Chapter 154: Audio Shooter
Su Huan still agreed to bring Yu Yue along.
Her ability is still very useful if it’s not specifically countered.
Moreover, Yu Yue has now been promoted to Tier 1.
What gave him a headache was that Yu Yue had evolved another skill; her five skills were: lv3 “Sonic Affinity”, lv2 “Shared Sound Field”, lv1 “Sonic Mark”, lv1 “Sniper Specialization”, lv1 “Ballistics Calculation”.
Even more exasperating was that these five skills actually allowed her to combine into a new Tier 1 profession.
Su Huan had never seen this profession at all, and couldn’t even find a suitable reference for it.
He felt like he had held her back; if he hadn’t given her the “Sharpshooter” skill potion, Little Aunt might have already become an expert.
Now promoting to Tier 2 was going to be tough.
Five skills meant she would have to consume more General Energy Crystals than others, and at Tier 2, she still needed to gather four new skills that matched her previous five.
Whereas Su Huan just needed to level up two new skills to lv3 to promote to Tier 2.
But at Tier 1, five skills were basically crushing.
Three sonic skills covered attack, perception, tracking, and sharing, and when combined, they had a one-plus-one-greater-than-two effect, unlike Su Huan’s General Energy Perception, which could only detect targets with General Energy—useless against inanimate objects without it. Yu Yue had maxed out perception and reconnaissance.
The two sniper skills went without saying; this Gunfire Lineage skillset was the fastest way to forge a fighter.
With this skill combo, if the distance was pulled to over three hundred meters, even Su Huan would have to flee in panic.
“Just call it ‘Audio Shooter’; it’s just a name anyway.”
Su Huan thought for a moment, pulled up the dining car’s large monitoring screen, and entered this new profession into the database.
Yu Yue had no opinion on naming her own profession and obediently agreed.
Then Su Huan quickly switched through the monitors; aside from a few carriages, most monitoring footage was intact.
Passenger casualties were heavy, with the total number dropping to around eight hundred.
Especially the last carriage, which was basically wiped out; if Old San and the others hadn’t supported quickly, the entire carriage would have been torn off by that Tier 2 Spine Hound.
Spine Hounds were far fewer in number than Blood Hounds, but their combat power greatly surpassed the latter, making them relatively strong even among the same tier.
Their feature was an exposed back with a row of vicious barbs.
After promoting to Tier 2 and forming Corpse Armor, they had astonishing defense, fast speed, and ferocious attack power; combined, they were trouble even for modern squads with firearms.
In his previous life, the Steel Council encountered these things with firepower saturation; taking one down with a few grenades was basically impossible.
Unless like Su Huan, compressing it and throwing it in the mouth, first blasting a concussion, then crushing it under thousands of tons of train while it slid along the railway track for a while.
What made Su Huan frown was the carriage itself; after the Steel Council’s bombardment and the zombie tide’s impact, the body was twisted and deformed in multiple places, and one bogie seemed to have a problem.
Another battle of the same intensity, and it might fall apart.
Lin Jin walked out of the room, and his first words were, “I want to go save my sister.”
Su Huan lay sideways on the sofa and faintly asked, “How much of your body’s energy has recovered?”
“Around thirty percent.”
“You should just stay obediently on the train. Evolvers with too little body energy will suffer mental dispersion and fatigue debuffs; if you go out now, a heavy sniper rifle shot from the enemy would blow your head off.”
Lin Jin clenched his fists; he wasn’t angry at Su Huan, but at himself.
He had clearly become an evolver, yet couldn’t do anything right: wanted to protect teammates, but they all died in front of him; wanted to help defend the train, but ended up fleeing under sniper fire.
Afterward, he could only do scraps work.
Thinking of his sister being stupidly delivered into the company’s hands for human experiments by him, while he could do nothing, guilt burned his heart like flames nonstop.
It hurt so much his whole body went numb.
Thinking of Su Huan dragging his near-death body to help save his sister…
Lin Jin suddenly paused, looking up at Su Huan in front of him.
Lying sideways, one hand holding White Porridge and sipping it slowly, the other swiping the screen; if not for that vicious through-wound on his hand, it was hard to imagine he had just gone through a fierce battle and was now gravely injured and near death.
