Following the War Council's decision, the hunting war erupted almost that very day.
"Die! Die! Damn monsters, go to hell!!"
On more than a dozen modified off-road vehicles, the machine guns' ammunition belts barely stopped feeding for even a moment, and the barrels were burning hot from constant fire.
Opposite them, the small horde of radiation beasts fell like wheat before a scythe. Then even more violent explosions erupted from their corpses, dealing secondary damage to their companions.
"Kill them!!"
Another wave of mechanical hunters leaped from the trucks. These people all followed the melee route. Their arms had either been remodeled into giant blades or chainsaws, or thick steel plates had been embedded in their chests. The least of these melee hunters had undergone one or two cybernetic augmentations, while the most had undergone three or four, or even five or six.
The extent of their mechanization made each of them look more like a humanoid machine.
Chainsaws hacked into the metallic hide of mechanical bio-beasts. Hardened fists viciously slammed into the beasts' foreheads, once, twice, three times, until their brains were beaten out. Then their palms tore away the bionic skin, and drills on their fingertips plunged viciously into the creatures' chests, forcibly ripping out their radiation cores.
"Brothers, watch me send you a plane!"
A captain standing atop the front of a truck held a radio and laughed heartily.
The next moment, two factory bombers emerged from the clouds and dove into the battlefield. Their bellies opened, and more than a dozen precision-guided bombs dropped and streaked away, focusing on the leader beasts behind the horde. Dozens of tons of explosives followed close behind. Explosions towering three stories high stirred up powerful waves of wind, and wherever they passed, the horde was blasted into vast empty patches.
"Radiation beasts are nothing special after all!"
"Captain, are we going in?"
An elite hunting-team member hurriedly looked at their captain. In terms of firepower, they were five times stronger than these ordinary teams.
"What are you rushing for? Anyone who goes in now is just volunteering to die." Unexpectedly, Wilson, who was always hot-tempered and prone to anger, wore an utterly calm expression.
"But Captain, these ordinary beasts are prime material for farming points. It would be such a waste to miss them!"
Wilson flew into a rage and kicked the speaker off the vehicle.
"Are you the captain, or am I? You don't know what the hell you're talking about!"
On the southern defensive line, the Mechanist Team encountered the same problem. However, they had no doubts and calmly adjusted their machinery. One automated weapon after another was being airdropped by drones onto predetermined firing positions.
Within the Mechanist Team, all combat was carried out by automated machines, while the team members were merely their remote operators.
At a communications station, Mechanist Huang Wen was constantly typing something on a keyboard.
His fingers had been modified into spider-like hands. The "buttons" at each joint were neural enhancement nodes. This was prewar enhancement technology, as well as a mandatory modification for military logistics personnel.
On the virtual screen, column charts kept appearing. Each red column represented the radiation level of a beast horde, and at that moment, the red columns were rising crazily.
The green columns representing defensive power, however, maintained an unstable trend.
"Have the members at New Steel City check the data sheets again. Several key figures are wrong."
New Steel City, the oasis south of Motor City, had once been a steel mill.
Huang Wen was very calm, as calm as if he were playing a strategy game.
On the western front, at Bloodmine Hills, more than a dozen Gray Eyes stood silently atop a hill. In their eyes, the battlefield looked entirely different. The various forms of radiation had become tides and rivers surging together into an ocean, spreading across the land and flooding toward them.
"Original Sin approaches. May the Turing God protect us!"
Gray Eye Adrian was not only a mechanical hunter, but also a metal preacher of the Turing Church. His eyes were "Eyes of Burning Coal," capable of glimpsing the truth through the electrical grid and seeing the twisted demons within the radiation ecosystem.
On the eastern front, Keiko Matsushima's pair of short legs kept bouncing up and down. She repeatedly rubbed the hilt of her mechanical blade, then looked pleadingly at the captain with her big eyes.
"Daisyra, I want to—"
"No."
"I'll only cut down one. I'll do it secretly, I promise no one will find out."
"No."
"Daisyra~~"
Watching Keiko Matsushima clutch her clothes and call out aggrievedly, Daisyra sighed and explained, "Keiko, do you know what's most frightening about radiation beasts?"
"The environment. The irradiated environment where the horde lives. In this kind of environment, all electronic devices will malfunction, and weapons and equipment will suffer tremendous interference. The beasts, however, thrive in the radiation zone. They can even use a fallen leaf or a tree stem to keep watch on us."
Before Keiko could speak, Daisyra continued, "I know what you're going to say. Now that the beasts have left their nest, this is when they're at their weakest. But you need to understand one thing: radiation fields aren't naturally occurring. They're born because radiation beasts live together in groups."
"Daisyra, you mean they're nurturing a new radiation field?" Keiko Matsushima asked blankly.
