Chapter 131: Chapter 115: The Deserter_l
Translator: 549690339
“General Camp, I hope you will consider my application more carefully.”
In Nora Camp’s office, Harrison Clark stood with his hands behind his back and his chest puffed out as he spoke.
Nora Camp stopped arranging the chessboard and said without a doubt, “Impossible. No one can have a gene injection twice. It’s absurd. You’re just causing your death, a death without any value. Go back.”
“I should decide my own fate…”
“No, your life is not just yours. The army has invested unimaginable resources to train you to this point. The free educational resources you’ve enjoyed since childhood. The cost of producing each meal for you is enough to meet the consumption of an ordinary family in a slum for a week. The wear and tear on the Summit Armor you use daily for training, as well as the operation and maintenance costs of the Holographic Simulation System…”
Nora Camp rebuffed Harrison Clark for a long time, causing him to return empty-handed.
Harrison Clark returned to his dormitory feeling dejected.
After making up his mind earlier, he had consulted the personal information system.
Gene modification technology was indeed widely available to the public, but it was tightly controlled by the military. The distribution and injection of gene fluids were strictly controlled to prevent some people from recklessly trying to get a second injection.
As expected, Harrison Clark’s application was rejected.
He then approached Nora Camp, hoping to enjoy a special privilege through the military’s internal system,
He tried to argue that he had never had a gene injection, but the medical team didn’t buy it. Their assessment still showed that he had not only undergone a modification but also completed a gene awakening.
So, he was rejected again.
The next day, Harrison Clark returned to Nora Camp’s office and submitted an application for retirement, which was also refused.
If he was still an ordinary soldier, he could have left at will. However, now he topped the Holographic Simulation System’s comprehensive evaluation ranking and was the target that countless fighters looked up to and strove to catch up with.
He couldn’t leave.
Two months passed…
Harrison Clark did something that shocked the Black Bear Training Base and all military camps worldwide.
After meticulous planning, he went on his first field mission. Upon perfectly completing the mission, he chose to leave his Summit Armor on the supply vehicle and disappeared without a trace.
He became a deserter.
Over the past two months, he had made full preparations, thoroughly understood the military’s monitoring system, and honed his ability to survive in the wild and conceal his trail to the extreme.
No matter how hard the dispatched search teams tried, they couldn’t find him even with the help of life detectors and scanners.
Unknowingly, more than ten days passed, and Harrison Clark appeared outside a dilapidated and deserted small town.
With the advancement of technology, urbanization, and the expansion of space stations, the Earth was no longer as crowded as it used to be.
Highly modernized farming machinery could fully meet human labor demands, agriculture population could comfortably live in cities and remotely control machines for cultivation and harvesting.
Almost everyone lived in large, centralized, and highly modernized mega-cities. The urbanization rate was 100 percent.
The small-town system of the past had long been consigned to history.
Now, small towns that still had buildings mostly existed as cultural relics, and city students would come there for sightseeing and admiring the ancient sites on their trips.
But the small town Harrison Clark was in was different.
This town was located in the Glasgow province of the Pacific region.
Since ancient times, Glasgow has been vast and sparsely populated, and now it seemed even more vast and empty.
The town was more than 800 kilometers away from the nearest big city in a straight line.
Logically, this place should have been completely abandoned, but it was not the case.
It seemed desolate, but only the buildings were old and abandoned, not the town’s atmosphere.
There were quite a few people walking around the streets and alleys, making the place quite lively.
The clothing styles here were not as modern as those in the military camps and big cities, and there were no floating vehicles in the sky. Instead, occasionally, old motorcycles and electric bikes passed by on the ground.
Only when a large flying vehicle took off from the other side of the town could people realize that this was a small town in the 30th century.
Behind the mountain on the side of the town, a cone-shaped metal structure emerged.
Harrison Clark recognized this thing as an under-construction large propellant spaceship.
This was the base of the escapees, also known as explorers.
Freedom Town.
The logos painted on the large flying vehicles carrying supplies belonged to several leading resource recycling companies worldwide.
Harrison Clark rubbed his stiff face from wearing the disguise gel for too long, swallowed a DNA scanning interference capsule, and walked straight in.
Apart from the above measures, he was also wearing a transmission suit that could block neutrino scanning and prevent his body shape from appearing on the global neutrino radar.
He had taken his anti-tracking efforts to the extreme.
It’s not that he was overly cautious.
The more advanced the technology, the fewer secrets one could keep.
Criminals, in a broader sense, had long disappeared, and hardly anyone could escape the military’s pursuit.
Except for Harrison Clark, only one person had managed to escape the military’s manhunt in the past ten years, Needham Brown, the security chief of Freedom Town.
Needham Brown didn’t desert the military as a soldier.
He was a research assistant in a research institute subordinate to the Ancient Civilization Research Institute.
His research work involved being a subject for study.
From his birth until he was twelve, he was studied like this. But then he managed to escape, and ten years had passed since then.
The military briefly pursued him but eventually let the matter go.
