Wasteland Echoer

Zine Empire, Old Uko Province, Underground of the "Wells Trail" in the Green Forest.

…

"What's your name, I want you to say it again. Not for anything else, just so that I can remember the poor souls who may be about to be annihilated under my hands. Do you know? [Hunter], especially by the God of the Forest' Wells' blessed hunters are destined to make sacrifices to the gods. Sometimes it's one, but today I got lucky, maybe it's my prayer to Lady Luck."

A mellow male voice came into Luo Nie's ears.

"Sacrifice...to the gods?" Luo Nie struggled to say in a hoarse voice that could hardly speak another word.

He forced himself to endure the inexplicable burning sensation in his throat and forcefully opened his painful, slightly red and swollen eyes that felt heavy.

After the initial blurriness caused by adapting to the light, the environment in front of him became clear as an extremely faint light flashed from his sapphire eyes.

"Sacrifice, gods, isn't it the goal of Hit and you? I'm also curious why the traitor brought a car, no, two cars of children to the gathering place of the lost. It turns out that besides his traitor and you Semi-leader, those children are the lost ones." The rich male voice reached Luo Nie's ears again.

He forced himself to hold back the cramps caused by the pain in his body and the nausea caused by the foul smell, and looked at the man in front of him holding a sharp electric saw that was running.

He looked up and saw that the man's hair was pure black, which suited the dark underground room.

Underneath the messy, even disgusting-smelling hair was an extremely ugly face.

His facial features are like the pinnacle work of an abstract artist. Wherever they should grow, there are corresponding organs, such as eyes, nose, ears and mouth, but the eyes are like a splicing of a watermelon and a grapefruit. Not to mention the big one and the small one, transparent liquid was still flowing out, as if he hadn't even noticed it.

And his nostrils seemed to have been chopped off along the cross-section of his face when he was fighting, leaving only two small holes for breathing out. Not to mention his ears, half of them were left on one side, and even more. It's like a product "deliberately carved" to express some kind of morbid beauty.

"Child... no!" A stern roar suddenly came from Luo Nie's hoarse voice, like a trapped and injured beast making its last cry of life.

"How about I introduce myself again? I think your spirit can't support it for much longer. I must get your consent to allow you to accept the implantation of MB-1333: Replacement Eye. Those children couldn't help but ask , as long as you make an action to torture, they will tell everything they know. Of course, except for the little blond boy, I smelled the smell of painful sequence core from his body." The man pretended to be gentle. said the voice.

He straightened up his cowboy-like attire, straightened his yellow wide-brimmed high-top felt hat, patted the dust on his jeans and yellow leather jacket with his hands, and even raised his right foot and glanced at his high-top hat. Are your leather boots stained with inexplicable dirt?

Immediately afterwards, he brought his foul-smelling mouth close to Luo Nie and said in a deep voice:

"My name is Atwood, and I am a supernatural being with the profession of [Hunter]. You should know that because of some damn laws, although I can't name them, in short, the Sogra City Legion and the Guards will not accept us. However, we still need to complete some tasks in the outer areas.”

"Bounty... hunter? Haha." Luo Nie deliberately tilted his head to one side to avoid the smell of dead fish, sewer, human excrement, and gasoline and gunpowder mixed with the smell coming from Atwood's mouth. smell.

"That's right. But our exclusive name is the Special Operations Group of the Sokra Outer District Legion. Of course, we are not necessarily loyal to this city. Although it is the capital, the imperial family also hopes to grab some interests outside the city's stronghold. . So, we become the ones who are reused. But I am different from you. I can't stand the careless and the lost. They are like the excrement left by the devil in the world and must be cleaned up. Do you understand?" Twowood said.

He forcibly extended his right hand, which was half the size of a basketball, to pinch Luo Nie's fair chin, which was barely stained by any dirt, and straightened him up.

"Are all [Hunters] the product of being easily...crazy?" Luo Nie sighed, but still looked at Atwood's abstract painting face angrily.

