Wow! The item-dropping rate is really high!

They set off once again.

This time, their target was a base station to the west of the city, approximately at the edge of Grey Iron City's urban radiation range.

It was the same three special squads uniting for the mission, everything seemingly no different from the last time.

"...but be careful of those Zhenche nearby," Bai E said, sitting in the vehicle, making overall combat arrangements to the other two squads via the team's short-range radio.

Although the internet had been reactivated, corresponding products hadn't caught up in time, so they were still using the vehicle-mounted short-range radios for communication within the team.

External threats also existed.

In this era, there were no absolutely safe outdoor environments, with orcs, bugs, humans, Zhenche, and even wild beasts and so on, all forces mutually hostile, ready to fight on encounter.

The current world's situation was in such a dynamic equilibrium where no one could subdue the other.

Thus, all neutral resources in the wild would have a power nearby that could influence it.

The base station, being the objective of this mission and said to be at the intersection of the radiation ranges of Grey Iron City and Blackwater City, was only so for humans themselves.

The other races didn't take seriously any radiation range without control capability.

"Roger that!"

"Roger that!"

The leaders of the other two squads instantly responded.

The joint squads for each mission were randomly assigned; the teammates for this mission were not the same as the last time, but that did not hinder Bai E from convincing Rose to reason again.

If one is in the right, one can travel across the world without a hitch; without reason, one finds it hard to take even a single step.

That's precisely the point.

The longer distance, compared to the last time, also took more time.

The journey nearly took a whole day, and by the time they approached the target, it was thoroughly late at night.

Clouds shrouded the sky, and dim stars hung high.

The visibility was extremely low.

"We're five kilometers away from the target. Should we approach tomorrow instead? Rest for the night?" Rose, sitting in the co-driver's seat, offered her suggestion.

"Hmm..." Bai E looked at the darkness outside the window. Apart from the areas lit by the beams of the two headlights, all else was enshrouded in darkness.

Approaching the target in such conditions was indeed not a good choice.

As a base station capable of undertaking the duty of an internet signal relay center, its allure to those Zhenche was probably not small.

In the past, it wasn't noticed, and there was insufficient surveillance of such places; no one knew what this place had become.

Now that they had decided to restart it, the risk at this base station was not insignificant—this was the core reason Bai E took on the task of reactivating it instead of it being actively assigned.

With risk comes greater military merit.

Bai E was not afraid of challenges, but he wasn't reckless either.

After all, facing potential adversaries—the Zhenche—he was not completely familiar.

Before departure, the military camp had provided relevant information, but documentation could only ever serve as reference, not as an on-the-spot combat manual when encountering enemies.

"Turn off the engines, rest here. We continue at five in the morning," Bai E commanded through the team's voice communication.

"Roger that!"

"Roger that!"

The obedient squads instantly replied.

The night passed swiftly.

At dawn, as soon as the sun rose from the horizon, the people resting in the vehicles opened their eyes under the first rays of sunlight.

"Move out!"

The five-kilometer distance was covered in a blink, and the target rose up from the horizon.

Unlike the base station near the bug nest, geological activity wasn't frequent on this piece of land, and there were no human or other biological disturbances, so the base station still stood erect on the ground.

But at the very moment Bai E could barely make out the base station, his brows furrowed, and he stepped on the brakes.

"What's wrong, boss?"

"Officer, what's happened?" the two vehicles following close behind immediately asked over the team voice communication.

"Someone..." Bai E answered succinctly.

More accurately, not someone, but... machinery.

The main body of the base station is neither particularly large nor small, but at this moment, the perimeter had been expanded quite a bit.

The seemingly solid metal walls enclosed the entire base station, and the oil-stained black steel walls presented a substantial texture under the sunlight.

Small machine gun turrets were mounted on those steel walls, with accompanying red scanning beams moving in a fixed cycle along the barrel, gauging all potential enemies outside.

