Chapter 59: Crushing
In the darkness of the third basement level, clutched a silver tightly to her chest.
The piercing alarm and the violent tremors arrived almost at the same moment. The light fixtures on the ceiling flickered wildly, and dust cascaded down.
"Run!" roared.
The three of them sprinted up the fire escape.
The hydraulic assist system of the " " exoskeleton armor whirred, every stride carrying them over several steps at once.
The distance from the second basement level to the first floor was barely a dozen meters, and the three of them covered it in about two seconds.
But the monster behind them was just as absurdly fast. A four-to-five-meter-long serpent tail swept out with savage force, and a in the that was firing furiously at it—along with the entire load-bearing wall behind it—was pulverized by the impact, chunks of concrete flying outward like shrapnel.
Then the serpent-tailed, humanoid monster rammed straight through the floor slab from the third basement level and forced its way into the second.
Its humanoid upper body had swollen to nearly four meters tall, and the dense clusters of flesh buds across its body quivered violently, like overripe fruit about to burst at any moment.
Its enormous vertically split mouth let out an ear-splitting shriek, the sound waves alone rattling the entire building.
, fleeing for her life, felt her scalp go numb. This building was hardly some shoddy construction project!
Finally, they reached the first floor. took the lead, slamming through the fire door with his shoulder—the metal door frame was torn clean off its welds by the sheer force of the armor.
, covering the rear, glanced back quickly.
The stairwell walls were cracking apart. A massive tail covered in pale gray scales surged up from below, crushing every piece of rebar and piping in its way.
"Hurry! It's catching up!" Even was starting to lose his composure now—just how absurdly tough was this thing's body?!
"Don't look back—run!" 's voice remained steady. He knew that the more critical the moment, the less room there was for panic.
The instant the three of them burst through the main entrance of the research building, a thunderous crash sounded behind them.
The entire northern exterior wall of exploded outward. Bricks, steel beams, and concrete slabs shot into the air wrapped in dust, forming a sky-obscuring pillar of smoke in the morning light.
The serpent-tailed humanoid's colossal body squeezed out of the rubble. The granular flesh buds on its exposed, blood-red muscles writhed wildly in the sunlight.
Its vertically split maw opened and shut, the cleft sensory organs on either side flaring violently as it locked onto the three small figures running ahead.
But by the time the three of them reached the open ground, it no longer had a chance.
The vectored thrust nozzles on the back of the armor blasted at full power, and the three of them crossed the predetermined safety line almost in the blink of an eye.
Almost at the same moment, 's voice came through the comms channel, brimming with barely contained excitement: "All units, fire!"
The next second, the fire positions that had been standing by let out a roar.
Whoosh—whoosh—whoosh!
Dozens of 120mm high-explosive mortar shells tore through the air with shrill shrieks, tracing precise parabolas like a storm of steel that crashed down head-on upon the serpent-tailed monster that had just burst out of the research building.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The explosions merged into a continuous roar. Terrifying firelight swallowed the entrance of in an instant, and the dust wave from the shockwaves blasted outward in every direction, flinging several abandoned jeeps nearby into the air.
The high-explosive shells that missed detonated on impact, each one carving a crater more than ten meters across.
Shrapnel sliced outward at tremendous speed in every direction. Any zombies remaining within a hundred meters were torn into pieces before they could even let out a scream.
The blast wave toppled the remaining half of , and the entire structure collapsed in a thunderous cloud of dust.
"Hit! Repeat the strike!" shouted excitedly, binoculars raised.
At the same time, the several ZTL-11 wheeled assault vehicles deployed in the distance completed their targeting.
The muzzles of their 105mm rifled guns spat out long tongues of flame as armor-piercing discarding-sabot rounds slammed into the monster's body with pinpoint accuracy at several times the speed of sound.
Thud! Thud!
The pale gray scales on the monster's surface—as tough as armor plate—shattered instantly. Crimson blood gushed out, turning into a reeking mist in the air.
Roooar—!
Caught in a sea of fire and a rain of shells, the monster let out a roar that even the gunfire couldn't drown out—but it still wasn't dead!
It gave up chasing and the others, instead spitting out a cloud of yellow smoke while trying to turn back toward the gaping hole in the research building.
"All vehicles, spread out! Stay clear of the yellow smoke—units outside its coverage, keep attacking!"
reacted fast. The moment he saw the smoke, he issued the new order over the comms channel.
Sure enough, one vehicle that was a little too slow to retreat brushed against a wisp of the smoke.
The moment the smoke touched the vehicle's armor, the steel began to rust and corrode at a visible rate. Within seconds, a hole the size of a washbasin had been eaten through it.
Fortunately, 's timely order kept the losses from spreading. In the rear, at the positions not yet enveloped by the smoke, shells continued to rain down on the monster.
A second volley of armor-piercing rounds, a fourth mortar salvo, and sustained autocannon fire.
The monster's body kept shattering under the concentrated explosions. Most of its serpent tail was blown off, its humanoid torso was riddled with holes, and blood pooled across the ground—but it still didn't die.
It tried to crawl forward into the hole, but the broken tail had cost it most of its mobility.
That monster really did have a thick health bar. But it's still the same old rule—if all you've got is a health bar, you'd better pray it's infinitely long.
Otherwise, none of it means anything in the face of firepower saturation.
In the end, it was the high-energy laser from the that finally ended its life.
[Ding! Detected the killing a low-grade 'Unnamed' x1. gained: 700.]
[Ding! Special drop blueprint obtained: ' ' poison gas projector blueprint x1.]
[Current : 950.]
[Ding! Eight triggered: .]
