Warlord: volume 1

by Chen Ran

  Therefore, Zero continued to sprint towards the exit of the base. When he followed Allen's corpse, he also picked up the young soldier's sniper rifle, opened the safety lock, and pressed the bullet into the barrel. Those bullets that Allen did not have the time to shoot, Zero decided to give them to Hans.

  Zero definitely did not believe that there was an immortal creature in this world. If there really was, then humans would have already gone extinct and there would be no Z7 base. In other words, Hans's body structure had only changed. What Zero needed to do was to find his weakness and kill him!

  In the blink of an eye, the exit was in sight.

  Zero quickly typed in the "Open door" command on the operating platform. Accompanied by the sound of the hydraulic machine, the main entrance of the base first shrank three meters inside, then separated. When the door revealed the crack in the door where only one person was left, Zero did not hesitate to enter the dazzling sunlight.

  When Hans came chasing over, the door was just halfway open. He, who had already turned into a monster, used his nose to sniff. After catching a whiff of the smell, he roared and ran like a human tank towards the endless wilderness outside the base.

  Hans had been preparing for this plan to massacre the base for a long time. Two years ago, after he was chased out of the base by Old Jack, he had been wandering in the wilderness. As his records had already been uploaded to the Parkland's valve's database through the computer, and other companies and bases could share information about the normal level through some contracts, Hans would also be informed about the virus.

  Therefore, in this land of the Middle Kingdom, there was no base or company that would take Hans in. Of course, a settlement without any constraints might be an exception. Because those places didn't have a complete computer network or equipment to check for viruses, Hans couldn't sneak in. However, in a place where there were no restrictions under the rules, once the residents found out that Hans was sick, they would definitely cut him into pieces and feed him to the Corpse Wolves.

  Therefore, Hans could only wander around in the wilderness. There were many times when he almost died under the claws of corpse wolves or other mutated beasts, but Hans managed to survive. While he was already in despair, the opportunity to change had already appeared in his body. Through an adult's gift, Hans obtained something that was referred to as a "core", and he became like this.

  Possessing both the third stage Strength and Agility, and also the ability to regenerate and multiply bones. However, the man told him that he wasn't a real Adept, nor was he a mutated creature. Hans's ability completely originated from that mysterious substance — — nucleus.

  Following that, the lord mysteriously disappeared. Before he left, he only told Hans to go ahead and do what he wanted.

  To Hans, there was nothing more important than revenge for Z7. So he came back and waited patiently for his chance. After wandering around the base for more than half a month, using his memories, Hans killed a soldier on a daily patrol this morning and sneaked into the base using his clothes and proof of identity.

  And then, there was a massacre.

  However, the plan now was incomplete. There were still some miners who had safely stayed in the mining area due to the separation of the Workspace's gate. Even in the base, Lea and Zero did not kill them.

  The man whom Hans had found among the hibernation chamber back then was now challenging Hans's bottom line.

  Hans's head hurt, his nerves felt like they were on fire. Just now, in the emergency passage, Zero had hit him accurately in the chest and shot him in the head and heart. Hans was really shocked, he did not know the extent of the damage his physical body could take either. However, when he recovered, his fear turned into anger.

  Something in his head seemed to have broken. That thing was called rationality. The current Hans only wanted to kill zero.

  To kill this man who gave him a sense of danger.

  However, he did not realize that after losing the shackles of reason, he had embarked on a very dangerous path.

  His head hurt, the sunlight in the wilderness was blinding, and that damned man. Where are you?

  Hans roared, he did not notice that his own voice had become the howl of a monster.

  A bullet shot out from an unknown place, accurately piercing into Hans's head. Amidst the blood mist, Hans's center of gravity became unsteady due to the huge impact. His feet staggered as he fell to the other side, falling onto the road along the cracked road.

  Moments later, the sound of the sniper rifle came from afar and was tinged with ridicule.

  This is the wilderness. Danger can occur at any time, and the god of death will always be at your left!

  Chapter 24 - Antipodes

  It had been three days.

  Hans raised his head. His pair of grayish-brown eyes had already become like that of a demon's.

  In the darkness of his eyes, the pupil was partially replaced by a dense array of red circles and a gray dot the size of a grain of rice in the center. These eyes were more like those of a monster than a human. Even if Hans's human face did not change.

  It was just that ever since the tavern had become like this due to fear and anger, the shackles of reason had been broken and Hans had embarked on a path that was impossible to turn back from. Right now, all he had left was the desire to kill.

  It was this obsession that made him wander in the wilderness outside the base without eating or drinking for three days.

  A strange smell floated in the air. Hans strongly sniffed it with his nose, and then released a beast's roar from his mouth. The human-shaped tank immediately rushed towards the foot of the mountain. Just at the foot of the mountain, beside a tilted tree, Hans discovered a broken sleeve. Without question, his sleeves were zero, which was why his smell drifted along the wind to Hans's nose.

  There was a bottle of unlabeled liquid under his sleeve, and the few memories he had of a human being told him that this was probably a bottle of water.

