Chapter 124: Mental and Psychological Stress
Poison Fang’s underlings began to act after the Skull King Carranio issued the highest kill order. Since Carranio also revealed that Cillin could deal with the worms, the little Poison Fangs searched tirelessly for him as if he was their only hope. However, if Cillin had vanished into thin air, they were unable to find even a shadow. Still, there was proof that Cillin was still operating around the area.
“King, he took all of their emblems!” a person reported to Carranio.
Every emblem on the chest of every dead Poison Fang members everywhere had been taken away by Cillin.
Carranio said nothing. He knew that this was Cillin’s way of taking revenge. He was taking away the emblem made from the bones of the owner of the emblem as offering to the Vanguard’s Sixth B Squadron’s members who had perished in that battlefield.
Meanwhile, search squads made of a dozen or so people each had their protective suits cut open by Cillin one after another, but even then they were unable to find the culprit who was doing so. They even accidentally hurt a few allies in the process while searching for Cillin using bio signature scanners. However, no one regretted the decision. At the very least, it gave them some peace of mind.
Cillin had not attacked the search squads personally. He had installed some traps to do so while he worked outside their scan range.
During their search, one of the Poison Fang members accidentally triggered something and caused flying knives to suddenly shoot out of the ground. The knives were all made from special metals, and they were capable of drawing faint scratches on the protective suit even if they could not cut all the way through. It was already enough to cause panic among the search squads.
Cillin wasn’t aiming to cut open their protective suits in a single try, however. He was just piling up the psychological stress they were enduring.
There was no doubt that the Poison Fang members felt like committing suicide as they suffered flying knives, firearms outside the range of their scanners, red-hot smoke grenades and all sorts of other prank-like traps. There was a limit to how far one’s nerves could be strained, and when this limit was exceeded, it was inevitable that the person in question would suffer a mental disorder, if they hadn’t gone crazy in the first place.
After all, while the protective suit might be able to endure the first ambush, what about the second, third, seventh or eighth attempt? It was only a matter of time before a hole was cut on their protective suits. They just didn’t know when the inevitable would happen.
As the group walked around a corner with strained nerves, someone stepped on something yet again and caused a wide range of flames to shoot up suddenly from the ground.
The floor of this area was painted with a kind of chemical substance that was completely harmless on its own. However, the place was also scattered with some tiny balls containing a different kind of chemical substance sharing almost the exact same color as the floor. Therefore, when these tiny balls were stepped on, and its contents spilled onto the chemical substances painted on the ground, an intense combustion was generated within the oxygen filled environment. Naturally, the Poison Fang members tried to jump out of the way in panic, only to step on even more balls and trap themselves in bigger, hotter flames.
The surrounding flames burned at their protective suits. While the protective suits could endure the scalding heat for a time, it was obviously inadvisable to stay amidst the flames any longer. The group swiftly ran towards the exit, but since the entire path had been painted in chemical substances, and the soles of some of their feet were drenched in chemical residue from the ball, fire burned wherever they ran to even though there were no balls along the path they came from.
In the end, the search squad was able to escape the fire, but…
“Ah——”
A bloodcurdling scream resounded, followed by the second and the third scream…
Their protective suits had faint scratches on them in the first place, and they finally fell apart and became cracked after they were burned by the hot flames. Seizing the opportune moment, the ‘Birds of Paradise’ immediately burrowed into the bodies of the exposed Poison Fang members.
Just when the Poison Fang members were driven to the brink of insanity, the ‘Birds of Paradise’ had slipped through the cracks between their protective suits and attacked them.
A long while later, two lucky fellows whose protective suits weren’t cracked yet remained. But before they could even take a breather, a shadow flashed past them and left behind a cut each at the back of their protective suits.
After the fire’s baptism, the scanner had become a little faulty and failed to warn the duo in time.
Five minutes later, Cillin slowly walked out of a building and cut open the protective suits covering the Poison Fang members who were being eaten by the ‘Birds of Paradise’ to the point they were beyond recognition. He took away their emblems.
As Carranio listened to one vein popping reports after another, he grew so furious that he broke a couple of chairs. His breathing was rapid, and his twin fangs could be seen protruding parallel to the ground through the transparent screen of his mask.
“Bring me my pets!”
“Yes sir!”
His underlings ran out to perform his order like they were escaping. It truly was stressful to face the Skull King.
Inside the great hall, Emmus and Wa Qing were chatting on and off with each other while leaning against the boxes containing the energy ores. They were both trying to feel out each other, but since both sides were as cunning as a fox no one was able to gain any useful information. It was at this moment someone walked in and glanced once at the duo inside the four layers of shield. They did not say anything and simply took the chairs inside the hall.
“What are they doing?” Wa Qing asked.
“If I’m guessing correctly, Carranio is probably planning to release his little pets. Tsk tsk, at long last he thought of this method. I guess Carranio isn’t so stupid that his IQ is in the negatives.” Emmus rubbed his chin with eyes flashing with an enigmatic gleam.
Wa Qing automatically filtered out the latter half of Emmus’ words and asked doubtfully, “Little pets?”
“Yeah, Carranio’s pets have a great sense of smell and are able to track down their targets just like a dog would.”
Wa Qing was starting to worry. There were many people who said that an animal’s sense of smell was in fact more acute than a scanner, and the species who were were born naturally with a great sense of smell even more so. Cillin had sat down on the great hall before and left behind his smell, so it would seem that Carranio was attempting to track down Cillin using the smell on the chair. He wondered if that Cillin kid would be safe.
While thinking, Wa Qing suddenly remembered something and felt his eyebrows relaxed. There was even the trace of a smile inside his eyes.
There was no doubt that Emmus had a keen eye for observation. He immediately caught the smile in Wa Qing’s eyes and asked, “LC Wa Qing, you look like you’re pretty confident in Cillin. If you thought of something then why don’t you tell me about it? This way I won’t need to worry about him.”
Wa Qing ignored Emmus directly and said nothing.
Carranio’s ‘little pets’ were not actually tiny, and they were all around one meter tall and two meters wide. They were the native four-legged mammals of this planet, and they had both a great sense of smell and danger.
After the ‘pets’ were fitted with emergency made protective suits, every search squad set out to search for Cillin again with two pets to guide them. They certainly lifted quite a bit of burden off the Poison Fang members’ shoulders.
Cillin had run around many places, and it was impossible not to leave behind a single trace at all. In the end, after many twists and turns, the search squads were led to a single location – the cross field.