Free Web NovelChapter 259: Deterrence
Jason and the expedition team successfully reached the outermost perimeter of the native village, but progress immediately hit a snag...
At the main gates, two massive packs of lizardmen were locked in a fierce, screaming standoff.
There were roughly thirty natives standing outside the gate, while over a hundred guarded the inside. Both sides were aggressively posturing, hissing, and shouting at each other.
It looked... remarkably like two rival street gangs squaring up before a brawl!
Hundreds of other lizardmen, young and old, perched atop the earthen walls, watching the spectacle with eager curiosity. They shrieked and hooted, seemingly trying to instigate a fight, making the entire scene incredibly chaotic.
"The Butterfly? The Yami Butterfly?" the natives clicked and hissed. The guttural, clicking nature of their language sounded incredibly primitive, giving the humans a visceral sense of stepping back into the Stone Age.
Standing just inside the village gate was an elderly lizardman adorned with elaborate bone and feather ornaments. He was clearly leading the group of over a hundred defenders, and he glared at the towering metal giants standing outside with deep, hostile suspicion.
Meanwhile, the 1.2-meter-tall chieftain—the one who had previously encountered the Marines—was shouting back angrily. He aggressively postured against the village elder, refusing to back down.
The Messengers of the Gods will not tolerate being questioned or insulted!
The younger chieftain held the dead smartphone high above his head, and the thirty natives standing behind him immediately roared in unison, as if chanting: Behold! A divine gift from the Gods!
Over the past month, the smartphone’s flash photography function had become a legendary tale throughout the village. Many of the onlookers crowding the walls immediately recognized the sacred device, erupting into excited cheers and applause.
But the elderly lizardman wasn’t convinced. He stubbornly blocked the gate, his spear raised.
The standoff rapidly escalated. Weapons were drawn, and the tension reached a boiling point. A brutal civil war seemed imminent!
The xeno-linguists exchanged bewildered glances; the scene was pure chaos. They couldn’t decipher a single complete sentence over the screaming and could only guess what was happening based on body language.
"...It looks like the chieftain we met previously is just a minor pack leader, not the overall tribal chief. He doesn’t have the authority to grant us entry," one of the sociologists murmured over the comms.
"And this elderly lizardman is the real tribal chief... essentially the village elder."
"The elder doesn’t believe we are divine messengers... and he absolutely refuses to let us inside the walls! That’s what sparked the standoff."
As a highly advanced species, the humans quickly deduced the geopolitical dynamic of these primitive natives.
Jason frowned, watching the two factions prepare to tear each other apart.
Clearly, the village elder still held ultimate authority, and the younger chieftain was politically outgunned. Whether the young chieftain was actively trying to use the humans’ arrival to stage a coup didn’t matter...
"Let’s show them why they shouldn’t argue," Jason ordered calmly. "Marcus..."
"With pleasure, Captain!"
Marcus grinned behind his visor; he absolutely loved flexing the Federation’s military might. He hoisted a heavy shoulder-mounted rocket launcher, locked a high-explosive shell into the chamber, aimed toward a dark, uninhabited stretch of the massive cavern, and pulled the trigger.
Fwoosh!
The low-yield rocket screamed out of the barrel, leaving a bright trail of exhaust as it flew several kilometers into the dark!
Instantly, the screaming lizardmen fell dead silent.
Every reptilian eye snapped toward the deafening roar of the launch, watching in awe as the blinding flash of light tore through the darkness. The fiery exhaust trail was completely alien and mesmerizing against the pitch-black cavern. freēwēbηovel.c૦m
A second later, the rocket impacted the cavern wall. The detonation produced an earth-shattering shockwave and a blinding fireball that completely shattered the natives’ comprehension of reality!
BOOM!
The deafening explosion caused the lizardmen’s scales to literally stand on end. They screamed, clapping their claws over their auditory receptors. Dozens of natives lost their footing and collapsed to the dirt. Several onlookers on the walls were so startled they fell off the fortifications!
Some of the younger lizardmen simply stood frozen, jaws unhinged, practically wetting themselves in sheer terror.
The village elder’s expression went completely blank. He trembled violently, his ornate spear slipping from his claws and clattering to the ground.
His unblinking eyes were blown wide in absolute disbelief!
This... This is the true power of the Gods!