"How do you say that? By the way, people with shotguns have to kill those animals. We are all greedy existences. What else is there... By the way, Wells protects us and lets us With the agility of a cat, the Terminator of Autumn gives us the vision of an eagle, and the Lord of Beasts gives us the strength of bears and tigers. I am a human who has lived here since I was a child. In short, I can survive outside the stronghold. Shouldn’t everyone be counted as a person with superpowers?” Atwood smiled evilly and continued:

"I have seen people who do not have strongholds to protect them. Some of them sadly said that they saw demons and then committed suicide, and some of them hacked their compatriots to death as unintentional people. There are even more outrageous things, which I said a few months ago. A young man under my command once cooperated with Sugra on a mission to the Lost Swamp. He was so hungry that he actually gnawed on my deputy. Fortunately, I shot him down with a shotgun, and finally killed his head with a silver bullet. The breakdown made him stop this kind of delusion. But more importantly, he became a careless person and a lost person."

"How are Sai...and Rosen's children?" Luo Nie suddenly changed the subject and asked with concern on his face.

"Those children. By the way, I just wanted to tell you about this. There are two roads in the Green Forest. If you are carrying a compass produced by the Sugla Machinery Factory, you will travel through the eternal world. The river stayed near the Forest Lord's Stone for a day, and then passed through the poison barrier and thorn area. It was nothing more than crossing the rocky ruins formed by a small town. But that child was Rosen, right? He was a [Hunter] like me. A professional child, but he wants to visit the sculpture of Wells in the forest temple. The Wells Trail is my territory, and it is also restricted by barbed wire and magic circle. It is a mistake for you to break in without permission. You Do you know there is another name for Greenland Forest?" Atwood asked in a mellow voice.

"What?" Luo Nie asked curiously.

"The green forbidden land of life. Although I am not a detective, I can still deduce something. The traitor Hit is the person the Socra Committee instructed us to arrest. He claimed to be investigating the ruins for the brothers, but the committee has long understood Evidence of his rebellion. Do you think that as an imperial soldier, you can resign if you want to? There is a motto of the empire that as a soldier, you either fight, die, betray, or be executed. He can deceive some people, but he But you can’t deceive everyone. I don’t think you would have chosen this path without his hint.” Atwood analyzed:

"After Route 65 was destroyed, most explorers who went to the Silent Highlands through Sunida would choose to circle outside the Green Forest and rarely go deep into the forest. Although the difference between the two is four or five days, it is safe is the most important thing. Moreover, human nature is greedy and plundering. Compared with the deep forests with complex terrain, the flat old roads and some remaining strongholds on the outside can still maintain a little order. Hit's risky behavior is nothing more than wanting to Away from possible surveillance, am I right, kid?”

Atwood roughly "stroked" Luo Nian's hair with his hands. After feeling satisfied, he placed the chainsaw on a long metal table painted with green paint in the dark room.

Then, after the rumbling weakened and stopped, he took two heavy steps forward and pulled down an electric switch on the wall of the room that smelled of rotting plants.

Suddenly, the dim room was filled with a fairly bright light, as if a little angelic aura had sprouted from the depths of the dark area.

He forced himself to endure the stinging feeling in his eyes caused by the strong light and the tears that overflowed passively. Luo Nie raised his head and looked around.

This was the first time he looked at his environment since he woke up.

The narrow environment seemed to be that of a cell, with a slight ray of light coming from the electric fan running overhead for ventilation.

The dilapidated door made of steel, smeared with scarlet and sticky blood, was facing the center of his sight.

Complex and intertwined pipes hung above his head, while an unexpectedly straight wire ran across the middle of the wall and circled around it.

There seems to be a relatively complete small power system here.

He tried to twist his body, and found that he was being restrained by a steel rope on a metal chair. He felt a clear sense of urgency in his hands and ankles, as if he was bound by the rope. .

But when he tried to recite the two languages ​​​​of the ancient Zine Empire language and the Chinese language to combine the magic source power, he suddenly found that the familiar surge of power had disappeared. It seemed that there was something in this narrow room. This kind of forbidden magic power exists.

"Are you trying to imitate those lost ones? Want to use the power of magic to break free?" Atwood raised the corners of his mouth slightly and said in a very proud tone:

"It's useless. The existence of magic source power is prohibited here, and after the empire restores order, the existence of magic source power will also be banned in the entire empire. An enhanced version of 'Annihilation' is placed in the center of the underground camp where you and I are. The Demon Machine, I named it the Demon-SS. It is most useful for dealing with the Lost. But boy, do you know what I am thinking about now?"

"What's the problem?" Luo Jie asked, suppressing the discomfort in her throat.

