Weasel Bandit Group

Ice Ridge Wasteland, midnight, thick fog everywhere.

A rust-covered steam-powered troop carrier moved quietly under the cover of fog and darkness, its steel tracks rolling over the frozen ground and leaving deep furrows behind.

In the last carriage, more than twenty men dressed as bandits were crammed together.

The air was thick with the strange, murky stench of sweat and tobacco.

"An SS-class mission?!"

"No way. How could we be involved in such a high-level mission?"

"Captain Tiger, is there some mistake? This mission is actually to infiltrate Blazing Steel Fortress and assassinate an imperial baron?"

"I heard the lord of Blazing Steel Fortress, Marquis Barret, is a Grand Demon Hunter who has awakened four Gene Locks. No one dares cause trouble in his territory."

"Yeah, Captain. And although the target, Doctor Morin, is only a baron, he's still a formally ennobled noble of the empire. If we kill him, the Imperial Tribunal will investigate directly. Will the Weasel Bandit Group get into trouble?"

"..."

Inside the carriage, the Weasel Bandit Group's Apprentice Assassins had never imagined that their very first mission would be the gang's highest-risk S-class mission!

They had heard that even Transcendent beings had an extremely high mortality rate on missions like this, let alone rookies like them who had yet to awaken.

At the news, a handsome brown-haired youth in the corner gave a slight twitch of his eyelid.

Just as expected. Since crossing over, his luck had been as terrible as ever.

Among the countless people who crossed worlds, there were always "chosen sons of destiny" and unlucky bastards. Rein felt that he was the latter.

A year ago, after working overtime until dawn for half a month straight, he woke up one day in this unfamiliar world, his soul inhabiting the body of a fifteen-year-old refugee named Rein Hermes.

He had thought his bad luck had finally run out and that he had escaped the fate of a corporate slave for good. But on his first day in this Misty World, he had nearly been bitten to death by a "giant rabbit" with a mouthful of dog-like teeth on the boundless wasteland!

Later, he learned that it was one of the creatures at the bottom of the wasteland food chain—a Canine Rabbit, an omnivorous rabbit that ate both plants and meat.

Only then did he understand that he had arrived in an incomparably brutal fantasy world.

Then, before he was bitten to death by that rabbit, he witnessed a scene he would never forget.

Accompanied by a deafening roar, an iron castle powered by steam engines, fitted with enormous metal tracks and wheels, burst violently from the fog like a monster.

From atop the castle, a hooded assassin leaped from a watchtower more than a dozen stories high and slit the throat of the calf-sized rabbit with a single stroke.

Rein was saved.

At first, he thought his fortunes had finally turned around, but he had not expected it to be the beginning of a nightmare.

This utterly depraved Weasel Bandit Group was nothing more than a gathering place for ruthless criminals!

They gathered orphans from everywhere, controlled them with poison, and trained them into cold-blooded professional thieves and assassins.

And so, Rein underwent nearly a year of brutal training at the Weasel Bandit Group's base and became an Apprentice Assassin.

Today was his first time leaving the training base for a mission.

Mm. An extermination mission.

Tiger, captain of 19th Squad and an instructor for the new recruits, shouted, "Hey, hey, hey! Quiet down, you brats!"

The mission's rating had reached the highest S-class, which truly exceeded everyone's expectations.

The Apprentice Assassins in the carriage gradually fell into panic.

Tiger curled his lip and added, "Don't worry. This mission carries some risk, but Leader Quinn will be joining us too, so there won't be any problems. You brats just follow along and earn some merit points."

Hearing their instructor say that, the newcomers were overjoyed and finally breathed a sigh of relief.

"Oh, really? Leader Quinn will be taking part in this mission too?"

"Then there definitely won't be a problem. With someone as powerful as the leader, no mission is a problem."

"I knew it. There's no way they'd have us rookies take part in such an important mission."

"..."

Listening to them, Rein's furrowed brow relaxed as well.

At last, the cloud of bad luck hanging over his heart dispersed, and he no longer felt that this was a train bound for death.

