Star Rank Hunter

Original and most up to date translations are posted at volaretranslations.

Translator's Note: This sponsored chapter goes to R.V.! Enjoy the slightly earlier than usual release! Meanwhile I'll be whipping the editor so he'll start get working on everything else I've translated already...

Translator: Craxuan

Editor: darklord5555

Chapter 74: Marking Red

“What… is this?”

Inside the control room, Knight stared blankly at the items on top of the table.

Knight had climbed out of his bed a long time ago. The moment he entered the control room, he discovered that there were five fist-sized warheads on the table in front of Cillin. Knight dared wager that he had never seen the base handing out such warheads to them. This was because the rules of the integrated warfare contest forbad the distribution of air-to-ground weaponry.

Sird, Hard and the others also woke up early, and when they saw the five items in the control room they too were pretty amazed.

The five warheads had spiral patterns like a screw’s.

Ci Jincheng stared at the five warheads as his eyes lit up, “Is there something inside?”

“Correct.” Cilin nodded.

Ci Jincheng walked over and examined the warheads closely. Then he said, “Are they detectors?”

Cilliin gave Ci Jincheng a thumbs-up and explained, “According to the plan, today Knight and Pride will pilot the plane and take us to San Border. Although the plane isn’t equipped with assault weapons, it can carry them. These five warheads are all installed with detectors and jammers. We will fire these five warheads before Knight and Pride land the aircraft, and they will dig into the ground and transmit signals from underground, thereby cutting off the Sentinel defense network and scan for external changes…”

Cillin explained the function of these five warheads to the group. According to the rules of the integrated warfare contest, the planes on the aircraft are not allowed to be installed with assault weapons. Normally speaking, they could only be used to transport people. In the past there were people who installed some portable weapons on the plane, but the effects were not as good as they hoped.

It might be because that many students nowadays were used to high-tech battles that they gradually overlooked some of the primitive, and most basic way of combat. Overreliance on high-end technology and WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) were not really meaningful to a student’s growth. Therefore, large-scale weaponry were not allocated in the integrated warfare contest. All students basically had to lift their guns and ‘mark red’ the enemy one by one.

The meaning of ‘Mark red’ was to ‘shoot dead’ an enemy. If a student’s sensor suit judged that the level of damage sustained was enough to cause death, then the student’s clothes would turn red color to indicate that that student was already ‘dead’. The students who were ‘marked red’ could only stay at the same spot and wait for the garrison troops to come and pick them up. The students who were ‘marked red’ would be taken to the observation station. Although they were out of the battle already, they could still watch the battlefield from the displays of the observation station.

The closest academy to their location was San Border College, also hailing from Sector B. San Border College’s total score put them at eighth place of the integrated warfare contest last year, and it was also a rather famous academy at Sector B.

Knight had made some minor changes to the battle plan based on the five warheads Cillin provided. If they succeeded, the time spent on this endeavour would be three times shorter; and the less time they use, the bigger the advantage they would gain.

Some teams would go search for energy blocks first, but there were also some teams who would first take out the competitors close to them. As the saying goes, how could one tolerate others snoring at one's bedside? If they did not take out their competitor, then they would be met with bigger obstacles when they were searching for the energy blocks. When that happened, the time they would waste would not be just a day or two.

Obviously, Knight had chosen the more forceful strategy of the two. In the past, the four military academies would also make such a decision. In general, every stronghold that was close to the four military academies’ would be ‘marked red’ on the next day, so when San Border’s participants learned that it was Seven Lights and not the four military academies that was nearby, they were so happy their mouths nearly got stuck. The difference in prowess between the four military academies and them was huge, but the overall prowess of every academy on Sector B was more or less the same. There was no such thing as an absolute advantage, so even if Seven Lights had produced two powerful nemeses Knight and Shadow X this year, San Border wasn’t really too afraid of them. It’s not like they’re military academies, so what the fuck was there to be afraid about?

There were seven people who had taken the initiative to participate in this offensive. Fu Luo, Kang Man and Ci Jincheng were left at the stronghold, whereas the remaining seven had joined the fray.