“But you haven’t recovered either, right?”
“Yeah, around forty percent.”
“That’s just ten percent more than me; wouldn’t it be just as dangerous for you?”
“Containers are different from containers, and people are different from people; my forty percent energy could probably match three of you at full strength.”
Su Huan replied faintly while flipping through the train status.
Near-death state promoted evolution, greatly boosting all his attributes to near Tier 2 level.
But due to Gene Collapse, they were now declining.
Even generated skills were unstable.
But to Lin Jin’s ears, this was “forty percent state could probably one-shot three peak-combat-power yous.”
This was a true evolution powerhouse…
Unable to protect his sister boiled down to him being too weak.
“I understand.”
Lin Jin turned and walked to the back; he needed more combat to catch up to Su Huan’s pace.
Su Huan glanced at him puzzledly, ‘What does he understand?’
He quickly handled things on the system, then gathered a few people separately.
This deep dive into headquarters was to catch them off guard in the chaos, rescue He Jie and the others’ families, and conveniently resolve the Gene Primordium issue.
The train couldn’t be left unattended; during the time the inducer fully dissipated, the train had to keep moving forward.
So the people going out would be four: He Jie, Jiang Rong, Yu Yue, Liang Kuan.
Liang Kuan and Jiang Rong were assigned to Yu Yue; both had steady personalities and extremely low chance of running.
He Jie was going crazy missing his wife; either bring no one or must bring him on this trip.
After a few simple words, time reached two-thirty.
The group dispersed, leaving only the already-prepared Yu Yue in the dining car with Su Huan.
A call icon suddenly appeared on the monitoring screen.
Su Huan curiously clicked it, and Yu Jing’s voice came from the other side.
“Calling the Train Conductor.”
“Mm, has full-train communication been set up?”
“Only a few carriages can call the dining car and Carriage 1; other carriages have only one-way communication.”
“Mm, anything else?”
“The new Scavenger Exoskeleton-I is ready.”
“Good, I’ll head over shortly.”
Su Huan hung up the call, lay back on the sofa, and tapped his forehead alternately with two fingers.
Relieving waves of inexplicable dizziness.
A rustling sound rose, and soft fingers landed on his temples, pressing with just the right force.
……
Five minutes later, the group gathered again in the dining car.
“The Steel Council Headquarters is a comprehensive heavy manufacturing base, originally an industrial zone of multiple companies; after the apocalypse, all were annexed by the Steel Council, retaining most smelting and manufacturing plants. Most crucially, it has a military armored vehicle assembly line, so there are plenty of armed vehicles.”
Su Huan pointed to the industrial zone on the map and introduced.
‘Goddamn god’s-eye view again.’
He Jie sat expressionlessly to the side, watching Su Huan explain the Steel Conference Headquarters on the screen.
The Steel Council’s headquarters was shaped like a flat inverted trapezoid, surrounded by intersecting railway tracks and roads.
Before the apocalypse, this location was prime, with no residential areas, farmland, or forests nearby, and very convenient transportation.
But flat terrain was no advantage in the apocalypse, plus single-industry and scarce other resources, so the Steel Council planned to build New City in Changli County.
Four years later, headquarters had become a pure military industrial zone, somewhat different from now.
After He Jie’s supplements, the entire plan was finalized.
The armored train would bypass the heavy industrial zone on the adjacent railway track, loop around, and continue north.
The inducer would also expire about then, and the hundreds of thousands of zombies gathering behind would impact the heavy industrial zone.
The group would charge in from the front, pass through the defense zone and manufacturing zone, then split: Su Huan alone to the left scientific research base, He Jie and the others to the right family area, finally rendezvous at the north freight platform, where the armored train would arrive about then.
The whole plan would take about forty minutes.
“If no supplements, let’s head out now.”
Su Huan grinned, fine teeth clenched tight, bloodstained white teeth stark and menacing.
Two Butchers climbing on the train were suddenly blasted open by a rocket launcher.
Lu Xiao’s squad’s pickup truck rushed out of the carriage, with He Jie in the bed standing by a silver motorcycle and dual-wielding a light machine gun.
The frenzied ammunition belt shredded nearby zombies as they sped off.
