old man Maxim's trading post, but unlike the trading post which is just a house on the ground, it looks more like a large double-decker bus with armor, or a miniature early aircraft carrier on land.

The lower part is an armored hull used to block enemy climbing and throwing weapons. There is a gap of about 1 meter between the upper deck and the hull. Vanguard and guards can slash enemies who try to climb up to attack ranged units on the upper deck, or they can jump across the lowerable drawbridge to board the enemy.

On the top deck, several sorcerers leaned idly against the light ballistae, chatting and laughing, completely unsuspecting. They had even lowered the boarding bridges of both platforms so that personnel could move quickly back and forth between them.

"Flemier, stop slacking off up there, I saw it all..." Captain Vesalion slammed a clod of dirt at the distracted sentry. "Are you even acting like a warrior of Ursus?! Keep a proper watch!"

Those who can serve as vanguards are already among the better soldiers in the Ursus army, but given the actual discipline of the Fourth Army, which is stationed near the border, it is probably just a case of choosing the best among the worst.

"Don't worry, Captain, those cockroaches won't dare to attack. We have ballistae, sorcerers, and mobile platforms. What do they have? To cut the tracks with knives?"

"Damn it, I wasn't talking about those cockroaches. The disciplinary squad and the young master of the First Army went to the side road, but they didn't say they wouldn't come back. Do you want the disciplinary squad to hang you up a tree and stick your tongue out?"

The captain banged on the cofferdam, making a loud thumping sound. "Or do you want to go to Lubyanka? Or grow potatoes in Olivier?! Damn it, you can't ruin everything! I said, Flemir, did you hear me?!"

"Captain, something's rushing towards us!" The sentry looked in terror toward the direction of Jigu.

"What are those things? Mutant creatures or those cockroaches?"

"Captain, yes..."

"Bang!" The helmeted head turned into a cloud of blood mist in front of the captain.

If played in slow motion, his face looked as if he had been punched and caved inwards, his skull cracked open like a watermelon being smashed, and his brain and blood gushed out instantly, leaving only half a chin and a tongue on his neck.

"Damn it, enemy attack! Everyone get into the vehicles, ballistae! Sorcerers!" The captain rolled behind a sandbag and grabbed the gangway to climb onto the platform.

"Clang! Clang!" An unseen attack made a series of collision sounds on the armor plates. The thick metal armor seemed to be just a thin layer of paper. Soldiers who were grabbing weapons and preparing crossbows fell one after another inside the cabin.

To the captain, it looked as if someone had sprayed a can of insecticide into an insect nest; the crowd instantly collapsed, and a series of transparent holes appeared on the bulkhead of the combat platform.

"Get down, don't look up! Warlocks, what the hell are you doing! Where's the ballista?!"

The captain lay face down on the ground, listening to things piercing through the steel plates of the ship's hull and flying overhead, smashing boxes and other equipment in the cabin into pieces.

Many soldiers who managed to dodge the attack died under the constantly bouncing parts and metal fragments, looking as if they had been smeared in the face with cluster bolts from an anti-ship heavy ballista.

"Click!" Xia Lin unloaded a drum magazine and threw it into the truck bed. He then took out a new one from his backpack and connected it. The Originium truck roared toward the outpost ahead. The captain's orders were not carried out at all. The caster and the operator stared dumbfounded at the ballista that had been reduced to a pile of scrap metal.

The former was just about to use Originium Arts when a barrage of orbital bullets ripped half of his body off. The electromagnetic rifle in automatic firing mode was powerful enough to pulverize the upper body of an adult in half a second.

Especially with the gunner having attached a 90-round drum magazine to it, Xia Lin maintained rapid fire suppression, alternately sweeping the two combat platforms that looked like some kind of antique ship from World War I.

He didn't see those crossbows as a threat, but for safety's sake, if he saw any gunners coming, he would fire a burst of railguns to keep them from showing their faces.

"Here you go!" Xia Lin took a bag off his thigh, inside which were seven or eight neatly arranged iron pipe grenades. They were made by filling pre-fragmented iron pipes made in an electronic furnace with enough high-powered fertilizer. Ivan and the others also took out Molotov cocktails and simple Originium bombs.

Their original plan was to drive over and raid, with the crossbowmen quickly taking out the sentries guarding the sides and the sorcerers at the top, while the others would seize the platform and open the roadblocks to pass through.

However, Xia Lin had a different opinion. He believed that they could suppress the enemy with firepower and then use trucks to smash through the roadblocks and advance.

