"They’re dead."

"How is that possible?"

"We just checked this trap, there was nothing wrong with it before. It’s clearly already been used and scrapped." The teammates gathered around Lou, all talking at once.

Lou felt a bit of a headache coming on.

After a brief silence, Lou said, "It was Ji You."

Teammates: "???"

Lou frowned and said, "This has Ji You’s handwriting all over it. She’s the type who always keeps something in reserve, likes to have several backup plans ready."

Even without Lou explaining, everyone already knew who Ji You was. Captain Louis Carter had brought them here not only to see what had happened in this area, but also with another goal: to look for traces of Ji You.

Ji You was Captain Louis’s classmate. Rumor had it she was terrifyingly strong, and also extremely sly and devious—a powerful enemy that Captain Louis had to find a way to eliminate.

The teammates fell silent.

Before this, their fear of Ji You had only come from secondhand information. But now, seeing with their own eyes that Ji You wasn’t even on-site, that there wasn’t a single enemy present, yet she’d still effortlessly killed two of their own teammates...

Is that scary?

Of course it is.

The heavy silence spread among them.

Lou suddenly said, "We leave here immediately and go check the neighboring base."

Teammate: "???"

There should still be a lot of traps here. We don’t need to waste time in this place. Let’s go somewhere else and take a look. If we find people from our own camp, that would be ideal.

After Lou finished speaking, he took the lead and moved out first.

Very soon, the group carefully left this large trap area, heading toward their next destination—exactly toward the Sixth Team of the 6th Regiment of the 6th Battalion. Before they even got close, all the teammates behind Lou were stunned.

The place was a complete ruin: rubble, broken walls, the remains of fortifications...

"You’ve got to be kidding me."

"There was an explosion here?"

"Where did the explosives come from?"

"What the hell happened?"

...

They looked at each other, each feeling like they had to be seeing things.

Lou frowned and said, "This might resemble the Original Battlefield, but the participants in this match are interstellar people. With modern tech and methods, as long as you have certain Material and the knowledge of how to mix it, it’s not hard to put together explosives."

Silence.

Still silence.

Lou said, "For Ji You to blow this place up means she’s already obtained enough useful stuff and no longer needs this area. And more importantly, there must be something here she couldn’t afford to leave to the enemy, so she had to destroy it."

"What was it..." Lou spoke as he walked, searching step by step...

The result?

Of course they found nothing.

After wandering around the ruins for a while with a few teammates, they still didn’t find anything useful—not even the slightest clue. Lou had no choice but to lead them toward their next objective.

Along the way, there was hardly a soul in sight, almost no sign of anyone.

Obviously, everyone in this whole sector had already been wiped out by Ji You in one swoop.

Lou felt a heavy weight in his chest, and he had the sense that he’d fallen into some kind of trap in his thinking, but he couldn’t pinpoint it right away. Not until a teammate beside him suddenly said, "Squad Leader, we’ve been out for a long time. Should we head back to our base first?"

There hadn’t been many people who left with the Squad Leader—only thirteen. Now that two had been eliminated, there were only eleven left. Their original purpose in coming out was to investigate the cause of the loud noise from earlier. Now not only had they not found the cause, they’d gotten bogged down here. Even though figuring out what happened would be very helpful for the following battles, still—

Time was too tight. If they kept wasting it out here, it would actually be bad for their side.

Lou understood this as well. After thinking for a moment, he said, "Everyone, return."

Whatever Ji You had taken, whatever her next objective was, it wasn’t the priority right now. The sense of crisis in Lou’s heart was overwhelming. He decided to hurry back to their own base, secure his foundation first, and then think about Ji You.

If his own lair also got leveled like this, then his match would be over.

Lou led the way, hurrying back. They’d just gone some distance when they suddenly came upon a military base—but it was another base that had already been flattened, with nothing left inside but broken walls and ruins.

"Holy—"

"What on earth happened here?"

"Is everyone from the 6th Regiment gone?"

"The entire 6th Regiment got wiped out?"

"Why didn’t we get even a hint of this?"

...

Lou’s brows were knit tight as he said, "The enemy must have done this while we were busy consolidating our forces. She probably infiltrated our camp the moment the match began, disguised herself as one of our own, and only then could she pull this off."

Most humans will be on guard when facing strangers. But when they’re dealing with their own people, they won’t be. So to make the enemy believe you’re one of them, you have to infiltrate at the very first opportunity.

After hearing Lou’s explanation, everyone frowned, each realizing just how terrifying an enemy they were facing.

Someone asked, "Squad Leader, do you think there are still enemies lurking in our camp right now?"

Lou shook his head and said, "I can’t predict that. But what I can say for sure is that our situation is already bad, because the enemy has probably more or less figured out our camp’s map and troop deployment."

Teammates: "!!!"

"Move!" Lou urged. "We need to get back, now!" They’d been gone too long. If the enemy slipped into their camp during this time...

No one dared imagine it, and Lou didn’t want to either.

So—

The group rushed back at full speed without stopping. After running for about twenty minutes, they suddenly saw a large crowd gathered not far ahead. Lou and the others paused, confused. A teammate asked, "What’s going on?"

There were twelve people in Lou’s group, all moving in a hurry. Each of them was tall and stood out easily on the open ground, so they were quickly spotted. A group of armed people immediately moved in and surrounded them.

Lou frowned and stated his identity.

The search party didn’t believe him. A small skirmish was about to break out when another group arrived. One of them saw Lou and suddenly spoke up, "I know him. He’s Louis Carter, Squad Leader of the 1st Regiment."

Then a few more people showed up to corroborate Lou’s identity, and only then did the group loosen their encirclement.

Even with his identity confirmed, Lou wasn’t exactly happy, because the large crowd in front of him were all armed to the teeth, fully kitted out, clearly about to go fight someone.

Who? 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

Thinking of one possibility, Lou’s expression darkened slightly and he said, "Don’t go. It’s a trap."