George and Victor stood frozen, staring blankly at the "naked" Armor Smith.
Lawson didn't have a single piece of protective armor on him.
He was a "White Board" player walking into a death trap.
The fury in George's eyes reached a boiling point. His voice, dripping with undisguised mockery, emphasized every syllable of his contemptuous question:
"Depart? Just the three of us? Lawson, has the data fried your brain, or do you simply have no intention of coming back alive?"
He had assumed this was just another of Lawson's crude, ill-timed jokes.
In his eyes, an Armor Smith stepping into a B-Rank Forbidden Zone without armor was no different from jumping headfirst into a meat grinder.
Lawson didn't answer. He remained wrapped in an eerie, unshakeable silence.
Standing in the center of the workshop, his gaze pierced through the alloy walls of the base, fixed on a goal only he could see. There wasn't a trace of a joke in his eyes; he looked like a grandmaster at a chessboard, having already calculated every move of cause and effect.
Then, the corners of Lawson's mouth curled upward. It was a smile of absolute control—a declaration that he wasn't playing a suicidal game of whimsy.
He was about to show them what a "Dimensional Strike" truly looked like.
"Stop talking," Lawson finally spoke, his voice terrifyingly calm.
"Follow me. You're about to see the other side of this 'New World'."
"That look... it's exactly like the night of the Raid," Victor whispered.
"Big Brother definitely has an ace up his sleeve."
"That aura of having calculated everything... it seems Mr. Lawson didn't come unprepared," George added, his skepticism finally wavering.
Lawson interrupted their murmurs with a sharp command:
"I'll take the aggro. You focus on DPS. Let the hunt begin."
"Wait, Mr. Lawson! Do you even know the target's location?"
"Yeah, it's a wasteland out there. It'll be a disaster if we miss..."
"Tch. Am I really that untrustworthy?" Lawson waved them off without looking back.
As they stepped outside, the contrast was jarring.
Lawson swaggered forward as if taking a stroll in a park, while the two behind him were as tense as drawn bowstrings, sweat pouring down their faces as they scanned the horizon.
"So... what are the coordinates? We need a sense of direction," George muttered.
This time, Lawson didn't use words. The {Spatial Smart Band} on his wrist flared with light, and a small spatial vortex swirled on the ground.
A second later, a sharp, industrially beautiful metallic hawk emerged from the center of the vortex.
The cold light reflecting off its wings instantly silenced their doubts.
"Whoa! Big Brother! What kind of treasure is this?" For a tech-junkie like Victor, this was like finding a legendary artifact.
"This is the {Hawk Recon Drone} I forged," Lawson explained, a smirk playing on his lips.
"Its hull mimics background noise, providing dual stealth against visual and radar detection. But its strongest feature is the [Hawk Eye]—a high-precision reconnaissance system merging multi-spectral, thermal, and quantum enhancement technologies. It provides 4K real-time streams through clouds and storms, rendering any camouflage transparent."
With a low-frequency hum, the drone took flight. It adjusted its posture gracefully, its sensors scanning the veins of the earth like an apex predator.
George watched the streak of light vanish into the sky, his doubt replaced by genuine admiration.
"I didn't expect you to have gone this far. It seems 'perfect preparation' is just your baseline."
"To be praised by the legendary 'Silver Wing' is truly my honor, hahaha!" Lawson let his guard down, and the name slipped out like a thunderclap.
George's murderous gaze swept over him like a blade, the temperature dropping toward freezing.
Fortunately, Victor knew nothing of the gaming world's top-tier players.
"Silver Wing? Big Brother, you got it wrong. This is George."
Lawson wiped away a cold sweat. "Haha... sorry, sorry. Slip of the tongue. George, of course it's George!"
Just then, the drone transmitted its data. Lawson slid open his tactical tablet screen, but as his eyes landed on the marked location, his smile vanished.
His pupils contracted. The world fell into a dead silence. Lawson's body turned to stone, blood rushing to his head.
He gripped his tablet so hard the screen nearly cracked, his knuckles turning ghostly white.
"That... that place is...no way..."
His voice was a raspy, trembling crack. "My home? Oh no!"
Without another word, Lawson charged forward like a maddened beast.
He wasn't running toward a coordinate; he was running toward his past. He didn't care about the house—he was terrified for his mother, who was still living there!
The three of them blurred across the charred pavement.
The dim, cold sunlight couldn't pierce the thick fog. The streets were a graveyard of twisted rebar, shattered glass, and the unrecognizable remains of those who hadn't survived the cataclysm.
As they neared the target, Lawson's heart hammered against his ribs. When Brutes tried to intercept them, he didn't even bother to strike back. He activated [Grace of the Armor God], letting the monster's claws shatter against his golden light.
He didn't slow down, even as the impacts rattled his very soul.
But when Lawson finally skidded to a halt at the edge of the camp, he froze.
The scene before him shattered the last shred of warmth in his heart.
The cream-colored walls and the tidy garden of the two-story townhouse were gone. In their place was a distorted, mutated nest of rotting flesh.
The bricks and wood had been parasitized by some foul lifeform; the walls were covered in dark red, pulsating organic tissue, filled with black holes and slimy moss.
Massive skeletal frames erupted from the foundation, morbidly stitching the building to the scorched earth.
The steel fence had been replaced by sharp wooden stakes draped in dried meat.
Brutes wandered between these horrific "totems," their raspy roars echoing through what used to be a quiet neighborhood.
This wasn't a home anymore. It was a slaughterhouse.