Retrospective Meeting

Dragon Kingdom, Bald Eagle Association Branch.

The meeting room was very quiet; the only sound was the rustling of documents being rubbed together.

At one end of the long conference table sat two high-ranking officials from the Dragon Kingdom branch of the Bald Eagle Association.

On the left sat a middle-aged man, balding, with drooping cheeks and gray eyes. On the right was this younger man, with neatly combed blond hair, his lips pressed into a straight line, his fingers repeatedly flipping through a thick document.

Two Bald Eagles team members, who had been killed in Tide Prison the day before, were sitting by the window.

John, who had commanded the previous operation, sat ramrod straight, but his face was as pale as paper, and one could vaguely sense that his body was trembling slightly.

The other one leaned back in his chair, his expression grave, his eyes fixed on the table. He was Cole, the offlaner from the last operation. He was also unlucky; he was called in at the last minute to participate in the new map's strategy, assigned to the offlaner position he wasn't good at, and then this happened.

Across the table sat three Japanese people side by side.

All three were dressed in dark casual clothes, sitting upright with their hands on their knees. The one in the middle was slightly older, with thick eyebrows, and was named Shimada. He was the commander of the samurai sword squad last time.

The meeting room was so quiet you could hear everyone breathing. The blond man stopped flipping through the documents; the tapping of his fingers on the paper struck a nerve with every step.

"Everyone's here." The middle-aged man finally spoke, his voice deep. "Let's begin. John, you go first. Recount everything that happened at Tide Prison yesterday, from beginning to end."

Upon hearing his name, John's body trembled slightly, his throat moved, and he took a breath. "After passing through the portal, the three of us immediately changed into level 5 defensive suits, and then descended to the elevator shaft platform via zipline."

"As planned, we intend to go directly to the power-off point. According to the information from the Explorers' live broadcast, the map boss, the Warden, will be waiting for players to pull the power in the cell."

"We plan to use fragmentation grenades and incendiary bombs to take out the warden ahead of time."

"In order to bypass the warden, we even took a detour and went from the second floor of the cell tower, where we saw the warden's guards waiting around the corner."

Recalling this, John swallowed hard. "We immediately followed the plan and fired at that corner, throwing all the projectiles."

"The result!" John's voice suddenly rose, his expression contorted with rage, as if he had imagined something horrifying. "The warden suddenly appeared from the second floor, jumped, and instantly killed Cole with a headshot!"

After saying those two sentences, John seemed to deflate, and his voice became dejected. "Then we planned to evacuate the cell area to avoid contact with the warden. Just as I was about to leave the prison and cross the iron gate, I was reborn outside the portal..."

"But Mr. Miles! Where are the people from the Samurai Sword Club?" John looked at the middle-aged man's gray eyes, pointed at the Japanese man opposite him, and said excitedly.

"We agreed to work together to kill the warden! We haven't seen them!"

"I saw them on the elevator shaft platform, near the safety lock area! They must have been stealing supplies! What a betrayal!"

"Friends of the Samurai Sword Club," the blond man interjected, "explain why the dangerous operation was wiped out in less than two minutes."

The entire team was wiped out? In just two minutes? John couldn't believe his ears; his eyes widened in disbelief.

So, they were all dead shortly after leaving the elevator shaft platform? Sniped? Surely they weren't that stupid?

Shimada, looking embarrassed, stood up and bowed to the leader at the conference table. He then said in broken Mandarin, "I'm sorry! We are deeply sorry that we were unable to complete the task entrusted to us by your company, which resulted in the failure of the mission!"

He then bowed again. "Regarding the reasons for the mission failure, we have conducted an internal investigation and confirmed..."

The blond man frowned even deeper, while the middle-aged man beside him, Miles, spoke directly, "This isn't your Japan, so stop with the polite formalities and nonsense! Get to the point!"

"Hi!" Shimada quickly stood at attention, cleared his throat, and said, "We're not far from the safe below the elevator shaft from the respawn point. Since it's still early, we thought we'd open a safe first; it might bring in some good profits. So we went down to the water pit in the elevator shaft."

"Based on the exploration team's live broadcast case, we learned that there were three snipers lying in ambush in the elevator shaft, so we strengthened our defenses, thinking of luring them out and taking them out first, and then eating them."

"But no matter how many times I activated the safety, the sniper just wouldn't come out!" Shimada paused here, observing the expressions of the Americans present.

"But then a strange sound came on... it was music."

When music was mentioned, John and Cole's expressions changed simultaneously, a moment that was also noticed by the blond man, but no one interrupted Shimada.

"The music grew closer and closer with the drumbeats. The three of us aimed our guns at the stairwell and fired the moment a figure appeared."

"But it turned out to be a shield bearer; the bullet hit his shield..."

"Then, the shieldman raised his shield, and the warden was lying under the shield. Then the three of us were shot in the head and killed."

After finishing his report, Shimada bowed again.

"What? Impossible! You mean the warden clearly attacked us from the second floor of the cell, how could he have gone down to the elevator shaft!" John couldn't hold back any longer and stood up, shouting loudly.

"Sir John, in my opinion, the one you encountered was not the warden at all. Knowing him as I do, if he had appeared, there would have been more than one of you who got shot in the head."

"Fxxk! What do you mean?"

"Quiet!" Miles slammed his hand on the conference table and stood up, instantly silencing everyone.

"Music? What kind of music? John, can you hear music?" the blond man asked.

"Superintendent Anderson... I, I heard it, on the second floor of the prison, before the warden appeared."

Anderson continued typing away at the documents, and the conference room fell into a suffocating silence once again. Sweat dripped from John's forehead, but he didn't dare to wipe it away.

"It sounds like you're not lying," Anderson said, slamming a stack of documents onto the conference table. "The warden first ambushed the samurai squad in the elevator shaft, then ran to the second floor of the cell block to ambush John."

"Ha," Anderson chuckled, "That's interesting."

"Forget it, we won't get anywhere just by talking. John, do you know how much our Bald Eagle Society suffered in this operation?" Anderson stood up and slowly walked behind John's seat.

"3 million!" Anderson leaned down and whispered in John's ear, holding onto the back of his chair.

"Because of your stupid performance, the company's stock price has dropped by 300 million! And of course, there's your ridiculous war reserves of over 10 million."

"Do you know how much money that Dragon Club next door made recently? Just because they had a big hit!"

"Don't you think you should be held responsible for these losses, Captain John?"

John was like a terrified quail, his whole body tense, not daring to even breathe.

"Next time, I'll give you another chance. Beat him up like a human being, kill the warden, and we can salvage some stock prices. Otherwise..."

Anderson pushed his chair forward and then turned and walked out of the meeting room.

"You're going to be a guinea pig in these brain-computer interface experiments!"