Mystical Journey

The black mountain peaks flitted past beneath them one after the other, as the four Mechs slowly flew past the black mountain ranges, advancing quickly in a specific direction.

Beneath them, on the peaks of the various mountains, between some stone platforms on the sides or peaks of some mountains, they could also vaguely see black-grey wastes and ruins. There were even some abandoned bases, with the faint movement of creatures that could not be seen clearly within.

The ruins were scattered sparsely all over, and some had several huge yellow cogs of different sizes exposed to the elements. The cogs turned slowly, occasionally spewing out white smoke.

Garen looked down to watch the scenery and ruins beneath him.

"Are there people in these ruined bases? Why are they still moving now?"

The Mech was on auto-pilot, so the pilots were not controlling them, and basically acted as independent passengers. That naturally meant they could also talk freely and discuss other matters.

A red symbol lit up slightly on the control panel in front of him, and Linda's voice came from it.

"Garen, this is your first time out here, and you don't know the place that well yet. Basically no one actually lives in these ruins, the reason they can move on their own is mostly because of some geothermal sources, but since this is the radiation zone, even though the geothermal energy here is considerable, its radiation pollution is even more so. That's why even radiation people don't dare to approach this place too often. Firstly, because the radiation interference here is too severe, so if they're not careful, they'll get an even more troublesome disease. Secondly, there are a lot of radioactive mutated beasts and radioactive corpses there. Most normal people can't handle that at all."

"Radioactive corpses?"

"Yeah, after being exposed to enough radiation and mutating, corpses will develop an innate desire to hunt for food. That's why they will be reanimated, and start wandering around on their own. When there is enough radiation energy, they'll be free to hunt around everywhere, but once the energy is depleted, they will collapse to the ground and become corpses again. So it depends on your luck when you enter ruins as well, if you're lucky, you might be able to find some documents or materials that are more valuable," Linda explained with a smile. "I went into some ruins before as well, but it's very dangerous in there, and regular pilots will practically just turn into food in there. Unless you are Level Three or above, it's best not to think about going in."

Garen agreed, and thanked Linda for her explanation. Then he began to observe the ruins beneath him.

As they continued advancing, soon enough, Anda's voice came in through the intercom.

"Careful, there's a flock of mutated birds ahead."

Just ahead of the four Mechs, a swarm of black birds was headed right for them.

These birds were each about a meter long, and their bodies were not too different from regular birds. But they had two pairs, or four furry fox ears on their heads, and their mouths were not straight like other birds. Instead, they were like so many sharp hooks.

Squawk squawk squawk...

In the midst of the piercing noise.

Anda's Mech suddenly emitted a sound wave field.

As the sound wave spread out, the flock of mutated birds instantly appeared to panic, and most of the birds scattered in all directions. Only a few of the strongest birds kept rushing at them, and seemed even fiercer for it.

Anda's high-powered ray gun kept shooting, and a dozen bolts of white light shot out, accurately hitting the heads of these birds, and utterly destroying them. The corpses fell down, but before they even reached the ground, they were surrounded by swarms of what appeared to be blood-sucking flying bugs that came out of nowhere. In no time at all, only a bunch of skeletons were left crashing into the ground.

Garen was at the back of the team, and seeing how easily Anda handled the mutated birds, he slowly relaxed the guard that he had put up.

"Ahead of us is the largest war ruins in these parts, the War Wastes. If we search here for a bit, we may be lucky enough to find newly-condensed mutated metals," said Anda's voice through the intercom.

"Be careful, there are many radioactive corpses hidden in the War Wastes, and some of the mutated beasts are very strong as well. There are even things like Level Four mutated beasts, don't cause too much of a commotion and stir trouble," Anda instructed carefully.

The few of them all indicated that they understood, and began to lower the Mech's height, flying towards the largest huge black mountain range directly ahead of them.

The black mountain was far taller than all the other mountains around it, compared to its surroundings, it looked like an adult towering over children. Even if three people scanned the huge mountain from within their Mechs, they still would not be able to see the edges of the mountain through their scanning visions, and could only see the large swathe of black mountain rock.

"There's a pretty decent name here, it's called the Sleeping Forest. If you don't wake it up, everything's easy," said Aves loudly, after whistling once. "I hear that pilots have even found really precious ancient energy furnaces and nuclear weapons here, that stuff can be traded for a whole customized Mech, y'know!"

"If it's a slightly better nuclear weapon, you'll be lucky to trade it for a small-scale battleship," replied Anda with a laugh. "Be careful, the radiation will reach warning levels soon, we need to use extra energy to form a barrier in there to avoid being infected. I've installed anti-radiation equipment in all three Mechs, but this takes up a ton of energy. If we can't find anything within an hour, we have to all gather here, we can't stay for long. Otherwise, don't blame me for not reminding you if you get the radiation disease."

"Got it!" X3

The four Mechs instantly scattered, and headed for the large black-grey metal city at the peak of the mountain.

The closer Garen got, the more he found the city on the peak strange.

It was dead, and had no sense of life whatsoever, but there was an immense pressure that seemed like it might explode at any time. There were floating pieces of metal and huge yellow twisting cogs everywhere.