Quinn, the One-Eyed Wolf, a wanted criminal with a sixteen-million-Wan Lisuo bounty offered by the Oma Empire's royal family, was indeed absurdly powerful and inspired a tremendous sense of security. Rein had personally seen him jump from a cliff hundreds of meters high without a scratch, then effortlessly pierce steel plates with a dagger.

At that moment, another recruit asked curiously, "Captain Tiger, what exactly is so special about that Baron Morin that someone would pay such a huge price to hire us to infiltrate Blazing Steel Fortress and wipe out his entire household?"

It was not only the others; Rein had been wondering the same thing.

This mission was indeed rather unusual.

Logically speaking, a bandit group like theirs that hunted on the wasteland would never risk infiltrating a large territory to assassinate a noble.

Not only would the mission be extremely difficult, but even if they succeeded, they would face endless pursuit from the Oma Empire's royal family.

Even if an employer was willing to pay an exorbitant price, no rational bandit group would dare accept it.

Yet this time, Leader Quinn had not only taken the mission but was personally joining it. That made it especially strange.

Rein guessed that Baron Morin must be hiding some incredible secret, enough to make Quinn take such a risk.

"Who knows? I heard he's a pretty rich surgeon."

Tiger answered with utter indifference, as if it made no difference whom they were killing.

Shrugging, he added, "Besides, what difference does it make to us whether it's revenge or robbery? We're just taking money to do a job."

"Oh, right."

"Shh. Stop talking. Put on your gas masks and get ready to disembark!"

"Yes, Captain."

"..."

The moment he finished speaking, the carriage fell completely silent.

The assassins in light leather armor checked the daggers and pistols tucked into the holsters on their bodies, then swiftly donned various gas masks to conceal their faces.

In the corner, Rein expressionlessly put on a black leather, crow-beaked gas mask.

In an instant, these youths in dark, ominous gas masks seemed to transform into cold killing machines, and the carriage filled with a heavy murderous aura.

Before long, the Centipede Steam APC arrived at the designated location.

"Everyone, get off. Approach the city wall stealthily. Remember, leave no one alive in Morin Manor!"

"Yes, Leader Quinn!"

"..."

There was a Fog Tide tonight. Thick mist blanketed the land, and visibility was very low.

The group slipped forward silently under cover of night.

Rein had long grown accustomed to this mist, which contained mild toxins.

This was a mysterious world shrouded in dense fog all year round, where danger and the unknown lurked everywhere.

After walking through the fog for a short while, the enormous city that had been concealed by the mist suddenly came clearly into view.

And once again, he was stunned by this world's architecture.

"So this is a human city in this world?!"

Though he had heard about it before, Rein was still deeply shaken by the iron castle before him.

"What an exaggerated miracle of steel. Such a huge city is actually an iron fortress powered by steam engines."

Even having seen countless skyscrapers in his previous life, he was profoundly shocked by the sight before him.

He had been in this unfamiliar world for nearly a year, yet this was the first large human city he had ever seen.

Blazing Steel Fortress was brightly lit. One enormous searchlight after another dispersed the fog over vast areas, allowing them to see the steel behemoth baring its fangs and claws ahead.

The city was enormous, roughly the size of a county town from Rein's previous life, though its buildings were far denser.

Gothic spires stood in uneven rows, packed closely together. City walls as tall as thirty stories completely enclosed the entire city. Tall buildings rose within, linked by web-like corridors and pipelines.

Giant iron arms wielding warhammers, battering rams, metal cutters dozens of meters in diameter, and large-caliber cannons ranging from several meters to dozens of meters long were especially eye-catching.

Dense rivets joined heavy steel plates together, while enormous, exaggerated tracks and wheels supported the whole giant city.

Most remarkable of all, towering chimneys rose above the buildings of the black city, reaching into the clouds and belching thick smoke.

Those were the marks of massive Steam Boilers!

The entire city exuded a rugged industrial style. Like a steel hedgehog, it delivered an overwhelming visual impact.

This was a steam-and-steel castle, a true mobile war fortress.

This steel bulwark was also humanity's greatest reliance for surviving and multiplying on a wasteland overrun by vicious beasts and monsters!

This new book had suffered through countless hardships, but it was finally here.