Every aircraft was equipped with two planes. Knight and Pride piloted one each, with Knight taking Cillin, Lung and Copley while Pride taking Sird and Hard. Although Pride usually looked at people with his nostrils, he would not be careless during a real operation.

“We’re almost at their stronghold, any closer and we would be discovered by their Sentinel.”

“Ok. This place is enough.”

“Execute plan A.” Knight said through the communicator.”

“Understood.” After receiving Knight’s notification, Pride turned the plane and headed towards another direction.

After Pride’s plane had flown far away, Knight’s plane circled around the area to check in passing whether there were energy blocks around the area. Unfortunately, there were none.

Ten minutes later.

“Time’s up.”

To avoid having their communications tapped by their opponents, Knight and Pride had agreed on a time. Once the time was up, both sides fired their warheads in unison.

The trajectory of the warhead wasn’t like the near straight line of other warheads. Instead, it flew in a flight pattern that was erratic and incredibly unpredictable. After the warheads were shot, Knight parked the plane nearby and disguised it in full before sneaking towards San Border with Cillin, Lung and Copley.

It must be mentioned that Pride’s ability was pretty impressive. When Knight fired his warhead, Pride too had arrived at the expected location and fired his warhead.

When San Border’s air-raid siren indicated that there were fast-moving missiles in the air, their students still couldn’t quite believe what’s going on. Wasn’t there no ground-to-air weaponry in the contest? If that’s the case, then what were with these five objects? The air defense system did not detect any planes entering the alert zone either.

Since the missiles were travelling very swiftly and in an unpredictable pattern, plus they never thought that Seven Lights would actually attack them, and from the air no less, they failed to intercept the missiles.

The missiles weren’t aimed at their aircraft. More accurately speaking, these missiles had just barely entered the edge of their alert zone. After the missiles had impacted against the ground they did not explode. Instead they penetrated straight into the underground before everything turned peaceful once more.

But this peace did not last very long before San Border’s people realized that their Sentinel defense network was being hacked. Moreover, the speed at which it was hacked was incredibly quick!

But of course that was the case. It would really be strange if the combined efforts of the two experts Ci Jincheng and Kang Man at Seven Lights’ stronghold had produced a slow hack.

San Border’ Sentinel defense network lasted only thirty seconds before it was completely paralysed. Although San Border had guessed that the cause was the five warheads, they were unable to settle the matter immediately. After all, the five missiles had all penetrated into the ground.

Inside Seven Lights’ aircraft, Ci Jincheng turned on his communicator, “Hack successful. Marking red.”

San Border’s Sentinel network was paralysed, by the sensors inside, the missiles could sense everything around them and display them on Ci Jincheng’s screen. What Ci Jincheng needed to do now was to report these circumstances to the seven people carrying out the operation. He would need to explain in detail who had enemies around them and how many, how much danger was lurking in the area and so on.

In the space station outside asteroid C-N300, the team leaders of the ten teams were watching the battle while seated. There were plenty of monitors, and every team’s outdoor activities could be captured through satellite monitoring. Right at the center, there was a monitor that wasn’t displaying these activities, but some blue and red dots.

The monitor was still completely blue yesterday, but red dots were already filling it today. These red dots represented those who were ‘marked red’. Every dot was labeled with the student’s info so that the officers would know that which dot belonged to whom. From this monitor filled with dots, one could see that the military academy students were much stronger than the other students of Sector B. As usual, any academy that was close to a military academy would be marked red on the second day. No matter how much preparation they’d made, they would not last over the second day.

The team leaders of the four military academies were numb to this situation already. Although the team leaders of the academies that were marked red had mentally prepared themselves, they still felt more or less unhappy on the inside. But the person who was even unhappier than them was the team leader of San Border. Anyone who saw his dark expression could see that the guy was roaring on the inside.

Gerrard sat at a side and leisurely picked his teeth while he watched the students of San Border being marked red by Seven Lights. From time to time, he would even hum a martial tune, pissing off the San Border team leader by his side so much that he ground his teeth repeatedly.