Fortunately, the caldera cavern was massively reinforced by the hardened bio-slag, so a low-yield tactical rocket posed zero risk of causing a cave-in... To the humans, it was just standard artillery fire.
"A’hab! A’hab! (Enemy! Danger!)"
Several terrified lizardmen sprinted out of the village, shrieking in blind panic.
But they were immediately swatted and hissed at by the younger chieftain’s pack. Confused and terrified, the fleeing natives instantly fell silent.
For a long, agonizing moment, the usually chaotic mob of lizardmen remained dead silent, staring blankly at the rising plume of smoke several kilometers away.
"Ta-shi-ding-gou! (The Gods!)"
The younger chieftain, having recovered from his own shock, suddenly threw his arms up and screamed at the top of his lungs.
This time... the display of divine wrath was vastly more terrifying than the plasma-saws they had seen a month ago, giving the young chieftain absolute confidence in his metal patrons.
His pack of thirty natives suddenly became incredibly aggressive, chanting "Ta-shi-ding-gou!" with fanatical fervor.
A second later, the hundreds of onlookers on the walls raised their claws and joined the chant, roaring, "Ta-shi-ding-gou!"
Meanwhile, the village elder and his massive group of defenders were completely paralyzed by fear.
Believing they had deeply offended these omnipotent deities, they didn’t dare show an ounce of resistance. They immediately dropped to the dirt, rolling onto their backs and exposing their soft bellies. They covered their heads with their front claws and kicked their hind legs into the air in a display of absolute submission.
Even the proud village elder lay in the dirt, looking completely disheveled and refusing to move a muscle.
No matter how high his tribal status was, he wouldn’t dare challenge a god. The divine messengers were clearly angered... He could only pray they would be merciful and not eat his tribe alive.
"Uh... I believe that posture indicates total surrender," a sociologist noted, checking his data-pad. He chuckled softly. "Their underbellies lack heavy scales, making it their most vulnerable spot. By exposing it like a submissive dog, they are signaling absolute surrender..."
Jason didn’t quite know what to say.
He felt like every action the expedition took was dripping with an absurd, theatrical arrogance, like an ancient shaman performing cheap magic tricks. It felt incredibly strange.
Well... as long as it gets the job done.
With the elder submitted, the expedition team smoothly crossed the threshold and entered the village. The embedded journalists immediately began snapping high-definition photographs, while the Senior Scientists fanned out, deploying their scanners to gather data on the settlement’s infrastructure.
Seeing that the towering metal giants weren’t actively slaughtering anyone, many of the braver lizardmen curiously began to trail behind them. They desperately wanted to observe these "Messengers of the Gods" up close. ƒreewebɳovel.com
A few of the bolder natives even darted in, circling the humans and cautiously tapping their powered armor with a single claw. The moment they felt the unnatural cold of the metal plating, they snatched their claws back in awe.
One of the lead biologists managed to corner a lizardman, using his suit’s integrated sensors to scan its height, weight, and core body temperature.
The terrified native began barking wildly in protest. But remembering that he was in the grasp of a "divine messenger," he quickly shut his mouth, standing rigidly as the towering human ran scanners over his scales.
"Fascinating. Its core body temperature perfectly matches the ambient environment. That confirms they are cold-blooded."
"Wait, I’m detecting a localized, high-temperature thermal organ deep within its thoracic cavity... How bizarre."
Once the biologist finished his scans, he requested Jason’s permission. Receiving a nod, the scientist reached into his tactical pouch, pulled out a simple, clear glass marble, and tossed it into the dirt at the lizardman’s feet.
Seeing the perfectly spherical, shiny object, the native was initially very cautious. But gradually, the temptation became too much. It was beautiful... far more beautiful and perfectly shaped than the crude bone ornaments worn by the chieftain!
It crept forward hesitantly, picked up the glass marble, and gave it an experimental nibble. When it didn’t shatter, the native looked up at the towering biologist. Seeing no reaction, it boldly shoved the treasure into its crude pouch.
Seeing this, the surrounding lizardmen suddenly had an epiphany: The Gods are handing out divine gifts!
Those shiny stones are perfectly smooth!
The village went completely insane. Shrieking and hollering in excitement, a massive mob of lizardmen swarmed the bewildered biologist, practically begging to be scanned and measured so they could receive their own glass marbles...
