Chapter 640
The Little Animals Are Here!
Chapter 640 The Little Animals Are Here!
Dim, damp, and desolate, the air was thick with the smell of mold and decay. The air seemed to have turned into some kind of murky, heavy "gelatin," its viscous texture settling at the bottom of this forgotten abyss. Industrial waste gas emitted from the layers of city factories above, toxic gases escaping from abandoned mine tunnels underground, and "corruption psionic energy" released by the planet itself during the depletion of the earth's veins—all of these things accumulated at the bottom of the city, eventually turning this place into some kind of... alienated region.
It's not a foreign land, but in some ways it's just as dangerous.
From any perspective, the lower levels of these cities on the Grey Dwarf Star are no longer suitable for habitation. As Luo led her personal guard through those decaying, dark streets, she sometimes even doubted whether the "lower-level inhabitants" mentioned in the reports really existed. But the captain of the guard told her that there were indeed people on this level.
Those "abandoned people" abandoned by the giant walls, the homeless and scavengers who can't survive up there, and the criminals exiled by gangs or sentenced to "execution" by local warlords, will sink deeper and deeper into the city of giant walls, eventually arriving at this dark neighborhood and becoming its "residents".
They mostly congregate near abandoned wells or ancient factories, living in shopping malls and residential buildings that look almost like ruins. They generate electricity using waste furnaces or by stealing power directly from the floors above. They hunt in wastewater rivers or cave areas and occasionally raid bio-farms or automated factories on slightly higher floors. Some people living in the lower areas of the Great Wall tell stories full of superstition and horror about what happens in the "Abandoned Streets" and describe the attacks in the dark as invasions from other realms—after all, they have never seen any real other realms or entities.
Luo looked up at the sky above, which was shrouded in thick dust and fog. From this position, the "giant walls" made up of huge buildings in the city could no longer be seen, but countless overlapping shadows and pipes and beams intertwined in the air could be seen. Occasionally, something falling from the upper level would break the tranquility in the distance and make a loud noise between the high-rise buildings—for the "residents" on this floor, that would be an invaluable supply.
Meanwhile, the Knights of Restoration established by the planet's native inhabitants and their tiny royal court, confined in a cage, reside in even deeper underground cities and mines.
Luo couldn't help but make some associations in her mind—she felt that the entire Grey Dwarf planet was a murky deep sea, and the huge cities on the planet's surface were corpses that were constantly rotting and collapsing. Nutrients fell from the upper layer to the seabed. In the deep sea, no matter how dark the place was, life lived there. But this deep sea itself was also rotting. It seemed to have died a long time ago, or it seemed that it could continue to rot forever.
The entire Dark Current Starfield is caught in this cycle.
“They won’t come near this place,” the captain of the guard’s voice came from the darkness. “The impact of the shuttle crash and the commotion from the firefight just now can be heard far. Anyone with a shred of sense would get away from here immediately. Besides, this level isn’t without order. Some gangs even have influence here. Many of the scavengers and exiles in the lower levels are their informants. They will try to avoid getting involved in the warlord conflicts… especially the ‘Blackspot Warlords.’”
Luo nodded and led the soldiers deeper into the area. Occasionally, she would see a light shining at the edge of the block. It could be a tactical squad, an ancient lighting device that was still in operation in the abandoned block, or even some "locals" who had dared to come out and check the situation. In this darkness, chaos was breaking the long-standing silence.
She casually stuck a piece of cardboard with a triangular emblem on a nearby wall.
Faint screams and gunfire could be heard from afar. A flash of fire appeared at a street corner, and a faint smell of blood drifted in the air—but in this place where the air was already filled with all sorts of pungent odors, the slight smell of blood was extremely difficult to distinguish.
Blood seeped from the surface of the rune cardboard, quickly seeping into the wall. The sound of flesh growing was particularly clear in the darkness. Blood vessels and nerves began to appear on the wall, gradually forming the outline of a door.
Almost simultaneously, Luo's spiritual intuition was triggered. She felt a tightness in her heart, and at the same time, the living metal and artificial spine on her back began to sting slightly.
"Old Joe is here..."
As if to prove her words, a rapid series of mechanical footsteps suddenly tore through the silence of the street. Several lights appeared in the nearby ruins of buildings, and flares were fired into the sky. In the brief moment of light, the position where Luo and the soldiers stood was revealed.
"They're here!"
A tactical squad emerged from the shadows of the building.
Luo and his soldiers took cover behind the nearest bunker. The faint light from the emergency shield devices illuminated their surroundings. They saw two more tactical squads emerge from a street corner not far away, and several six-legged tactical walking machines, resembling giant insects, slammed through the partition wall with heavy steps and strode into the street. The lights from the walking machines made the area as bright as day.
