Chapter 130: Strike Force [40 GT Bonus Chapter]
Of course, continent-wide announcements were not limited to humans alone, so the ancient variants had also received the same messages. But Uhtred and Mateo did not really care much about that. The main thing was that the people who were meant to get the messages had gotten them.
The ancient variants were going to kill a lot of humans migrating across the desert to the nearest camps, but that was unavoidable. Many more humans would reach the camps instead of dying out in the desert in their smaller clusters.
Following the broadcast, Uhtred held a short final meeting with Mateo before leaving the camp entirely.
He slung his star-metal battle axe over his shoulder and started his solo trek across the desert, heading directly toward the next closest camp.
Aside from issuing the public announcement urging humans to immediately congregate into larger collective clusters along the border of the moving barrier, Uhtred had also shared the exact details of the trial.
He made it clear that hoarding knowledge, techniques to stem essence loss, or survival resources would hurt everyone.
To keep as many people alive as possible, he ordered the most powerful leaders to freely share anything that could help others survive.
Most importantly, he issued a continent-wide warning. Anyone who ignored his orders, preyed on weaker survivors, or held humanity back for their own selfish power would face him directly. He promised to hunt them down and kill them himself.
And over the next forty-eight hours, that was exactly what he spent his time doing.
The very first camp he arrived at during his journey was exceptionally compliant. It was managed by a pair of Level 10 ascenders whose names Uhtred didn’t even bother to commit to memory.
The leaders had already been waiting outside their camp for his arrival, having received the early warnings dispatched by Mateo’s scouts the night before.
Uhtred only had a brief conversation with them, refining some of their plans, especially how they would handle incoming travelers, before he immediately departed for the next camp.
But the more he traveled, the more violent things became.
For two whole days, Uhtred journeyed continuously across the vast desert, dropping into various camps to ensure they were adhering to the rules of the collective front.
With every passing hour, battles erupted all across the barren lands of Australia as humans migrated toward the camps forming along the barrier.
And with every successful skirmish, the barrier crept forward ever so slightly, expanding the frontier of humanity.
For Uhtred, however, he found himself swinging his axe against more humans than ancient variants.
Before the sun set on the second day, word had already spread of Uhtred’s absolute mercilessness toward the rogue ascenders who had planned to ignore the broadcast and maintain their cruel control over human groups.
He was like a demon to them. Any low-level or mid-level ascenders who let their new trial powers go to their heads and used their strength to terrorize weaker humans were brutally executed by his hand.
A prime example was a coalition of three separate camps led by self-proclaimed powerhouses at Levels 8, 9, and 10. They had defiantly refused to join the human alliance so they could do whatever they pleased.
Uhtred did not care about their independence. If they wanted to go off and die on their own, that was their choice.
But the real issue was that their camp was made up of many Level 4s, 3s, and a few Level 5s, and they wanted these people to share their fates. They viewed themselves as absolute rulers.
They even used the members of their camps as bargaining chips, hoping to exploit Uhtred’s empathy and force his hand.
But Uhtred simply slaughtered them without hesitation. He showed everyone that their "powerhouse" status meant nothing to a Level 23 like him.
To the weak Level 3s, 4s, and 5s in the camp, those leaders were powerful. But to those so-called powerful leaders, he was an unstoppable force of nature.
News of the execution spread instantly as the freed camp members traveled across the desert toward the border. From then on, Uhtred’s reputation as a terrifying tyrant skyrocketed.
Within forty-eight hours, the rogue elements were completely broken, and the entire human population became intensely compliant out of sheer, unadulterated fear for survival.
By the late hours of the second day, his journey had become entirely straightforward. Every camp he encountered was perfectly aligned with the collective.
Finally, humanity had begun to move as a unified front. Of course, there were still many leaders among them who were heavily disgruntled and harbored hidden treacherous ideas, but Uhtred’s presence loomed as a threat that forced them to remain compliant.
That baseline compliance was more than enough for him to officially initiate the next phase of the plan: a direct offensive strike on the ancient variants’ camps.
Throughout his two days of rapid transit, Uhtred had been forced to witness the staggering number of human casualties across the desert.
The ancient variants were relentless in their offensive strategies. They expertly utilized pincer tactics to cut off and isolate flocks of migrating humans trying to reach the designated safe camps.
Low-level ascenders who completely lacked the talent to even master the forty-percent essence sealing techniques popularized by the camps were left to rot.
The ancient variants would intentionally attack and scatter them, letting many flee into the deeper, barren sectors of the desert where they would either slowly starve from essence depletion or be violently hunted down by the giant Dune Strider serpents and jackal packs dominating the wild regions.
The sheer volume of human death Uhtred tallied over those forty-eight hours was nothing short of staggering.
According to the trial rankings, the total number of participants within the trial grounds had been more than 3.5 million, a third of which were humans. By the early morning hours of the third day, that number had plummeted to just 1.2 million participants.
Over two million people had perished within the span of just two days.
It was an incredibly massive, horrifying number to fully conceptualize. Even for a man as intensely pragmatic and detached as Uhtred, a small, quiet part of his subconscious whispered that a fraction of those two million deaths was on his hands.
But Uhtred was far too logical to let those useless thoughts take root. He brutally killed the guilt the second it tried to manifest.
He knew that in this new reality, dwelling on hypothetical scenarios was a fast track to mental collapse. There would always be an infinite sea of what-ifs, but the cold, hard present was the only variable that mattered.
Of course, out of those two million-plus dead, the ancient variants had also suffered casualties during the chaotic skirmishes, but their total death count reached a maximum of perhaps two hundred thousand, compared to the millions of slaughtered humans.
However, as the sun began to rise on the third morning, Uhtred knew that numerical disparity was about to change violently.
Right now, Mateo was supposed to meet him this morning, before sunrise. The location had been agreed upon long before, in secret. It wasn’t included in the public announcements but passed along silently via trusted channels and powerful scouts.
An elite strike force composed of highly trusted camp leaders had already rendezvoused at Uhtred’s current location.
Twenty ascenders, all Level 10 and above, had arrived.
Uhtred sat quietly on a high, jagged ridge, his eyes scanning the profiles of the elite powerhouses gathered around him:
Antoine Blanc. The French previous special ops. Face of the United New Eden alliance. Ranked number 9 on the global human ranking ladder, holding the number 88 spot in the current trial rankings.
White Raven. A silent, dark haired norse woman. Positioned at number 10 on the global human ranking ladder, sitting at number 132 in the trial rankings.
Quiet Daoist. A simple bald headed monk who looked to be somewhere in his sixties, but with a vigorous, stable body now enhanced by cosmic essence. Ranked number 13 on the global human ranking ladder, occupying the number 321 slot on the trial leaderboard.
Hassan Al-Malik. Dastardly handsome Arabian-looking man with an ever-present smug smile on his face. Sitting at number 12 on the global human ranking ladder, holding rank number 403 within the trial.
Mateo — Black Sun himself — sat firmly at number 5 on the human ladder and number 48 in the trial rankings. He was currently in transit to their location with a small team but had not yet arrived.
The remaining individuals already present were also powerhouses among humans, but Uhtred could not recognize their names. They were newer entries into the top ranks.
