"Plow" "Jump Machine"

"What... what is going on?"

Sears and the others were frozen in place.

They had witnessed Leon land two shots in the chest and one in the head; even if they knew nothing about military tactics, they understood that an ordinary person would have no chance of survival after that.

However, even with the villager's head blown apart, several blood-red "vines," half a meter to a meter in length, sprouted from the neck.

Leon was equally horrified.

Yet, all the training he had received was designed to handle such situations.

After only a moment's hesitation, Leon stepped forward, raised his left foot, and stomped hard onto the villager's chest, pinning it down to prevent it from struggling to its feet.

At the same time, he aimed the muzzle of his USP downward, targeting the tumor at the villager's neck.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!" The crisp, rapid-fire shots echoed.

"Splat! Splat! Thud!"

After taking several high-stopping-power .40 S&W rounds at close range, the tumor finally succumbed to the laws of carbon-based biology and burst open.

Blood sprayed out a meter or two like spilled milk tea, and the tentacles went limp and lifeless.

It looked like it was truly dead this time.

"Bang!"

Leon still put one more round into the body for good measure.

Confirming that the villager was no longer moving, he quickly ejected the magazine, which still had a few rounds left, stowed it in the pouch on his lower back, and pulled out a fresh, full magazine to reload.

Completing the reload in under two seconds and scanning the area to ensure there were no immediate threats, Leon freed his right hand, pulled back his sleeve, and tapped the tactical computer on his left forearm to call for emergency support from the ARS company.

Seeing the screen confirm that the distress signal had been sent, Leon gripped his USP again and said to Sears and the others out of the corner of his eye, "Stay close to me. Survival is the priority now."

"I am truly sorry to trouble you, Mr. Joseph. If it weren't for you... we would all be dead here." Sears felt both ashamed and grateful.

The group of students had never expected that the "second-rate mercenary" they thought they had hired for money would be so fluid and efficient when dealing with rebels and these incomprehensible mutated villagers.

"Save the talk. Just remember to pay up later. Let's move."

Leon didn't bother with false modesty; his mind remained fixed on his commission, as if he had been stiffed before and was now quite sensitive about it.

He then led Sears and the others along the row of thatched huts, moving quickly until they reached a small alley between the buildings.

He reached the mouth of the alley.

He crouched to observe.

Looking out toward the village square, Leon and his group saw that among the mixed crowd of rebels and villagers, there were numerous mutants whose heads had been replaced by blood-red vines.

These mutants were even operating firearms, spraying bullets at the real rebels in the woods, though their accuracy was abysmal.

When Leon pulled out his monocular to get a closer look, he noticed that while they still appeared human, their eyes were entirely blood-red, with no pupils visible.

Through these distinct features, Leon could conclude that both the rebels and the villagers were infected.

Combined with the villager he had just killed, he could infer that once an infected host sustained too much fatal damage, the "blood-red vines" residing within them would take control—this was the second stage of the disease: the mutant.

And the only thing capable of causing such a phenomenon was "God's Flower."

As for how it brought villagers back to life and assimilated or infected the rebels, Leon had no way of knowing; he would have to wait for reinforcements to arrive and let the technicians reverse-engineer the process.

Putting away his monocular, Leon pointed to a tin house on the left, signaling that they would take shelter inside.

Sears and the others nodded, having understood his intent.

Seeing this, Leon took a deep breath to steady his rhythm and was the first to dash out of the alley.

Perhaps it was luck.

Along the way, they were not detected by the infected.

After all, the rebels trying to seize the village were still launching relentless attacks, drawing almost all the attention away from Leon and the others.

But just as Leon kicked the door open and let Sears and the students slip inside to hide, their luck seemed to run out, as an infected carrying an RPG-7 turned around and prepared to pull the trigger on the tin house.

"Swoosh!"

But for some reason, the infected's body, from chest to head, simply disintegrated, with blood and muscle tissue splattering in all directions.

"BOOM!!"

Only then did the distinct, heavy-caliber report of an anti-materiel sniper rifle echo from the southwest.

That was not the direction where the rebels were gathered, and in the heat of the intense battle, no one would notice who had fired that shot.

"Bang! Bang!"

As for Leon, who had already entered the tin house and cleared it, he was already crouching by the door, picking off the increasing number of infected trying to approach.

Whoosh! Whoosh!

Bullets whistled through the air.

Pop! Pop!

The corrugated iron walls were pierced with ease.

Fortunately, Sears and his students were all lying flat on the ground. Coupled with the fact that the infected's marksmanship was even worse than that of the rebels and civilians before they were infected, everyone didn't have to worry about their safety for the moment.

Only Leon had to constantly change his position. He ran out of the iron shack, performed a sliding roll, and reached a fallen giant tree to use as cover. Kneeling on one knee, he exchanged fire with the infected and the rebels who occasionally charged into the village.

Click... clack!

Hearing the sound of the bolt locking back, Leon had no time to think. He tapped the magazine release with his right hand, flicked the empty magazine out, and simultaneously reached for his lower back with his left hand to retrieve a full magazine and lock it into place.

As his right thumb flicked the safety, a click echoed out; the silver slide snapped forward, signaling that a round was chambered.

"..."

Leon's expression, however, was grave to the extreme.

This was his last magazine. Even the magazines he had scavenged earlier were empty. If the reinforcements...

Whoosh...

Just as Leon wondered when the reinforcements would arrive, he heard a faint roar.

He looked up.

BOOM!

He saw an A-10 Thunderbolt II, painted in grey and white and fully loaded with ordnance, skimming low over the area.

It slowed down to circle once, adjusted the angle of its fuselage—from left to right in Leon's view—and then...

Riiii—vrrrrrrrrrr!!

The seven-barreled 30mm GAU-8 rotary cannon "plowed" through everything in a matter of seconds, obliterating the infected and rebels that had posed a threat to Leon, along with a third of the village.

By the time the pilot banked the A-10 around to fly over from right to left, it launched a barrage of air-to-ground missiles into the rainforest.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Three football fields' worth of rainforest were leveled instantly; trees and soil were churned up, to say nothing of the rebels caught in the blast.

Immediately following this, a CH-53E Super Stallion, escorted by an AH-1W Super Cobra, arrived over the village and hovered at an altitude of about 20 meters.

Then, a soldier jumped out of the cabin without a rope, plummeting toward the ground in a freefall.

The expected sight of a fatal fall did not occur; instead, with a dull thud, the soldier landed steadily on the ground.

Thud! Thud!

More and more soldiers jumped from the cabin, completing the rope-less insertion.