Intense gunshots echoed across the open Badlands.
The mercenaries, holding heavy machine guns, strafed the Arasaka convoy.
But their big guns couldn't inflict significant damage on Arasaka's armored vehicles.
Instead, Arasaka's escort vehicles rammed them into disarray.
Instead of passively defending or accelerating to escape the attack, Arasaka's armed escort team began actively clearing out these annoying mercenaries.
Controlling the armored vehicles to get close to the mercenaries' vehicles, drawing guns, and headshotting them, all in one smooth motion.
Soon, these mercenaries were completely cleared out.
But the crisis for the Arasaka convoy was not yet over.
Having dealt with this group of mercenaries, more were waiting for them up ahead.
Even if dealing with these mercenaries wasn't difficult for them.
It wasn't without cost.
Facing wave after wave of mercenaries, Arasaka's transport team slowly began to show signs of decline.
The armed personnel were decreasing little by little.
Dealing with these mercenaries also gradually became more difficult.
At this rate, it was likely only a matter of time before these mercenaries took them down.
...
Arasaka Transport Convoy.
The large transport truck in the very center, which was the main objective of this transport mission.
Inside the truck compartment.
Two fully armed Arasaka soldiers sat facing each other, holding their guns.
The sound of bullets hitting the outside of the truck, blocked by the high-strength protective steel plates, turned into faint thuds echoing inside the compartment.
On the tactical panel nearby, red dots constantly appeared and then disappeared.
And the blue dots representing their teammates were also slowly disappearing.
At this moment, their expressions hidden by their tactical helmets were somewhat tense.
Because they were intercepted all the way through the Badlands; in the past, Arasaka's reinforcement team should have been on their way by now.
But until now, let alone reinforcement troops, they hadn't even heard a sound.
This also made them sense something different.
Either the enemy was too powerful, or there was something wrong with this mission.
Swallowing, they looked towards the other side in unison.
They saw a large object they had never seen before placed on one side of the compartment.
Its iconic huge gorilla arms indicated its identity.
Cyberpunk.
And right in the middle of the Cyberpunk, a limbless, unconscious figure was suspended.
Looking at this scene, the two armed soldiers, although they didn't know what the Cyberpunk they were transporting was.
It didn't prevent them from guessing that this was Arasaka's latest research product.
With such an important product in danger, Arasaka was not at all anxious.
How could they not understand the meaning behind this?
It was obvious they were just bait.
But what was the point of knowing this? It would only make their deaths more painful.
As pawns under Arasaka, they seemed to have no right to choose their own life or death.
"Boom!"
With a huge sound and violent jolt, the rapidly moving truck suddenly came to a stop.
And these two armed soldiers also received their final mission.
Activate the installation program on the truck's terminal.
...
Across the vast Badlands.
The driver of the transport truck was still taken down by the mercenaries.
The truck, with its braking program activated, kicked up a large swathe of yellow earth, finally coming to a slow stop under the overwhelming yellow sand.
This group of mercenaries, who knows which wave they were, looked at the truck in the sky-filling yellow sand, revealing excited smiles.
They didn't notice at all that on one side of the dust, a gap had suddenly broken open.
As if someone had crashed through this yellow sand barrier at an extremely high speed.
The mercenaries excitedly approached the truck's door.
The hacker in the team began to work hard on the side to crack the door.
But just as the hacker hadn't completely unlocked the door, the ground suddenly began to shake.
The mercenaries turned their heads one after another, only to see a scene that filled them with terror.
They saw that across the Badlands, armored vehicles marked with Military Technology occupied their vision.
The vast convoy caused the entire ground to tremble slightly, and the stirred-up sand and dust even obscured half the sky.
And besides the ordinary armored vehicles, there were also a large number of armed missile vehicles mixed in.
But what terrified these mercenaries the most was the Military Technology two-seater hover tank flying in mid-air—the Basilisk.
"Military Technology? What kind of force is this!" the mercenary leader shouted in terror.
He had never seen such a lineup before.
"Boss, what should we do? Should we run?"
One of the mercenaries asked urgently.
This wasn't just about a small armed transport convoy anymore.
See those ready-to-fire missile vehicles? If they unleashed a round of missile bombardment, they would all be reduced to dust.
They were just desperadoes, not truly wanting to die.
But just as the boss was hesitating while looking at these Military Technology forces, another terrible situation seemed to arise.
They saw a sudden huge thud coming from the truck, which had been very quiet.
And a large outward bulge immediately appeared on the indestructible truck door.
As if a terrifying behemoth was locked inside, awakening at this moment, ready to rush out and devour people.
"Retreat!"
Seeing this scene, the mercenary captain also quickly gave the order; if they didn't retreat now, they would truly die.
However, this was a commission where death was inevitable anyway, so how could they possibly survive so easily?
They saw the truck door make a loud noise for the second time, and the door could no longer withstand this immense force, being blown outward.
As the truck lost its door, the scene inside the compartment was revealed.
What met their eyes was deep red.
Not the red light of an alarm, but splattered blood.
Those two Arasaka soldiers were turned into the best paint, giving the compartment a new coating.
The Cyberpunk, or rather, test subject Captain Bafil, was unleashed.
There was no roar like a gorilla as imagined; Bafil's face showed unexpected indifference.
At this moment, he could feel the terrifying power this cybernetic body brought him.
As an iron-blooded soldier, he had never seen such a cybernetic body.
But at this moment, he was not happy about his own strength.
Because he knew he was nothing more than a pathetic test subject.
What was the point of a test subject being strong?
His existence was solely to provide Arasaka with a grand performance, and then be thrown into a garbage can to slowly rot and die.
From the moment he was injured and fell unconscious on the battlefield, revived by a mysterious injection, and "voluntarily" participated in this Arasaka experimental project, he knew his fate.
So, who should be blamed for this? Himself, who performed bravely on the battlefield but unfortunately lost?
Bafil didn't think so.
The one who should die should be Arasaka.
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