Intelligent machines!

They had already occupied this place and even operated it for some time!

Given the unknown strength of the opposition, a frontal assault would be no different from seeking death.

"Retreat for now."

Memories regarding the intelligent machines flooded Bai E's mind before setting off, prompting him to issue the command.

The existing intelligent machine entities originated from the Golden Age several hundred years ago, but during these centuries, their scale hardly expanded, and as time eroded their numbers, they only decreased.

These intelligent machines were also known as the first generation, being those that rebelled alongside the birth of the electronic demons, powerfully demonstrating a certain extent of the human capabilities during the Golden Age.

Apart from the first-generation intelligent machines inherited from the Golden Age, the subsequent generations produced for resource collection and maintenance of combat abilities were far less formidable than their predecessors.

Even the most powerful technology requires a stable environment and almost infinite resources. Without the resource-gathering and manufacturing abilities of humans from the Golden Age, the intelligence and mechanical structural strength of the intelligent machines created by the first generation saw a significant decline.

But no matter how much they declined, the method by which machines observe the world undoubtedly involves various light and temperature scans, and their alert distances far exceed human eyesight and hearing.

A brief encounter like the one just now might have already been noticed by the enemy.

But the enemy might not necessarily react...

The significance of electronic demons to intelligent machines lies exactly here; however intelligent they might be, they are ultimately just programs that react to different external stimuli. They will never possess the subjective capacity to act on what's known as "desire."

Without electronic demons, they would remain silent.

And if they had any single pursuit... it would be the last order given by the electronic demons before their silence—maintain themselves, collect resources.

To sustain their daily consumption, these intelligent machines tirelessly scavenge for usable resources like a swarm of indefatigable worker ants and bring them back to their fortresses.

Their scale won't expand but won't contract either; undisturbed, they could stay the same for thousands of years.

Of course, if they suffered heavy consumption due to a skirmish, they would gather materials even more frantically to replenish their strength.

In short, these are a bunch of... tin cans that generally won't bother you unless you disturb them.

Similar to those green-skin lads, impossible to eradicate completely; the more you fight, the weaker you become, the more at risk you are of other species taking advantage of your vulnerability. Thus, humans can only choose to ignore these beings as much as possible.

And now...

The direct conflict has arrived!

The three vehicles stopped and gathered together, and the captains of Team 5 and Team 6 looked at Bai E, asking with a somewhat worried expression, "What should we do?"

They'd just undertaken an ordinary mission; how could they have encountered such a formidable calamity?

Encountering an intelligent machine resource gathering squad was fundamentally different from directly assaulting their well-developed fortresses, with just their three small teams?

"Let's see the situation," Bai E, biting his fingertip and gazing thoughtfully, decided after a moment. "Let's circle around the fortress first to assess the situation."

Humans need material supplies, and intelligent machines also can't live on air alone.

Aside from those large first-generation intelligent machines, not every intelligent machine entity has an almost limitless small-scale nuclear reactor for energy.

They also need to replenish energy, even engine oil, and replace damaged parts and the like.

Encountering this legendary opponent for the first time, Bai E could only rely on limited information and his own wisdom to analyze the situation and make decisions.

Seeing the still worried faces of the other two team captains, Bai E smiled, "We can't just turn around and run, can we?"

If there weren't large first-generation intelligent machines in place, seizing this fortress that has become an intelligent machine battlefield wasn't entirely hopeless.

Even if they couldn't conquer it, gathering information was a duty they had to perform as special squads.

They couldn't just come for nothing.

Their job was to roughly determine the threat level of this point of danger and report it upward. The military would then decide whether to dispatch a large force based on the ratio of the necessary effort to overcome the difficulty versus the benefits afterward. Find exclusive content at My Virtual Library Empire

The prerequisite for these decisions relied on the information gathered by their small teams, known for their mobility.

"Let's go," Bai E decided, "We'll split up and move!"