The people in the town were very friendly. Even when they saw Harrison Clark, a new face, they didn’t show any hostility. Instead, they approached him and chatted warmly with him, trying to help him blend into the town atmosphere as quickly as possible.
Harrison Clark settled into an inn, chatted casually with the passers-by, and then went to the town’s tavern to buy some Vodka using the World Government’s credit points.
He sat by the window in the tavern, took a sip of Vodka, and its spicy taste went down his throat, making him feel incredibly refreshed.
He liked this relaxed atmosphere very much.”Friend, are you new here? You look strong, have you received basic professional military training?”
A young man with a delicate face appeared in front of him and sat down, holding a white porcelain bottle of Maotai in his hand.
Harrison Clark nodded, “Yes.”
“Are you interested in joining our vanguard and becoming a warrior?”
The young man asked again.
Harrison Clark counter-questioned, “Who are we fighting against?”
“I don’t know, we plan to rush to the edge of the solar system and deal with whatever comes. Every ten years, we do this once, and this should be the last attempt.”
The young man shrugged.
Harrison Clark thought for a moment, “Do all the fugitives love courting death?”
“It’s not courting death, it’s striving for hope.”
“Are you all so enthusiastic about strangers? Aren’t you afraid of the military’s spies?”
The young man sneered, “What’s there to be afraid of? Do you really think there’s anything new under the sun? They’ve always known about our existence and know what we’re going to do.”
Harrison Clark nodded, indicating he understood.
That made sense.
With the current military control, if they really want to wipe out the space for the fugitives, it wouldn’t take any effort.
Just like last time, one shot from the Main Ship, and all turned to ashes.
The military is reluctant to let the elite fighters they have cultivated die in vain by crashing into the Invader Barrier.
Here, there are private individuals willing to put in their own money and effort, along with others willing to risk their lives to help collect data. The military is happy to see that.
This may be a new form of cooperation that has evolved and reasonably emerged under the distorted social system.
At the same time, Harrison Clark also found that the crowd of explorers was indeed different.
They seemed to be loyal followers of Sergey, believing in Sergey’s theory, so they forced themselves to become more enthusiastic and live like real human beings.
But Harrison Clark knew that no matter how hard they tried, their true nature was still to replace emotions with logic.
No matter how much they pretended, essentially they remained different.
“I won’t join your vanguard, I have my own plans. Needham Brown, give me one gene serum, and I’ll owe you a favor.”
Harrison Clark directly called out the young man’s name.
Needham Brown slowly leaned back, his expressions changing rapidly.
Harrison Clark felt twisted and uncomfortable.
He couldn’t imagine what it would feel like for someone to decide to make different expressions through their thoughts.
“Captain Clark, you really know how to joke.”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
“A favor? What can you use to repay us? Do you know what the military’s arrest warrant says about you right now?”
“What does it say?”
“Your value alone is equivalent to a battlecruiser.”
Harrison Clark shrugged, “That’s so cheap, I thought I would be worth more.”
“Don’t try to change the subject. The military is turning a blind eye to us now, but if I give you a gene serum and let you die here, they will definitely take action because we’ve caused them a major loss. This is the last time the explorer spaceship will be launched, and I won’t allow any accidents to happen.”
As Needham Brown made his stance clearer, more and more people in the tavern slowly stood up.
Many of them quietly put their hands on their waists, their fingers resting on the phase particle guns.
Harrison Clark remained calm, “So, what do you mean?”
“If you’re willing to join the vanguard, our people will find a way to help you fix your identity. But if you want the gene serum, I’ll have to capture you and send you back to the military so I can at least get some reward and resources. Attack!”
In an instant, Harrison Clark and over twenty people in the tavern, including Needham Brown, burst into action.
Harrison Clark’s figure turned into a ghostly shadow, flashing back and forth.
He darted left and right, up and down.
Every punch he threw was heavy and powerful.
He pushed his body, capable of withstanding 50G acceleration, to the limit.
With his well-honed fighting skills, no one in the tavern was a match for him except Needham Brown.
These people couldn’t even aim because Harrison Clark was too fast and skilled.
Harrison Clark perfectly demonstrated to these semi-skilled fugitive fighters what the strongest ace elite in the military looked like.
Thirty seconds later, the large tavern was filled with counterfeit customers lying unconscious on the floor.
The bartender and the bar workers groaned and struggled, hanging on walls or beams.
Needham Brown’s hands hung weakly, his weapons long disarmed by Harrison Clark.
Harrison Clark kicked Needham Brown squarely in the chest, sending him flying backwards and smashing countless tables and chairs.
“I originally wanted to have a nice chat and ask for or buy a gene serum. But since you didn’t give me a chance, you can’t blame me for stealing it.”
Needham Brown, lying in the pile of debris, struggled to his feet, disbelief all over his face, “Impossible! I’m at least an S-class fighter in your assessment system; our difference shouldn’t be this big!”
Harrison Clark left a remark, “A little difference can create a huge error. Goodbye.”
With that, he dashed out of the tavern, heading straight for the back mountain of Freedom Town.
He didn’t kill anyone.
In his opinion, these people were quite respectable, just a little weaker..