"Answer my questions," Gray said, fixing his gaze upon the officer as he began the interrogation. As the thought of interrogation crossed his mind, vital statistics such as blood pressure and heart rate appeared beside the officer, accompanied by a label indicating "requires reference conditions for calculation."
"Who is currently commanding the battle? Is it your marshal?" Gray inquired.
"Yes, his name is Poison Sting, and he is a psionic," the officer quickly replied.
At that moment, in Gray's view, the label indicating "requires reference conditions for calculation" transformed into "not a lie."
His electronic eye was equipped with a function akin to a lie detector.
Had the officer possessed a neural interface, Gray could have employed a more efficient method of interrogation.
"Where is Poison Sting?" Gray pressed on. If he could ascertain the marshal's location, it would facilitate a decapitation strike beneficial for the ensuing war.
However, the officer was unaware: "Sometimes I see him walking through the barracks, other times I see him engaged in battle, but I have no idea where he is specifically…"
Not a lie.
Gray cast a glance at the label beside the officer, then utilized the telekinetic function integrated into his prosthetic arm to crush the officer's skull.
With that, all individuals on the ground floor of the church were thoroughly neutralized.
Gray surveyed his surroundings, scanning the scene before him, and projected a prompt in his vision: the scene remains unprocessed, and there is a possibility of being discovered by others, which could raise suspicion.
In fact, his vision even presented suggestions for cleaning up the area, including where to dispose of the bodies and how to eliminate biological traces such as fingerprints and blood.
However, Gray had no intention of doing so, as the other elite guards were also executing their missions in the upper nest. When the first military facility was compromised, it would undoubtedly create significant noise, drawing the attention of both patrols and others.
"Have you noticed? There are no civilians in the upper nest," Anruida's astonished voice echoed through the communication channel.
"I haven't seen any civilians either," Gray responded, raising his gaze toward the second floor.
All enemies on the second floor were marked, and Gray could view their precise locations and movements through thermal imaging, just as before.
He lifted his hand, drawing close-combat weapons from the corpses on the ground floor and controlling them to point threateningly at various spots on the ceiling.
"I found a notice stating that the rebels are conducting massacres in the lower nests and urging all upper nesters to head to the tower for evacuation."
"Rebels? Those damned scoundrels! The lower nesters are living just fine; they are the true rebels!"
As Gray listened to his comrades' communications, he advanced toward the second floor. Upon reaching the top of the staircase, the officers moving about on the second floor spotted him as well.
At that moment, all manner of close-combat weapons pinned beneath the ceiling on the first floor pierced through, flying toward the officers on the second floor to slit their throats.
Gray suddenly felt that his prosthetic arm was far superior to his original.
Once, in a moment of leisure, Gray had asked Qin Mo why his prosthetic arm possessed telekinetic capabilities and what the principle behind it was.
Qin Mo explained that an apparatus within the prosthetic arm generates a magnetic field around objects, thus allowing for their manipulation.
There was no third floor in the church.
At the corner of the second floor lay the stairwell leading to the spire, and Gray made his way toward it.
"Hold on, brothers! I've located the armory!" someone suddenly exclaimed over the communication channel. "Heretical scum! Lord Vendis has arrived!"
Boom!
As Gray ascended to the pinnacle of the spire, he witnessed a beam of light approximately a kilometer ahead, followed by a violent explosion.
The shockwave from the explosion even reached the church, shattering all the glass.
"Focus on completing the mission," Gray reminded. "War isn't merely about annihilating the enemy."
"Don't worry, I certainly understand the priority of mission completion; I simply fired a shot toward the armory from a distance," Vendis replied.
Gray said nothing further, continuing with his task as he began reconnoitering from the spire.
As he surveyed the entire district, all enemies were marked within his field of vision.
Each patrol route, every enemy resting within the houses, every armored vehicle under maintenance, and each cannon… all this information was automatically collected, organized, and stored.
Enemy deployments might shift, but this intelligence would serve as a reference, and a full-scale assault on the upper nest would soon commence, alleviating concerns of significant changes.
Upon recording the situation in one district, Gray promptly proceeded to the next.
…
Meanwhile, on the other side.
Anruida, executing the mission to locate the teleportation points alone, arrived at a park square. He had already discovered four similar teleportation points, with the upper nest's favorable living conditions facilitating his task significantly.
However, every park square in the upper nest had been converted into barracks for the patrols, and Anruida needed to clear the area of its inhabitants.
He was not particularly adept at combat; he believed his survival as one of the 44th regiment's few survivors, or perhaps Qin Mo's need for a combat clerical officer, were the reasons he had become an elite guard.
Within the elite guards, Anruida mainly performed clerical duties, organizing task logs for everyone and archiving them, recording confidential information known only to the elite guards.
At that moment, this clerical officer stood in the square, facing the attacks and artillery fire coming from all directions without flinching, raising his hands to eliminate every group of enemies before him with his shotgun and shoulder cannon.
With each shot fired from his hand weapons, he could reap at least an entire squad of foes, while each blast from his shoulder cannon claimed the lives of at least a hundred enemies.
Anruida resembled a turret, stationary in his position, unleashing fire upon the adversaries.
Once the enemies before him were dealt with, he shifted his focus to eliminate another group, repeating this cycle until, three minutes later, every enemy in the square had been eradicated.
Anruida blasted a hole in the ground with his shoulder cannon, inserted the teleportation beacon, then adjusted the cannon's power to melt the metal surrounding the hole, ensuring the beacon remained well concealed, so that the next wave of enemies arriving in the park square would not discover it.
While engaged in these tasks, Anruida suddenly pondered why he could not eradicate every enemy in the upper nest, but quickly dismissed the thought.
The entire upper nest area was merely a smaller version of the lower nest yet still immense, comprising at least tens of thousands of blocks.
At that moment, Anruida recalled the design intent behind the elite guard's powered armor; indeed, it was meant for two individuals to manage an entire battlefield, yet it was not a weapon of mass destruction akin to an insecticide.
In designing the powered armor, Qin Mo had certainly left room for conventional troops to step in and mop up the defeated enemies.
"Our actions must be expedited, comrades," Anruida declared as he leaped toward the next location. "This way, we can launch our assault by tomorrow."