Starting as a Mechanical Hunter

Chapter 925: Chapter 31: All-Out Assault

In the starry sky, a giant flying-type Radiation Beast was running for its life, with double-digit Star Thief Ships chasing behind it.

And on the back of this A-level Radiation Beast, more than a dozen players were firing back while crazily yelling at the Plane to make the bird go faster.

The Plane was so pissed he was about to cough up blood, turning his head to viciously curse these heartless bastards.

”Who was it back then that guaranteed installing high-explosives would be silent and invisible, and who swore we’d definitely get away clean?! You guys dying is no big deal, but if my damn bird dies, it’s really gone for good!”

The group of players immediately started laughing it off, dodging the topic while continuing to urge him on.

Any player who could enter the Cosmos early was a frontline player, and the ”big shots” in frontline players’ mouths were all level 55+ super players with sky-high Transformation Rates.

Baozi, Rainy Night with a Knife and No Umbrella, Sister Ji, Dida, Eldest Brother Hui...

These guys, in a sense, all belonged to the ”infamous as hell” category.

Infiltration, assassination, loan sharking, XP modding, self-castration, Virtual Personality rework.

The ways these big shots made their names were all seriously... distinctive.

A few of the ones with slightly more moral bottom lines weren’t even Carbon-based Species.

Just gathering this bunch together was already enough to form a ”super assassination squad.”

Even the headquarters of large corporations had a chance of getting hacked; blowing up a few Starships, what’s the problem there——that’s how this group of High-End Players thought, and that’s exactly what they did.

It went pretty smoothly at first. They successfully hacked into the Star Thief Ship’s interior, installed directional demolition devices, then pulled out clean.

Only during the retreat, there was a teensy little hiccup.

The route they were using to bail... accidentally got discovered.

So here we were: one side chasing, one side fleeing.

The Starships hunting them belonged to the Walter Star Thief Group. Their Starships were clearly one tier higher than the other Star Thief Ships, and they’d even hired a ”Strong Signal Lifeform” onboard—a special Tier 3 signal-based lifeform built specifically for counter-tracking.

No matter how strong the players were, they were still only strong at Tier 2. Facing Tier 3 counter-hacking tech, of course they got exposed without suspense.

All kinds of Energy Lasers rained down on the A-level Radiation Bird. Its Blood Volume was plummeting, and the Plane’s balls were literally aching.

”Hahaha, don’t lose heart. Roaming the interstellar scene is all about blood and fire. Let me give you guys a hand!”

With a bold shout, an Energy Necklace snapped around the A-level radiation bird’s neck. That Interstellar Cowboy leapt up, landed on the bird’s head, gave his wrist a smooth flick, and the Radiation Bird let out a scream of pain as its direction forcibly changed.

”What the hell?” Quite a few people looked toward the Plane—no one knew this A-level Radiation Bird’s condition better than he did, after all they’d once been one.

The Plane’s face was flushed bright red.

”I just got hit with a ’Forced Riding’ status. Under this status, the interstellar species’ speed, defense, and Power all get buffed.”

”Then why do you look like someone just killed your parents?” Baozi asked in surprise.

”He looped it around the bird’s neck.”

”So what?” a clueless High-End Player asked, confused.

The Plane ground his teeth. ”I’ve got varicocele, alright?!”

...

As someone who’d once been the 4th Celestial Calamity, Gao Gong knew all too well just how wild players’ imaginations could get. So beyond the frontal offense and defense, he’d also set up a ton of ”behind-enemy-lines infiltration missions,” ”Starship demolition missions,” and ”Intermediate cadre assassination missions in Star Thief Gangs,” all with juicy rewards.

Action squads made up of super players like the Plane’s team were obviously not the only ones out there.

Some succeeded, some failed.

The successful ones, no need to say—massive rewards. The failures, well... see you in three days.

What the Plane’s crew pulled off wasn’t even the biggest operation. There was another—not a small Elite team, but a massive Super Hacker organization with nearly 3,000 members.

This organization was formed by over 90% of the Advanced hackers among the 300,000 players brought into the Starry Sky.

For a very long stretch in the past, these Cyber Hackers had been living pretty damn miserably. Their proud hacking skills were completely useless in the face of the ”signal-less Cosmos.” Unlike the players with Mechanical Transformation who could do both brains and brawn, they didn’t even have enough Physical Strength to go mining (piloting Mecha also has Attribute requirements; the higher the Mecha’s level, the higher the Attribute requirements).

These hacker big shots spent the better part of half a year mostly doing one thing—cleaning the deck.

Lots of them had actually leveled up the ”cleaning duty” skill all the way to lv9.

Now they’d finally entered an Interstellar Space Station and could once again revel in the joy of the internet. With tears in their eyes, these hacker experts damn well knew it was time to seize the opportunity!

The usually lone-wolf Cyber Hackers pulled off a rare show of genuine cooperation: database intrusion, Artificial Intelligence infection, operator personality distortion, weapons system recalibration.

During the ten-day-long siege by the Star Thief Gang, when it got to day nine——

This hacker bunch dropped a massive payload on the Star Thief Alliance Army.

