"War" thus erupted.
It was called war because both sides used firearms, with the ultimate goal of eliminating the living forces of the enemy, thoroughly driving them out of the stage that was Thistlefort. Yet it was not quite like a war, since the troops one side deployed weren't human in the usual sense, and the outcome had been determined from the start; it was just that few people could foresee it beforehand.
Chaoyang had imagined before, that if he had bodies to waste, what he could achieve in actual combat. Today, he verified that hypothesis—after tuning the pain response to the lowest, Anthony and others became killing machines, controlled by their biological brains. They feared no bullets, and the modern rifles and fragment grenades in their hands always managed to take down a dozen or so enemies before their own "deaths."
