After the brief carnival, there will be war.

After greeting Bai Liu, Guy quickly said goodbye to them and got on the train with the assault team and dozens of heavy artillery.

Alex stood where the train started. He looked at Guy who stuck his head out of the train window and greeted him with a smile, his eyes almost staring through Guy.

Tang Erda left even earlier. As a new recruit who joined the assault team through irregular channels, he left the tavern by train at around two or three in the morning to go to the battlefield for adaptive training.

Bai Liu asked Hei Tao to wash off the paint on his body, put the balloons in the box that Guy found for him, put it in the room, and then went to the training ground with other recruits to receive their assignments.

Alex took them to the training ground. When he reached the door, he turned and looked at Bai Liu: "I hope I will never pick up your bodies on the battlefield."

"Of course it's very likely that someone else picked it up." Alex forced a smile, but he soon calmed down, raised his head and looked at Bai Liu firmly, "After I finish my job as a cleaner today, I will apply to join the Second Assault Team tomorrow and will no longer be a cleaner."

Bai Liu looked at him and said, "Because Guy went to the first team, right?"

"Yes." Alex lowered his head, turned the ring on his left ring finger, and smiled happily. He whispered, "We have come to this point. Only death can separate us."

Alex patted Bai Liu and Hei Tao on the shoulders and said, "Guy has crossed out your quota for the commando team. Go and be a cleaner. It's safer."

After saying that, he trotted over and waved goodbye to Bai Liu.

Bai Liu withdrew his gaze from Alex's back and looked at the storage rack at the entrance of the training ground.

The shelf was rusty, with a thick stack of registration forms placed on it, and a notice board with white letters on a red background pasted on it - [Application for quota for Assault Team 2 and Assault Team 3].

"It seems that there are options for player identities here. The answer suggested by the main NPC is to be a cleanup soldier." Bai Liu thought thoughtfully, "But the game also placed an application for joining the commando team here."

The main task of the game is to help Alex win the war. The way to win is that the player who gets the most corpses within seven days wins.

From these two points of view, both the Cleaner and Commando identities are likely to complete the mission, but the cost-effectiveness is too low.

Collecting corpses as a soldier is a purely labor-intensive competition, which is inconsistent with the consistent design style of this game. There must be some shortcut to obtain corpses in large quantities.

What approach will yield the most bodies in war?

Of course, as one of the camps, nothing can be more cost-effective than actively starting a war to incur casualties.

Bai Liu narrowed his eyes.

Helping Alex win the war does not assign a faction, but only specifies a character. Combined with the way to win and the attitudes of the two main NPCs, Alex and Guy, towards the war, it is very likely that there is a side storyline of Alex's rebellion set up here.

Assuming that the designer of this game intentionally made Alex an NPC with an unstable stance as Bai Liu thought, then Alex would have the possibility of rebelling against his current camp.

This is probably the reason why the group of players from Nishen can join the enemy camp.

If Alex defected and joined the enemy camp, players in the enemy camp could also trigger the main quest to help Alex win the war.

From this perspective, there can be two player camps in this game. One is to help Alex, who did not rebel, win the war, and the other is to help Alex, who rebelled, win the war.

The only question now is, under what circumstances would Alex, a mild-mannered medical student who loves his hometown and country but is negative about the war, betray the country?

Although Alex has a negative attitude towards war, this negative attitude is not enough to catalyze Alex to fiercely rebel against his current environment and defect to the enemy.

His idea is that even if this war is a mistake, we should wait until we end the war with victory before settling these mistakes and compensating the innocent people who were harmed in this mistake.

Alex has accepted war for what it is, in which no one is innocent.

In Alex's opinion, the incompetent government is certainly guilty, but even more guilty are the backward enemies who killed soldiers and started the war.

In this situation, Alex would definitely tend to stand on his own side. Even if Guy died on the battlefield, it would not be easy to change Alex's camp concept and make him defect - this was destined when Alex chose to join his own camp instead of volunteering for the enemy.

If Alex was to rebel, he needed a different catalyst.

Bai Liu turned her head and looked at the track where Guy was sitting on the train and leaving.

He knew what the catalyst was.

"Choose the cleaning team." Bai Liu turned to look at Hei Tao, "You have no objection, right?"

Heitao nodded and said, "It's all right."

After Bai Liu and Hei Tao entered the training ground and were assigned the roles of sweepers, a signalman ran into the training ground in a panic, holding a telegram. He squinted his eyes in fear and shouted sharply: "Guy Davis of the assault team has betrayed us!"

"He suddenly turned around on the battlefield and blew off his assistant gunner's head with a bazooka, destroying two of our hidden firing points."

The soldier who rushed in was so angry that his eyes were red: "This despicable asshole! He killed more than 20 veterans of the assault team, and then under the cover of the enemy's firepower, he cleared the battlefield and surrendered with the spoils to join the enemy army!!"

The whole audience burst into laughter.

That night, the fighting situation worsened again.

The operation of the assault team one failed miserably due to Guy's rebellion. The general who relied on his wife to get to the top was furious and finally pulled the thousand heavy artillery pieces to the front line overnight. He also merged the remaining members of the entire assault team one into the assault team two, letting the assault team two take the lead and launch the second assault at dawn.

Bai Liu and Hei Tao, two sweepers who had only received simple training, were also forced to be pulled to the front line along with the heavy artillery because of the impending large-scale casualties.