Nearly half the Starships started firing wildly at other Spaceships and Star Shuttles, slaughtering Star Thieves on board in droves, even launching suicide bombing runs. At least 100 Spaceships went down in this hacker assault. Mid- and high-level personnel casualties were in the hundreds, and even more low-level Star Thieves died. You could say that the total dead and wounded Star Thieves from the previous nine days of siege didn’t even come close to the losses from this single wave.

Turns out selling your life can’t beat using your brain. As long as you give a Cyber Hacker an opening, they can whip up a large-scale death event.

Rumor had it there was a faction boss who took heavy damage in this hack-in incident.

Lester proved with facts that it wasn’t a rumor, it was real—he was that faction boss.

On the flagship of the Walter Star Thief Group, the only ship protected by ”Strong Signal Life,” the Lester Star Thief Group’s leader walked into the command room, face full of Evil Qi and gloom. His entire upper body was wrapped in bandages, and there was a visible hole in his abdomen—damage from his own starship ramming into him and successfully exploding.

Compared to the Robot Star Thief Gang, whose electronic firewalls were decent; the wealthy Walter Star Thief Group; and the Co-prosperity Seeker, composed entirely of Plant Life—

The Lester Star Thief Group had taken the worst losses.

That’s what you get for not having the cash to install a virtual defense system.

Sixty percent of their Star Thief Ships ended in self-destruction; of the hundred thousand Star Thieves they brought, they’d lost close to half. Lester himself had been hit by three Star Thief Ships in suicide rams and had almost gone under.

If he could barely stomach those losses, then the losses to his direct troops—the ”Lester Fire Demon Legion”—were something he absolutely could not accept.

As everyone knows, the mass-producible bottom-tier Star Thieves are not the core of a Star Thief Group; it’s the elite troops directly under the Star Thief Leader that are a group’s real trump card.

But his trump card, the ”Lester Fire Demon Legion,” whose numbers hadn’t even broken a thousand, just happened to be inside the self-destructing starship. Worse yet, the Cyber Hackers got hold of this critical intel, so aside from the self-destruct starship itself, at least ten more starships unleashed a triple combo of indiscriminate fire on the explosion’s Space Coordinates, starship ramming, and starship self-destruct.

Lester had spent over a thousand years building up this trump card: the ”Devil Corps,” who had reached Tier 3 Species level. He’d lost more than half of them.

When he heard the news, this Red-skinned Star Thief nearly fainted from rage.

”If we don’t launch a full-scale assault now, the Lester Star Thief Group is pulling out of this hunt!” Lester snarled as soon as he entered the command room.

”You need patience, Lester. This Prey isn’t that simple,” Walter No. 2 said with a frown.

”Who attacked the Prey first?” Lester roared. ”Aren’t you just trying to bleed us dry so you can swallow the Prey alone?”

”I’m in favor of a full assault. Who knows what Variables will crop up if we keep dragging this out,” Vervi said heavily. This time, the Vervi Star Thief Gang’s ”losses” were second only to the Lester Star Thief Group’s.

The Robot leaders of the Co-prosperity Seeker and the Independent Traitor kept silent. Various calculation formulas flickered across their mechanical faces—they looked to be computing the odds of victory for this battle.

Walter No. 2 looked toward the Co-prosperity Seeker. She knew perfectly well what Lester and Vervi were thinking: in this line of work, Star Thieves are infamous for devouring people down to the bone. If the losses are too big, never mind whether the Prey will be enough to share—afterward, whether you yourself end up as someone else’s Prey becomes the real question.

In this Green Widow’s heart, she certainly had the intention of weakening these two small Star Thief Gangs and then annexing them.

But as it stood, the Prey Vervi had brought in really was turning out to be tough to deal with, and she was becoming even more interested in that Advanced Civilization ”relic.”

So she was hesitating as well.

The Co-prosperity Seeker’s voice came right on cue, rasping out through the friction sound of the ”vines” on its body, sounding hoarse and hard to understand.

”Prey... flesh and blood... very interested. Main assault... can... accept.”

Three votes to two.

Walter No. 2 finally made up her mind.

”Our side agrees to deploy high-grade Gene troops.”

...

From the Players’ perspective, with enough mission points farmed in the early stages, the garrison mission had finally entered its third phase.

With no warning whatsoever, the NPC Star Thieves went all in the moment they made a move.

Red-skinned Devils nearly ten meters tall, their entire bodies wreathed in Energy Flames.

Even larger in build and packing even heavier firepower: the ”Half-Mechanical Destroyers.”

Plant Life units ranging from A-level to S-Level.

Shrek Star Thieves (remaining), whose Attribute Panels were packed with various Full Level slaughter skills.

And the White Skin Corps, who not only possessed tremendous physical Power but whose high-tech gear was no worse than the Elite troops of a Level 3 Civilization.

This batch of Star Thief troops had almost all reached Tier 3, and each had at least one boss panel; among the top officers, some were running two to three boss panels.

These Super Star Thieves hit the field and immediately unleashed crushing-level damage.

Of the thirteen defensive lines, nearly half broke in under half an hour.

High-End Players can punch above their weight.

But that kind of level-skipping assumes the enemy isn’t running boss panels.

If they are, then with a single boss panel, you need about 5–10 front-line melee Players to barely hold.

For a boss with two boss panels, you can pretty much tack a zero onto that number.

And if it’s three panels, you’re forced to break out the ancestral human-wave tactic.