Chapter 649: Successive Explosions, The Nuclear Moment, Hogg Makes His Move

Whoosh—

The tactical nuclear missile’s exhaust trail carved a faint streak of cloud across the Reversal World.

Under the lingering cover of the first nuclear explosion, it flew toward that massive blood-red train.

The Alpha’s tactics had worked.

Though he didn’t know the defense and detection ratings of a Silver-tier train, he understood one thing clearly: taking down an enemy in a single attack was impossible.

The first nuke’s purpose was to use the blast to disrupt and damage the Black Ice Express’s detection systems and weapon defenses. The following three nukes were the true killing blows.

Inside the train’s command cabin, Black Ice was stunned when three long-range strike warnings suddenly appeared on his console.

Forgetting everything else, he poured all his focus into driving the train downward. One nuke could be withstood. Two were still manageable. But any more than that, and he’d be dead.

Even Silver-tier players were still beings of flesh and blood. Worse, the radiation effects from nukes amplified their lethality against organic life. It was a fatal combo.

Unfortunately, by now, Black Ice’s attempts to act were already too late.

On the command cabin’s surveillance feed, a blinding fireball appeared in the sky, growing closer and closer, like a falling meteor streaking down.

Boom—

The second tactical nuke struck the Black Ice Express dead-center in its midsection.

A violent chain reaction generated tens of millions of degrees of heat at the moment of detonation. Though a second later, the core temperature plummeted to a few thousand degrees as the fireball expanded outward, it still made a major contribution—shattering the thin blood-red membrane coating the train’s surface.

In an instant, the Black Ice Express’s strongest defensive barrier rapidly drained its energy. It didn’t collapse outright, but it grew noticeably thinner.

At that very moment, the intense, penetrating radiation from the nuclear fission began seeping through the blood-red membrane, corroding the train’s interior. Massive damage was done to its biological structures.

And this was only the beginning.

[Warning, backup energy insufficient! Backup energy insufficient!]

In the command cabin, urgent alerts blared in Black Ice’s ears. The bitter fruit of his earlier reckless gambit—expending a huge amount of Blood Energy to mass-produce Blood Beasts—now revealed itself.

But Black Ice had no time to dwell on it. Scrambling up from the floor, he worked frantically.

The locomotive began to separate from the carriages. Black Ice was preparing to cut off the tail to survive. All stored energy was funneled into the drill mechanism at the front of the locomotive.

“Faster, faster!” That was Black Ice’s only thought now.

And with the bulky, bloated carriages shed, the locomotive became far more agile. In just a few seconds, it had already burrowed more than ten meters downward.

But at the same time, the third and fourth tactical nukes launched by the Alpha had already arrived.

The moment the Alpha spotted the Black Ice Express’s drill mechanism, he had already anticipated the possibility of it burrowing underground to escape. So, for those four nukes—the first for disruption, the second for direct damage, and the third and fourth for a decapitation strike—the targets were clear and precise.

When the two nukes, trailing their shrieking descent, landed at the Black Ice Express’s locomotive with a margin of error under one meter, an unprecedented explosion erupted in this Reversal World.

A colossal fireball illuminated the sky, and a mushroom cloud announced its arrival to the world. A surging shockwave incinerated everything within hundreds of meters. The sand and gravel on the ground began to melt under the extreme heat.

“No......”

The blast lifted the earth, and along with it, the blood-red locomotive.

=

Rumble—

A long time later, when the Pioneering Group’s mechanical Steel Torrent appeared at the horizon, kicking up dust, it came to a halt ten kilometers from the explosion site.

“Report. Radiation levels ahead exceed the warning threshold.”

The Alpha stared at the radioactive contamination map on his screen. The impact of four nukes exploding in quick succession was far more severe than he had imagined.

“Show current wind direction and calculate the diffusion radius of radioactive contaminants.”

In moments, a dynamic chart appeared on the screen.

On the chart, the Pioneering Group’s current position was directly downwind of the blast zone. The explosion had carried radioactive debris this far, reaching an area over ten kilometers away. The chart also showed the calculated diffusion radius in the upwind direction—less than a kilometer.

The next course of action was crystal clear.

“Turn around. Head upwind of the blast.”

The Mechanical Armored Vehicle convoy immediately changed direction.

Meanwhile, inside the vampire city, the chaos triggered by Moon Shadow’s Breath’s disappearance had the vampires in disarray. But now, they were also drawn by the commotion of four consecutive explosions.

The Reversal World was a sealed space by nature, with both lower and upper mirror worlds of the mainland. The impact of four powerful explosions was immense. Every living creature felt a deep wariness.

And on the other side.

Yu Yuan had already arrived at the motor lodge.

Under the Parasitic Blood Vine’s draining, Moon Shadow’s Breath’s once voluptuous, well-proportioned body had become withered and gaunt. The Blood Clan’s power came from Blood Energy, and Blood Energy’s carrier was the blood within a vampire’s body. So, once the Parasitic Blood Vine had absorbed the blood from Moon Shadow’s Breath’s body down to the minimum required to sustain life, she was barely left with the strength to breathe.

It was fortunate she was a vampire—no heartbeat was needed to pump blood through her system. Otherwise, Yu Yuan would have worried whether the residual blood in her body could handle the load.

Moon Shadow’s Breath felt a weakness she had never known before. For the first time, fear appeared in her eyes.

“Am I going to die?”

Just as Moon Shadow’s Breath was thinking this, she saw a black rat appear beside the man across from her. And the next moment, that black rat transformed into a black whip.

Crack—

Moon Shadow’s Breath’s eyes shot wide open. Her neck stretched taut...

-

Inside the command vehicle.

The Alpha watched the drone’s surveillance feed, a tremor running through him.

“So this is a Silver-tier player?”

Truly terrifying!

After taking three nukes head-on, the Black Ice Express lay sprawled across the scarred land like a dead blood-red serpent. Its body was mottled and damaged, a clear sign of the nuclear blast’s immense impact.

And at the locomotive’s position, a crater over thirty meters deep and forty to fifty meters wide had formed in the ground.

At the bottom of the crater sat the locomotive, its color now a dark, charred brown. The engine was battered, but it had clearly maintained its structural integrity and frame. In fact, under the Alpha’s watch, the last thin layer of the blood-red membrane on the locomotive’s surface finally dissipated.

A pool of blood oozed out from the locomotive, eventually coalescing into a man dressed in a white suit. But now, that suit was stained and filthy, and his usually slicked-back hair was a complete mess.

He seemed to hear the drone’s buzzing sound.

He looked up—and the drone feed instantly cut out.

The Alpha shifted his gaze from the screen to the imposing figure who had been by his side from the very beginning.

“Hogg... he’s yours! Keep him alive. The Leader will kill him personally.”

Hogg cracked his neck, baring his teeth in a grin. “Heh heh, got it!”