Chapter 119: Bird of Paradise
Inside the great hall, Emmus watched the live images being projected on his palm. As expected, not only did Carranio chose not to directly launch a long distance attack against them, he did not even mobilise the spaceplanes and fighters to attack the great hall’s energy shields. This was thanks to Cillin’s parasites disrupting the combat power of the personnel in this area and buying them more time.
“Carranio is probably sending his men to acquire the energy absorption weapons from the arms warehouse right now. If the energy absorption weapons are mobilised, then we won’t be able to hold out for long no matter how many energy ores we have.” Emmus tapped out a control panel from his arm and operated it, “I’ve disrupted part of the long range weapons and the spaceplanes’ weapons, but that is all I can do. We have about twenty minutes left on the clock.”
“Where is their arms warehouse?” Cillin asked.
Emmus reduced the map scale on the projector and pointed at a location, “Here, at the scarlet desert area.”
“Scarlet desert area?”
“Mm. It’s called scarlet desert because the sand is all red. In fact, the majority of this planet is made up of scarlet deserts with extreme radiation. Even a rank B genotype would not be able to live over 40 years old in such an environment. This was why I refrained from going outdoors, and if I had to, I’d spray a layer of insulative paint on my body beforehand. This was also why they looked down on me,” Emmus shrugged, “No matter how strong your genotype is, there’s no reason to take an unnecessary risk. The crazies in Poison Fang may not treasure their lives, but I do, and I fear quite a lot for my life actually. I’ve been spying on Poison Fang for a very long time. If you guys could take out Poison Fang, then I’d be able to go home as well. What awaits me after this will be a shiny future where I would be promoted to a ranked officer, and maybe even a general before I’m forty years old. For the past twenty years or so I haven’t been able to enjoy life at my leisure, so I have no intentions of being sentenced to death at such a young age.”
Cillin thought for a moment before saying to Emmus and Wa Qing, “I’m heading out. Reduce the area covered by the energy shields later and stay inside. If Carranio fails to mobilise the energy absorption weapons to this place, then stay here until the energy ores inside that device is finished.” Cillin pointed at the four semicircular objects. The energy ores powering it should be able to hold out for another twenty hours or so, and by then everything should be more or less over. There would be no need to switch to a new power source.
“You’re going out alone?” Wa Qing frowned. He might be a little weak right now, but he could still fight.
“It will do. You’ll only die if the two of you head outside.”
Cillin’s words might be a little ugly, direct and hurtful, but neither Emmus nor Wa Qing raised an objection because they recalled the ‘Bird of Paradise’ Cillin had mentioned earlier. They did not know what it was, but it was probably a lot deadlier than those parasites.
“Aren’t you afraid that I’d harm LC Wa Qing?” Emmus smiled.
“It’s fine. I left you a ‘Bird of Paradise’ too.”
“Oh dear, please don’t. I swear I won’t harm LC Wa Qing in any way, so please?” Emmus raised both his hands to show his determination.
“If everything goes well, you can go straight back to the army. This will be a collaboration.”
“Deal!”
Emmus recalibrated the energy shields and allowed Cillin to go outside. The moment he calibrated the outermost energy shield and opened it, the guards observing outside the energy shields from the dark immediately focused their firepower onto the unprotected Cillin. However, Cillin was faster, and he swiftly vanished into the hall after a few quick dodges. The beam shots struck the outermost shield and caused tiny ripples to appear on it, but the other three energy shields on the inside were perfectly untouched.
When Cillin had vanished, Emmus propped his chin and asked Wa Qing, “Cillin must be pretty influential in Vanguard’s Sixth B Squadron, isn’t he?”
Wa Qing said nothing. Ever since he learned that Emmus belonged to the army, he had decided not to say anything. The army and the Hunters had always disliked each other, and it was not uncommon for both sides to try screw each other over in secret.
Suddenly, Wa Qing’s eyes narrowed as his face slowly turned pale. Sweat poured out of his forehead as if he had just seen something terrifying.
Emmus followed Wa Qing’s gaze and immediately felt a chill crawling up his spine all the way to the brain.
Although the energy shields were in the way, the distance was not so far that they could not see what was going on in the hall beyond the four energy shields.
Big Q and the people who were killed by Emmus were still at the same spot where they were killed. They were not taken away for a proper burial or cremation. This was Poison Fang’s brand of cruelty, where camaraderie was non-existent. However, both Emmus and Wa Qing found the tiny worms slowly boring their way out of the men’s bodies were far crueler and disgusting right now.
Emmus felt his stomach churn at the sight of the rice-sized worms boring out Big Q and the others’ bodies. It was unthinkable what would’ve happened if he hadn’t eaten Cillin’s ‘pesticide’. In fact, now that he thought about it, if he hadn’t killed Big Q and the others earlier they would probably still be alive when the infestation happened. It was a kind of destruction to both the body and the mind.
The Poison Fang guards on the outside obviously saw the scene as well. They had all been injected with suppressants, but it was not the antidote after all. If the suppressant lost its effect before the antidote could be researched, then they would become just the same as Big Q and the others.
It was at this moment indescribable panic truly began to invade their hearts.
Poison Fang, was thrown into disorder.
Although Emmus, Wa Qing and the guards outside had lost Cillin’s trail, Cillin had not in fact left the hall yet. Instead, he entered the elevated area that was cut off by thick metallic walls (T/N: Uh… I guess it was either unlocked after Carranio left, or Cillin can walk through walls); the place where Carranio escaped had from and where his throne was.
The native beast continued to lay beside the throne as if it had fallen asleep, but in reality it had completely lost consciousness. Its resistance was obviously stronger than Big Q’s, and it hadn’t drawn its last breath so there were no worm boring out of its body just yet. Then, suddenly, the native beast began to tremble all over as the first, second, and third parasite began to bore out of its body…
Seeing that it was almost ready, Cillin overturned his hand and took out many oval-shaped balls the size of quail eggs from his leaf ring. They were identical to the ones the gray cat had spat out of its mouth.
Many centimeter long little worms were revealed after the oval-shaped balls’ outer shell had dissolved into the air. These were the ‘Birds of Paradise’ Cillin had mentioned earlier.
Although Cillin had named them ‘Birds of Paradise’, they were nothing like birds at all. In reality, they were a kind of half parasite that Cillin had modified and created from the parasite found inside the big fish’s body deep within the rivers of the green planet. He also added a few cosmos parasite genes into them so that they would better fit his purposes. He had taken the name ‘Bird of Paradise’ from the title of a poem written in one of Enji’s diaries.
Cillin left after he had released the little fellows.
The ‘Birds of Paradise’ seemed to smell food and instantly zipped towards the native beast beside them. The ‘Birds of Paradise’ that had just exited their shells immediately tore the worms boring out of the native beast’s body to shreds and consumed them. To these ‘Birds of Paradise’, these worms were no different from an extraordinarily rich feast, and they grew bigger and bigger as they cut open the beast’s stomach and ate. In less than five minutes, they had grown ten times their original size, and ten minutes later they had started to lay eggs. The native beast’s corpse was completely devastated beyond recognition at this point.