Chapter 287: Dense Forest Borderland

After a short period of revelry, comes the coming war.

Guy said goodbye to them soon after greeting Bai Liu and followed the men of Assault One and a couple dozen heavy artillery pieces onto the train.

Alex stood at the start of the train, he looked at Guy who stuck his head out of the train window and greeted him with a smile, his eyes almost staring through Guy.

Tang Erda had left a little earlier, as a new recruit to Raider One who had joined through irregular channels, and had left the tavern on the train at about two or three in the morning to go to the battlefield for acclimatization training.

Bai Liu had Spades wash the paint off, stored the balloon in the box Guy had found for him, put it in his room, and then went with the other recruits to the training ground to be assigned.

Alex led them to the training grounds and as he walked to the door he turned to Bai Liu : "I hope I never have to pick up your bodies on the battlefield."

"Of course it's quite possible that someone else picked it up." Alex smiled reluctantly, but he quickly calmed down, looking up at Bai Liu with a determined gaze , "After I'm done with today's Sweeper, I'll apply for Raider II tomorrow, and won't be a Sweeper anymore."

Bai Liu looked at him levelly, "Because Guy went to the first team, didn't he?"

"Yes." Alex lowers his head as he twirls the ring on his ring finger on his left hand, a very happy and contented smile on his face as he whispers, "We've come this far, and only death can keep us apart."

Alex patted Bai Liu and Spades on the shoulder, "Guy ticked off your commando enrollment, go be a sweeper, it's safer."

After that, he jogged and waved goodbye to Bai Liu.

Bai Liu withdrew his eyes from Alex's back, and looked towards the shelves standing at the entrance of the training ground.

The shelves were rusty, and on them lay a thick pile of sign-up sheets, with a white-lettered, red-backed sign posted on them-[Application for a place on Raider Team 2, Raider Team 3].

"It looks like there's a player identity option here, and the suggested answer given by the main NPC is Sweeper." Bai Liu was thoughtful, "But then again the game placed a commando entry application here."

The main mission of the game is to help Alex win the war, which is won by the player who gets the most bodies in seven days.

From these two points of view, both identities, sweeper and commando, are likely to get the job done, but at too low a cost.

Collecting corpses as a soldier is a purely laborious race, which doesn't fit the usual design style of this game; there must be some sort of shortcut to obtaining corpses in large quantities that exists.

How about a practice that gets the most bodies in a war?

Of course it exists as one of the camps, and there's nothing more cost-effective in getting casualties than initiating a war.

Bai Liu narrowed his eyes.

The bit about helping Alex win the war doesn't assign a side, but only a character, linking the method of victory, and combining this with the attitudes of the two main NPCs, Alex and Guy, towards the war, it's quite possible that a spinoff storyline of Alex going rogue is being set up here.

Assuming that the designers of this game intentionally made Alex an NPC with an unstable stance, as Bai Liu thought, then it is possible for Alex to defect from his current camp.

This should also be the reason why the group of players from Against the Gods could join the hostile camp.

If Alex defects and joins the opposing camp, then players from the opposing camp can also trigger the main quest to help Alex win the war.

In that sense, there can be two sides to the player camp in this game, one side helping the non-rebellious Alex to win the war, and one side helping the renegade Alex to win the war.

So the only question now is under what circumstances would Alex, the gentle natured medical student who loves his home and country but is in denial about the war, actually defect?

Although Alex holds a negative attitude towards the war, this negativity is not enough to catalyze Alex to fiercely rebel against his current circumstances and defect to join the enemy.

He is still stuck in the notion that even if this war is wrong, he has to wait until it is over with a victory for his side before he can liquidate these mistakes and compensate those innocent people who have been hurt in this mistake.

Alex has accepted the war for what it is, and there are no innocents in it.

In Alex's mind, the incompetent government is certainly guilty, but even more guilty are these backward enemies who kill soldiers and start wars.

In this case, Alex will definitely tend to side with his own side, and even if Guy dies on the battlefield, there's no way to easily change Alex's idea of side and make him defect - something that was predetermined when Alex chose to commit to his own side's military camp instead of being a volunteer for the enemy.

If Alex is to go rogue, there's a bit of a different catalyst missing.

Bai Liu turns his head and looks toward the track Guy is riding the train away from.

He knew what that catalyst was.

"Pick the sweeper." Bai Liu turns to Spades, "Are you okay with that?"

Spades nodded and hmmmed, "Both."

After Bai Liu and Spades entered the training ground and were assigned the status of sweepers out, a communications soldier ran into the training ground in a panic holding up a telegram, his eyes wide with terror as he yelled shrilly, "Guy Davis of Assault One has mutinied!"

"He suddenly turned his head on the battlefield and blew off the head of his secondary shooter with a Bazooka (rocket launcher), blowing out two hidden fire points on our side."

This soldier who rushed in was red with rage, "This despicable ass-kicker! He killed over twenty veterans of Assault One, then under the cover of enemy fire, cleared the battlefield dragging the loot and surrendering to join the enemy!!!"

The whole room was in an uproar.

That night, the battle was again bad.

The operation of Raid 1 failed miserably due to Guy's rebellion, and that general, who had risen to power by his wife, finally pulled the thousand heavy cannons to the front line overnight in a fit of rage, and merged the entire remaining members of Raid 1 into Raid 2, allowing Raid 2 to take the top spot, and launch a second raid at the crack of dawn.

Bai Liu and Spades, two sweepers with only brief training, were also forced to be pulled to the front line along with the heavy artillery because of the impending mass casualties.

