Chapter 287: The Dense Forest Frontier

After a short period of revelry, there was a war to come.

After greeting Bai Liu, Guy quickly said goodbye to them and followed the men of Assault One and a couple of dozen heavy guns onto the train.

Alex stood at the start of the train, his eyes almost piercing Guy's as he looked out of the train window and smiled in greeting.

Tang Erda left a little earlier, having joined the Raider I team as an irregular recruit, and left the tavern on a train at around 2 or 3am for his orientation training.

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

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

"It's certainly possible that someone else picked it up." Alex grinned reluctantly, but he quickly calmed down and looked up at Bai Liu with a determined gaze, "I'll be applying to join Assault Team Two tomorrow after I'm done with today's sweepers and won't be doing any more sweepers."

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

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

Alex tapped Bai Liu and Spades on the shoulder, " Guy ticked off your commando entry, go and be a sweeper, be safe."

After saying that, he ran and waved goodbye to Bai Liu.

Bai Liu retracted his gaze from Alex's back and looked towards the shelves standing at the entrance to the training ground.

The shelves were rusty and there was a thick pile of application forms on them, with a sign in white letters with a red background - [Application for places in Raiders 2 and Raiders 3].

"Looks like there's a player status option here, the suggested answer given by the mainline NPCs is to clear the soldiers." Bai Liu pondered, "But again the game has placed a commando entry request here."

The game's main mission is to help Alex win the war, and the winner is the player who gets the most bodies in seven days.

From these two points of view, both capacities of sweeper and commando are possible to complete the mission, but are too low cost effective.

Collecting corpses as a soldier is a race of pure labour, which is not in keeping with the usual design of this game; there must be some kind of shortcut to obtaining corpses in large quantities.

What is the best way to get the most bodies in the war?

Existing as one of the camps, of course, there is no more cost-effective way to get casualties than to initiate war.

Bai Liu narrows his eyes.

The point of helping Alex win the war does not assign a side, but only a character, and in relation to the manner of victory, combined with the attitudes of Alex and Guy, the two main npc's towards the war, it is likely that there is a subplot here where Alex goes rogue.

Assuming that the game's designers intentionally portrayed Alex as an unstable npc, as Bai Liu suggests, there is a risk that Alex will defect from his current side.

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

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

In this sense, there can be two sides to the game, one that helps the non-defected Alex win the war, and one that helps the defected Alex win the war.

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

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

He was still of the opinion that even if the war was wrong, he would have to wait until it ended with a victory for his side before settling those wrongs and compensating the innocent people who had been hurt by them.

Alex has accepted the war for what it is, and that no side in it is innocent.

In Alex's view, incompetent governments are guilty, but even more guilty are the backward enemies who kill soldiers and start wars.

In such a situation, Alex would certainly be inclined to side with his own side, and even if Guy died on the battlefield, it would not be easy to change Alex's perception of his side and make him defect - something that was predetermined when Alex chose to join his own side of the army rather than be a volunteer for the enemy.

If Alex is to defect, a different kind of catalyst is missing.

Bai Liu turns his head and looks towards the track where Guy is riding away in his train.

He knew what that catalyst was.

"Pick the sweeper." Bai Liu turned to Spades, "You're okay with that, right?"

Spades nodded and hmmed, "All right."

Once Bai Liu and Spades had entered the training ground and been assigned as sweepers to come out, a communications soldier ran into the training ground in a panic holding up a telegram, his eyes widening in horror as he yelled shrilly, "Guy Davis of Assault One has mutinied!"

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

The soldier who rushed in was red with rage: "This vile arsehole! He killed over twenty veterans of Assault One, then cleared the field under cover of enemy fire dragging the spoils of war and surrendering to join the enemy!!!"

The whole room was in an uproar.

That night, the battle was again bad.

The Raid I failed miserably because of Guy's rebellion, and the general, who had risen to power through his wife, was furious when he finally pulled the 1,000 heavy artillery pieces to the front line overnight and merged the entire remaining Raid I team into Raid II, leaving Raid II to take over and launch a second raid at dawn.

