My Chat Group Is Too Strange — Chapter 44

"Mr. Mo Wang, why are you on the front lines? A place like this shouldn't..."

Having learned Mo Wang's identity, Marian looked at him somewhat nervously.

"Haah~ That's why I didn't want to interact with you all under this identity." Mo Wang sighed and said to Marian, "Just call me Commander. With our relationship, there's no need to be so formal."

"O-Okay."

Though she said that, Marian could not help staring at Mo Wang.

The Ark's most brilliant genius in the rumors, an expert in materials science, energy science, and mechanical engineering—someone regarded as the Ark's savior. She had never expected him to be this kind of person.

He felt vastly different from the rumors.

"Then, Mo Wang... no, Commander, what should we do now?"

Marian respectfully asked Mo Wang for the next course of action.

"What plan do we need? The two of us fight our way to the rendezvous point, find the others, and keep waiting for reinforcements. Isn't it that simple?"

Mo Wang spread his hands. What was there to ask? Any normal person should know what they needed to do now, right?

What? Kill all the Raptures around them?

He was not Destruction or The Hunt. He was not doing anything that barbaric.

"All right. I'll lead the way, Commander. Please follow me." Marian spoke as she prepared to lead Mo Wang toward the rendezvous point.

"Wait a second!"

However, Mo Wang stopped Marian again.

"Commander, is there something else?" Marian had only taken one step when Mo Wang suddenly grabbed her. She had nearly fallen flat on the ground.

Even if nothing on her was broken right now, after being jerked around by Mo Wang like this, something probably would be soon.

"You girl, why are you planning to just walk there?" Mo Wang said irritably. It was one thing for her to be silly after going dark, but why was she still so silly before that?

"Then how are we supposed to get there?"

Marian stared at Mo Wang blankly.

If they were not walking... were they supposed to fly there?

"Of course we're driving." As Mo Wang spoke, he projected a hammer into his hand. "Stay right here. I'm going to knock together a few screws."

Then, under Marian's utterly baffled gaze, Mo Wang used the surrounding Rapture wreckage to handcraft an armed off-road vehicle in ten minutes.

Ark's Legendary Survivor King and Comedy Master

"Laphi, how much longer are we supposed to wait? That Commander we were promised hasn't already died, has he?"

In an open little plaza, a blonde girl in yellow impatiently spoke to the reddish-brown-haired girl beside her.

However, expressionless Laphi showed no reaction whatsoever to Anis's words, as though she had not heard them.

"Hey! Laphi, say something! At this rate, we're going to run out of bullets."

Seeing that Laphi did not say a word, Anis stomped her foot hard.

But when Laphi saw that Anis was getting angry, she merely said calmly, "Since we have not received a death notice, we have a duty to keep waiting here. After all, those are the orders."

"You know, sometimes I really wish you could be a little more flexible."

Anis looked at her teammate. Though the two had been working together for some time, she still found it hard to get used to Laphi's thought process, which was stiffer than wood.

Sometimes, Anis seriously suspected that when Ingrid made Laphi's body, she had not put synthetic skin on her face at all and had simply made it out of steel.

Otherwise, how could she speak without showing even a trace of emotion?

If this girl did not eat normally, Anis would have suspected she was an actual robot in disguise.

"I'm not stubborn. I'm simply carrying out orders from above." Laphi calmly checked the bullets in her weapon. "Instead of talking over there, you should get ready. It seems more Raptures are coming."

"Haah~ Yes, yes, yes. Come to think of it, does following orders correctly mean you can keep surviving forever? Is that why you've lived this long? No, that can't be right. Those orders sounded like suicide missions." Like a comedy performer, Anis kept prattling in Laphi's ear.

She truly could not understand how Laphi had managed to live for so long despite being this rigid.

After all, on the front lines, mass-produced NIKKE came and went in wave after wave.

Normally, a NIKKE would not survive half a year in this hellhole.

But Laphi was the sole exception. As the Ark's Survivor King, she had genuinely broken the front-line survival record for NIKKE.

Even when all her teammates died, she never did.

She had even earned the title of the Ark's Grim Reaper.

As for Anis, who had been chattering endlessly beside her, Laphi had long since attained inner tranquility. She showed no emotion whatsoever.

Of course, just when one might think Laphi was already strange enough, Anis beside her was no ordinary character either.

As a former underground idol, Anis had fully demonstrated what it meant to have a tongue sharp enough to poison people after joining Tetra.

Normally, teammates assigned with her would start arguing with her within three days, and come to blows within a week.

Among all NIKKE, if anyone had the sharpest tongue, aside from the third member of their squad, probably no one could compare to her.

Yet Laphi had endured this woman for an entire year.

If Laphi had not had this personality, the grass on Anis's grave would probably be three meters tall by now.

"Watch out! The enemy is closing in!"

As movement came from ahead, Laphi and Anis were instantly surrounded by a large number of small Raptures.

Those mechanical creatures gleamed with cold metallic light. Like a pack of bloodthirsty hunters, they charged toward the two at high speed.

The two quickly found cover and ducked behind the nearby broken walls and ruins.

Laphi steadily adjusted her weapon, while Anis nervously gripped her gun beside her.

As the machine gun roared, bullets rained toward the incoming Raptures. Several were instantly shot down, their metal fragments cutting arcs through the air before crashing heavily to the ground with crisp clattering sounds.

However, the number of Raptures clearly exceeded their expectations. They seemed endless.

They surged forward like a tide, pouring continuously out of the ruins ahead and creating a suffocating sense of despair. Anis's heart began racing, and she could almost hear the blood rushing beside her ears.

"Laphi, can we hold out?" She tried to remain calm, but the anxiety in her voice was impossible to hide.