As the city of ruins grew closer and closer, larger and larger, he split up with the rest of the team, and flew towards the eastern side of the city alone.

The city was extremely vast, about as big as Blackboard City. Garen simply flew towards one of the three large areas, and randomly landed one on of the colored boxes there. There were more than ten such boxes in the whole area, and each was the size of Flying Batoid City.

In the wide streets, all that was left of the old bumper car fields was a regular shelter tarpaulin to keep out the rain. The Ferris Wheel, with its many broken support pillars, was like a battered windmill. It would occasionally move randomly, creaking loudly as it went.

The angle Garen had flown into just happened to be a theme park. The Mech landed slowly, right next to a merry-go-round on its right. The spinning red wooden horses moved slowly, and even emitted crisp-sounding music.

'Lalala... lalala... The kite is flying... fish are swimming... the quiet life needs more to be satisfied, lalala... lalala...'

Garen could even still understand the music from the merry-go-round. Although the accent was slightly strange, and it was a little girl's voice, he could still understand what was being said.

Gusts of cold wind blew past, and as he looked across the whole city area, he found no sense of life in the theme park. Except for a few things that were moving on their own, the whole place was practically deserted.

Bang... bang bang bang...

Garen raised his Mech's steps, and walked forward. The heavy Mech walked around the theme park, the vibrations from its steps spreading, and the empty echoes returning in response.

"This place... sure is deserted." Garen frowned tightly, for some reason, he kept feeling a mysterious threat from this place. It was mild, and faint, but it felt as though something here could actually threaten his life.

The empty theme park gave him a very uncomfortable feeling.

Creak.

Suddenly, there was a sound from behind him. Garen quickly activated the sensor behind him, and saw that it was a swing in the empty space moving faintly, as though someone had just stood up from it.

Pulling back his gaze, Garen began to move again, pausing here and there.

Soon enough, the theme park's entrance was right ahead of him. It was an arch-shaped painted door, but many parts of the white paint had been washed off by the tides of time.

There was a model of a clown, more than five meters tall, at the side of the gate. It was dressed completely in red, and had bright red curly hair, two round red cherries pasted onto its cheeks. It looked like it might really make a child smile.

Crash!

Suddenly, there was the sound of glass shattering.

Garen frowned, and turned on the intercom. Aves had probably gone off in that direction.

"Aves?" he tried asking, but there was no reply.

There was just crackling in the intercom, it was all just intense static and interference.

Turning off the intercom with a smack, Garen knew that it would not work here anymore. Looks like he could only contact them once he was out of here.

The instant he walked out of the theme park, Garen instinctively felt as though the clown's eyes had moved a little.

He could not help but turn around and looked at the clown statue carefully. It was clearly made of stone and metal, its eyes were just drawn on.

"Was it an illusion?" Garen had always had faith in his instincts, but now he could not help but doubt.

He turned around and walked towards the door. Outside the theme park, there was a pitch-black dark alleyway, with tall buildings on both sides blocking off half of the light. Above, there were slightly dim, lead-colored clouds; below, it was the dark and shadow-lit streets. The ground was clean, and there were no signs of damage. But there simply was not a lot of light, so it looked rather dark and dingy.

"There should be usable materials in here..." Garen thought about it, and turned off his Mech's scanner. However, the problem was that the interference of the radiation here was too immense, and he could not use it at all. The scanner was filled with countless red dots, it was evidently malfunctioning because of the interference.

All of a sudden, he seemed to sense something aiming at him.

The Mech stopped abruptly, and took one step to the left.

Bam!!

A deep crater appeared in the place he was supposed to walk to.

"Who!"

Garen followed the direction the bullet crater came from, and just happened to see a blurred silhouette fading away quickly.

He was just going to activate the Mech to give chase, when suddenly he felt a chill from beside him.

"Shit! It was that..."

Barroom!!

In the intense explosion of green light, the entire street and the two large buildings on either side of it was bathed in a sickly green.

Super-effective acid missiles!!

The large amount of green liquid sprayed everywhere. Even if he reacted at lightning speed, dodging part of it, a little bit still got onto his Mech's anti-radiation barrier.

The transparent barrier sizzled on contact with the green acid.

Garen flew back far, and entered the theme park before he could check the condition of his Mech. The person who ambushed him just now was definitely no ordinary person, such super-effective acid missiles might not work so well outside, but under these highly radioactive conditions, its effect was extremely considerable. It could consume large amounts of the energy used by the anti-radiation barrier, but the opponent could not take down the barrier here, or else the intense radioactive pollution would instantly corrode the pilot and their Mech, leaving them to become radioactive people, which was a fate worse than death. To immediately fall from being a high-level hotshot to becoming the most average, low-level radiation person!

The Mech was not damaged too severely, but the explosion of the acid missile had taken up at least 20% of the Mech's energy resources.

Garen thought back to that ambush from just now, the movements were lightning fast, and his own Willpower somehow could not lock on the target, so that person had to be at least Level Three. And most importantly, their actions seemed very well-rehearsed, they had fired off a shot and retreated without even waiting to see the results. This was the main reason they could avoid Garen's detection even though they were only Level Three.