Three hours later.
The sun is no longer so dazzling and high, and the temperature has dropped to about 37°C.
Outside the Glory City, a convoy of at least two hundred off-road vehicles and trucks was escorted by three atmospheric airships, raising dust and heading towards the depths of the sand sea in the northwest direction.
In this convoy, there are three Warthogs belonging to Lyon, Lin Hong, Rum and others.
At the same time, this convoy was also organized by the Horatel Gang, one of the three major gangs in Glory City, with a total of more than 4,000 people, and many participating forces.
As for Lyon and the others, in addition to providing enough "tickets", they were able to join this expedition temporarily and smoothly, and they also had the help of Lum, the guide who took the lead.
Pull into view.
This side of the three Warthogs at the end of the convoy.
"."
Leon, who was sitting in the passenger seat, not only remained silent while checking the holographic screen, but also tried to piece together all the information he had collected.
First is the bloody red light.
Glory City began to frequently witness bloody red lights suddenly appearing in the night sky, about six Earth months ago, accompanied by unspeakable strange sounds.
However, similar to the "everything is normal" result scanned by the Griffin, Glory City used various equipment for analysis, and even used a warship converted from a pioneer engineering ship to conduct an overhead reconnaissance of the desert in the northwest. Nothing unusual was found.
As a result, this abnormal phenomenon instantly spread throughout Glory City, the nearby towns, and even the entire Sri Lanka.
After that, people began to spontaneously form expedition teams, and expedition teams of various sizes went deep into the desert about 300 times.
As a mercenary, Lum has been escorting different employers to the desert six months ago. Lyon, Lin Hong and others are Lum's seventeenth "employer".
Moreover, Rum said that in the past six months, all the expedition teams have not only been time-consuming and labor-intensive, but also wasted a lot of money and even their own lives, but they have also failed to discover the source of the bloody light and the treasure beneath the source.
Because of this, various rumors and rumors emerged one after another. Some said that there must be extremely powerful psychic creatures at the source, while others said that the source was an entrance to another space, another latitude, or even an entrance to a different space.
But no one can confirm these claims. After all, until now, the source of the bloody light is still a mystery and a fog, so people associate various visions with evil gods and demons.
"Huh~huh...~!"
Hearing the brisk humming from behind, Leon came back to his senses, turned sideways and looked back, and saw Lum, who lacked two mouths, lying on the seat with a contented look on his face.
This move made an auxiliary soldier who was also sitting in the back seat particularly unhappy.
The main reason is that this guy is a guide. Although the current situation is that everyone follows the expedition team and does not need the services of a guide, this kind of careless attitude without even covering up is really irritating.
However, Rum's humming tone reminded Leon of the plague doctor who had made great contributions to mankind, but had a very weird temperament and never showed his true face.
At the banquet when the empire was founded, the plague doctor rarely left the laboratory, but he always muttered "Ah... Why do humans always like to use alcohol to paralyze the central nervous system and cause damage to their brains? It's boring and boring."...
Or "Don't toast me! I don't drink! Go away!"
And words like "Well, it's okay to take a small sip. It does have a different feeling... Oh~! Otherwise you will like it.".
Although no one can understand how the Plague Doctor drank the wine from the wine glass while wearing a beak mask, but no matter what, even the Plague Doctor did not escape the law of "true fragrance".
Think back to how they thought about how they secretly moved forward in exchange for their current wealth and power.
Slow down.
Leon turned around, put his left hand on the seat, and asked Rum with interest: "I think you were once a soldier or auxiliary. How did you end up like this?"
Hearing what Leon said, the atmosphere in the car suddenly changed, and Rum was no longer as idle and content as before.
Immediately, Lum ended his relaxation state, sat down, and looked directly at Leon, who was still smiling.
After a few seconds of silence...
"Hahaha~!" Lum smiled boldly again, "I didn't expect Mr. Kennedy to be an expert at recognizing people."
"Excuse me." Leon continued without any modesty: "Why, you are not interested in sharing your past with us?"
"This is personal privacy..."
"two thousand."