[Mission description: Find it or be found by it. Kill it or be killed by it. There has only ever been this one rule—good luck. must find a 'Dragon'.]
[Mission reward: 100,000 , ' ' tactical mech blueprint x1.]
was stunned as he looked at the system prompts.
The system had always been an all-knowing presence to him—he never imagined that even it could fail to recognize a monster.
On top of that, both the classification and the newly triggered left deeply shaken.
Holy crap! Wait—dragons were actually real?! And mechs were real too?!
But before could recover from his shock and excitement, an unexpected development cut his thoughts short.
It was the surveillance feed from the itself.
In the footage, the scattered zombies suddenly started running—and the direction they were running was straight toward the power station.
What was even more eerie was that the numbers were wrong.
Almost in the blink of an eye, the number of runners on the road doubled—and it was still increasing.
At the same time, patched into the comms, her voice carrying a suppressed urgency: " ! Something's wrong on the perimeter—large-scale moving targets detected on both the north and east sides!"
's heart tightened, and his attention snapped back to the main facility at once.
The surveillance feed switched. On the at the station's outermost defensive line, sparks were flying like festival fireworks.
One after another hurled itself against the grid like moths into a flame, instantly charred black by the massive current—but the zombies behind them kept coming, endless and unceasing.
The patrolling the northern perimeter also sent back footage. Dense ranks of gray figures were pouring out of the woods to the north, spreading along the highway like a dull gray river.
Then, an icy system notification detonated deep in his consciousness.
[Ding! Two triggered: !]
[Mission description: An unknown threat is gathering. A qualified should be able to withstand invasion from any malice.]
[Mission requirements: Establish a solid defensive line; successfully repel one medium-scale tide assault (including [Pilgrims]).]
[Mission reward: 10,000 , unlock blueprint x1, unlock blueprint x1.]
[Mission countdown: 23:59:47]
Damn it! 's reactor was genuinely running red-hot now.
A third of the 's personnel were still at the military base more than forty kilometers away, just about to set out on the return trip.
The first batch of armored vehicles was still halfway back, and the material transport through the underground tunnel had only just gotten underway. This was exactly the moment the was most shorthanded.
Without hesitation, immediately synced the information to everyone's identity cards.
[All personnel remaining on site— !]
[Immediately halt all non-urgent production activities. Defending the is hereby raised to top-priority mission status.]
In the cafeteria, , who had just finished lunch, shot to his feet and sprinted back to his post.
In the dormitory area, , who was explaining weapons maintenance to new members, also changed expression and immediately grabbed the rifle at his side.
"All children, into the immediately! All production-sequence personnel, assemble at the arsenal!"
"All combat-sequence personnel, move out immediately to reinforce the outer second line and clear the zombies alongside the Robots!"
's voice rang out right behind, calmly and decisively taking command of the defensive deployment.
" ! Get every piece of usable long-range firepower set up!"
, meanwhile, ordered the UAV swarm formation near the city to race back while dispatching the only remaining at the base, which tore off at high speed toward the direction the tide was surging from.
Under the UAV's camera, the sight was hair-raising.
The pitch-black tide seeped out of the distant hills and dense forests like ink, converging into an unstoppable black torrent that surged madly along the highway toward the .
The sonic repulsion devices that had once been effective were now, for some reason, as good as useless. Only the zombies closest to the sound source showed a flicker of confusion or fear—and they were quickly swept past the line by the tide behind them.
Behind the tide, four or five mutants, each like a moving building, advanced slowly on their segmented limbs.
The countless eyeballs on their bodies spun wildly, radiating an eerie red glow.
Farther out, there even seemed to be more massive, never-before-seen shadows of varying shapes moving about.
Only the [ ] specifically named in the mission was still nowhere to be seen—but didn't dare let his guard down in the slightest.
He had seen for himself just how sickening those hellish things could be.
Boom!
A section of the makeshift wall at the outermost perimeter, after enduring the relentless onslaught, finally gave way and collapsed with a roar.
A breach was torn open in the defensive line, and countless zombies howled through it, surging right up to the second line of defense.
The dozens of Robots already on the line immediately opened fire at full power. Their Gatling guns spat out chains of death, carving lanes paved with shredded flesh and spent casings through the tide.
led the members in laying down fire on the flank, the rattle of rifles ringing out one after another.
Before long, also led the armed members in as reinforcements. The front rows of zombies fell in wave after wave like harvested wheat.
But against the pitch-black tide, these losses were nothing more than a drop in the bucket. The tide kept advancing steadily.
For a moment, the situation was critical to the extreme.
***
Meanwhile, behind the tide, on the far side of a hillside twenty-seven kilometers from the .
A giant spider-shaped monster lurked silently in the shadows. Its body was a full four or five meters tall, and its eight segmented limbs covered in pale gray fuzz were driven deep into the soil.
And atop that spider-shaped body bulged a grotesque humanoid upper torso—skinless, its pale muscle fibers exposed, arms crossed over its chest. On its smooth head, two pitch-black eye sockets stared toward the .
And at the monster's feet stood a neatly dressed adult woman, her gaze also fixed on the brightly lit power station in the distance.
"Quick reflexes," the woman said softly. "It reacted before the assault even took shape."
"My lord, now you must believe it, yes? The 'husks' here are strange. We can't allow them to keep developing around that backward energy hub."
"Otherwise, they might very well threaten the revival of the great civilization."
The head of the humanoid torso atop the spider monster tilted slightly, and a string of unintelligible, bizarre syllables resembling the grating of metal issued from its mouth.
But the woman seemed to understand. She bowed her head respectfully.
"Rest assured, my lord. Once we find the lost legacy, I will forge you a perfect body anew."