Chapter 1430 - 464: The Lemming (Player) Suicide Mystery_2

Chapter 1430: Chapter 464: The Lemming (Player) Suicide Mystery_2

"Target acquired, 72°32’24.558 West, 27°13’33.298 North, target: Hood, altitude 750 meters."

Electromagnetic signals spread and propagate underwater; they’re completely unafraid of being picked up by Hood’s detection radar.

When the huge red dot appeared on the holographic map in the players’ cyber command center, everyone inside immediately got restless, ready to mobilize players to launch the next boarding operation.

Wildman, having just hung up on Mongolian Toplaner, stared worriedly at the data sent back by the radar mines. It wasn’t that he was afraid of false intel—those guys didn’t even know they’d lost control of the Artificial Intelligence mines, so they had no reason to fake anything.

"There’s only one ship—if we make a move now, will we spook the snake in the grass? Or should we drag it out and lure the other warships over as well?"

Family Joy patiently talked him through it.

"Now is not the time to worry about that. Even with Huang Ban and Military Science providing external military support, the disparity in strength between us and them is still massive. At this point, wounding ten fingers isn’t as good as cutting off one; taking out a single unit is already a huge advantage for the current situation."

"You have to factor in one thing: the information asymmetry between us and them. We don’t need to fear a strong opponent; as long as there’s a gap in intel and we can deliberately manufacture that information gap, then winning weak against strong stops being impossible."

"They have no idea we’ve taken control of the Artificial Intelligence minefield in the Bermuda Region, and even less idea how we found Hood. Now put yourself in the enemy commander’s shoes: after getting burned by our radar tech last time, when Hood suddenly gets ambushed this time, what’s your first thought?"

Wildman tried to answer.

"Support our allies?"

"No."

Family Joy shook his head.

"The situation between us and them is unclear. They don’t even know how Hood got exposed, and they have no idea how many enemies there are or where they are. Rashly exposing themselves to rescue a teammate would not be a smart move."

"And the European Alliance Army isn’t a solid block. They have zero obligation to rescue someone who’s neither from their own country nor their own company."

"So this fight not only has to happen, it has to be fast and vicious. The harder we hit, the more they’ll worry about getting dragged in themselves. On the flip side, if we dawdle and they see through our bluff, that’d be bad for us."

There was more that Family Joy left unsaid: given the glorious tradition of certain folks in Britannia, even if Hood really blew up, the others would probably just clap and cheer. Wouldn’t be surprising if the French even comped us a shell at the moment Hood gets boarded by players, helping to send her under and settle a little national grudge.

This is what you call national credibility.

After listening, Wildman suddenly saw the light, his respect for Family Joy deepening another notch; you could only say the level at which the two of them viewed the situation wasn’t even on the same plane.

He’d been judging them by his own standards, treating Europeans like they were the same kind of "comrades-in-arms" as the players.

Family Joy clasped his hands behind his back and said,

"Let’s head to the port and take a look. This is, after all, our very first warship. The significance is extraordinary."

Over in Italy, the Blackhand Company was already foaming at the mouth, frantically negotiating with Horizon Corporation and ordering Lin Miao to return the Pola, while Lin Miao didn’t give them the slightest damn—you wanna rage, go ahead and rage.

No choice, it’s not that he doesn’t want to return it.

The kind of guy who can make players cough up the spoils they’ve already swallowed hasn’t been born yet on Earth.

Even if he’s the game dev, it wouldn’t fly—the players would dig his dear horse out of the grave and leave it rotting in the open.

From the day this ship arrived at Pig Bay, thousands of players have been boarding daily just to sightsee. Areas the Italians themselves rarely went into—whether it’s "dry paths" (corridors) or "wet paths" (oil pipes)—players keep burrowing in like mad, insisting on seeing everything, just to figure out the hull’s internal structure.

For now, Pola will just have to suffer a bit. Someday, when the players are bored of her and have found a new toy, Lin Miao can return this heavily modded Pola to Italy.

Though at the moment, probably no Italian soldier would admit that the abomination docked in the harbor is actually the Pola.

The originally sleek and elegant blue spindle-shaped hull was now covered in all kinds of messy, god-knows-what cab—uh... cables, and on top of that, those two large electromagnetic railguns, mounted bare without any casing and brutally welded directly onto the deck. Each gun was twenty or thirty meters long, practically matching the ship’s beam, and the barrel bore was way beyond 460mm, looking savage as hell.

The vibe it gave off was like an elegant Italian noble lady being forcibly modded into a dual-wielding futa; there’s no going back from that.

"Holy crap, that’s terrifying!"

Mongolian Toplaner’s first reaction on seeing the ship was,

"That’s so ugly. Couldn’t you have done a better job?"

He complained,

"Couldn’t you at least bundle these wires together instead of dragging them out through random windows and leaving them exposed? Just looking at it is triggering my OCD."

"Nonsense."

The engineer player who’d come to pick them up glared at Toplaner.

"This is already the best we could do without ripping out the internal power distribution system."

Meaning, on the outside she’d been modded into some kind of demon, but on the inside she was still a good girl.

"Tsk..."

Mongolian Toplaner still looked completely disgusted.

If it weren’t for the chance to fire the guns, he wouldn’t even set foot on this thing.

"Start by telling us how this thing works."

There was no way the players were going to use that original batch of Italian navy crews. Even if they surrendered en masse, the players still had to consider whether these guys might pull some tricks.

But the players themselves had zero naval experience before this. Even with the control systems overridden, there were still tons of stations that required human operation; they couldn’t just jump in and instantly handle a warship that’s basically on the level of a real-life carrier.

So they cut wherever they could: all nonessential functional compartments were shut down, leaving only the basic control rooms and gunner stations, all manned by the highest-level relevant players, working together with Artificial Intelligence control.