However, before Rum could refuse, Leon took out four dark gold 500 denomination notes from the backpack on the side.
Seeing this, Lum hesitated to speak, but finally reached out to take the two thousand banknotes and put them into his pocket skillfully. He sighed helplessly: "Why bother? Mr. Kennedy, do you really want to know my personal history?"
"I'm just interested in the employee's background," Lyon said with a smile.
"Okay, it's not a confidential document." Lum shrugged and said, "UNSC...Actually, I fought for the covenant at the beginning..."
Rum still did not mention his last name, but he told the history of nearly a century and a half ago.
The year 2072 in the main universe was the year when the war broke out between humans and the Covenant Empire. It was also the year when humans began to acquire the mantle of the administrator civilization and gradually became the overlord of the galaxy.
At that time, Rumu, who was already a golden-armored elite (colonel level), was suppressed by a prophet (ostrich). As a result, he and his subordinates did not know that the elite clan had chosen to withdraw from the Covenant Empire and had also cooperated with the Covenant Empire. Humanity forms an alliance.
Afterwards, he and a group of subordinates escorted the prophet to evacuate the colonial planet. Unexpectedly, the evacuation plan was blocked by the fleets of the 3rd, 4th and 7th Battalions of the Space Wolves before the evacuation plan even started.
Control of the track quickly changed hands.
When the ground war broke out, their Covenant army was not the Astartes at all, especially the Space Wolves opponents who were good at charging and hand-to-hand combat.
And he even had a close confrontation with the battalion commander of the 3rd Battalion, a Space Wolf who called himself Bricka Berserker. The result was that he barely lasted six rounds before being punched by Bricka. Shattering the energy shield, the punch did not lose strength and successfully knocked him out.
Fortunately, the elite clan has formed an alliance with humans, and the three battalions of the Space Wolves did not kill them all, imprisoning Lum and his subordinates.
After learning the truth from the Space Wolves and the accompanying tribesmen, Lum and his men were naturally extremely angry and voluntarily joined the team to conquer the Covenant Empire and the Prophet Clan. …
After winning the victory, Lum first served as the ground combat commander of the elite fleet for a period of time, and then when all the elite fleets were integrated into the UNSC, he also became a Marine Corps colonel in the UNSC.
Next.
He led his original subordinates to try to fight side by side with humans. At first, they looked down on the thin humans. However, as time went by and they fought together more and more times, they respected the brave and fearless UNSC soldiers from the bottom of their hearts. , and then have great respect for humanity as a whole.
With his outstanding military exploits and the extremely strong combat power of his elite clan, Lum was captured by a prisoner and became a major general of the UNSC in just a few years...
Although looking at the entire universe, there are thousands of UNSC major generals, this is also an extremely honorable position.
But the good times didn't last long.
The storm in another space a hundred years ago brought everything to naught.
Since Lum and the others were the first to come into contact with the Space Wolves, when they were incorporated into the UNSC, they were naturally assigned to the Oslo sector, which the Space Wolves were responsible for.
When the alien space storm raged, the Oslo sector suffered the heaviest losses. About 7.2 billion humans (the elites at the time, whose identities were already humans) died unexpectedly, including Rum and all his subordinates.
As a major general, Lumu discovered that the demon army that invaded the colonial planet under their jurisdiction was led by a fallen demigod who called himself Amphion. In order to minimize the losses and buy enough time to wait for rescue, Lumu decided to Mu resolutely led an elite team to behead Amphion.
In the end, this elite team was completely wiped out, and Lum's four-petal mouth was cut off in half by Amphion, who had blue wings growing out of his back, a stooped body, and wriggling, twisted tentacles.
However, with the belief that they would die together, Rum succeeded in splitting Anphis into two pieces with the double-edged energy sword in his hand when he was about to lose consciousness due to excessive injuries.
But when he woke up, he found that he had been transferred to the UNSC hospital ship, and none of his men survived.
The only thing that makes Lum happy is that the sacrifices he and his men made were not in vain. At least they bought enough time for the innocent people on the colonial planet to evacuate and relocate.
