True Apocalypse Game

The searing fireball from the tactical nuclear weapon’s explosion instantly engulfed the entire ruin and everyone present.

Whether it was the kingpins of the Columbia Medellin Group or the Purifiers from the Purification Society’s South American Branch, they didn’t even have time to react before being instantly vaporized by the blistering heat at the explosion’s epicenter, leaving nothing behind.

The stone statues, which had been piled in the ruins and already mostly burned, were also instantly destroyed and vaporized. Not a single trace of the Stone Statue Virus or anything like it remained.

It was simply the swiftest and most convenient method of disinfection.

Although it was a low-yield tactical nuclear weapon of only 50 kilotons, it was still a nuke, and its power was nothing to scoff at. The entire mountaintop was razed to the ground by the explosion, leaving behind a massive crater.

Aside from the vitrified glass formed on the ground by the intense heat and the flattened trees at the edge of the blast zone, basically nothing was left.

Without a sound, everything simply ceased to exist.

The explosion of this tactical nuclear weapon first drew the attention of the Eagle Country’s military.

After all, South America had always been Eagle Country’s backyard, treated as its private reserve where outsiders were forbidden to meddle. All manner of surveillance equipment was in place.

Upon detecting a nuclear reaction in Colombia, the Eagle Country Government’s first thought was whether the Cuban Missile Crisis was happening all over again.

After all, deploying a nuclear weapon in a place like Colombia, so close to Eagle Country, was by no means a small matter.

However, they soon discovered it was merely a low-yield nuclear detonation, and it had occurred deep in the remote mountains of Colombia.

Could the Colombian Government be secretly conducting a nuclear test?

The Eagle Country Government dismissed this possibility almost immediately, as it was about as likely as the kids from the neighboring kindergarten building an atomic bomb.

After all, they knew exactly what the Colombian Government was like.

Corruption and authoritarianism went without saying. They couldn’t even handle their own country’s criminal gangs and constantly needed support from Eagle Country’s drug enforcement agency. How could they possibly conduct a nuclear test under such circumstances?

Besides, who would they even use it on?

Soon, all the world’s major powers had received news of the nuclear explosion in the northern jungles of Colombia.

A certain Eastern Power quickly deduced that this must be one of the nuclear bombs that Eagle Country had lost from the Turkish Incirlik Air Force Base.

The most worrying scenario had come to pass: the nuclear bombs had clearly found their way onto the black market.

One of the things the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council would not tolerate was nuclear proliferation.

Therefore, after the nuclear detonation in the Colombian jungle, the major powers temporarily set aside their differences and formed a joint investigation team with the International Atomic Energy Agency to begin investigating the incident.

The investigation would cover everything, down to the smallest detail, including the origin of the bomb and the situation at the site.

The Colombian Government, on the other hand, was simply sidelined, allowing the joint investigation team formed by the major powers to conduct a thorough investigation on its soil.

After all, they also wanted to understand how a nuclear bomb had suddenly appeared in a jungle that was supposed to be a traditional coca-growing region.

The thought that they too could be hit by one of these while holding a session in the government building sent a chill down everyone’s spine. The matter had to be investigated thoroughly.

Time passed quickly. In just a few days, the joint investigation team had already found some clues and gradually pieced together the scene at the time.

The site of the nuclear explosion appeared to be a previously undisclosed ruin of the Ancient Inca Civilization.

Furthermore, there were some remaining supplies and equipment, including a transformer capable of storing and generating its own power. Clearly, someone had established a base here with plans for a long-term operation.

It might have even been there for a very long time.

Besides these findings, it was determined that two groups of people had been here:

The first was the entire senior leadership of the Columbia Medellin Group, including its boss, Martin Benitez.

The second was a mysterious organization with high-end equipment, apparently led by the boss of "Villa Gold," a subsidiary of the Brazilian Vale Company, a man named Racels.

Villa Gold was itself a gold mining company, but its cash flow was highly mysterious, and there were rumors that it also dabbled in the drug trade.

Looking at it this way, the picture became much clearer.

Even a blind man could see that this was most likely a shootout between two criminal organizations.

The tactical nuke must have been one side’s final trump card. When they ran out of options, they detonated it, taking everyone down with them.

As for the tactical nuke’s origin, after tracing its path, it was found to have come from a shipping container in the Middle East Region.

The container, in turn, was linked to an extremist organization over there.

At the same time, the investigation team also located the villa deep in the jungle belonging to Martin Benitez. Inside, they found bodies everywhere, victims of a firefight. Most were in an advanced state of decomposition, but DNA confirmation revealed them all to be hitmen and gang members of the Medellin Group.

At this point, there was basically nothing left to investigate.

The sequence of events was crystal clear.

Racels’s Villa Gold Company was also secretly involved in illegal business. After running into the Medellin Group, they began attacking each other.

Perhaps it was over drugs, or perhaps it was over this hidden Ancient Inca Civilization ruin.