They were given a crude military tent, some stretchers and two shovels, some anti-infective drugs in small bottles, a dozen suture packs, and several rolls of tourniquets.

Bai Liu and his team camped next to Alex's camp. After camping, they walked into Alex's tent.

The light in the tent was very dim, and I could vaguely see corpses piled on the ground. In the middle of the pile, Alex was sitting motionless, like a corpse.

The young man who said during the day that he wanted to join the Second Assault Team seemed to have his soul taken away in just one day, and became so haggard that he lost his shape in just a dozen hours.

Alex's military uniform was splattered with blood and coagulated flesh from top to bottom, and his face was covered in bloodstains. He stared at the broken body parts on the ground in a trance. When he saw Bai Liu and the others lift the curtain and come in, he just moved his eyeballs slightly, and then continued to stare.

Bai Liu walked to the table and turned on the light. The light illuminated everything in the tent, including the bedding on the narrow camp bed that had not yet been made up after the two people had entangled in it.

Alex's eyes slowly moved to the quilt. He stared at it for who knows how long, until the pent-up emotions finally overwhelmed him. He couldn't bear it any longer and bent over, covering his face and breaking down crying.

Bai Liu then asked, "Alex, what happened?"

Alex looked up, his voice hoarse and his expression dazed: "-I was transported to the front on Guy's next train."

"I was worried about Guy. I was afraid that something might happen to him, so I secretly exchanged positions with other sweepers and came to the stationing area of ​​​​the assault team. It was already late at night, and there was a heavy rain. The sky looked particularly gloomy. I saw Guy's tent moved. It seemed that they received a communication telegram from the commander. Because of the heavy rain, the lake surface rose a lot, and the assault had to be brought forward."

"The leader of the assault team proposed to take a detour and attack from the east, outside the lake. Guy seemed to disagree. I heard him vehemently refute the leader, saying that place was not a war zone at all."

Bai Liu knelt on one knee in front of Alex and asked softly, "What is that place?"

"That's another indigenous village." Alex's face was covered with dried tears. "According to the requirements of the international peacekeeping department, the people there have declared themselves a neutral camp, and no attack is allowed."

Bai Liu continued to ask: "Then why did the captain attack there?"

"Because the natives there adopted many children and women of the enemy who were displaced by the war, later, the people in the enemy camp began to deliberately and secretly deposit their children and wives there, because it was safe there."

Alex paused. "But many of us here don't think that there are innocent people there. The general has submitted applications to the international peacekeeping department three times, requesting that this indigenous village be included in the war zone, but it has been rejected because of insufficient reasons."

"So this time, the general is going to kill first and report later." Bai Liu asked calmly, "But there are only children and women there, what's the point of attacking?"

Alex shook his head. "Not only that, the natives here value blood and family ties. If the assault team can hold that village, it is very likely that these natives will be restrained for a short period of time - at least until we can get through this rainy season."

"Also..." Alex paused, "The restrictions imposed on us by the International Peacekeeping Department are not as great as you think. And as long as the other side retaliates, it can be judged as a war preparation behavior, and the other side can be really brought into the war zone."

Bai Liu asked again: "So was this plan finally implemented?"

Alex was in a trance for a long time before answering in a daze, "...It happened. I saw Guy carrying his bag and getting on the bus and leaving."

"We, the cleaning team, followed very far behind until it was completely dark... I can't remember exactly what time it was, but there was a heavy rain, and then I heard the sound of gunfire and screams."

"But the village we raided this time had no artillery reserves, so there shouldn't have been any sound of firing."

Alex's breathing became rapid: "I didn't know what happened, but I was scared that something might happen to Guy, so I ran over -"

He closed his eyes, tears falling. "There were sounds of bullets and gunfire everywhere. Someone was yelling hysterically, but I couldn't hear anything. I touched my ear and it was bleeding. It must have been from the shock. I was yelling for Guy frantically, and finally I saw him on a hillside, covered in wounds."

"I wanted to rush over, but the people around me pulled me back and yelled at me not to go over. I didn't understand why I couldn't go over at first. That was Guy, my love, and I had to save him."

Alex opened his empty eyes: "Until I saw him raise the bazooka and sniper rifle, shooting at the people around him coldly and without hesitation."

"I know he has received professional training and was once the best rocketeer on the team, but I have never seen this side of him."

"He was like the Grim Reaper, pointing a bazooka at me and everyone, smiling with tears in his eyes and saying, 'I'm sorry, Alex, I can't bear to see the people he wanted to protect being persecuted like this.'"

"Marrying you is what I long for most. After that, I think I will be happy even if I die."

Alex's tears slowly overflowed, and he took a deep breath: "-So he said that he had no regrets, and he was going to die for something else."

"I carried his blown-up bodies back one by one. Many of these people had blessed me and him last night, but today they were lying here, being torn to pieces by the people they blessed."

Alex said softly, "I don't understand."

"That factory manager, the first person he loved pursued justice, and the lives he wanted to protect were lives. These people—" Alex stood up shakily, pointing at the more than 20 broken bodies on the ground that he had carried back, and questioned Bai Liu with red eyes in an almost hysterical state, "—the lives of his friends who had rescued him and blessed him countless times, aren't they lives?"

Alex stepped back while shaking his head. He screamed in despair: "This is not right!! Guy did it wrong! These people don't deserve to die!"