But since then, Rum has lost his pursuit of battle and glory, voluntarily resigned from his position as major general, and wandered between different planets and different universes.
After that, Rum also worked as an interstellar mercenary, and in the Zero-3 Universe, he either offered bounties for capturing Ada or the Dark Eldar one after another, or went to some edge planet to help the local UNSC and the Sheriff deal with small-scale crimes. The alien insect plague event.
In this way, Lum came to Srilan three months ago and followed different expedition teams, first entering into the so-called Bloody Sand Sea.
Speaking of which.
Rum's voice became much deeper, "Last time, I protected my employer and followed the expedition team to the depths of the desert. When night fell, I heard...the roar of ghouls, and something indescribable, like purgatory. Horrible dreams.
And this phenomenon did not only happen to me, but also to the expedition team. Immediately afterwards, my employer and the team leader immediately voted and unanimously decided to withdraw from the sand sea overnight. "
“.”…
Hearing this, the three of them in Lyon fell into silence.
In particular, the expressions and demeanor of Lin Hong and another auxiliary soldier were "wonderful" because not long ago, they were very unhappy with Lum, but after hearing Lum's past and reality, they immediately put their unhappiness aside. Finally, it was replaced by respect and admiration.
After all, he had the rank of major general a hundred years ago. For their auxiliary army, he is truly the senior among seniors, almost the same as Lyon.
Thinking of this, the feelings of contempt and disdain they had previously felt made them feel guilty.
It's like when you are riding a bus, someone accidentally steps on your foot, but due to a bad mood and other factors, you can't help but curse "You are blind!", who would have thought that the other person would actually come? The guilty feeling of "Ah... I'm sorry, I really can't see."
On the other hand, although Leon was a little surprised by Rum's life experience, it was basically the same as what he expected and guessed. What Leon was more concerned about was the ghouls and purgatory dreams that Rum mentioned.
This situation is indeed similar to erosion from another space, but since everyone, including Lum, has been vaccinated, there is no reason for it to be caused by another space.
What's more, the Milky Way in Universe 03 is already a "black territory" for evil gods and demons, which cannot be observed in a different space, let alone penetrated and corrupted.
Then, Lyon guessed that this kind of thing was most likely an unknown civilization. It used defense measures against their tombs to interfere with the thoughts of creatures, generate fear, and then achieve the effect of driving them away.
You must know that their human empire also has corresponding technology, and it has been widely used, which can instantly "clear the area" during riot control.
However, this intimidation effect seems to be somewhat negligible on Srilan. Even though most people know that their lives will be in danger once they go to the desert, they still cannot stop the exploration activities.
but…
There is another possibility, and it is the possibility that Leon is least willing to face, that is, evil gods and demons not only exist in different spaces, but similar evil and "original" creatures also exist in the real universe or other dimensions.
Thinking of this possibility, Lyon couldn't help but be extremely alert.
Although this possibility is slim, after all, his immediate boss (Sui Bian) has never mentioned such creatures, but the habit he has developed over the past two hundred years made Leon immediately take out his exclusive mobile phone to describe this speculation. Report it, and let the Griffin be ready at all times, and if necessary, immediately summon the battalion headquarters in the nearby star field to come for support.
It would be easier to say if it was an ancient tomb of an unknown civilization, but if it were an unknown existence...
That would be difficult to deal with.
"Why, why did the atmosphere suddenly become so solemn?" Lum, who had returned to his carefree look, couldn't help but break the silence.
"We were rude before."
"I didn't realize you were a war hero."
Lin Hong and the Auxiliary Army were the first to apologize.
"Hi! No need to apologize. If you don't say it, I won't know what you are thinking, hahaha!" Lum smiled generously.
"." But Leon remained silent.
At this time, the mighty expedition team began to slow down. Looking forward, everyone in the car could see that they had arrived at the foot of a barren mountain peak.
look carefully.
The top of the mountain is about one thousand meters away. The rocks and walls covered with yellow sand are gray or black.
Rum, who was looking at the mountain in front, said to Lyon and Lin Hong: "This should be a new location. At least the expedition team I participated in has never found this mountain in the desert."