Bai Liu and Spades, two briefly trained sweepers, were also forced to be pulled into the front line with the heavy artillery because of the impending mass casualties.

They were given a simple military tent, some stretchers and two sapper shovels, and some anti-infection medication in small bottles, a dozen stitching kits, and several rolls of haemostatic bandages.

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

The tent is very dimly lit, with a vague glimpse of bodies piled up on the floor and a motionless, corpse-like Alex sitting in the middle.

The young man who had said during the day that he was going to join the second unit of the raid had been drained of his soul in just one day, and had petered out in just a dozen hours.

Alex's uniform was splattered from top to bottom with blood and congealed flesh, his face a patchwork of blood, his eyes staring out at the mangled body parts on the ground, and flicking his eyes only slightly as he saw Bai Liu and the others lift the curtain and enter, before he continued to stare again.

Bai Liu walked over to the table and lit the lamp, which illuminated everything in the tent, including the unmade bedding on the narrow marching bed, where the two men had been intertwined.

Alex's eyes moved slowly to this bedding and he stared at it for who knows how long, finally waiting until the pent-up emotions overwhelmed him, causing him to bow down in a moment of unbearable strength and cover his face as he broke down and cried out.

Bai Liu asked at this point, " Alex, what's going on?"

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

"I was worried about Guy and I was afraid something would happen to him, so I surreptitiously swapped turns with the other sweepers and went to the area where Raid One was stationed - it was late, there was a heavy rain and it looked particularly dusky, and I saw Guy and his tent move as if they had received a a communication cable from the commander that the lake had risen quite a bit because of the heavy rain and to bring the raid forward."

"The captain of Assault I proposed to go far around and take the attack from the area beyond the lake to the east, Guy seemed to disagree and I heard him contradict this captain vehemently, saying that it was not a war zone at all."

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

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

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

"Because the natives there adopted many of the children and women of the enemy who were 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, "But many of us here don't feel innocent there, and the General has submitted three applications to international peacekeeping authorities to have this indigenous village included in the war zone, but they have been rejected for insufficient reasons."

"So this time, this general is prepared to go ahead and attack." Bai Liu asked rhetorically with a calm look in his eyes, "But what's the point of attacking when there are all children and women there?"

Alex shook his head, "It's not just that, the natives here value blood and family ties, and if Assault One can hold that village hostage, there's a good chance these natives will be in a short-term vice grip - at least to get us through this rainy season."

"And ......" Alex paused, "the international 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 go ahead?"

Alex was quiet for a long time before replying in a shy voice: "...... was implemented and I saw Guy get in his car with his backpack and go."

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

"But the village that was raided on this occasion had no artillery reserves and there was not supposed to be the sound of firing."

Alex's breathing became laboured: "I didn't know what was happening, 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 felt my ear bleeding, I think it was from the shock, I was screaming frantically Guy, and eventually I saw him on a hill, bruised and battered."

"I wanted to rush over, but the people around me were pulling me, yelling at me hideously to not go over, and I didn't understand at first why I couldn't, it was Guy, it was my lover, and I was going to save him."

Alex opened his hollow eyes: "Until I saw him raise his bazooka and sniper rifle and coldly, without the slightest hesitation, strafe those around him."

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

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

"Being married to you was the thing I most desired, and after that, I felt I was 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 regrets left, that he was going to die for something else or something."

"One by one I carried back his blasted bodies, many of these same people who had blessed me and him last night, but today lie here, struck to pieces by the very people they blessed."

Alex whispered, "I'm Buming White."

"That factory manager, the first person he loved pursued justice, the lives he wanted to protect were human lives, and these people-" Alex staggered to his feet, pointing to the 20 or so broken bodies he had carried back to the ground, almost hysterical. He was almost hysterical, his eyes red, asking Bai Liu, "- are the lives of his friends who rescued him and blessed him so many times not lives?"

Alex shook his head and backed away as he hissed in despair, "It's not right!!! Guy, he did it wrong! These people don't deserve to die!"