Airborne

The sky was lit up, painted with the streaks of anti-aircraft fire, illuminating the night like day. Innumerable cannons fired into the sky along with the roars, igniting fire explosions like fireworks, painting an array of dazzling colors across the sky as the British planes were hit.

"Boom!" A loud explosion erupted not far from the transport plane. The massive airflow tossed the plane around like an autumn leaf, and it rolled in the air, narrowly avoiding a collision with another aircraft. A group of people fell from the plane into the sky, screaming in horror.

The parachute doors of the transport plane were already open, but no one had expected the first batch to jump out of the aircraft in such a manner.

"Jump now!" Keanu shouted.

They all knew that this short journey from the sky to the ground would be dangerous, but no one expected the city to announce it to everyone in this way.

Those who had not been thrown from the plane rushed towards the hatch, throwing themselves into the air. Large groups of allied paratroopers had begun to parachute down, and the sky was full of white parachutes fluttering around, like jellyfish floating in the air.

Ground-based machine guns spewed fire hysterically, tracing long lines of fire in the sky. Paratroopers were ripped apart by this ferocious hail of bullets, their remains scattered across the sky.

Aboard the C-47 transport plane, the fatty trembled with fear as he painstakingly moved step by step towards the door. He was the last one to jump, apart from Keanu. Seeing the barrage of gunfire from the ground, bodies flying in the air, and all the adventurers and other paratroopers serving as live targets for the Germans, he was utterly frightened.

"I said, jump for God's sake!" Keanu yelled.

The fatty trembled in fear, "I... I can't... I'm scared..."

"Damn it! I don't get how you passed the novice mission!" Keanu cursed in frustration.

As the cannon fire concentrated, the pilots of the planes were ordered to drop all the paratroopers and immediately return to their base. The C-47 began to turn, and Keanu knew if they didn't jump then, they'd either be shot out of the sky by the flak or taken back to the allied airfield, two fates he wanted to avoid.

Kicked the fatty hard, "Get the hell down there!"

The fatty screamed and tumbled into the air.

Fear had taken his courage, but not his senses. In the next moment, a huge white parachute appeared in the sky above, followed by the man's excited shout, "I opened it, I opened it!"

With a wry laugh, Keanu jumped into the sky.

Just as he left the hatch, he heard a colossal explosion behind him. The C-47 was torn apart, scattering into pieces, and engulfed in a ball of fire. Burning fragments grazed past him, landing on the parachutes of some airborne troopers, setting them ablaze. The paratroopers, minus their parachutes, screamed in terror as they plummeted to the ground.

The sky was filled with fire, giving Keanu no opportunity to open his parachute, with countless fragments still falling from above.

He couldn't open it prematurely. If the parachute was ignited, he would be doomed.

Keanu tumbled through the air, closely watching the fallen wreckage above.

He lifted his spirit gun and shot into the sky.

Piece after piece of falling wreckage was hit by his bullets, scattering randomly in the sky. Although the sound of the wind was deafening, Keanu's eyes only saw the fragments. Absent of fear of death, forgetting the height, time, and his rapid plunge, he focused all his attention on this moment. In the fierce shooting, metal shards flew everywhere, and the recoil accelerated his descent, but the number of threats to his parachute dwindled. His skill with firearms greatly improved his ability to shoot moving objects, and the burning debris made it easy for him to target in the sky.

Keanu finally pulled the parachute chute when there seemed to be no more threats overhead. The sudden halt in his plummeting made it feel as if his body had been yanked upwards, the strong reaction force pulling him up.

At this point, he was still about a hundred meters above the ground.

As he neared the ground, the power of the anti-aircraft machine guns increased.

Some German soldiers also started firing into the sky. Upon entering the lower altitudes, the threat posed by the storm of bullets was much greater than the anti-aircraft fire. His body flickered repeatedly with white light, indicating that the bulletproof jade was working — it had prevented him from getting hurt as bullets hit him.

"Aah!" With a screaming cry, Keanu heard that someone above was hit.

One poor soul had been riddled with bullets by an anti-air machine gun, his corpse hooked to a parachute trailing behind, floating in the air. As the parachute had several holes, the descent speed was noticeably faster. He drifted past Keanu's sight; it was one of the adventurers.

Watching the rapidly descending body and the crazily dancing bullet storm in the sky, Keanu got an idea.

For a paratrooper, the sooner he lands, the sooner he can be safe.

Indeed, it's preferable to be shot at in the sky without the chance to fire back.

Even with bulletproof jade, if you are riddled with bullets from an anti-aircraft machine gun, it's almost a sure death.

Keanu was not fond of leaving his fate up to luck, especially in a terrible environment like this.

He quickly took a gun from his emblem, the one that the young man had initially asked him to discard.

He raised the pistol and shot his parachute.

Fortunately, he had kept this novice gun; if he'd used the spirit gun, the bullet could ignite the parachute.

After being shot, the parachute soon had a hole in it. The strong wind was pulling and enlarging the hole, significantly accelerating the descent. As the speed continued to increase, Keanu was no longer floating down but was falling nearly in a straight line. All his focus was on the rapidly approaching ground.

80 meters.

70 meters.

60 meters.

50 meters.

Not far away, there was a house. As Keanu kept descending, he crashed through the roof with a loud bang and plummeted.

After hitting the ground, Keanu immediately did a roll to counteract the force of the fall and ended up sitting on his bottom.

A gunshot rang out. A bullet whizzed past Keanu's head. Without even turning around, he fired a shot back, hitting the German soldier in the doorway.

Thankfully, it had only been a single German soldier.

Keanu slowly stood up, a ding sounded out, and the prompt from the emblem stated: First Main Task Completed, 500 CP rewarded.

"Earning these 500 bucks sure as hell ain't easy," Keanu muttered under his breath.