"Those are the ones? How many are they? By the way, the seven Lost Children, right? The Hit named and arrested by the Socra Committee is worth 1,500 Singapore dollars. This money is barely enough for us to purchase some new equipment. And I heard that he is one of the committee members. We can't hurt him because of some connections, and after he was arrested according to some damn laws, he should only be detained for a few days. Although your resistance last evening killed one of our brothers and injured three others. Brothers. I really want to take revenge on you." Atwood said "honestly".

"Retaliation? Use deception and traps to make Rosen, who is also a [Hunter], fall into a trance and make wrong judgments. And with the help of Hit, he can quickly and conveniently make an arrest. You have been eyeing us for a long time, right? That suit The lost ones who hurt Sai are also disguised by you, right? Your targets are also people from the Tenyin sect, right?" Luo Nie analyzed.

"It seems you are not stupid, right? Yes, there is indeed a gentleman man in our team who previously worked for the Tenin Sect or the Church of Hope. It seems that he was the only one who used to stimulate the poisonous plant 'Greenland Vine' in yesterday's battle. way to attack you. Have you ever thought about a question?"

"What?" Luo Nie asked confused.

"In fact, all your risky behaviors are the result of deliberate design. Including that self-righteous guy Hit, after he left Socra and had direct or indirect contact with the man and woman of the Tenin sect, he He has been monitored by the Socra Committee. Including the child named Sai in your mouth. In fact, he had a unique code name in the committee’s intelligence, do you want to know?"

Atwood took out a piece of paper covered with dirt and wrinkles from his jeans pocket, waved it in front of Luo Nie's eyes, and said:

"Scorpion?"

Luo Nie's gaze went straight to the middle part of the paper where it had been rubbed many times.

"That's right, Scorpion. His superpower, no, to be precise, it's the unique ability of the Lost, which is to fight with Scorpion's tail. His price is not low, the committee offered 2,000 Singapore dollars. But this is in Na Tasha's diary and the order issued after Teng Yin's sect stronghold was removed. It seems to be a week ago. You may not know that our radio station was damaged once, and after repairing it, we were immediately tasked with arresting him. By the way, you know Teng Was it the scene of the sect's stronghold being raided?" Atwood asked with interest.

"I want to know." A hint of worry flashed in Luo Nie's heart, and she asked a little eagerly.

After all, this is related to Say, and Natasha, who came into contact with the false god and hoped to become friends with her.

If that lost woman whose heart is filled with "love" knew that the stronghold she created for these half-lost children had been "destroyed", I wonder if she would quarrel with the gods in charge of life in the underworld.

"'No. 404, Storm Street, right? The owner of a small shop selling kerosene lamps was directly shot to death by the Scots Guards. There is also a courtyard behind a secret door. Although there are no traces of human life, the people inside Everything had been looted. Then it was turned into ruins under the raging fire. Wonderful, right? Exciting, right? Fire is the most exciting product!"

Atwood said, with an expression of yearning and pride on his face.

But the next second, his expression was replaced by seriousness and greed. He stared at Luo Nie's sapphire eyes, and even a little dark red blood oozed from the corner of his mouth and said:

"Scorpion and Hit were handed over to the committee to receive the new dollar reward. The other five children are worthy of being sacrificed to 'Wells', so that under the operation of those Lost Boys, I will receive the blessing and sublimation of the gods. The gods are not only It will allow me to be promoted to the upper-level profession [Slayer], and it will even reconstruct my skin, allowing me to truly gain the heroic appearance of a normal human being, and become a new person. You know, you are not the only ones cursed by the wasteland world; There's me. But," Atwood suddenly changed his tone.

As if he instantly changed from a gloomy bass to a high soprano, he said:

"As long as you can accept the occupation or fusion of the 'Replacement Eye' and become the core combat force of our special operations team that is perfectly integrated with the sequential monsters, I will consider letting go of the irrelevant children. As for whether they can go to Silent Heights safely, That depends on their fate. But you, those Lost Boys said that you exude a strong mechanical aura. As a product of the legendary Machine Lord, you should be based on rational analysis. , avoid some human emotions, right?”

"I..." Luo Nie was speechless for a moment.

He stared blankly at the ugly Atwood in front of him, smelling of dirty "sadness".

After a long time, he slowly opened his mouth and said...

After the short-lived chapter of Luo Nie's Green Forest Chapter ends, Luo Nie's first line will directly enter the final chapter of Silent Highlands.