  The golden sun overhead was emitting a strong ultraviolet light, causing the entire ground to turn into a furnace. Hans's lips were already cracked from the dryness. When he realized that the bottle was filled with water, out of instinct, he used his thumb to break the bottleneck, then poured the glass fragments and the bottle's liquid into his mouth.

  When the liquid flowed through his mouth and entered his mouth, the strange taste made Hans realize that this thing was not some kind of drinkable clean water.

  But he woke up too late.

  A bullet flew across the 1500 distance, the high speed spinning bullet wrapped in a faint flame light, carrying the smell of gunpowder as it grazed past the glass bottle on Hans's hand.

  Boom — —

  Flames soared to the sky and covered Hans like a red cape.

  In the distance, the sound of a sniper rifle could be heard.

  Hans, who was wrapped up in raging flames, was obviously unhappy. The flames even followed his esophagus and spread into his body. He flew into a rage, the high temperature of the flames stimulating Hans's pain senses. He felt as if his whole body was about to explode. He kept crashing into the hard rocks at the foot of the mountain. This was purely out of instinct, yet he had achieved an exceptionally good result.

  Under the constant collisions, the flames on Hans's body gradually became smaller and smaller, before finally disappearing. Only, Hans's body was burnt to a pulp, the raging flames melted his skin and muscles. After extinguishing the flames, the cooled blood formed a membrane of substance. When the special ability for the regeneration of Hans's blood and bones activated, the new muscles in his body broke through the blood membrane and gave Hans a heart-wrenching pain!

  Hans's roar echoed in the wilderness, and it could be clearly heard thousands of kilometers away.

  Zero put away his sniper rifle and hid behind a yellow-brown rock. In his mind, he wrote off the possibility of a high temperature burning.

  In the past three days, he had tried
many different methods. This included the trap of using his scent as bait and hiding a bottle of highly concentrated alcohol. However, Hans's vitality was as strong as a devil's. No matter if it was zero who exploded his limbs or burned him, Hans would not die.

  This was a contest of endurance, tenacity and willpower. Zero was like a lone wolf wandering in the wilderness, constantly using various methods to deal with Hans, such as guerrilla attacks, harassment, traps, force attacks, sniping and so on. But now, Zero felt like he was reaching his limit.

  No one knew what it would be like after crossing the limit. Perhaps they would be reborn, or their spirit flesh would collapse. Zero also didn't know, he only hoped to get rid of Hans before the limit was reached.

  And through these three days of competition, Zero gained a whole new understanding of his body. Even though this body was not like Hans's, it was almost immortal. However, his previous assumption of his body, which was equivalent to the life support system controlled by a sophisticated computer, had been verified.

  When Zero left the base, he only brought 200 milliliters of Level 2 drinking water. However, this small amount of pure water not only maintained the life energy required for the past three days, but also included the energy consumed by all kinds of strong physical exercises.

  Zero would not have been able to hold out for so long had it not been for some system in the body that quantified any external energy. He was certain that the golden right eye was part of the part that had transformed his body in some way. All of this should be related to the name that was written on the hibernation chamber.

  However, now was not the time to think about such things. Even with a nanometer level life-support system, it was not possible to rely on 200 milliliters of clean water to pay for more energy.

  If he was unable to deal with Hans before the sun went down, then he would have no chance of winning at all.

  For the past three days, he had silently filtered through all sorts of situations in his mind. Countless amounts of data were analyzed, summarized, and then eliminated. In the end, there was only one possibility left.

  Body shattering and bone shattering!

  Perhaps, only by blowing Hans up would there be a chance to kill him. However, after checking his own equipment, Zero did not have enough gunpowder.

  Staring at the wilderness, Zero suddenly remembered that when he was hunting the wolves half a month ago, he had prepared some detonators to blow up the rocks and hit the wolves. However, because of Hans's appearance, the subsequent lightning bolts were all useless.

  At the time, he was in a hurry. Zero did not reclaim the detonators. Considering the amount that they had, which was sufficient to blow up the rocks, it should be more than enough to deal with Hans.

  In the wilderness, Hans was wandering around. His head was in pain, and sometimes he wished he could open his head and see if there were worms growing inside. Otherwise, how could he feel so much pain? The pain made it impossible for him to think carefully, but it reminded him that the current situation was all because of nothing.

  Unknowingly, Hans walked onto the road. A wind blew past Hans from the distance. The pair of devilish eyes suddenly narrowed, and Hans smelt the smell of blood.

  That was zero blood!

  Hans exhaled a fishy breath of air as he ran frantically. Not long after, he found a drop of blood.

  The blood had congealed, dark red. Hans stuck out his tongue to lick it, causing the sand and stone to be swallowed into his mouth before he swallowed them back into his stomach. No mistake, it was zero blood. This meant that he was injured. Nothing was better than this news. Hans raised his head, and the wind gusted again. He stood up and ran down the road in the direction of the canyon.

  At this time, Hans had already forgotten that he had once killed a group of corpse wolves there, and he had also forgotten that Zero was there to hunt as well.

  Hans only knew that a voice continuously sounded in his mind.

  Kill him!

  Chapter 25 - Cracking Cocoon

  The smell of zero was always in the air, neither too much nor too little, just enough to lead Hans to the canyon like a ghost.

