Please comment if you see any mistakes I will fix it as possible.
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In a tunnel barely wide enough for one person, the four of them walked in single file.
"Nervous?" Dance, walking second, tilted his head to ask Bela and Karmine behind him.
"A little." Bela hugged the sniper rifle tighter to his chest.
"I'm alright." Karmine's voice sounded relatively calm.
Walking at the front, Zeke looked up and tapped the layer of soil above his head twice.
With a poof, air rushed down from above.
Zeke put away his pickaxe, jumped straight up, grabbed the edge of the hole with both hands, and performed a clean pull-up.
He scanned the surroundings. After confirming it was safe, he reached his hand down.
"Come on."
Dance grabbed his hand, and Zeke pulled him up with some effort.
Next came Bela and Karmine, who were much lighter and easier to pull up.
They were inside a room, with a layer of dust covering the floor.
Zeke squatted down and picked up a chunky object by his feet. He pinched it, and white powder showered down.
"Chalk." His gaze swept across the room.
It was a classroom. Several rows of desks and chairs were askew; some were already broken.
At the very front was a blackboard, broken in half and hanging limply on the wall.
"Do not waste your tears. I was not born to watch the world grow dim.."
Dance read the sentence on the blackboard aloud, his eyes glazing over in a trance.
Scenes from the past floated before his eyes: young cadets sitting straight as ramrods, boys boasting in low voices by the wall, and the annoying drill instructors.
Everything was gone. Only this classroom remained.
"This has been around for over a decade, right? I remember learning this sentence in boot camp when I was a kid." Karmine broke the heavy atmosphere.
"Tell me about it," Bela chimed in. "When I was doing basic training at another bastion, this sentence was posted on the wall there too."
"So your textbooks are printed uniformly across the planet and haven't been updated in over ten years?" Zeke quipped.
He walked over, pieced the two halves of the blackboard together, and set it upright.
The conversation brought Dance back to reality.
"There's no blood around, and no signs of desks or chairs being overturned," Karmine began her observation.
"The children must have evacuated in an orderly manner according to plan. I hope they are all safe."
Dance nodded heavily.
"By the way, Zeke," Karmine looked at Zeke, who was inspecting the outside through the window. "Where exactly are you from? You're definitely not Cadian born and bred."
"Me?" Zeke turned around, leaned against the window, and thought for a moment. "I'm an Earthling."
Karmine reacted quickly. "You mean Terra? The homeworld of the Imperium of Man, Holy Terra?"
"Uh, pretty much," Zeke replied vaguely, not intending to delve into the subtle differences between the two Earths.
Terra in the 2nd Millennium was still Terra, after all.
Looking out the window, Zeke could only see buildings and rooftops pressed close together.
"The visibility here is terrible," Zeke said. "Let's go up and take a look."
Zeke turned and walked out of the small classroom, climbing two more flights of stairs to reach the roof of the building.
Here, the view finally opened up. They could see over the nearby buildings to points further away.
"Look over there." Zeke pointed to a distinct open area within the cluster of buildings in the distance.
A heart-palpitating blood-red light was emanating from there.
"That's the Memorial Plaza in front of the Banquet Hall." Karmine got her bearings, took out a monocular telescope, and handed it to Zeke.
[Spyglass] x1
Zeke took it and brought it to his eye.
It was indeed a relatively open plaza.
In the center stood a statue with only half its pedestal remaining.
Behind the statue was a large hall, likely the Banquet Hall where the welcome reception was held.
The formerly magnificent doors of the hall were long gone, blocked tight from the inside with vehicles and debris.
Between the statue and the hall doors was a pit.
Due to the angle and distance, Zeke couldn't see exactly what was at the bottom of the pit, only the blood-red light shining up from it.
The plaza was crawling with Volscani traitor troops. They had built simple fortifications with sandbags and set up heavy stubbers and mortars, with all firepower aimed at the Banquet Hall.
"The remaining resistance forces in the Bastion are likely trapped behind that Banquet Hall."
