Chapter 608: Scout Beetle Contributes

"The haul this time isn't that bad."

"Although the number of these Rock Balls isn't high, the loot is great. The drop rate of Chips is a lot higher than the previous monsters."

"That's right. Most importantly, these Rock Balls' base level is only Level-50. A lot of those items that they drop can be used immediately."

The players were gathering their battle loot on the ground in front of the fourth base.

As for the players of the Nine Star Guild, apart from a few of them staying behind to clear the area, the rest of them had started moving towards the abandoned research base on top of the rock hill. The base was attached to and built within the mountain.

Feng Luo, who had just obtained his second Quasi-Boss pet biochip, was standing behind Big Pineapple and a few others who were picking up battle loot. His eyes had turned into a void.

In the sky high above everyone, a fingernail-sized Scout Beetle that was almost undetectable by the naked eye was flying quickly towards the fifth base.

The fifth base was the closer of the two bases that were on the third side of the island. The base was located close to the sea and its straight-line distance to the players' current location was around one kilometer.

For most players, a night environment was a huge obstacle. Even night vision goggles could not pick up many things due to the game world's uniqueness.

However, for the Scout Beetle's vision, there was not much of a difference between night and day.

After switching to the Scout Beetle's vision, which was located over a hundred meters above the ground in the night sky, Feng Luo was able to see the overall situation of the island in an instant.

Of course, it was only generally speaking.

The Scout Beetle's vision was very strong and it was even capable of easily detecting all sorts of energy and life force fluctuation within a certain range without being affected by the night environment. It still cannot detect fluctuations far away. Besides, due to a severe disturbance on the island, the perception range is even smaller.

However, the Scout Beetles had a weakness, and it was that its vision could not zoom in or out like a sniping scope.

This limited Feng Luo's ability to use it to obtain information about the target. He would need to get the Scout Beetle closer to the target before being able to do so.

The good thing was that, as an Elite Grade Scout Beetle with amazing camouflage skills flying in a sky without any obstacles, it did not have to worry about being attacked.

After the Nine Star Guild players opened the locked the fourth base's tunnel, the Scout Beetle was already within the range of the fifth base.

Feng Luo, who did not give it much thought but decided to use the Scout Beetle to scout the fifth base in advance due to some factors, suddenly frowned.

The reasons for the frown were - one, an unexpected situation was currently unfolding at the fifth base; the second was due to something that he saw through the Scout Beetle's vision on the sea. There were a few weaponized ships with people moving on them.

"Why are there ships over on this side?" Feng Luo wondered in his mind while being surprised at the same time.

Ships were floating on the surface of the sea. It wasn't just one or two ships, there were five medium-sized ships.

"Could it be that the people from North City had chosen not to disembark on the other side but instead disembark here?" Feng Luo thought. However, he immediately rejected that notion.

This expedition garnered a lot of attention. As such, most of the information about the two rival cities' expedition was already exposed on the forum. The luxurious weaponized cruiser ship of North City, which was even larger than their military ship, was not like these kinds of medium-sized weaponized ships. Moreover, there weren't so many of them.

"Let's fly over there to check it out." Through 24K, Feng Luo instructed this Elite Grade Scout Beetle to accelerate and fly towards the military ships.

...

After a few minutes, in a corner of the research area of the fourth base.

"Mr. Feng? Is something wrong? Oh, that's right, I have not yet congratulated Mr. Feng for getting yet another Quasi-Boss biochip," Zi Wei said to Feng Luo with a smile after giving her report.

Feng Luo looked directly at Zi Wei and asked, "Are we and North City the only teams participating in this mission?"

Zi Wei seemed distracted for a moment and answered, "That's right. Mr. Feng, why are you asking this, may I ask?"

"The people from North City should have disembarked on the island on our right side. And the final side where the fifth base is located, it should be empty, right?" Feng Luo pressed on with his questioning.

Zi Wei nodded and said, "Yes, that's right. They are the same as us. With the mission's constraints, they should have disembarked and begun their journey from that side."

Then, Feng Luo disclosed something that surprised Zi Wei. "But now... The final side that should be empty has shipped; moreover, there are a few of them."

Zi Wei's smile disappeared and her face became very serious. "Mr. Feng, you're not joking, are you?"

She did not ask how Feng Luo knew about the situation on the sea which was further away from the fifth base which was one kilometer away. However, Feng Luo's intel caught her completely by surprise. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that it had caught all of Nine Star Guild's upper management by surprise.

"I'm not joking," Feng Luo said and shook his head. "Also, the fifth base has been cleared. Moreover... some of the monsters around that research base are being controlled by someone and they are all moving towards the sixth base."

"Controlling monsters? Mr. Feng, you mean to say that the people disembarking on the third side of the island are the Rebel Army?" Zi Wei perceptively caught on to Feng Luo's words.

"Yes. The Rebel Army. Not only are there NPCs, but there are also a few players too," Feng Luo said and nodded.

"The Rebel Army... This means that this mission is not a two-sided competition. It is a faction mission? Or maybe it is an overlapping of missions..."

Zi Wei recovered her composure slightly. At that moment, her brain was moving quickly as she thought. The intel provided by Feng Luo did catch her by surprise.

It was clear that the system prevented information about the Rebel Army camp joining the mission from leaking out. This made it so the players from the Federation camp did not know that there was another faction participating in the mission.

As for how they could prevent players from leaking the info? It was not all that hard.

For example, they could first gather the players through other means and only reveal the true objective by the time the mission officially began. Or perhaps, they could also deliberately cause an accident that put both sides together...

By now, Feng Luo saw and ascertained that Zi Wei was most probably very close to concluding, so he asked, "Can I ask what your next course of action is?"

"Well... I guess I can tell Mr. Feng about this... The losses we took at the fourth base was a lot more than we had expected. Just now, we had modified our plan to clear the fifth base, but now... The main reason is the disturbance on the island is very severe, it is just too difficult to obtain enemy intel..." Zi Wei shook her head with a bitter laugh.

"Hmm?" However, at that moment, her pair of purple eyes stared straight at Feng Luo.

It looked like she had just thought of something. In an instant, her smile returned and she said to Feng Luo, "Mr. Feng if you don't mind, can you help support us and provide our next action plan? Also, there's another thing that is related to you that I was just prepared to tell you... Let me introduce you to Uncle Lin."

After that, she pointed towards a Heavy Armor Warrior walking toward them while speaking to Feng Luo.