"That’s the sound of tracks."
Adrian recognized it at once.
He had never had the chance to see a tank in his previous life, but he had seen excavators at construction sites and heard the sound of their tracks grinding against the ground.
"It’s an armored vehicle. Our weapons can’t do anything to it. Running into the mountains won’t help either—the ammunition depot will keep respawning guards."
Rem sounded utterly dejected.
"Is there no other way?"
Adrian frowned.
"There is. Blow up the armored vehicle, kill every NPC here, and capture the entire ammunition depot."
Frost gave a bitter smile. Clearly, that intelligence was no secret among mercenaries.
"Huh. I thought it was going to be difficult."
Adrian had expected something far more complicated. This was it?
"Red Ram, did you not hear what we said? It’s an armored vehicle. Rifle rounds can’t penetrate it."
Rem’s voice rose in agitation.
"That armored vehicle is basically this instance’s boss. Unless it’s destroyed, it’ll keep respawning guard squads," Frost added.
Both of them thought Adrian had genuinely lost his mind.
They had already given up resisting and simply sat where they were.
"All right, I’m not explaining this to you."
"Get them on their feet. We’re heading to the machine-gun position."
Adrian issued the order. Several men went over, hauled the four slumped mercenaries to their feet, and threw them over their shoulders.
The VDV troops were all massive men, averaging over six feet three.
Even Rem, the biggest-built of the group, stood a head shorter than Adrian’s squad members.
Having abandoned all resistance, the four let Adrian take them away.
Before long, they reached a hill opposite the ammunition depot.
In the few minutes it had taken them to get there, two hundred NPC guards had gathered outside the depot entrance.
They stood in neat ranks, as though awaiting something.
Then an armored vehicle rolled into Adrian’s field of view.
"Seriously? That’s it?"
"A BMP-1?"
Adrian had expected a Bradley covered in composite armor, or perhaps a fully equipped Armata heavy infantry fighting vehicle.
What he had not expected was that the armored vehicle Rem and Frost had described as such an impossible threat would turn out to be a Cold War relic. Its thickest frontal armor was only twenty-three millimeters. Forget a tandem HEAT round—even an ordinary shaped-charge RPG round could punch through it.
Seeing Adrian’s blank stare, Rem and Frost assumed he had been frightened by the sight.
"Stop struggling. If you wait here to die, at least it’ll be less painful," Rem said.
He lay flat on the ground, while Frost wore the same defeated expression.
"No, you’ve got the wrong idea."
Adrian’s face darkened.
"Don’t tell me you have a way to deal with that armored vehicle?"
"Forget the armored vehicle. You can’t even handle those two hundred NPCs down there."
They knew Adrian’s squad worked well together.
But against overwhelming force, any tactic was a joke.
"You. Come here."
Adrian could not be bothered to explain further. He called over one of the anti-tank gunners.
"Do you recognize this?"
Adrian took the RPG launcher from the anti-tank gunner’s back and showed it to them.
Rem glanced at it, then looked away again.
"No. It doesn’t even look like a gun."
But Frost could not remain calm. Her eyes locked onto the RPG-7 launcher in front of her.
"This... I saw one in one of my father’s books. I think it’s called a rocket launcher?"
Frost did not sound certain.
"Close. But it isn’t called a rocket launcher. Strictly speaking, it’s a rocket-propelled grenade launcher."
Adrian showed off in front of the beautiful girl again, then had the anti-tank gunner hand him a tandem HEAT round.
It looked like an enormous wine bottle. It felt rather heavy in his hands.
Frost and Rem were both completely focused on Adrian’s movements.
"This is a tandem HEAT round. It can easily penetrate six hundred millimeters of rolled homogeneous armor."
Adrian explained as he loaded it.
"That armored vehicle you see down there is a BMP-1. Its thickest armor is only twenty-three millimeters."
"So..."
By then, Adrian had finished loading the weapon and used the RPG-7’s optical sight to range the target.
"Yep. Exactly one hundred and fifty meters."
Because it had been developed relatively early, the RPG-7 required a larger sighting scale when firing heavy warheads.
As a result, when firing thermobaric or tandem HEAT rounds, the RPG-7 had a maximum effective aiming range of only two hundred meters.
"Fire in the hole!"
Before the two could understand what Adrian meant, they heard a soft pfft as the massive warhead shot from the RPG-7’s launcher.
A huge cloud of dust erupted behind Adrian.
Boom!
First came a muffled detonation.
Sparks burst from the BMP-1’s frontal armor where it stood outside Ammunition Depot No. 4.
Then—
Boom!
With a thunderous explosion, the BMP-1’s turret was blasted more than a hundred feet into the air.
"That’s a rare turret toss."
The BMP-1 had clearly been hit in its ammunition rack, triggering a sympathetic detonation.
Like a meteor, the turret rocketed into the sky before trailing a long plume of black smoke back down to the ground.
"What the hell was that? How did you do that?"
Rem, who had been lying on the ground waiting to die, sprang to his feet. He nearly tore the beard from his chin.
Frost was equally stunned. Her small mouth hung open as she stared at the wreckage outside the ammunition depot below.
"How...?"
In the end, Frost could not manage another word.
"It wasn’t nearly as hard as you made it sound."
Adrian handed the launcher back to the anti-tank gunner, who gave him a resentful look that seemed to say, "If you weren’t the captain, I’d never let you show off in front of a girl with my launcher."
Of course, Adrian did not regard the squad members he had summoned as System NPCs. He truly considered them his companions.
"Next time, I’ll make sure you get the chance."
In truth, it had been Adrian’s first time firing an RPG. He had not even been sure he could hit the target.
Still, it would have been fine. The anti-tank gunner had two tandem HEAT rounds.
And if that did not work, Adrian could have asked the combat engineer for C4.
At worst, he could have put on a little anti-tank gymnastics display.
"Does this mean we’re safe now?"
Adrian’s question snapped the two out of their daze.
"Y-yeah, I think so. No—wait. There are still two hundred depot guards."
Rem and Frost tensed up again.
"Right, there are still two hundred depot guards."
"Damn it, they’re starting to surround us."
Adrian’s position was the only high ground nearby. The moment he fired the RPG, the guards had noticed him.
"Oh, right. There’s still the infantry."
"Machine gunners, sniper—it’s your show."
After issuing his orders, Adrian found a comfortable position, braced his rifle, and prepared to fire.
Rat-a-tat-tat!
A rapid burst of machine-gun fire rang out.
As soon as the guns opened up, a swath of guards outside the depot entrance dropped.
Ten minutes later—
"Congratulations, Red Ram. You have cleared Ammunition Depot No. 4. You have acquired this depot’s output. Each month, you will receive 200 AK-47 rifles and 18,000 rounds of 7.62×39 ammunition."
The announcement came from the battlefield.
After the battlefield notification, Adrian’s System delivered one as well.
[Combat concluded. Calculating results: NPCs killed: 430. Points earned: 4,300. BMP-1 destroyed: 1. Points earned: 500. Total points earned in this battle: 4,800.]
[Support Squad Exchange Store unlocked.]
This time, Adrian had truly struck it rich.
Not only would he receive a fixed monthly supply of weapons, but he had also unlocked the Support Squad Exchange Store and earned 4,800 points.
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