The IFV roared down the concrete road, effortlessly reaching a jaw-dropping 100 km/h. Whoever engineered this upgrade clearly wasn’t messing around. This wasn’t just any Hilux—it was a 60-ton military vehicle and the fact that it could even come close to something that fast was mind-blowing. It felt like a machine built for sheer power and precision.

What was even more bizarre, though, was how smooth the ride was. The IFV glided through the turns, cornering with a precision I didn’t expect from something so massive. I had expected to feel at least some resistance or wobble, especially when I turned sharply, but there was nothing—no jarring motion, no unsettling body roll. It was like the vehicle itself was glued to the road, or even more accurately, it was like the cockpit was suspended in a world of its own.

Inside, it felt like I was floating in a bubble, disconnected from the world around me. I doubted I’d notice if the whole vehicle flipped. The way the controls responded, so effortlessly and intuitively, made it almost surreal.

And the weapons—oh, the weapons—were something straight out of a science fiction novel. The MK-30 30mm autocannon was an absolute beast. The rate of fire was blistering, sending a rapid series of rounds screaming downrange with the kind of efficiency you’d expect from a machine designed to tear through anything in its path.

Then there was the MG3. The thing practically roared to life when I fired it, its rate of fire so fast it almost seemed to outrun the sound. Soft targets didn’t stand a chance. Each pull of the trigger felt like unleashing a storm, the power of the weapons syncing seamlessly with the IFV’s otherworldly handling. I could fire the autocannon and MG3 almost in tandem, turning the surrounding terrain into a field of destruction.

It was perfect—there were no words to fully capture what I was feeling. As I continued to drive, I cycled through the vision modes, switching between normal, thermal, and night vision with ease. Each mode provided a new layer of clarity, revealing different aspects of the battlefield—thermal showed heat signatures, night-vision lit up the darkness with a ghostly green hue, and the normal mode gave me the clearest view of the surrounding terrain.

Every so often, I switched to the ‘sight’ camera, which offered a jaw-dropping 50x magnification. The precision was incredible. Through the sight, distant targets became razor-sharp, making long-range engagements feel effortless.

“Damn, it feels like playing War Thunder, but way better in all aspects, hell, I spent less time grinding for Puma in this world than in the game,” I commented, feeling how great it was inside the armored vehicle.

I didn’t know what the village would look like, but the drake would be dead the moment they noticed this thing. They wouldn’t be able to shrug off an autocannon, right? I meant they were still little dragons, all things considered, but well, let’s just see.

The distance to Eleanor’s village was ten kilometers left. I hadn’t detected any meaningful heat signature so far, nor had I noticed any of the husks in the surrounding grassland shooting at me or not. They might be not as stupid as I thought, I meant, you wouldn’t shoot your puny rifle at an armored vehicle, would you?

I continued my drive, the smooth rumble of the IFV underfoot, when I came across a roadblock. Two pickup trucks were parked side-by-side, creating a crude barricade, and a handful of soldiers stood guard. At first, everything seemed normal. But as I zoomed in with the camera, something felt off.

The soldiers wore the familiar Federation uniform, but there was something about their movements—jerky, unnatural—that immediately raised a red flag. As I focused further, I noticed the bloodstains smeared across their clothing, some fresh, some dried. Their eyes were wide and unfocused, and their posture was stiff as if they couldn’t fully control their own bodies.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Husks,” I muttered to myself.

I switched the ammo to high-explosive incendiary and peppered the checkpoint with the autocannons. The pickup trucks were shredded into pieces from the high-explosive rounds. About the husks? The impact was brutal—limbs were torn off, torsos shredded. The autocannon’s powerful bursts didn’t just kill them—they obliterated them, turning the husks into a cloud of blood, gore, and charred remains.

[Exiting Combat: +800 EXP]

“Only that much exp, huh, well, whatever, not bad for a speedbump,” I commented.

The Puma continued rolling down the concrete street, slamming against the pickup truck wreckage without a care in the world with its sheer weight, continuing its journey to the target’s village. The body of the vehicle crashed against the pickup truck with a loud bang and the road was cleared again.

I didn’t bother to loot the enemies. I doubted that I would be able to sell the loot in the village, and at this point, it was pocket’s change. The tracked vehicle moved against the concrete road, before finally taking a turn leading into a paved dirt road.

I couldn’t help but wonder, what kind of village I would encounter. A place where I wouldn’t be able to find electricity? A tribal goblin village? A village with a bunch of wooden huts? Or what? I wasn’t sure. The feds might struggle to expand to this area if my assessment was correct, evident by the husks and other monsters I encountered on the journey.

The village took me by surprise. Nestled in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by the grassland, it looked more like a modern suburban neighborhood than the primitive, backwater settlement I had imagined. Neatly paved streets crisscrossed between rows of well-maintained houses, their uniformity and design reminiscent of a typical suburban area.

Well, if not for the goblins on top of the rooftops looking over their houses and a bunch of weapon placements, from a mere M2 machine gun to TOW missiles, scattered among the whole neighborhood with goblins manning it, not stopping there, but I could see the drakes coming from a direction, from the east, straight from the forest.

“Welp, fire away,” I said.

The moment the words left my mouth, my fingers instinctively gripped the controls. The autocannon roared to life, sending a hailstorm of high-explosive incendiary rounds screaming toward the incoming drakes. The 30mm autocannons shredded against their scales.

The impact was explosive—literally. The HEI rounds erupted on contact, the force tearing through their natural armor like it was paper. Chunks of scale and flesh were blasted away, scattering like shrapnel across the battlefield. The first drake let out a deafening roar of pain as its chest caved in under the barrage, crumpling mid-charge before collapsing in a heap of blood and scorched remains.

I swung the turret toward another drake, the shot striking it dead on impact. The goblins shifted their attention to the incoming IFV, momentarily surprised by my sudden appearance. But their focus didn’t linger. They quickly returned to firing at the approaching drakes.

I swapped the autocannon’s ammunition for airburst rounds. The turret clinked and clanged as it automatically made the switch. I set the range to auto, letting the computer’s targeting system take over for the airburst munition setting.

From there, the process was flawless. The wave of drakes emerging from the forest was shredded before they even had a chance to react, even when I fired blindly in their direction. I continued the massacre, ensuring not a single drake escaped the forest’s edge under the fire of my 30mm autocannon.

I continued my advance toward the village while having the autocannon aim at the left side of the village, continuing my attack on the drakes. Then, as I approached closer to the village, I took a turn to the left to approach the source of the drake.

I then parked my IFV right near the west entrance of the village, firing my autocannons at the slightest sign of moving heat signature on my vision. Even the cold-blooded giant reptile had a slight heat signature that differentiated it from the environment.

The drakes stopped advancing as their numbers dwindled, their charred bodies littering the ground like discarded husks. The few survivors from the forest slinked back into the shadows of the forest, but not before the 30mm autocannon gunned them down and killed them.

[Exiting Combat: +5,000 EXP]

After the exiting combat notification closed, a new notification appeared in my vision. It was an update to the quest that I took.

[Kill The Attacking Drakes and Provide Medical Support To a Village: 800,000 UC]

* Heal any injured person

* Heal any person with an illness

* Finish up the guild master’s special request

* Deliver the medical supplies

“Time to get out of this thing.”

I drove the IFV into the village, parking it beside a house.

But as I stepped out, I quickly realized the "welcoming committee" wasn’t quite as friendly as I’d hoped.