They were given a rudimentary military tent, some stretchers and two engineer's shovels, and some anti-infective drugs in small bottles, a dozen suture kits, and several rolls of tourniquet bandages.

Bai Liu and his team were stationed next to Alex's camp, and when they were done, they went into Alex's tent.

The tent was very dimly lit, with vague glimpses of corpses piled up on the ground, and a motionless, corpse-like Alex sitting in the center.

The young man who had said during the day that he was going to join Raider Two in just one day looked as if his soul had been drained from his body, emaciated and out of shape in just a dozen hours or less.

Alex's uniform was splattered from top to bottom with blood and congealed flesh, his face was in patches of blood, and he gazed out at the mutilated body parts on the ground with his eyes out of focus, and rolled his eyes only slightly at the sight of Bai Liu as they lifted the curtain to enter, before continuing to stare.

Bai Liu walked over to the table and lit the lamp, the light illuminating everything in the tent, including the bedding on the narrow marching cot that hadn't yet been made up, after the two men had intertwined.

Alex's line of sight slowly moved to this futon, and he stared at it for I don't know how long, finally waiting until the pent-up emotions overwhelmed him, causing him to bow down in a moment of intolerance and cover his face as he broke down and cried out.

It was only then that Bai Liu asked, "Alex, what happened?"

Alex looked up, his voice hoarse and dazed, "-I was transported to the front on Guy's next train."

"I was worried about Guy, and I was afraid something would happen to him, so I secretly exchanged turns with the other sweepers and went to the area where Raid 1 was stationed-it was late, there had been a heavy rainstorm, and the sky looked particularly dusky, and I saw Guy and their tent move, as if they had received a communication telegram from the commanding officer to bring the raid forward as the lake had risen considerably because of the heavy rain."

"The captain of Assault 1 proposed to go the long way around and take the attack from the area beyond the lake to the east; Guy seemed to disagree, and I heard him vehemently contradict this captain, saying that it wasn't a war zone at all."

Bai Liu palms the lamp and kneels on one knee in front of Alex and asks softly, "What is there?"

"There was another indigenous village there." Alex had numerous dried tears on his face, "The people there had declared themselves a neutral camp, as required by the international peacekeeping services, and were not allowed to attack."

Bai Liu continued, "Then why did that captain attack there?"

"Because the natives there adopted many of the children and women of the enemy who had been displaced by the war, later on, people from the enemy camp began to intentionally and quietly send their children and wives there because it was safe."

Alex paused for a moment, "But many of us here don't feel innocent there, and the General has submitted a request three times to the international peacekeeping services to include this indigenous village in the war zone, but it's always been rejected because of insufficient justification."

"So this time, this general is prepared to make the first move." Bai Liu asked back with calm eyes, "But there are all children and women there, what is the point of attacking?"

Alex shook his head, "Not only that, but the natives here value blood and family ties, and if Raider One can hold that village hostage, there's a good chance that those natives will be clamped down for a short period of time - at least long enough for us to make it through this rainy season."

"And ......" Alex paused, "DPKO doesn't have as many restrictions on us as you might think, and can literally include the other side in the war zone."

Bai Liu asked again, "So in the end, did the plan work?"

Alex was out of breath and quiet for a long time before he replied in a hard voice, "...... was practiced and I saw Guy get in the car with his backpack and leave."

"The clearing of the soldiers we followed very close behind, and by the time it was all dark ...... I can't remember what time it was, at any rate there was another rainstorm in the middle of it, and then I heard the sound of artillery fire and screams coming."

"But the villages in this raid had no artillery reserves, and there wasn't supposed to be the sound of firing."

Alex's breathing became rapid: "I didn't know what was going on, but was afraid something had happened to Guy, so I ran over-"

He closed his eyes and there were tears sliding down his face, "There was the sound of bullets and artillery fire everywhere, someone was yelling hysterically but I couldn't hear anything, I touched my ear it was bleeding, I think it was from the shock, I was frantically screaming for Guy, and I eventually saw him bruised and battered on a hillside."

"I wanted to rush over, but everyone around me was pulling at me, yelling at me hideously to stay back, and I didn't understand at first why I couldn't go over there; it was Guy, the love of my life, and I was going to save him."

Alex opened his empty eyes: "Until I saw him raise his bazooka and sniper rifle and coldly, without the slightest hesitation, sweep the people around him."

"I knew he was professionally trained and had been the best rocketeer in the ranks, but I'd never seen this side of him before."

"He was like a grim reaper, holding up a bazooka to me, to everyone, smiling with tears in his eyes, saying, I'm sorry, Alex, there's no way I can watch the people he's trying to protect be persecuted like this."

"Marrying you was the thing I longed for the most, and after that, I think I'd be happy to die."

Alex had tears slowly spilling out of his eyes as he took a deep breath, "-so he said he didn't have any more regrets, that he was going to die for something or other."

"One by one, I carried back his blasted body, many of these same people who blessed me and him last night, but today are lying here, struck down and torn apart by the very people they blessed."

Alex whispered, "I don't understand."

"That factory manager, the first person he loved pursued justice, the human lives he wanted to protect were human lives, and these people--" Alex staggered to his feet, pointing to the ground where these twenty or so dramatically shattered corpses that he had carried back, almost hysterical. His eyes were red as he questioned Bai Liu, "-the lives of these people who had rescued him and blessed him countless times, his friends, are not lives?"

Alex backed away while shaking his head as he hissed in desperation, "This isn't right! Guy, he's doing it wrong! These people don't deserve to die!"