After arguing for a while, the two sides decided to use both plans together. If they could successfully suppress the other side's counterattack, then they would do as Xia Lin said and ignore both of them.

If you can't suppress them, or if they promptly drop something like a steel plate blocking the road that they can't break through, then go with their plan.

"Light it and throw it over there!" The barricade was thinner than everyone expected, as if the other side had been stunned by Xia Lin's firearms from the very beginning.

To be honest, Ivan had never seen such terrifying firearms; the armor on those land platforms looked no more sturdy than a layer of cotton paper.

Even the barbed wire reinforced with iron plates, which served as roadblocks, was easily torn apart. The truck easily crashed through the first layer of roadblocks and sped away between the two platforms.

Before leaving, the Shield Guards threw incendiary bombs, iron pipe grenades, and improvised Originium bombs onto the two platforms that had already lost their resistance. The Originium bombs activated by Originium Arts would produce different explosive effects depending on the Arts used.

For example, freezing or high explosion, as well as combustion or EMP current, etc.

"Cough cough, damn it!" The captain pushed aside the half-corpse on top of him. This unfortunate guy was preparing to rush to the upper platform to fight, instead of being trapped in the vehicle through the armored plates and shot to pieces. However, an Originium bomb thrown in front of him blew off half of his upper body.

Thick smoke billowed and fire spread within the combat platform, while on another platform, large chunks of icy frost clung to the hull. This frost was completely different from a normal Originium bomb; it seemed to be made of expensive, pure Originium.

"We need to warn the others, those guys have fooled us all!" The captain covered his mouth and nose and rushed to the upper deck, preparing to warn the others via radio.

However, when he kicked open the equipment bay door amidst the thick smoke and high temperature, all he found inside were corpses, blood, and radio equipment shattered by a railgun that had penetrated the wall.

"Suka!" The captain turned around helplessly and rushed to the outer deck, escaping to the ground via the emergency escape ladder. Less than half of the Ursus soldiers had survived. Behind them was the raging fire of the combat platform. They looked at each other in the firelight, finding the "battle" incomprehensible. What kind of weapon had attacked them?

"Phew!" Xia Lin put away his Falcon assault rifle. Even though the quality of Star Alliance's industrial products has always been good, he was still not very confident in the stability of the ground combat equipment under high-speed continuous fire, considering that the equipment was from the cheapest bidding manufacturers. After clearing the way ahead, he put away the rifle to prepare for inspection and maintenance.

"How many etched ammunition pieces of this type of firearm are left?"

"There are still many left." Xia Lin kicked the ammunition box on the ground. The display board showed "410/90%". There were four more ammunition boxes like this. Railguns really are a type of ammunition that can be manufactured at will when metal resources are abundant.

In addition to the standard 8.7mm iron lead bullets, Xia Lin's assault rifle is also compatible with 8mm nail bullets, which are easier to manufacture, but have an unstable trajectory and excessive penetration power, making them easy to over-penetrate unprotected human bodies.

"This kind of weapon makes me wonder what the point of our martial arts training is..."

"It will allow you to shoot more steadily," Xia Lin replied instantly, "although I would recommend you switch to an automatic stabilizer and use wireless guided munitions."

“Uh…” Ivan could only shake his head and decide not to continue the topic.

How much longer until we arrive?

"If we continue at full speed, it will take about a day, provided we don't take a detour or get entangled by those hyenas along the way. Also, this old car can last until then."

Meanwhile, on the path leading to the farm, three patrolmen, escorting two local guides and a small squad of elite black-armored guards, took a shortcut along the almost indistinguishable animal trails, bypassing the Valley of Taboo, to pursue the infected who had attacked the excavation site.

"Go ahead, that's the source of Cold Creek, and beyond that is Shelter Valley, the only place where people can hide."

The guides were two ordinary Ursus farmers they had recruited from a nearby village. They weren't actually very familiar with the road, because going through the Valley of Oblivion would take them too close to the wasteland.

Since they weren't very familiar with the route, they wandered around in the mountains for a while. As a result, the patrol had to reduce the number of guides from three to two and use a corpse hanging from a treetop to help them remember the route.

"Peter, where are they?" Yelena called out over the radio as she and her men were on their way.

"They've reached Deer Knee Trail and will be at our water source soon. Honestly, leaving an adult water pump there will definitely arouse suspicion."

"You don't need to worry about this. Think of a way to keep them occupied..." Yelena was on her way to the sniping point, while the other hunters split up and entered their respective ambush positions.

