Men Vs Apocalypse - Chapter 6

Sen noticed that the system gave him four days, he deduced that he does not need to complete the mission now but to have sufficient preparations. That way, he might actually be able to pull this off alone. With a body with regeneration abilities, it meant that he could probably do a Hit and Run tactic.

However, he was unsure how many soldiers can be lured into doing this. He was also not willing to bet at the sanity of the Black Monarch Troops. They might be crazy enough to kill all the captives as a mean of retaliation towards the attack.

Its near nightfall, so Sen took this opportunity to move forward as stealthy as possible ahead of the Black Monarch convoy. Majority of the Black Monarch troops lowered their guard after the victory of the skirmish and gave most of their attention to the current batch of prisoners.

They doubt there would be any other survivors around the area since an extensive sweep of the area was performed an hour ago. How could they have known Sen would teleport away to another plane during that period of time? Hence, Sen managed to sneak off without any notice. In the meantime, he can sought a vantage point and think of any feasible tactics along the way to rescue Feng.

The convoy was moving slower than expected by Sen. He realised that it could be due to the pace of the prisoners. Sen was far ahead of them and he reached to a nearby clearing. “Considering the sun had set, this clearing would most possibly be the place where the Black Monarch troops will take to set up their camp for the night. I should look for a decent vantage point from here.”

Sen opened his mini map and once again, the system did a radar swipe of the area to indicate the surroundings. When he took a closer look at the map, he cursed a little under his breath. There were essentially no ambush points for him to take.

The only consolation is that the clearing was surrounded with dense number of trees and the troops might have a hard time counter attacking if he fired from a distance around.

Sen reviewed the mini map to see how many soldiers he will be facing and how many prisoners there were. The system conveniently counted for him and they amount to 59 troops. This time round, some of the red dots have certain symbols.

A red star symbol appeared along with a red square symbol with a short tip pointing at the top of the square was recorded in the radar swipe. “Hmm, I guess the red star should be leader and that symbol should be the mobile tank walker that I had seen when I teleport back to Earth plane.”

The mobile tank walker was probably the reason why the 48th Red Sun Conscripts suffered a terrible defeat as evident from the heavy ordnance attack they had to withstand from the previous skirmish.

“The Black Monarch Mobile Tank Walker nicknamed the Strider had its design inspired by the frame profile of the water strider. It had four legs which increased the stability of the machine allowing it to handle difficult terrain such as rocky mountains and swamps.

Though it is fairly difficult to operate, the one man system allows the Strider to increase deployability, creating a bigger pool of units for the Black Monarch to diverse its strategy. The small frame composed of various alloys so it can be sufficiently light to increase mobility but more importantly, it was to cut cost. Hence the disadvantage of the Strider is its armour.

However, it had the capability to achieve a high first hit probability at the range of 1400 metres, providing soldiers short range artillery coverage. A general purpose machine gun is installed beside the turret as the second armament for anti infantry purposes.” the System replied promptly.

“…Thank you I guess?” Sen had difficulty responding back since this is not really best the time to learn something new. He rather hope the system to advice him the possible routes of assault against the Black Monarch which he knew that arrogant system of his would not do.

“…Assault hmm..OHHHHHH! System, you are the best!” Sen’s lips curl a little when he suddenly thought of a wonderful idea.

“Without a doubt.” The system replied promptly.

The 36 blue dots which represented the prisoners of war were moving along behind the bulk of red dots. Some of the guards were walking along side the blue dots as indicated in the minimap. Sen’s heart dropped a little knowing that they initially had 200 recruits in the 48th Red Sun Conscript and to be utterly defeated by a company of Black Monarch troops of less than a hundred showed superiority in training, arms and even morale on their end.

“It is fine Sen, you should be able to pull this off and save Feng and the rest.” Sen cheered himself a little and quickly hid in the woods further south of the clearing. The Black Monarch convoy indeed used the clearing as their spot to camp out for the night.

The prisoners were placed at the south of the camp and the mobile tank walker Strider stationed itself at the West of the campsite. The soldier using the Strider turned the engines down to save power and left the tank walker to have his dinner.

He subsequently slept after his dinner in his makeshift tent. Ever since the Strider came into the clearing, Sen tried to observe every action taken by the soldier operating it.

To his surprise, Strider’s cockpit was wide open but there were two guards on patrol duty and one of areas they patrolled was indeed the strider. “Hmm, it could be a method to deploy quicker in case of emergency or maybe the cockpit just stinks.” Sen sneered a little.

The duty guards focused most of their attention to the prisoners and bullied them on occasion to relieved their own boredom. Sen continue to keep watch of the guards’ movements and kept his cool and patience for the opportunity to arrive. It was near dawn and the two guards that were on patrol started to doze off at the north of the clearing.

“Time to act.” Sen took out his rifle from the system’s inventory and moved stealthily towards the Strider. As he approached the strider, he surveyed his surroundings for one last time before climbing up to the top of the strider in order to enter into the cockpit.

He managed to get into the cockpit but immediately felt like puking. “It really smells real bad in here.” He noticed two opened bottles of half filled with vodka, partially eaten bread and the stench mixed possibly with pee and sweat.

Sen breathed through his mouth but it was not helping much so he unwilling sat on the driver’s seat and glanced at at the complicated controls. “I hope this works or else I have to think of something else” Sen took a deep breath and held onto two controls sticks.

“Scanning object that User picked. User determined picked object as a weapon of choice. Re-calibrating object to suit the System and User.”

“YES!” Sen was extremely elated it worked similar to how he picked up his Zinger rifle. Instantaneously, a rush of information went into Sen’s brain. When the transmission of information stopped, he felt like he had used the Strider machine for more than 10 years.

He knew what each and every control combination does which an average tank drivers required years of experience to develop. Suddenly, the cockpit hatch automatically closes without any sound and Sen seemed to be in a middle of a major renovation.

The pungent smell and food was gone, the controls were changed drastically. Even the seat turned brand new and comfortable. A key appeared in front of Sen which he took it immediately and inserted it into the brand new console to turn the Strider engine on.

According to his accumulated knowledge, the previous Strider was extremely noisy and requires ten minutes or so to warmed up but the newly ‘upgraded’ Strider was silent and fast to boot. A screen interface appeared in front of Sen and it felt extremely modern.

Despite the controls were changed, it felt even more accessible. Sen also found additional sidearms and grenades which he did not noticed when he entered the cockpit and they were placed neatly at the side of the cockpit. He held onto the two control sticks again and smiled.

“Time for some payback, Black Monkies.”