  Hans panted heavily as the mutated muscles emitted an astonishing amount of heat. As the energy within his body was being used up, Zero was already reaching its limit, so how could he escape from the Han Dynasty? It was true that the infinitely regenerating flesh and blood were real, but the energy was unable to regenerate. However, in the past three days, due to the zero movement combat style, Hans was unable to even rest, much less eat.

  Moreover, this body that looked like a human tank now, compared to its human form, seemed to be consuming even more energy. He did not have the ability to adjust each portion of energy to its limit like he did with zero minute movements. Relatively speaking, the energy consumed by Hans was far above zero. Although his base in this area was also much larger than zero.

  The current Hans was like a wild beast, he did not have any extra rationality to restrict his movements. Ever since he had liberated the shackles of rationality, Hans's only reason left was to kill zero. Therefore, even though the energy consumption was nearing exhaustion, he could not stop, nor could he stop.

  He rushed into the canyon, bringing with him a cloud of dust. The smell of nothing here was much fainter. The wind blowing into the canyon was dispersed by the mountain walls, creating a few irregular gusts of wind that would reduce the scattered smell of blood in the air. Hans had to work hard to distinguish between them so that he wouldn't lose his target.

  After passing through a rugged mountain road and crossing two broken highways, under a broken road sign, Hans found zero bloodstains. This excited him, and the smell of blood continued up the hill. Hans bent his knees and jumped ten meters away. He caught the protruding rocks on the mountain wall and chased after them as if he was flying.

  Under Hans's control, the two hundred meters of distance quickly came to an end as Hans jumped onto a platform halfway up the mountain. The sand and rocks here had been grinded into powder by the strong winds and the scorching sun. Traces of blood could be seen extending out of the dry sand and mud towards a cave in front of them.

  Zero was hiding inside.

  Hans thought of this as he flew towards the cave. As he walked closer, he felt a bit absent-minded. He seemed to have been to this place before, but of course, the current Hans would not remember this. Just half a month ago, he dragged a dead wolf into the cave to tear and nibble on it, which also attracted Zero's attention.

  Now, he had returned to this cave. It was just that the corpse wolf's body had disappeared, but Hans saw something else. Just behind a rock in the cave, Hans saw a back figure. He curled up behind the rock, trembling slightly. Zero seemed to be injured, which made Hans very happy. He roared, his voice echoing through the cave.

  Hans pounced towards Zero, and the hand that was strong enough to break an elephant's neck grabbed towards Zero. Zero seemed to be severely injured, and could not escape Hans's grasp at all. Hans clenched his fingers tightly and raised it up.

  Zero's body is abnormally light.

  With a hiss, the clothes split open.

  There was nothing under the clothes, and there was a small crack in the ground. The wind blew from a crack in the ground, causing Zero's clothes to sway continuously, and created the false image that Hans had just seen. Hans's current brain was unable to understand what it meant to be fooled, but he was extremely furious at not being able to catch Zero. Thus, the furious Hans did not see it. As the clothes were torn apart, a thread hidden under the clothes was lifted up.

  The other end of the thread was attached to the safety lock of a grenade on the ground. With the lifting of the thread, the safety catch was removed. With an almost inaudible sound, the hand grenade's needle sank. After touching the explosive equipment, the air inside began to inflate rapidly.

  Beside this grenade, there was an entire circle of detonators, which were originally used to hunt wolves. Obviously,
their target was Hans.

  A flash of fire.

  BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

  A huge explosion sounded in the canyon, and many of the corpse wolves that were resting in the canyon immediately panicked and ran away. From afar, a fiery cloud rose up from the canyon. The fiery clouds rolled about, accompanied by thick smoke and falling stones. Suddenly, they scattered in all directions.

  After a few seconds, the fire cloud started to descend, but the whole mountain was already pitch black. The raging flames surrounded the weeds that had crawled out of the crevices of the mountain. Although the mutated creatures in the valley were curious, they did not dare to approach.

  A minute later, a figure appeared in the vicinity.

  Zero was carrying a sniper rifle, and was only wearing a comfortable vest. His shirt was sacrificed to lure Hans into his trap, the hot sunlight bringing along an astonishing amount of ultraviolet light as it fell on his body. The skin that was exposed under his clothes had already started to turn slightly red, but that was all. Zero did not know that if it was a normal person, their skin would have already been rotten from the ultraviolet rays.

  The thick and solid military boot stomped down a bush of flourishing burning grass, then carefully crawled into the hole with the sniper rifle in hand. There was choking smoke in the cave, and Zero held his breath. However, the thick smoke, mixed with the smell of gunpowder, blocked Zero's line of sight. Zero narrowed his eyes into slits to ease the irritation of the smoke. He regretted not wearing a gas mask. Otherwise, he wouldn't be crying like this.

  Other than the sounds of fire burning the weeds in the cave, Zero could not hear Hans's voice. Unless Hans was killed on the spot, how could there be no sound? The power of the detonator's detonator was extremely clear, but whether it could kill Hans in one blow, Zero did not have complete confidence.