Chapter 400 - 397: A Scalp-Numbing Show

Chapter 400: Chapter 397: A Scalp-Numbing Show

「Half a month after the Touch.」

On the outskirts of a small city in Yin Country, a few young men and women with guns moved cautiously through the streets.

They climbed over the chaotic roadway. While the others provided cover from a corner, one of the girls slowly climbed to the roof of a half-collapsed building.

This town wasn’t a touch zone, yet it was desolate and silent. There were no civilians or soldiers to be seen.

"It stinks here... such a disgusting feeling... Amira, do you see anything?"

The girl called Amira raised her sniper rifle, using its scope as a pair of binoculars to observe the distance.

She focused on a few shops and a medium-sized clinic.

Her face was covered in fine beads of sweat. Through the sniper scope, she could see bloodstains everywhere—on the walls, the ground, and many other places.

Perhaps because she had been up there for too long, another woman climbed up and whispered, asking about the situation.

"I didn’t see anything! I’m coming down."

The girl glanced at the man and her other tense-faced companions below, then started climbing down.

These people weren’t wearing military uniforms, but they possessed rifles and other weapons because they were, in fact, soldiers of Yin Country.

But they weren’t well-trained regular army soldiers. They were new recruits from a large-scale, temporary conscription drive across the country’s various states.

Although Yin Country was a world power in terms of both population and area, when it came to the responsiveness of its state apparatus, it clearly didn’t even qualify as second-tier. It might have been even worse.

Its only advantage was its demographic dividend, allowing it to rapidly assemble a massive force during the global wave of military conscription.

However, the development of a high-quality officer corps was severely lagging. The existing army already lacked educated low-to-mid-level officers, and the formation of new recruit units was even more chaotic.

This led to a very strange phenomenon.

Yin Country, having barely managed to join the World Alliance, formulated its own precise strategic plans based on the common defense protocols adopted by the Alliance.

But they aimed too high and overlooked their own weak foundations. Their underdeveloped military system was insufficient to support a strategic plan that required precise control over a population of more than a billion people.

The original million-plus veterans were already of mixed quality; illiteracy and older age were commonplace.

To quickly turn their several million new recruits into a fighting force, they broke up the veteran units and inserted the old soldiers into the new recruit corps. The plan was for the veterans to mentor the rookies and raise the overall combat effectiveness of the army.

The idea was good, but the veteran force already lacked qualified junior officers. They ended up inserting all these veterans into the new recruit corps to serve as individual officers.

In the apocalyptic atmosphere, chaos reigned as civilians looted supplies. Police brutality became common, and the supply chain for military equipment—sourced from all over—was a mess. This only exacerbated the panic among Yin Country’s new recruits. Compounded by inadequate psychological counseling services, not only did the veterans fail to mentor the new soldiers, but the opposite occurred. The consequences were predictable.

Calling Yin Country’s overall military system "stuck in the middle" would be generous. To World Alliance observers, it was an absolute mess. This series of blunders not only shocked the major powers of the World Alliance but also terrified some of Yin Country’s own generals.

Through its observers, the World Alliance issued warnings to Yin Country, coordinating with reformists and other discerning individuals within the country to remedy the situation.

There were still quite a few people who understood the gravity of the situation. At this critical juncture, with the president at the core, high-ranking military officials who had been responsible for handling previous anomaly incidents stepped up to set things right.

They integrated a portion of newly re-enlisted older veterans with active-duty troops, then supplemented these units with new recruits. This maintained an active-duty regular army of 800,000. At the same time, they expanded the active-duty forces by 30% at the squad level, filling the new spots with rookies.

This method preserved a certain level of combat capability, but the consequence was that the units composed entirely of new recruits became even more inefficient.

Meanwhile, due to the vast territory and population, these troops had to be prepared for the front lines after only basic training. To make matters worse, the Dark Tide arrived earlier than expected.

While the main fronts in the first wave of contact battles were stabilized, the morale of new recruits on the periphery often completely collapsed. It was common for them to break ranks and flee the front lines.

This series of fumbles from Yin Country sent a chill down the spines of the other World Alliance nations. As a major neighboring country, Hua Country was especially on high alert along its border defenses.

From the central leadership and the Special Security Team down to the grassroots troops, no one held out any hope that Yin Country could contain the monsters within its borders. The situation in some of the smaller countries on the borders of the two major powers might even be worse than in Yin Country.

The young people outside Galuo City at this moment were precisely these deserters from Yin Country’s broken army.

Amira and her companion carefully climbed down the building and approached their teammates.

"It’s noon. Maybe those monsters really don’t like the sun."

"Or maybe they’ve already left this place to fight the regular army... After all, here..."

Another man chimed in.

"After all, anyone who didn’t escape from here is probably already dead..."

This was the price of the army’s slow response. The monsters that had gotten loose varied in size and strength, some being bizarrely powerful. Ordinary people could hardly fight back.

They had access to the series of strategic plans shared by the World Alliance, but lacked the ability to execute them properly. Their military proficiency, equipment, and even their infrastructural transport capacity couldn’t keep up.

As they spoke of these heavy topics, the mood among the group grew somber.

"There are two supermarkets over there, and a clinic. Should we look for medicine first, or go to the supermarket?"

"Supermarket!" "Supermarket..." "Supermarket!"

All seven or eight of them chose to go to the supermarket first.

Soon, they reached a supermarket with a shattered entrance. The group tightened their grips on their guns, and they could all see the tension on each other’s faces.