Even without the spyglass, Bela could see farther and clearer than ordinary people. "They are resisting stubbornly."
"Pull the lens back a bit. Look inside the fortifications," Bela reminded Zeke.
Zeke adjusted the focus of the spyglass slightly. He saw a person wearing a large black robe.
Even across the distance and through the lens, Zeke could feel a jarring sense of wrongness.
The robed figure appeared thin, with slender limbs, yet the black robe was stuffed full, bulging as if filled with something else.
The distance was too great; the system did not display the name or information of that unit.
"What do you think," Zeke stood up, pointing toward the plaza, "about opening our tunnel exit right there?"
He handed the spyglass to Dance and the others, letting everyone take a turn observing.
Dance took a look. "That plaza is open. There's enough space for our tanks to deploy and maneuver. It works."
Bela nodded in agreement. "Once we appear and clear out those traitors, we can immediately link up with the friendly forces trapped in the Banquet Hall."
Karmine also agreed. "I suggest getting a bit closer to get a better grasp of the specific situation."
Having reached a consensus, the four began to descend and move toward the plaza.
It wasn't until they truly stepped into the alleyways inside the Bastion that Zeke fully understood what Dance meant by a "maze."
Looking down from above, it just seemed like dense construction. But once inside, he realized it was a three-dimensional labyrinth meticulously constructed from countless houses.
The paths wound and extended between buildings, with numerous forks. often, a single turn would present several choices that looked almost identical.
"This is the internal defense philosophy of Tyrok Bastion."
"Using dense buildings and complex passages to cut up the space. People who don't know this place can't possibly get through—"
Before Dance could finish, he heard a soft clang from the side.
Zeke had already taken out his Iron Pickaxe, dug a hole large enough for a person to pass through, and crawled in.
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. EZ.
"Hmm? What were you saying, Dance?" Zeke poked his head out of the hole and asked, puzzled.
Dance: "..."
He looked at the passage and swallowed the rest of his sentence.
"By the way," Zeke's voice came from the other side of the wall, "does this count as destroying property? Your Cadian residents won't mind, will they?"
"Wartime regulations. All civilian structures can be requisitioned when necessary." Karmine followed him through the hole.
Despite saying that, after everyone had entered the house, Zeke turned around and plugged the hole back up.
The interior of a Cadian residence was incredibly sparse.
Listening to Dance's description wasn't enough; seeing it with his own eyes was shocking.
There were no decorations, only the most basic pieces of furniture.
Zeke rummaged through a chest in the house and found a piece of flint.
[Flint] x1
Perfect for making Flint and Steel. Zeke pocketed it. (TL/N: In Minecraft, Flint and Steel is a tool made from an iron ingot and a flint used to start fires, activate Nether portals, and ignite TNT)
His gaze fell on the hard plank bed. He walked over and swiped his hand across the thin blanket spread over it.
[Bed] x1
Hey, a ready-made bed. Zeke pocketed it.
Now, this house could truly be described as having "bare walls."
Zeke swung his pickaxe and began a straight-line demolition.
His efficiency was extremely high. Soon, he had pierced through several houses, getting closer and closer to the plaza.
From the other side of a wall, voices could be heard.
Zeke stopped his movement and signaled the three behind him to be quiet.
"Hey, we have so many people surrounding them for so many days. Why haven't we cracked those hard nuts inside yet?" a complaining voice asked.
"Idiot. Do you know who's leading them inside?" Another voice trembled. "It's Ursarkar Creed!"
"It's him... Then can we win?"
"Fool, the advantage is ours." The second traitor tried to pump himself up, raising his voice again.
"We've trapped them in there for days. They have no supplies; we can starve them out. Besides, isn't the ritual ongoing?"
"But I heard our numbers are dwindling, and we won't be able to hold out much longer."
The voices gradually faded away.
"General Creed. It's him!?" Dance's eyes revealed a look of admiration.
Karmine muttered, "When I was a kid, the phrase I heard most often was 'Look at Creed'."
As the footsteps faded into the distance, Zeke dug open the final wall.