Wow! The item-dropping rate is really high!

Even the mightiest gun is still a gun, and all guns fall under the dominion of Gun Fighting Skill.

As Bai E moved with agile grace, he climbed swiftly up the surface of the war machine, stepping on its clearly defined steel armor plates.

With both hands wrapped around the barrel, the gun's muzzle nearly pressed against the spine at the back of his opponent, Bai E suddenly pulled the trigger.

"Boom!" Discover hidden stories at My Virtual Library Empire

Due to certain practical constraints, even artificial intelligence found it difficult to create a fully armored individual that was both heavily armored and as flexible as the human body.

The massive war machine had its own vulnerabilities, which were obviously easier to target for a critical hit when up close.

"Boom!"

"Boom!"

Shot after shot, each one hit its mark.

Nevertheless, the adversary did not sit idly waiting for demise, but its close combat weapon modules and support modules clearly could not cope with Bai E in his Gun Fighting Skill state.

The only trouble now was the health bar.

Even with every shot being a critical hit, facing an opponent with a high as 500 health points, Bai E would still need a dozen or more shots to take it down.

Whether Bai E would run out of steam first, or whether the war machine would be destroyed, became the final bit of suspense left in this battle.

Realizing that their attacks neither breached the armor nor did the enemy pay any attention to them, the three members of Grey Iron City squad finally faced a hard truth—

This ambush's final BOSS battle might not have much to do with them after all.

Nevermind dealing damage, they weren't even up for taking it.

What does it feel like to have a front-liner with high evasion?

Well, the answer is quite evident.

Watching the figure skillfully navigating atop the war machine while holding a ridiculously large gun, larger than his own body, the three warriors from Grey Iron City, who had just snapped out of their frenzied wartime state, sat on a low-level AI each, looking somewhat dazed and lost in thought.

"This lad is definitely one of us from Grey Iron City."

"With that kind of strength, wouldn't it be more straightforward to pick up a knife and hack at people like we do?"

"Our captain doesn't use knives," Rose, who was sitting beside them, chimed in with a smile, playing along with the lie Bai E had prepared in advance, "He only shoots."

"Oh~"

"I see~"

The Grey Iron City trio voiced their understanding.

But Rose's gaze drifted to the distance, to their white-haired captain still lying on the ground, her condition unknown, with a strange look in her eyes, "That's your captain, right? Don't you care at all whether she lives or dies?"

She'd been lying there forever. Might as well consider her dead... But not even a person to collect the body?

"She won't die..."

"Even if we all died, she wouldn't die."

The people from Grey Iron City didn't seem worried in the slightest, not even bothering to glance back, leaving their captain lying on the ground.

"Probably just knocked out temporarily by the backlash of Spiritual Energy, she'll wake up on her own in a bit," they casually speculated.

"..." What a nonchalant response.

Rose was speechless.

Yet, she found that the white-haired captain indeed started to stir before her very eyes.

First fingers, then toes... bit by bit, her entire body began to awaken as if from sleep.

Eventually, she sat up abruptly on the spot and then let out a yawn...

"Eh?" While yawning, her body stiffened, and she looked around.

The outdoor environment made her tense instantly, as if recalling past memories. She turned sharply to look at the battle happening behind her and caught sight of Rose watching her.

Her wandering gaze quickly took in the entire battlefield, and the white-haired woman's eyes finally met the curious ones of Rose.

"I'll ~ eat ~ you ~"

The smile that crept across the white-haired woman's face seemed sinister and frightening. The message she mouthed towards Rose—a verdict or perhaps a challenge—was full of bloodthirstiness.

However, in the next moment, as if it were all an illusion, her face switched back to a sweet and obedient smile.

On that delicate face, whose gender was hard to discern, it looked quite convincing.

Rose bit her lip, feeling dubious about everything she had witnessed.

'Either she's gone mad, or I have...'

"Is there... something wrong with your captain's mind?" She wasn't one to mince words and simply asked what was on her mind.

The Grey Iron City trio chuckled, "You noticed so fast, huh? She's not a normal person."

"Every time she wakes up from losing consciousness like this, it's like she becomes someone else. You'll get used to it..."

"Just don't know what she has turned into this time."

"..." The normally fearless Rose felt a chill down her spine and silently shifted her seat a little closer to where Bai E was fighting.

Bai E's battle had also reached its final stage.