The soldiers on the opposite side opened fire, but the brief exchange of fire quickly subsided, as if it were just a probing attempt to exert pressure. Luo stared intently at the war machines behind her shield. The electronic scan results told her that Old Joe was in one of the walking machines—even under these circumstances, he had to hide himself in the iron shell that the soldiers were protecting.
“Lo!” Old Joe’s hoarse voice came from the walkie-talkie’s broadcast system. “I didn’t want things to come to this point—you should know I’m not a ruthless person.”
"Too bad that joke doesn't make me laugh anymore, Joe," Luo grinned and shouted across the street, "My standards for humor are much higher now!"
The walking machine raised its gun, its six legs pawing restlessly on the ground like a real insect: "You still have a chance. Listen, all I want now is the raw data from your Rift Lab. I can leave you everything else—your trade lines, factories, ports, and mining centers—all of that. You won't find a fairer deal, girl. Some experimental data that's no longer useful to you can be exchanged for your safe departure. I can even guarantee your return to the company..." Luo laughed, as if finally confirming something, his voice filled with pleasure: "Just as I thought, you were only after the Zolda Black Stone test data from the beginning. All the other conditions you proposed were just a smokescreen. Who wants these things? It's definitely not you, you idiot—your 'trading partners'? Those Hermitage followers?"
"This is related to that..."
"That's because their rift device is about to fail! Those idiots messed up the process; the key illumination parameters they used to activate the rift were wrong!" Luo shouted excitedly. "Soon, a massive hole big enough for angels to descend will tear open in the middle of the Dark Current Sector—they messed up, hahaha… Old Joe! So you're going to mess up too! Countless people will want you dead, and the corporation won't let you off the hook either—"
Old Joe suddenly fell silent, and the words "angels have descended" even caused a small commotion among the clone soldiers.
Two seconds later, a gloomy and hoarse voice came from inside the large walking machine: "It seems you won't be leaving here alive today."
A slender hand rose from behind the bunker, giving the middle finger: "You talk as if you were really going to let me go in the first place."
"Blow her and her ridiculous bunker to smithereens."
A cold command came from the walker, and at the same time, the grenade launcher mounted on the side of the machine gun platform was raised. The other walkers and black dot soldiers around also raised their guns instantly—a deafening roar instantly rang out, almost instantly flattening the place where Luo and the guards were hiding.
However, at that moment, another strange shriek suddenly came from above, as if something was falling rapidly from the sky.
Some of the soldiers on the black dot who were busy pulling the trigger heard the sound coming from above, but before they could look up to confirm, they felt a terrifying heat wave suddenly sweep over them!
Fire, fire everywhere. Incendiary bombs that seemed to fall from the sky covered the entire block, like an apocalyptic downpour. Several unlucky soldiers were hit by the flames, their bodies covered in scorching flames that were hard to extinguish. The light power armor shields of ordinary soldiers were thin and lacked sufficient high-temperature resistance. After struggling for a while, their protective layers were burned through, and they fell to the ground with miserable screams.
The roar of exploding flames echoed from all directions. Soldiers scattered in panic, their tactical walkers' sensors went off like crazy, and commanders searched for the source of the attack. Amidst the chaos, Old Joe's somewhat panicked shouts rang out: "What's going on? Who...?"
A massive fireball erupted from the center of a Black Dots tactical squad. In the rapidly expanding inferno, a figure stood atop the blazing flames, long hair whipping wildly, laughing maniacally: "Hahaha... Want a match? Sir, want a match? Full price: forty thousand, hahahaha—the match's here!!"
The large tactical walking machine spun its gun barrels wildly, unleashing a dense barrage of bullets at the madwoman standing in the flames. However, the latter's figure almost instantly became part of the flames, and the bullets only passed through her phantom.
A new alarm bell rang in his mind: the sensors detected another high-energy reaction rapidly approaching. Old Joe hurriedly steered the walker around, only to see a massive shadow rushing straight towards him across the sea of fire.
He hastily fired several shots, but they hit a patch of protective spiritual energy. Immediately afterward, the shadow rushed in front of him—an astonishingly large snake, more than ten meters long and as tall as a three-story building when stood upright.
The upper body of the giant snake was that of a beautiful woman.
The giant serpent banshee immediately grabbed one of the walking machine's combat arms. Her terrifying demonic power pushed the war machine back several meters. Then, amidst a series of horrifying creaking sounds, she began to slowly lift the heavy machine while laughing excitedly.
The walkie-talkie struggled in vain, and a frantic voice blared from the speaker: "Who are you! Where the hell did you come from!?"
"They're the little animals from TM kindergarten!"
Snake Princess shouted excitedly and slammed the tactical walking machine hard onto the ground!
(End of this chapter)