"Yes. And combat will only accelerate the field's formation. Once you enter this kind of radiation field, your biological magnetic field will be marked, and you'll passively become part of the 'radiation food chain.' Do you want radiation beasts to keep targeting you for the rest of your life?"
At the thought of being pursued by beasts day and night, Keiko Matsushima shuddered.
"Then what do we do now?"
"Wait." Daisyra remained calm. "The beasts' energy isn't infinite either. Once the radiation ecosystem forms, that will be the moment when their own energy is at its weakest. That will be when we hunt."
"But if we do that, the radiation zone will only grow larger step by step, eventually surrounding the oasis completely." A taciturn team member suddenly spoke.
Daisyra was silent for a moment before saying, "That isn't something we need to worry about. When the time comes, the mechanical legions will naturally be deployed to completely change this desert's ecosystem, just as they did during the Mechanical War."
The hunt continued for a day and a night. Mechanical hunters kept returning covered in wounds to recuperate, while others hurriedly replaced a single cybernetic limb before setting out again.
As mechanical augmenters, their stamina could not compare with machines, but it was still more than ten times that of ordinary people.
At some point, a giant electronic screen appeared at the entrance to Gasoline Town. It displayed a succession of names and hunted prey. Battlefield recorders automatically recorded and played back the most spectacular hunting scenes, stirring the blood of everyone who watched.
At the very center of the screen was a leaderboard. The hunting team ranked first had killed two hundred E-rank beasts on the very first day. They were truly formidable.
"Is it the Marauder Team? They've been in the limelight lately."
"It's only natural that it's them. At least three members of their team have completed semi-mechanical augmentation. They're all rising stars."
"What about the old-established teams? Fireweed, Gray Eye, and Crawler?"
"In this man-eating desert, isn't it only natural for the new to replace the old? A few years ago, Fireweed, Crawler, and Gray Eye were the Marauders of today. Do you still remember the old teams before them?"
"The betting's open! Come on, place your bets. Who will be in the top ten tomorrow? Will an old-established team overtake the newcomers, or will the Marauders remain firmly in first place as the dark horse?"
Aside from the gamblers who knew they had no hope of competing and loved opening betting pools, the truly attentive people were more concerned with the movements of those old-established teams.
Firestealer, Mechanist, Crawler, Gray Eye, and Fireweed.
What were these old-established teams doing now?
"I think I saw Crawler while I was hunting earlier."
"Oh? What were they doing?" The other person immediately perked up. Could these old-established hunting teams be planning something extraordinary?
"When I left, I think I saw Crawler surrounded by a beast horde. The situation didn't look good." The person hesitated for a moment before answering.
"Impossible. Most of the radiation beasts appearing now are F-rank and E-rank. How could they surround Crawler? They must have another arrangement and be preparing to unleash something big."
They really were holding back a big move. Late that night, news arrived: Crawler had been trapped by the beast horde in its entirety. The team had been wiped out.
"Crawler is dead!?"
"Seriously? Are the beast hordes really that terrifying?"
"Does anyone else feel that the radiation beasts seem to be getting stronger? The more we kill, the faster they grow."
"Damn, you feel it too? Their hides could be pierced by a single bullet before, but now bullets can't even get through."
The first day, the second day, the third day.
The Marauder Team remained firmly in first place. The number of prey killed by their hands approached five hundred, while several powerful newcomers also began making names for themselves.
The Chainsaw Killer, Octopus Monster, Bio-Maniac, Hound Hunter, the Bomber...
The old-established teams still showed no movement. Rumors were now circulating that these old teams had other arrangements. Otherwise, they would not have remained so low-key.
At the data analysis center in the military supplies warehouse, a group of battlefield analysts were analyzing the situation. The atmosphere was heated.
"The Marauder Team must have capital backing them. The D73 micro-missiles, full-coverage exoskeleton armor, and EMP bombs they use are all weapons meant for dealing with rebels."
"The beast horde is nurturing radiation fields faster than we calculated. As of noon today, the F-rank and E-rank radiation fields have finished forming. The battlefield is about to rise by an entire level of intensity. We need to increase logistical support."
"How about consuming another wave of mechanical hunters?"
"Not for now. The old-established teams still haven't entered the battle. Such attrition would be meaningless. Remember, ours isn't the only oasis facing a beast horde. This is a competition too."
Director Zhou tapped on the tabletop. The situation had gone somewhat beyond his expectations. After all, he had painted such a grand picture, yet these old foxes had not taken the bait?
Sure enough, spending too long dealing with robots had caused his eloquence to deteriorate.
"What about the Hunter Team? Have they reached the supply point? A new batch of weapons is waiting for them to receive."
"They've arrived." The operator's expression changed, and he said excitedly, "They reported that they have a hunting plan. They're going to hunt a D-rank radiation beast tribe!"