Thanks to Xia Lin's water pump, the birds in the vicinity were all frightened away, and the previous scene of flocks of birds circling in the sky and refusing to land, which allowed the team to discover that someone was lying in ambush on them, was no longer present.

"Something's not right. There's a very...unsettling feeling about this place." As elite veterans, they were roughly on par with the Shield Guards.

While he may not possess Ivan's keen sense of danger honed by years of walking a tightrope, the feeling of impending doom was still quite palpable.

"Squeak!" The composite crossbow string slowly took shape with the help of the mechanically assisted stringer. Peter put an armor-piercing heavy arrow into the groove. He didn't know how Frostnova got her hands on this kind of ammunition, which should theoretically belong to military heavy arrowheads, but he was very glad that he had such a thing on hand.

The White Rabbit obtained these arrows in a simple way: he told Xia Lin about the Originium Bugs and the Giant Originium Bugs, and then he manufactured a batch of them.

If it weren't for the White Rabbit's statement that the Originium Bugs were just ordinary pests and unnecessary, Xia Lin might have created a series of high-explosive crossbow bolts and specialized armor-piercing heavy bullets for the Rabbit's hunting team.

He clearly initially mistook them for the Zerg-type monsters commonly found in the Covenant, whose metal-rich chitinous carapaces are difficult to penetrate without some armor-piercing ability.

For the Covenant's farms, fighting the Zerg is as common as villages fighting over water. The Zerg are a typical agricultural civilization in the universe. They need a lot of biomass to feed their massive swarms, and they rarely actually use bio-warships to fight in space like in science fiction movies.

There's no way around it; the energy efficiency and heat resistance of living organisms are limited. If the reactor energy level can't be increased, it means that the power of any shipborne weapon can't be increased, and fighting in space would be suicidal.

Therefore, the Zerg also have proper metal and composite material warships, nuclear reactors or antimatter reactors—who would use a biological reactor to power a starship!

If you see a Zerg bio-ship, what does that mean? It means that a Zerg nomadic or agricultural group is preparing to settle here. It's the same type of thing as Xia Lin's workshop; simply put, it's agricultural machinery.

Something that looks like Leviathan isn't necessarily a warship; it could just be an agricultural aircraft spreading pesticides and bacteria. Similarly, something with angular composite material structures burning nuclear fuel isn't necessarily human; it could be a swarm of insects inside.

The sound of the bowstring being drawn clearly startled the highly tense veteran soldiers in black armor, who immediately raised their shields to protect the vulnerable crossbowmen and sorcerers within the ranks.

However, Peter and his men were not targeting the warriors at all, but rather the pickets and guides.

Without a guide familiar with the terrain and roads, or a patrol team familiar with the locations of the surrounding villages and how to catch guides, Peter and his companions were confident that they could lead these big oafs through this snow forest forever.

"Whoosh whoosh whoosh!" The high-speed armor-piercing crossbow bolts easily pierced through the ordinary equipment of the disciplinary squad, pinning them to the ground. The squad leader, whose lungs were pierced, kept spitting out pink foamy blood and struggled painfully on the ground.

Then, after running a short distance in a panic, the two guides were killed by the black-armored crossbowmen as deserters. Their captain didn't even have time to stop his men before the two guides fell into a pool of blood.

"Sukabul! Are you a pig-brain?!" Without a guide, they didn't even know if they could find their way back. Right now, they could only try to capture the attackers and interrogate them to get intelligence and map data.

"I'm in position..." The white rabbit, panting, climbed up a pine tree, concealing itself among the needles, and aimed at its captain, who was disciplining his men and preparing for a counterattack. "Yeti Squad, hunt, begin!"

Chapter Thirty-Six: The Hunt

Chapter 36

"Yeti Squad, the hunt begins!" "Let's go!" A powerful hunting crossbow, loaded with armor-piercing bolts, pierced through the gaps in the shield and accurately struck the arm of the heavily armored Ursus. The latter never expected the crossbow bolts to be so powerful; the armor was like paper in front of it.

The Ursus elite troops were no ordinary force after all. Upon realizing the enemy's overwhelming firepower, these elite veterans of the First Army quickly moved closer together and used their shields to cover each other.

After piercing the D30 steel shields, the arrows struggled to penetrate their heavy armor, since Xia Lin hadn't equipped them with tandem armor-piercing arrowheads. Otherwise, the protective effect of the armor behind them would have been difficult to guarantee.