Laphi did not answer. Her eyes remained fixed ahead as she precisely calculated the path of every bullet. As the artillery roared again, shell after shell landed accurately amid the Raptures, triggering explosions that intertwined fire and smoke and temporarily halted the enemy's advance.

Yet through the smoke, Raptures continued to pour forward without end. Unease gradually rose in Anis's heart. Faced with enemies like a flood of metal, she could see no hope at all.

"Damn it! There are too many! I told you we should've left earlier!"

Anis shouted at Laphi beside her.

If this continued, Laphi might survive, but she would definitely die beyond dead!

With this many Raptures, there probably would not even be a fragment left of her body!

Was it really inevitable that anyone who stayed with the Ark's Grim Reaper would die?

"Something's wrong, Anis. These Raptures don't seem to be attacking us. They seem more like they're fleeing."

Laphi remained calm as she observed the battlefield around them. To her surprise, she noticed that these Raptures' route of advance was completely different from usual.

"What? Raptures running away? What kind of dream talk is that? It's not time to sleep yet, Laphi!"

Just as Anis finished mocking her, a strange sound suddenly reached both her and Laphi's ears.

"What the hell is that sound?"

Anis looked over in confusion. Behind the countless Raptures, a bizarre object was rapidly approaching while making strange noises.

"Die, all of you! Hahahaha! You damned Raptures, can you resist me, clad in Anti-Rapture Armor made from your own corpses?!"

"Commander, keep it down. This is way too embarrassing."

Anis: (?_?)

"If I'm not mistaken, it looks like someone is talking from inside that weird thing? What the hell is that?!"

In Anis's eyes, the enormous mass of scrap metal before her, which looked like countless Rapture corpses fused together, was wiping out the surrounding Raptures with unstoppable force.

Its terrifying power crushed an elite Rapture into pieces in the blink of an eye.

"What is that thing? A Tyrant-class Rapture?" Anis wore an expression like one from a famous masterpiece.

At that moment, she felt like the sky itself had fallen.

Is Mo Wang Still Human? That Was a Philosophical Question

Perhaps Anis was not the only one who thought that.

At the very least, the fleeing Raptures around them probably felt the same way.

Rapture No. 1: Holy shit?! What is that pile of stuff behind me? Why do I think I saw my big brother's face on it?

Rapture No. 2: MD! That human is a demon! Not only does he want to kill us, he even wants to stitch my corpse onto that monster!

Rapture No. 3: Gah! No, no! I don't want to become scraps!

Rapture No. 4: Where are my teammates?! Why did they all disappear at once?!

Rapture No. 5: All the teammates have become chunks on the enemy's body! Run for it!

Although Rapture intelligence was basically at the level of low-grade artificial intelligence, with many Raptures possessing only animal-like thought processes.

Still, it could not be denied that Raptures had instincts too.

Without orders forcibly issued by higher-ranking Raptures, low-level Raptures would instinctively flee from anything they considered dangerous.

For example, that giant mass behind them. To the Raptures, it probably looked like how humans would see a gigantic stitched-together Tomie—something that made their sanity plummet.

"Anis! Prepare to defend!" Laphi hurriedly warned the stunned Anis beside her.

However, it was clear that neither the surrounding Raptures nor the enormous stitched-together robot had any intention of attacking the two of them.

"Marian, stop! Looks like we've arrived!"

As Mo Wang's voice came from inside that mass of machinery, the machine that looked like a combined garbage heap finally came to a screeching halt.

"Finally... finally, we can stop?"

At that moment, Marian walked out from inside the robot with a pale face.

One could tell from her hollow eyes.

Her soul had probably left her body some time ago.

"You won't do, Marian. You need more practice. This is nothing. Can you call yourself an elite among NIKKE like this?" Mo Wang scolded as he looked at pale-faced Marian.

"Commander, while I'm happy that you called me an elite, I'm only an ordinary mass-produced NIKKE. True elites should be the Triangulum Squad, the Mortis Squad, or Special Forces, shouldn't they?"

"Oh? Not bad. You can even make snarky remarks now? Looks like you've improved a lot." Mo Wang nodded proudly. "As expected of a NIKKE taught by me. You improve quickly. It seems you understand now that anyone without the ability to complain is useless."

"I really don't know what complaining has to do with being useless." Marian looked helplessly at Mo Wang. She now clearly understood just how much of a headache it was to be with this Commander.

"But I still have to remind you, Marian. A mass-produced NIKKE who doesn't want to become a Pilgrim isn't a good Heretic. You need dreams, girl."

"I don't understand any of that at all."

"A human and... a NIKKE? What kind of bizarre development is this?" As she watched Marian and Mo Wang banter like a comedy duo, Anis, the Ark's number one comedy master, could no longer resist interrupting.

"Ah? Sorry! I'm Marian! The Commander and I have safely arrived at the rendezvous point!" Seeing someone looking in their direction, Marian quickly gathered herself and spoke to the two NIKKE.

"Oh?" Mo Wang also looked toward Laphi and Anis before him.

He recognized them at a glance. Were these not NIKKE's true female protagonist, Laphi, and his good bro Anis?

"Commander? Seriously? You two actually weren't blown to death?" Anis looked at them in astonishment.

"A NIKKE surviving is one thing, but the Commander is human, right?" As Anis spoke, she sized up Mo Wang. "You are human, right?"

"What kind of question is that? How am I not human?" Mo Wang looked at Anis indignantly.

What, was she going to revoke his human status today too?

Though bullets could not pierce his body, and missiles could not blow it apart.

A wound the size of a bowl might be healed by the next day.

He could even fire energy cannons and stuff.