Through the periscope installed in the ventilation duct (hand-crafted by Sarak using mirror shards and iron pipes), I could clearly see the expression on his face.
It was a smile of contempt, arrogance, and self-righteousness.
He waved his battle axe, shouting something to the five hundred elites behind him. Though muffled by the thick concrete, reading his lips, it was probably standard villain lines like: "This is Swiss cheese," "Charge in," "Buffet time."
No decent resistance encountered.
The narrow corridor was empty, save for a few rickety wooden supports. The floor was covered with a thick layer of dry straw and a grey-white powder (Cat-kin "moldy flour" they didn't have time to move—at least it looked like it).
Five hundred Wolf elites, along with dozens of Wargs, squeezed into this hundred-meter-long semi-enclosed corridor like a black flood.
"Too easy, right?"
Wearing heavy goggles, leaning toward the central brass funnel, I watched the dense Wolves pushing each other due to overcrowding through the lens.
A heavy knot tightened in my stomach. They weren't just data points; they were living, breathing predators.
But if they lived, my people died.
I nodded to Sarak beside me.
"Close the door," I whispered, my voice heavy with the grim arithmetic of survival.
BOOM!!!
Hidden mechanisms at both ends of the corridor activated.
Two reinforced concrete gates, weighing five tons each, slammed down with gravitational acceleration like guillotine blades, cutting off all light and retreat.
[Skill: Structural Camouflage (Deactivate)]
The "rickety" wooden walls vanished instantly, revealing the triple-layer granite lining reinforced by Sarak behind them.
Zone C was no longer a corridor.
It became a sealed pressure cooker.
The Wolves below panicked instantly. I saw the one-eyed commander whip around, hacking madly at the wall. But apart from chipping his axe, it was useless.
I took a deep, shuddering breath, gripping the edge of the brass funnel.
"Kaelas," I called down the acoustic pipe, "Ignite."
Ventilation Duct.
Crazy old Kaelas wore a gas mask, hugging a huge detonator. Beside him were piled the black oil barrels stolen from the Wolves, and several bags of flour mixed with magnesium powder.
"Party time! Party time!"
Kaelas laughed maniacally, throwing the lit fuse into the vent.
Phase 1: Dust Explosion.
Sparks fell into the high-concentration flour dust permeating the corridor.
WHOOSH—!
No earth-shattering boom.
Only a dull sound, like a giant beast inhaling.
Immediately after, the oxygen in the entire corridor was sucked dry in an instant. The originally harmless flour dust turned into orange-red high-temperature gas, sweeping through every inch of space like a shockwave.
The Wolves at the center of the explosion didn't even have time to scream before the air in their lungs was extracted, and then they were burned to ash by the high heat.
But was this the end? No.
This was just the appetizer.
Phase 2: Napalm.
The black oil barrels buried under the floor were detonated by the high heat. The sticky black liquid mixed with Kaelas's special "Green Fire Accelerant" sprayed out like a volcanic eruption.
This wasn't normal fire.
It was Sticky Fluid Fire.
It stuck to Wolf fur, armor, even eyeballs. No matter how they thrashed or rolled, the fire couldn't be extinguished, burning fiercer instead.
"AAAAHHHHHH——!!!"
Shrill screams finally penetrated the thick concrete walls. The sound didn't sound like living creatures, but more like a pipe organ ensemble in hell.
Zone C became an oven.
Five hundred Wolf elites turned from warriors to fuel in less than thirty seconds.
Command Platform.
Zayla stood beside me, watching the inferno below through the observation window.
Even battle-hardened, watching enemies struggle in the sea of fire, unable to flee, made her feel physically nauseous.
"This is too..." Zayla's voice was dry. "Too cruel."
I just gripped the concrete windowsill, the reflection of the flames dancing in my lenses, hiding the turmoil in my eyes.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
"It is a slaughter," I admitted, my voice rough, carrying no pride in the engineering marvel below. "But it's them, or the children huddled behind us. I will bear the sin of the flames, Zayla. You just focus on leading them forward."
In front of my vision, the system's blue popups were scrolling madly.
Those numbers flowed like a waterfall.
I felt a warm current (actually a massive data stream) washing over my brain, the pleasure of leveling up, the tingling sensation of the cerebral cortex being activated by current.
"Precision Guidance?"
My vision blurred.
The world changed.
No longer blurry naked-eye vision.
Countless pale blue dashed lines appeared in my field of view. Wind speed, humidity, gravity drop coefficient, air resistance, target trajectory... all data were marked in an instant, converging into red [X] points.
I raised the crude industrial nail gun in my hand, aiming through the single-lens telescope at a fish that slipped through the net on the edge of the distant battlefield.
It was the Wolf Vanguard's messenger. Lucky enough not to enter the hole, he was now riding a Warg, fleeing madly to report back.
Distance: 850 meters.
Wind: NW, Force 3 (Wind shear detected).
Weapon: Modified nail gun with an effective range of only 50 meters.
Common sense said this was impossible to hit. The nail would fall after a hundred meters due to a lack of kinetic energy.
But my current [Logic: 30] brain told me: This is just a physics equation.
If I adjust the launch angle to 42 degrees (max parabola), and use that rising thermal updraft...
I raised the muzzle.
To Zayla and Brad, I was shooting at the sky, as if hunting birds.
But in my vision, a blue parabola perfectly connected the muzzle and that moving red dot.
Yaw correction 4 degrees.
Target lead time prediction: 2.1 seconds.
This wasn't just shooting. This was math.
"Goodbye."
BANG!
A steel nail, specially lengthened by Sarak with simple tail fins, whistled out. It drew a weirdly perfect, ridiculously high parabola in the air, like a miniature mortar shell.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
The galloping messenger in the distance suddenly looked like he was pressed down by an invisible hand.
Using gravitational acceleration, the nail pierced the back of his head precisely. His head exploded like a watermelon, and he planted face-first into the Warg.
[Headshot. +100 XP.]
I blew the smoke from the muzzle (though a pneumatic nail gun shouldn't have smoke, it looked cool).
I turned around, looking at the dumbfounded Zayla and Brad behind me. They looked at me like I was a monster who just calculated nuclear fusion with an abacus.
"Round one over."
I pointed at the still burning Zone C, tone like evaluating a freshly cooked steak:
"The heat was a bit high; next time, use less magnesium powder."
"Now, let's go greet that angry Wolf King."
The Wolf Vanguard is toast. But the Boss hasn't even moved yet.
Question of the Day: Is using math to kill people cheating?
(Click to debate the ethics)
?? A) Yes, nerf him.
Result: The Wolf King's Report. "Admin! He is hacking! He hit me from 2 kilometers away without looking!" System Response: "Git gud. Skill issue."
?? B) No, it's science.
Result: The Engineer's Defense. It's not magic; it's applied ballistics. If you stand still while I calculate the wind speed, that's your fault, not mine.
?? C) Math is the deadliest weapon.
Result: The Universal Truth. Numbers don't lie. They also don't miss. Pythagoras sends his regards—a quadratic equation to the face is super effective.
Follow and Rate. Round 2: Boss Fight incoming!