"Cease fire! Cease fire!"
Wang Zhong grabbed Tax Brother, who was still wildly spraying bullets at the spinning blue light, and shouted so loudly that his spittle nearly sprayed into the other man's helmet.
"Our crappy guns are useless against that thing! What, you think it's a Khorne Bloodletter?"
"This is a Tzeentch ritual! You need psychic powers or a damn bigger cannon!"
The barrel of Tax Brother's shotgun, converted from a Stubber, was practically glowing red. He panted heavily, his single eye fixed on the warehouse.
Ren and his people had completely transformed. Their bodies twisted and stretched like melting candles, and shifting geometric patterns surfaced across their skin. Their chanting had become an inhuman shriek.
At the center of the blood-red pattern, space had already torn open, revealing a glimpse of a bizarre scene beyond: countless eyes, books, and warped clocks swirling around.
"Damn it... Heretics!"
Tax Brother spat. "We're just going to leave them alone?"
"Leave them alone? What are we supposed to do, headbutt them?"
Wang Zhong pointed up at the sky, then toward the explosions and gunfire outside the facility, which were drawing ever closer and nearly merging into a single roar.
"Can't you hear that?"
"It's a lot livelier out there than it is here!"
"The Alru Group isn't stupid. With a commotion this big, reinforcements are bound to be on their way!"
He dragged Tax Brother backward and shouted over the squad channel at the same time: "Everyone! Fall back! Return to the robbery... I mean, the Resource Recovery Main Battlefield!"
"But Brother Loyalty," Xue Brother said, aiming his Lasgun at the center of the ritual, its scope still trained on the scene, "are we really going to let them finish the summoning? What if a Greater Daemon comes through..."
"Then let it come!"
Wang Zhong had already turned and started running. His voice carried a reckless excitement over the channel. "What the hell does that have to do with us? We're players! The Fourth Calamity!"
"Even if a Greater Daemon shows up, it has to follow the usual process. First comes the scripted death, then we wait for the next update to add a guide!"
"Besides, have you ever seen a game put the final boss in the first chapter of the newbie village? If the developers actually pulled that, the players would flame them so hard they'd blow up their ancestors' graves!"
His logic was bizarre, but somehow convincing.
The players in the direct squad exchanged glances, then all put away their weapons and sprinted after Wang Zhong toward the depths of the facility.
Over there, Soul of Cadia and the others were dismantling equipment with a racket like a heavy-metal cutting convention.
As they passed the warehouse, Wang Zhong took one last glance inside.
Ren was slowly turning his head. On the face that no longer had any recognizable features, countless tiny mouths opened at once, uttering overlapping whispers laced with mockery:
"Knowledge... grants you choices... clever little ants... go... forage... at the feast of change..."
"Shit, that's creepy as hell."
Wang Zhong's scalp prickled, and he ran even faster.
When they raced back to the smelter area in the northwest corner, the sight before them made everyone suck in a sharp breath.
Not out of fear, but excitement.
The Promethium Smelter worth eighty thousand coins had disappeared.
All that remained was a huge smoking pit where its base had stood, with dozens of thick pipes and power cables severed by brute force scattered nearby.
Meanwhile, Soul of Cadia and his crew were like ants hauling food, taking apart the third Large Ore Crusher piece by piece and stuffing it into more than a dozen Portable Recovery Terminals, activated in turn by different players.
The numbers on the terminal screens raced upward. Every crisp ding meant thousands of Imperial Coins added to their haul.
"Brother Loyalty! You're back!"
Soul of Cadia wiped the grease from his face and grinned as if he'd just robbed a bank. "How'd it go?"
"What's happening over there? I can hear the explosions getting closer!"
"Don't worry about that. It'll take too long to explain."
Wang Zhong quickly scanned the battlefield. "How's the haul? Give me the numbers!"
"This is freaking amazing!"
Tau-kun, you are right, but Bolter is righter came running over from the east, carrying a processor board he had just removed from a control panel.
"We took apart the Conveyor Control Tower. Thirty-two thousand!"
"The Raw Material Pre-processing Line to the west, forty-five thousand! Plus seven large transport vehicles, twelve thousand each on average! The total recovery value so far is..."
He glanced at the synchronized figures on his terminal. His voice rose to a pitch. "One million, two hundred and seventy-eight thousand, four hundred Imperial Coins!!!"
The channel fell silent for one second.
Then it exploded.
"How much???"
"One million, two hundred and seventy-eight thousand???"
"I'm bad at math, don't lie to me!"
"That means everyone gets over two hundred coins?!"
"Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit!"
"We're rich! We're really fucking rich! This haul's a fortune! A fortune, brothers!"
