NOVEL NEXT Chapter 48: Infection
Lieutenant Ye Bai sat in a dimly lit corner of the BGA common room, her back straight, her arms resting lightly on the table. The air was thick with the lingering scent of stale energy drinks, machine oil, and the sweat of exhausted soldiers who had spent hours grinding matches.
Yet, at that moment, the room was strangely empty.
Only five frowning sergeants remained, seated near two active Sim Pods which were locked in combat. The steady hum of the machines filled the otherwise silent space, the occasional flicker of light from their screens casting long shadows on the walls.
Ye Bai's beautiful, sharp eyes were closed, but she wasn't resting.
She was processing.
The past 100 fights replayed in her mind with brutal clarity.
That's right.
100 fights.
After witnessing Damien Bloodbane's jaw-dropping Pentakill against her hotshot sergeants, Lieutenant Ye Bai had gone, in the words of her subordinates, "completely batshit crazy."
She had stormed into the simulation room and begun challenging every single one of her sergeants to matches. Non-stop.
And not just any matches.
Each time, she picked the super-basic Battle God mecha and faced off against their fourth and fifth-gen war machines.
And each time… she got absolutely, brutally annihilated.
Like, obliterated.
She did not land a single clean hit.
At first, her sergeants had been delighted at the free wins. Beating a superior officer was worth a lot of rank points, and they weren't about to pass up the opportunity.
But as the hours ticked by, and Ye Bai didn't stop, didn't rest, didn't even blink too much, their joy turned into confusion.
And then into sheer, abject terror.
"What's going on?! Why is Lieutenant Ye Bai doing this?! She's dropped from Diamond Rank to Silver Rank already!"
"Any more losses, she'll be in Bronze! She'll get demoted!"
"Is she depressed?! Is it… you know… that time of the month?"
"I KNEW IT! Women shouldn't be in leadership! Their emotions are unstable, and they just wake up one day and decide to do batshit crazy things like this!"
"I'm reporting this to Major Harvey. Someone has to stop her!"
They had no idea what happened when Major Harvey summoned Ye Bai to his office.
But whatever it was, it didn't help.
Because five minutes later, Major Harvey had joined her.
And he too was challenging every sergeant to a match.
With the Battle God mecha.
And somehow, he was even worse.
"HOLY SHIT! I DIDN'T KNOW BATSHIT CRAZY WAS CONTAGIOUS!"
"WHAT THE HELL, EVEN MAJOR HARVEY IS INFECTED!"
"SOMEONE GET MEDICAL! WE NEED A QUARANTINE!"
Major Harvey's performance was so painfully bad that he didn't even manage to scratch the enemy mechas once. His battles lasted less than thirty seconds, and by the end of it, he was laughing like a lunatic and roaring at the next sergeant to come up for another match.
By that point, the sergeants were in full-blown panic mode.
An emergency meeting was called, where a bold survival plan was proposed.
"Listen up! Full anti-biohazard protocol is now active!" the drill sergeant barked. "All soldiers NOT scheduled for a fight against Major Harvey, evacuate to the parade ground IMMEDIATELY! I REPEAT—EVACUATE!"
Within minutes, the base was a chaotic mess of fleeing soldiers, discarded Sim Pod helmets, and the muffled sound of yet another Major Harvey defeat.
But then—
Ding!
A soft chime rang through the room.
Ye Bai's Chronolink vibrated lightly against her wrist.
Her eyes snapped open, cold and focused.
She immediately checked her inbox.
A new message.
A reply to the one she had sent earlier that day.
There was only one word.
"ACCEPTED."
The corners of Ye Bai's lips curled slightly.
Finally.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The battle started.
A random map was chosen: Tundra.
Hungry Monster (Unaffiliated) VS HappyGirl88 (Northern Titans)
The Tundra was a brutal battlefield.
Beneath the towering cliffs and the swirling snowstorms, mecha movement was severely hindered. The thick snow dragged at the legs of heavier mechas, forcing them to expend extra energy just to stay mobile. Thrusters were unreliable, as the frigid air and ice-coated terrain played havoc with energy efficiency.
And worst of all?
The cold seeped into everything.
Sensors flickered. Motors stiffened. Pilots had to compensate for delayed input responses.
To most, this was a nightmare map.
But Damien Bloodbane had fought in worse.
Back in the Super Soldier Training Program, he had been thrown into the worst possible conditions imaginable—frozen wastelands, burning deserts, deep-sea combat, zero-gravity skirmishes. He had fought in -50°C blizzards with nothing but a knife and his own body heat to keep him alive.
To Damien Bloodbane, it was just another day.
His Battle God mecha stood still, its sleek, basic frame barely affected by the biting cold. Across from him, his opponent was the same.
HappyGirl88.
She had also chosen the Battle God mecha.
It would be a mirror match!
For the first time since the match began, Damien's expression shifted.
A spark of genuine curiosity flickered in his eyes.
"Interesting," he murmured.
He had expected to fight a fifth-gen war machine, something fast, advanced, and packed with high-powered weapons. Something that would at least make him work for the $10,000 per match.
But unexpectedly, it was this.
"Oh well. $10,000 here I come!" Damien Bloodbane burst forward with startling speed.
Ye Bai also rushed forward, her Battle God moving as smoothly as the conditions allowed.
No flashy thruster bursts. No unnecessary movements. Just pure, raw piloting skill.
She went for precision.
A single clean stab, aimed directly at his cockpit.
Fast.
Sharp.
Ruthless.
It was the correct move.
It was the exact move Damien would have used if their roles were reversed.
Unfortunately Damien Bloodbane knew exactly how to counter that move.
In the split second before Lieutenant Ye Bai's sword pierced Damien Bloodbane's cockpit, he vanished.
Well not literally.
But to the untrained eye, it might as well have been teleportation.
In a single, ridiculously sharp sidestep, he twisted past the attack, dodging it by mere centimeters.
Then in the same motion, he slammed his sword straight into the side of her mecha's neck.
It was a perfect, calculated, single-strike kill.
Her cockpit shut down instantly.
System failure.
Match over.
Hungry Monster had won in a match that lasted less than three seconds.
Lieutenant Ye Bai's Sim Pod door hissed open, releasing a faint cloud of condensation from the heated battle inside.
But she didn't move.
For a long moment, nothing happened.
The room was silent except for the distant hum of other Sim Pods and the barely contained panic of the five sergeants standing outside, watching her like she was an armed bomb with a faulty timer.
Her knuckles were white against the armrests. Her shoulders stiffened. Her lips parted slightly, as if to say something—then closed again.
A faint tremor ran through her fingers.
The sergeants exchanged looks.
"Oh no. Don't tell me…"
Ye Bai's eye twitched.
Her breath came out slightly uneven.
She slowly, mechanically turned her head to face the sergeants.
Five round-eyed men stood there, frozen in absolute terror.
She lifted a single, shaking finger and pointed at one of them.
"You. Duel. Now."
The poor sergeant she pointed at let out a strangled noise.
"SHE'S GOING BATSHIT AGAIN!"
"SOUND THE ALARM!"
"ABORT! ABORT! ABORT!"
One of them screamed and bolted.
Another grabbed his comrade by the shoulders. "DON'T LEAVE ME BEHIND, YOU COWARD!"
Chaos erupted.
The infection had returned.