His combat suit was covered in dust, and the right side of his scalp seemed to have been grazed by a bullet, with bright red, viscous liquid oozing out. His face was somewhat pale, yet he gripped an assault rifle in his hands. The raised muzzle was aimed directly at William Grant's brow.

No energy left, and the MFP pistol's bullets had all been spent... William Grant felt his whole body trembling slightly. He gave a bitter smile, tossed aside the now useless weapon, and slowly raised both hands above his head.

He had never imagined that he would one day become a prisoner of war.

This was by no means a chance to regain life and escape the battlefield. Instead, it meant a miserable future of spending the rest of his days in a dark, sunless underground mine.

Earth's civilization had evolved to heights unimaginable to previous generations. Yet in some places, the most primitive human labor was still required for excavation.

Machines, after all, were not all-powerful.

In the distance, a muffled gunshot could be faintly heard. Like thunder that had been building up for a long time, it rumbled with lightning-fast ferocity. Even with William Grant's vision far superior to ordinary people, he could only just make out a blazing, fiery-tailed line streaking like a flash of light into the side of a Pan-Union soldier's skull, exploding with a terrifying crack and splattering blood and gore everywhere.

Almost at the same moment the gunshot reached his ears, William Grant instinctively took evasive action, crouching low and diving into the grass, sprinting in the direction his companions had retreated.

The shooting position had already shifted northwest. Clearly, the rescue force was not just a single person. It was likely a well-equipped special operations squad—the difference between the two shooting positions was over six hundred meters, something impossible for a single person to achieve in just a few seconds.

The Pan-Union patrol did not pursue. The attack aircraft that swept overhead also failed to spot William Grant and the others, hidden beneath the dense vegetation. Half an hour later, the recon squad, barely managing short-range jumps while supporting each other, had already left the New Alliance's control zone and entered the Earth Federation's firepower warning range.

……

"Boss, they... huff, who are they?"

A freckle-faced private collapsed onto the ground, gasping for nearly five minutes before finally yanking off his helmet and asking curiously and wearily.

He was referring to those who had saved their lives from the gunfire.

"No idea—"

William Grant's breathing was just as heavy. He took a canteen from his backpack, unscrewed the cap, and gulped down several mouthfuls, feeling both the lingering terror of a narrow escape and the joy of having fled death's cage. After a few seconds of silence, he said, "Probably friendly forces on some special mission. They were too far away—I couldn't make out their insignia."

"But no matter what, they saved me..."

The wounded soldier, whose head had just been roughly bandaged and whose cheek was wrapped in gauze, struggled to lean against a rock and added in a hoarse voice, "Saved us."

Nodding silently, William Grant felt his taut nerves slowly begin to relax.

"But why did they appear from the north?"

The last to speak was a sergeant in his thirties, the second-in-command of the recon squad. He first rested his hands on his knees, bowed his head in silent prayer for a moment, then straightened up, his face full of doubt, and asked, "That's the S12 mining area. Not to mention humans—even the hardiest mole couldn't just wander in and make it out alive."

For some reason, William Grant suddenly noticed his palms were slick with sweat. His damp fingers felt uncomfortably sticky. He wiped them hard on his uniform, reached into his shirt pocket for a pack of cigarettes, took out four and passed them around, then finally lit one for himself. He took a deep drag and, in a voice that even he found strange, said to the sergeant beside him, "Did you notice their sniping distance? How far was it?"

"Four thousand five hundred to four thousand seven hundred meters. Maybe even farther."

The sergeant took the cigarette from his mouth, sniffed hard, and looked at him in puzzlement. "You're a visual evolver. You should see better than I do."

"I always thought it was an illusion—"

William Grant wiped the sweat from his forehead, his fingers holding the cigarette twitching unconsciously. "Not just me—even those specialized snipers who put two or three points into long-range shooting can't get a hit rate above eighty percent at that distance. You have to understand: seeing and actually hitting are two completely different things. Bullet flight is affected by wind speed. Once the range exceeds 2,500 meters, the deflected bullet... increases the margin of error to over thirty percent."

"That's not necessarily true—"

The young, freckle-faced private spoke with a mix of envy and jealousy. "Boss, the 'Shadow Kill' sniper rifle's large-caliber special rounds don't even need to worry about that. I saw them shoot in the armored infantry battalion—even in simulated storm conditions, their hit rate was still ninety-eight percent."

"That's not the same..."