"Let’s go... Be careful!"

One step, two steps, they tiptoed inside, their eyes constantly scanning their surroundings.

Inside the supermarket, several shelves were toppled. It had been repeatedly looted before the Dark Tide’s arrival, so there was little desirable food among the scattered goods on the floor.

Many places were stained a dark red.

"There’s blood everywhere..."

Amira’s words made everyone’s breathing quicken. Suddenly, she froze. Her mouth began to water uncontrollably.

"Over here! Bread and luncheon meat!!"

Those heavenly words instantly drew everyone over. They rushed to the shelf like madmen, tearing open packages and stuffing the food into their mouths, not caring in the slightest if the bread was past its expiration date.

"Don’t just eat, pack it up! Pack it!"

Amira stuffed a loaf of bread into her mouth, and after catching her breath, she quickly shouted. Only then did her companions take off their backpacks, unzip them, and start frantically stuffing things inside.

"ROAR~~~~"

The roar of a beast echoed from the distance, and everyone’s movements gradually stiffened.

The vegetation around the world was now growing at an exaggerated rate. This small town had no skyscrapers, and with the reduction in human activity, a large section of it had already been encroached upon by the forest in just half a month.

"It’s fine, it’s fine. It’s probably just a passing animal."

Just as one of the men finished saying this reassuringly, they heard more roars, growing louder and more chaotic.

The group were not seasoned veterans with military discipline. Having witnessed the cruelty of the front lines, they were as skittish as startled birds. Now, their faces were pale with fear.

"No, it’s not necessarily those monsters. There are a lot of roars from Earth animals in there..."

But within moments, all sorts of strange cries also erupted from within the town. Most were abnormally sharp, and some sounded like mournful wails, making one’s skin crawl.

"Hide! Find a place to hide, quick!!"

Going outside now was clearly not an option. They chose to rush through a door on one side of the supermarket, barricade it from the inside with debris, and then head up the stairs.

The building was about four or five stories tall with high ceilings. Aside from the supermarket on the ground floor, they didn’t know what the upper floors were for.

The second, third, and fourth floors had many rooms—it could have been a hotel or an apartment building. But the bloodstains all over the hallways made the group afraid to linger, so they went straight to the top fifth floor.

The top floor was a kind of recreation room. It seemed to be a wide-open space with no small rooms or suspicious corners. Aside from being a bit messy, there were no bloodstains.

The group let out a small sigh of relief. At least there were no monsters.

After securing the entrance door, Amira carefully lay prone by one of the recreation room’s windows to look outside.

This was one of the highest vantage points in town. Her companions slowly gathered around her.

Cold sweat trickled down their faces.

The once-dead town seemed to have come alive. Strange, humanoid figures were running out of houses all over the place.

From their tattered clothing, it was very likely they had once been human. Now, however, they all appeared somewhat deformed.

Some ran on all fours, while others leaped forward. A common trait was their deformed, massive fingers, many of which had grown claws. Their heads were also much larger than a normal person’s, and their mouths seemed to be split open to their chins, revealing menacing teeth.

They poured out from collapsed houses, from intact residences, from certain shops, and even from the clinic they had considered looting earlier.

These monsters were very fast, as if stimulated by the animal roars to rush out from their hiding places.

Even with the door locked and windows closed on the fifth floor, the group felt the stench in the city grow stronger as the monsters appeared.

’So that’s what the stench was from... them...’

"SHHH!!!!"

Amira’s breathing grew ragged. The others, who took turns looking through the sniper scope to see the details, were no better off.

"What are these things..."

"I-I don’t know... But some of them are wearing clothes, and, and they’re humanoid..."

"Zombies?"

A man wearing glasses swallowed hard and wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve.

"No, I read something online... These might be... mutant Ghouls!"

In the surrounding forest, countless beasts roared as herds migrated through the woodlands around several cities.

If one were to look from high above, one would see that it wasn’t just Galuo City. From the villages, towns, and cities near the forest, a tide of Ghouls was pouring out.

Some were still humanoid, while others had already transformed into twisted giants or hunched monsters.

The dust clouds they kicked up converged on the surrounding forest from several directions. The ones from Galuo City were just a small fraction of the total.

Two J-series reconnaissance jets streaked across the sky.

"CLICK CLICK CLICK..."

High-speed still and video cameras worked continuously.

They flew less than 50 meters apart to ensure the efficiency of their ultra-shortwave communications.

In this day and age, the concept of airspace was already quite vague. Yin Country couldn’t provide shared intelligence for areas it couldn’t control, but Hua Country would not relax its surveillance of the region.

"One, what are those things down there?"

The pilot observed the ground through the cockpit window. The sight of things swarming out of the surrounding towns gave them a very bad feeling.

"They look like Ghouls. But what are they doing?"

"We know too little about their behavior. But I feel like... they’re on a coordinated hunt?"

The jets circled in the air a few times, but ultimately, the pilots decided against attacking the ground with their payloads. For one, their weapons would be ineffective against a Demon Tide of this scale and would likely just alert the enemy.

On the other hand, this was not their own country’s territory. There was a huge difference between reconnaissance and a military strike. Unable to contact command from this distance, an Air Force major and a captain didn’t dare make such a decision on their own.

"WHOOSH~~~~"

The sound of the low-flying jets also startled the trembling group in Galuo Town. Amira could even see the markings on the Hua Country jets through her sniper scope.