The 99 points of Spiritual Energy reserves made his endurance in battle extremely terrifying, and his thick health bar merely delayed the inevitable death of his opponent.

When the health bar reached its final moments, Bai E silently recited—

"Activate 'Lucky Hit'."

The first intelligent-machine mini-boss he encountered possessed quite a bit of seemingly decent knowledge and technological capabilities; not looting it would be a disservice to all his strenuous efforts.

The long barrel of the gun pressed against the war machine's forehead, the dark muzzle radiating a ferocious bloodthirsty intent. Squeezing the trigger, the bullet roared out of the chamber.

"Boom!"

Shrapnel exploded, scattering across the sky.

In the instant of the last shot, Bai E noticed a new trait in the enemy's battle attributes: self-destruction.

You motherfucker, why didn't you say so earlier?!

He urgently activated "Absolute Defense," as the detonating energy source already unleashed an unimaginably powerful shockwave, carrying with it shards of steel.

Fighting intelligent machines meant one explosion after another.

These entities, powered solely by energy, carried lethal threats all over; even in death, they could inflict tons of damage on the enemy.

Explosive damage!

"Pfft," a broken piece of metal shot out instantaneously, striking the dead center of the forehead of the white-furred team captain, who had been turning her upper body and smiling sweetly. Her body stiffened and she fell once more.

"..."

Rose, who had been carefully observing the situation, awkwardly hid behind the body of an intelligent machine she had lifted, witnessing this dramatic scene.

Dead again?

Um... knocked out?

She must be dead now, right?

The explosion came quickly and left just as fast.

The battlefield was a mess, with the surviving fighters awkwardly rising, dusting off their clothes.

The two consecutive explosions nearly destroyed the area, but fortunately, such area attacks lacked precision. Those close to the explosion's center could mostly withstand it, while fragile characters like You and the boy from Grey Iron City took cover behind barriers.

Despite everyone being injured and disheveled after an ambush, fortunately, there were no casualties... right?

Rose, her clothes somewhat tattered, walked over to the white-furred team captain, kicked at the unresponsive foot hidden under the combat boot, and looking at the piece of metal deeply embedded in the forehead, she asked with a hint of curiosity, "Is your captain dead?"

The Grey Iron City gorilla, who had returned to his normal form, cast a sidelong glance at Rose and unusually retorted, "If your captain is dead, ours can't possibly be."

"..."

Rose crouched down, touched the other's neck incredulously, and then looked up excitedly, "But she's cold as ice..."

"Rose..." Bai E went up to pull Rose aside, whispering a reminder, "She's not dead."

The loot subtitles were still there; the opponent was indeed not dead.

Seeing how the Grey Iron City people ignored their captain and even intentionally kept their distance, Bai E knew they must have suffered because of this aspect.

Probably they were just waiting to laugh at Rose for getting close to their captain...

"...It's likely (Trait: Phoenix...)"

God knows how far Grey Iron City's biotechnological modification had developed, for such an abnormal ability to appear.

Their captain, unlike her three subordinates, did not have a body that could take damage; almost anything could break it, but she could come back together again, which was a bit outrageous.

Bai E wondered if this ability was common among them or if it was a special case that varied from person to person.

Bai E glanced at the Grey Iron City folks and sensibly chose not to ask more.

He just pulled Rose aside and gathered his team of four again.

"Everyone check your equipment and recover your condition,"

Ambushing this squad of intelligent machines was just the first step of the plan, next...

Bai E brought an intentionally preserved, undamaged intelligent machine to the area just outside the EMP lockdown zone.

Leaving a live one to send out a distress signal to the nearest intelligent machines was also part of their plan.

An invisible mechanical force fluctuated through the air. Once out of the EMP blockade area, in one-millionth of a second, the network of mechanical forces reconnected, and the alert was sent out immediately.

That was the limitation of intelligent machines; even if Bai E and his team outright spilled their plan, non-original intelligent machines would still faithfully execute every programmed reaction to outside changes.

Even if they knew it was a trap, they would still call their companions to step into it.

They might be called intelligent machines, but they were not so "intelligent."

Just like their combat style, cold but precise, invariably responding to any change with unchanging stability, their cruelty occasionally veered into dullness.

Without the manipulation of electronic demons, they were nothing but soulless husks.

Allowing the low-level intelligent machine by his hand to send an alert to the fortress, Bai E turned to check the loot he had just critically hit...