I Became A Mech Soldier After Waking Up in The Future.

"Wait! It's me!"

The swinging crowbar was easily caught by the figure, which was actually Keiko, who had approached Jeanne without her even noticing.

"Heh...heh..." Jeanne was gasping, almost out of breath.

If Keiko could see Jeanne's face under the helmet, she would see that her face was as white as a sheet of paper right now.

Hearing the familiar husky voice, the tension in Jeanne's body gradually loosened up.

"You're back," muttered Jeanne softly.

Keiko was slightly flustered by Jeanne's affectionate mixed with relief tone. Fortunately, she was wearing a helmet right now, if not Jeanne would surely be able to see her blushing cheek. 

But she quickly regained her composure, so Jeanne didn't realize what happened.

"Are you okay?" Keiko asked her worriedly. 

Jeanne nodded her head, then began to look at Keiko.

This girl really lived up to her promise to come back alive despite the injuries on her body.

Seeing that she was still carrying a Devil Mantis scythe, Jeanne could imagine how Keiko killed that monster. 

'Wait, could it be that Keiko killed this monster too?' 

However, she rejected this idea as soon as it popped into her mind. After all, with her upright and slightly naïve personality, there was no way she would go through such hassle to deliberately inflict the corpse with a second wound to cover up her act.

However, she still opened her mouth to confirm it. 

"When did you come back?" 

"I just came back, and it seems... this battle is very tragic." 

"Yeah, we're almost wiped out." 

"How many survivors are there?" 

"There only two people survived, and they are still lying near the city gate," Jeanne returned her gaze to the car door after a brief glance toward the battlefield."Dr. Leah and the two nurses, as well as Bailey and the adventurer, are all still alive. They are currently trapped inside." 

"It means, including us, only nine people remain?" Keiko sighed, and then said, "I'll help." 

"Are you alright? I can see wounds all around your body," Jeanne asked. 

"Fortunately, I could still hold on."

After saying that, she took the crowbar in Jeanne's hand, banged, and pried open the door.

The dazzling light made Dr. Leah, the only person who was still awake in the car, squint her eyes subconsciously and stretch out her hand to cover it.

Keiko peeked inside the car. The two patients and two nurses were still unconscious.

Dr. Leah had them leaning side-by-side on the overturned bed, covered with sheets, with oxygen ventilators on their mouths and noses.

Leah was the only one who wore the helmet, with gauze wrapped around her right leg and conspicuous bloodstains on it. 

"Hey, are you the savior?"

Dr. Leah still had the time to joke around when she saw Keiko's arrival. 

"Let's talk about this when we return to the city," Keiko replied. 

Keiko and Jeanne started working together with Dr. Leah to treat the wounds on Corporal William's and the female soldier's bodies.

Keiko was a little worn out after experiencing such a bitter fight with the Devil Mantis.

Her body was bruised and battered.

She may not have realized it at the time, but as the adrenaline rush in her body gradually calmed down and she was finally in a relatively safe environment, the fatigue that had accumulated from the fight, added to her condition, which wasn't at peak performance because she was still recovering from the kudzu poisoning, gradually took a toll on her body.

After treating her wound with basic treatment, she sat side by side with Dr. Leah by the side of the overturned medical car.

Seeing Jeanne still wandering around the battlefield, searching around for something, Keiko, who was wondering what Jeanne was doing, couldn't help asking, "Major, what are you doing?" 

"Don't mind me. You can go and rest first. I'm just looking for something." 

"Looking for something?" Keiko replied with a puzzled look. 

Jeanne didn't answer Keiko anymore and continued searching for something among the soldiers' corpses. 

How come it's not here? Did I remember it wrongly?

There must've been a sonar device here before because otherwise there was no way they could control the predator at will to ambush them.

Does it mean that it was already thrown into the moat? Or that the traitor wasn't outside the city but had entered the city? Or, was it that the traitor had lost the sonar device and was already dead? Or else, this person should be among the 9 of us ...

"Major Armstrong, the city gate is now closed and we have no method to contact our team inside the city. What should we do now?" Dr. Leah asked, suddenly interrupting her train of thoughts. 

Jeanne had already come back to her senses and replied, "Wait! A little bit more and they'll definitely let us into the city." 

'What makes her so confidence?' Keiko muttered in his heart. 

In fact, Jeanne found out that she was overlooking something so obvious—the number of people here didn't match up. 

She recalled that of the 40 soldiers that were trapped outside the city with them, only 37 participated in the battle.

The surviving Corporal William and the female soldier belonged to the 37 people, so there should be three others who did not participate in the battle.

When Corporal William reported, he said that three soldiers were injured and unable to move in the car accident, so they should've been inside one of the armored cars at the moment. 

Perhaps, the missing sonar device was on one of those three people, Jeanne thought. 

She immediately rushed toward the car to check them out, but she immediately frowned when looking at the bloody scene inside the car.

Two of the three soldiers were already dead, and the last soldier had gone missing. 

Jeanne examined their bodies and found that both were shot through the throat and died when they were caught off guard.

The reason why the murderer didn't shoot them in the head might be due to the helmet's extraordinary toughness. It was made from high-end bulletproof material so that ordinary bullets couldn't hope to get through it.

The crime scene was inside the passenger seat. The murderer suddenly attacked from a position deeper inside than the victims, indicating that the murderer was in the same car as the two victims from the beginning.

By observing the scene and deducing from the clues inside, Jeanne could guess what had happened here. 

Initially, the three soldiers were injured and unable to participate in the battle due to the armored vehicle being turned upside down, but unbeknownst to the two victims, one of them was a traitor, arranged by the group of people who wanted Bailey's life.

After everyone got out of the vehicle, the traitor remained in the vehicle with two other innocent soldiers.

Right at the time when the fighting broke out, the man took advantage of the cover of the messy and dense gunfire to shoot and kill the two soldiers inside the car.

As for the murderer's motive, Jeanne could easily spill three or four reasons, but Jeanne felt that the biggest reason was that this person wanted all the people outside the city to die, preventing any hidden danger from rising later on.

Jeanne searched the corpse's pocket but didn't find the sonar device. She assumed that it was probably taken away by the murderer.

So, she took photos and collected evidence first before getting out of the car.

Jeanne didn't rush to find the murderer but first pulled up the information of all the personnel in the third squadron and checked it out one by one. By elimination method, she quickly found the suspected killer—Private Elisa Ford, a female soldier who had just enlisted in the army.

Now that her id reported that she was dead, Jeanne deliberately expanded the life sense detection, but she didn't find any sign of life nearby. 

Jeanne sent the information to Keiko, opened a private call, and said to Keiko: 

"I sent you information about a person. She is most likely a traitor of the Third Squadron, and her whereabouts are unknown. You could help me by searching around and seeing if you can find her body.. She should have a sonar device on her body; it's a tool used to control predators."