The players' eyes had gone red—not with bloodlust, but with the kind of hunger a poor man felt upon seeing a mountain of gold.
Wang Zhong's heart pounded too, but he forced himself to stay calm and quickly asked, "How much have we dismantled? How much is left?"
The voice of the Mechanicus Oil-Lover on the Run came over the channel:
"According to the preset priority list, seventy-eight percent of the high-value targets have been dismantled and recovered."
"Remaining recoverable large equipment includes: the Central Cooling Tower Core Unit, Promethium Refinery No. 2, three Medium Conveyor Drive Engines, and assorted medium-sized equipment. The raw material stock is worth approximately one hundred and fifty thousand coins."
"If we dismantle everything, the total value could exceed 1.6 million Imperial Coins."
He paused, then added, "But we're running out of time."
"Based on the frequency spectrum of the gunfire outside, the attackers have breached the facility's outer defenses and are expected to reach this area within fifteen minutes."
"Meanwhile, calculating by Hive City military response standards, the Alru Group's reinforcements will arrive within an hour at the latest."
Wang Zhong's thoughts raced.
1.6 million coins.
That meant over three hundred each.
What could you do with three hundred coins?
A proper Lucius Pattern Lasgun in the shop cost just eighty coins, a basic Flak Armour set fifty, and a basic physique enhancement a hundred...
In other words, as long as they got out safely today, these five thousand players could upgrade their gear in an instant, going from a band of miner guerrillas to a respectable light infantry company!
"Speed it up!"
Wang Zhong gritted his teeth. "All squads! Forget careful dismantling! If you can blow it up with explosives, do it!"
"Once it's blown up, recover the fragments! It doesn't matter if the recovery rate's lower! Just hurry!"
"Tech team! Mark the structural weak points on the Cooling Tower and the refinery! Plant the explosives!"
"Squads one and two! Get to the raw materials warehouse!"
"Grab whatever you see! If you can't carry it, pile it up and recover it with the terminals!"
"Move, move, move! Time is money, friends!"
The players roared and got moving again.
This time, they were no longer careful. They had gone completely berserk.
The demolition team carried simple explosive charges exchanged from the shop. They were ridiculously cheap—fifteen coins for a big pack—and had roughly the power of three grenades strapped together. They charged toward the base of the Cooling Tower.
The tech team members lay on the ground, using pens from the shop to mark X after X across the metal casing.
"Here! Coolant pipe junction! Blow it up and the whole structure will collapse!"
"And here! Main support column! Damn, this thing's solid steel? The Alru Group actually built something without cutting corners?"
"Quit talking! Set the charges!"
"Three, two, one, get down!"
"BOOM!!!"
The blast was deeper than any of the previous explosions. The upper half of the Cooling Tower slowly tilted and collapsed, sending dust billowing into the sky.
The players charged forward before the dust had even settled, sweeping their Portable Recovery Terminals over the rubble.
[Recovery complete: high-strength alloy structural components... Estimated value: 43,000 Imperial Coins]
"Awesome!!!"
Almost at the same time, explosions rang out from several directions across the facility.
The other player squads followed suit, beginning their own demolition spree.
And amid all this frenzied constructive destruction, the facility's outer defenses were finally breached completely.
At the same time, in Arlu City, at the Simans Chamber of Commerce Security Council
"Useless! Every last one of you is useless!"
The Bald Director slammed his fist against the reinforced alloy table for the third time. This time, a dent appeared in the tabletop, its edge buckling upward.
The holographic screen before him was divided into more than a dozen windows, each showing the ongoing battle at a different facility in the Crimson Bright Wasteland.
Refinery No. 3—the one the players were at—was the most chaotic. Smoke and explosions erupted throughout the interior, while outside, a sea of armed people in mismatched clothing but moving with surprising discipline used the facility buildings for cover as they exchanged fire with the remaining supervisors and the Chamber of Commerce security forces.
"The Siclaman Rebel Organization... the remnants of the Black Royal Family, who should have been wiped out eighty years ago!"
The red light in the Bald Director's single eye was almost spilling out. "Where's the intelligence officer?! How could we have received no warning about a military buildup on this scale?!"
An operator at the console answered in a trembling voice, "Director..."
"The Alru Group's chief intelligence officer, along with several of his core subordinates, last sent a signal seven days ago. We've lost contact with them since."
"We thought he was conducting a routine infiltration and reconnaissance mission..."
"Thought? You thought?!"
The Bald Director whipped around. His glare nearly made the operator collapse. "The Chamber of Commerce gives your intelligence department a budget of three million every year!"
"And you still turned out to be a bunch of useless fools who only know how to guess?!"
Before you continue