Finally, when one side proposed a final negotiation or set a trap to annihilate the other, one of them detonated the nuke, resulting in mutual destruction.

This kind of brutal tactic was typical of criminal organizations throughout the American Region, especially in Central America and the South American Region.

For a time, the various Colombian criminal groups, whose spotlight had been stolen by Mexican cartels for many years, were once again front and center, their infamy unmatched.

So what if those guys in Mexico hacked people up, skinned them, and burned them alive? The hardcores in Colombia went straight for a nuke!

Who would dare to mess with them?

Who else?

Meanwhile, the Eagle Country authorities were absolutely furious.

South America was their backyard, after all. Who could tolerate a nuke suddenly going off in their own backyard?

The Eagle Country Government had always used the drug problem as a pretext to interfere in the internal affairs of Central and South American countries, which was why they had never completely eradicated the drug trafficking groups in these regions.

Now it seemed these scumbags were getting completely out of hand. They dared to detonate a nuke in their own home, so what was next? Setting one off in Papa North America’s house?

Eagle Country’s domestic military-industrial complex was also enraged.

They had originally been happy to see the criminal organizations in neighboring smaller countries grow larger. After all, growth required weapons, and they were the only ones to buy weapons from. But this time, instead of buying from them, the other party had gone and procured a nuke from the black market in the Middle East.

This was a matter of principle!

Suddenly, for the sake of the people of America living in deep suffering, the Eagle Country Government began to cooperate with various nations, directly deploying special operations forces to enter the countries and begin a frantic purge of their criminal organizations.

The remaining forces of the Columbia Medellin Group had been excited by the news that Martin Benitez and the other leaders were all dead, thinking they could finally take power. Now, however, they were wiped out in one fell swoop.

Notoriously rampant criminal groups in Mexico, like the Sinaloa Group and the Bay Area Organization, had originally thought this would be like all the other times—just a show, a bit of political theater for the taxpayers back in Eagle Country. They figured they would just have to hand over a few of their most high-profile leaders to settle the matter.

But they never expected that this time, they were playing for keeps!

For a time, street gunfights raged constantly in the countries of Central and South America. Under the command of Eagle Country’s military advisors, the government’s newly-equipped special forces, supported by tanks and armored vehicles, crushed the domestic drug trafficking cartels with devastating force.

The famous criminal organizations in Mexico and Colombia, such as the Sinaloa Group and the Medellin Group, were utterly uprooted.

After the initial period of bloodshed on the streets, hundreds of thousands of gang members were thrown into maximum-security prisons or executed by firing squad right on the street.

The major criminal organizations were suddenly hollowed out. The crime rate throughout Central America and the South American Region plummeted, and public order improved rapidly.

Of course, the local governments’ sources of revenue were drastically reduced, as a business worth tens or even hundreds of billions of US dollars annually had been directly impacted.

However, this incident made one thing perfectly clear to everyone: if Eagle Country truly wanted to, it was fully capable of uprooting and completely eliminating those seemingly lawless super-cartels.

It was just a matter of whether it wanted to or not.

The chain reaction triggered by the Colombian jungle nuke incident was beyond most people’s expectations. Feeling the drop in the street crime rate, the people of Central and South America, who finally dared to go out at night, were moved to tears of gratitude. They even started a "Thank You, Nuke" movement, which for a time became a worldwide trend.

「About a month later.」

In an office building in Colombia’s capital, Bogota, a young female agent named Sophie was reviewing clues.

She was part of the joint investigation team for the nuke incident and came from Eagle Country’s FBI. Though quite young, she was already a veteran agent with five years of experience.

The impact of the nuke incident, though enormous, was also gradually fading.

Now that the basic cause and effect had been determined and the case was considered closed after several major operations, the joint investigation team’s work was mostly finished, and they were preparing to pull out.

Only seven or eight of them remained to handle final communications and wrap-up duties.

But today, as Sophie was organizing some old files, she noticed a few details that had been overlooked before.

It was about the shipping container that had carried the tactical nuke.

Although the container itself had been melted down, its appearance was still visible on the port’s surveillance footage.

The container’s shape, while standard, seemed to have a few unusual features.

The main thing was the company it belonged to. Its ownership structure was extremely complex, with various corporate relationships tangled together like a messy ball of yarn.

When Sophie finished untangling it, she was surprised to find the shadow of a trading company called "Assassin" woven throughout.

This trading company also seemed to be connected to certain contracted projects at the Turkish Incirlik Air Force Base.

Sophie highlighted this lead on her computer, preparing to report her discovery.

Just then, Gerard, the investigation team leader who had been at his desk in the back, suddenly came up behind Sophie. He reached out and pressed down on her hand as she was about to submit the information, speaking in a voice that was gentle yet permitted no argument:

"Sophie, this case is officially closed. You’re tired. Leave the rest to me."