Aftermath

Other than the one that was killed by the joint effort of Keiko, Seol-Hyun Ae, and Lieutenant Lu, there were two other Ferocious Earth Dragons that attacked the third squadron.

One appeared in the middle of the troops but was quickly disposed of by the joint action of three officers of the left-wing squadron. Another one was even more unlucky to appear right in the center of the encirclement of the Right Wing Squadron and was directly blown to smithereens by the officers and soldiers of the right-wing squadron.

Their battles ended just around the time the fight on Keiko's side was finished. The alarm rang, signaling that the danger had passed and the situation was once again back under control.

That was why Seol-Hyun Are could get out of the mecha and come to Keiko's side with a more relaxed attitude.

From the start to the end, the battle lasted no more than three minutes. However, in such a short time, the entire Einherjar Squadron had suffered a lot of casualties.

They lost nearly ten armored vehicles, the lives of a dozen officers and soldiers were sacrificed, and more than 30 officers and soldiers were injured to varying degrees. Furthermore, the road leading to the main city-state from Secret Zone 1 was also broken beyond repair due to the intense battle.

The soldier's complexion wasn't so good, but they didn't utter any complaints or whine and just went back to their duty.

After the battle, the soldiers had to clean the battlefield field before resting to avoid attracting another encounter with monsters, so they had to leave quickly with tired bodies and minds.

Meanwhile, Keiko was still treating her injury. The wound on her left arm was opened again, but she didn't think much about it since she could just reapply the bandage again, and so she did, with the help of the nearby nurse.

Her right arm was in worse condition, it got dislocated when she was tossed around by the Ferocious Earth Dragon's attack.

She relaxed the tension in her right arm and a popping sound came out when she grabbed her wrist and straightened it to reconnect the arm back to the shoulder socket. Keiko did it swiftly and silently, without even flinching.

Her sprained right ankle was also treated as soon as possible. Because of the protection of the exosuit, these injuries didn't cause much trouble for her.

After finishing dealing with her condition, she immediately joined the soldiers and helped clean the battlefield.

Everyone was as busy as worker ants and didn't even have the spare time to talk about the battle just now.

Keiko helped saw off the collapsed giant tree, transported it to the side of the road, and cleared the road.

At the same time, the engineers were quickly filling up the pit caused by the Furious Earth Dragon with shovels, and the soldiers who were in charge of disposing of the monster corpses chopped the body into several pieces and buried it inside the pit before covering it with the ground.

To be honest, the best way to deal with the zerg corpse was to burn it cleanly due to the properties of zerg's blood being poisonous to humans and the possibility of inquiring about the mutation on animals or plants when contacted.

However, such a method couldn't be applied in a dense forest. After all, what if the fire spread throughout the whole forest?

Aside from wasting resources and polluting the already polluted air, if the fire accidentally spread to the nearby zergs and predator nests, not only would it cause insignificant damage to them but also incite their terrifying wrath, or worse, trigger a bug wave.

There was once an occurrence of a bug wave mentioned in history whose ground zero was the now lifeless Outer Region of Valhalla City, where thousands of people died, including many powerful mech soldiers.

This was the reason why cold weapons were usually used as the mechas' main weapons, which were more efficient and less risky than artillery fire for destroying the enemy, avoiding starting the battle, or expanding the combat area.

Therefore, every mecha driver must have an extremely high combat fighting sense. If not, it would be very hard for the mech soldiers to kill the monstrous zergs with only a blade.

This rang true for someone like Seol-Hyun Ae, for whom mecha combat had always been her weakness.

If it weren't for her great achievements in leading troops, she would not have been promoted to the rank of second lieutenant. The battle with the Furious Earth Dragon inevitably exposed her weaknesses.

On the other end of the spectrum, there was Lieutenant Lu, whose battle skills and mecha driving skills were the creams of the top.

Nevertheless, her experience from the accident this time had broadened her horizons.

The first battle she came to the world, she passed through inexplicably like this.

Fighting is something she has been accustomed to and the only thing she had been good at since she was a child.

Whether it was her adoptive father or the instructors in the army later, they only taught her one thing: how to see through the enemy's weaknesses and overcome the enemy to win.

After completing the first battle, her heart was a little more relaxed. Through this battle, she learned that she still had sufficient ability to keep her life safe in this ruthless world.

At this moment, her fighting spirit as a former soldier was rekindled. This kind of exciting battlefield is the most suitable for her.

***

After working together with the soldiers to push the fallen trees into the scorched bushes by the roadside, Keiko took a breath and rubbed her arms.

Her physical status was displayed on the mask and didn't show any abnormal signs. The only warning she got from the 3D scan of her body from the health monitoring device was to not overuse her left arm to prevent the wound from expanding.

The team has begun to gather, ready to start. Maybe it was just after a big battle; everybody was still a bit tense and vigilant.

Keiko looked around and found that the soldiers were all gathering in the direction of the road, and no one was going into the jungle, so she trotted into the jungle to scout ahead.

She deliberately ran deep into the jungle and inadvertently noticed that there was a relatively open area under a big tree not far away, and there was a small pile of extinguished bonfires, slowly smoking blue smoke.

She was curious and stepped forward to check, and found that it was indeed a man-made bonfire, and there were traces of tents camping nearby.

Who will camp here?

###

Author's note:

Hello reader, sorry for yet another unfulfilled promise. Originally I wanted to publish the new chapter(s) on 3rd February and already had the draft of a chapter around 3-4 chapters, it was the same for Red Packet and System Journey. Alas, at that time, I found it hard to focus on writing, even editing chapters suddenly become so cumbersome and headache-inducing task. Who knew that the drop in the mood was actually the result of undetected health problems.

Long story short, my health is a little bit problematic, and now am still in recuperation, so I can only write and edit for 2-3 hours the most a day so there will be new updates soon but it will most probably slow, really slow. But considering I once hadn't been updating for a month, the next update will be a lot faster.

Anyway, enjoy the read!