A pure black armor covered Cillin as he turned around to face toward the entrance. It looked practical but mysterious; reserved but unrestrained. By the time he took his first step, the transformation was already complete. It was so fast that everyone including the Eleventh Squad was caught off guard by it.
Cillin ran. Usually, you could spot a hint of clumsiness or a sudden hitch here and there when an armored person moved, but that wasn’t the case for the hunter at all. He moved just as quickly and smoothly as he would’ve without the armor.
Moreover, the armor looked pretty thin, but it completely withstood the parasites’ attacks. They knew this because Cillin wasn’t bothering to defend himself at all. After beckoning for Wheeze and Moon to follow him, he charged straight toward the parasites and sent everything that was blocking his way flying. The reason he was in such a hurry was because the mutated parasites could be swarming toward the fourth entry point already. They needed to be cleared out as soon as possible to facilitate the group’s escape when they arrived.
Wheeze and Moon weren’t afraid of the parasites as a matter of course, so once they joined up with Cillin they ran over all the parasites in their way like a truck. It wasn’t long before the unstoppable trio completely vanished from everyone’s view.
After the trio was gone, the people in Luminous Flower and Golden Willow’s group murmured, “What… was that?”
The people of the Eleventh Squad was equally silent. They knew that Cillin was gathering materials for Xi Mu, but they had thought that the “armor” he spoke was just an upgraded protective suit until now. The armor Cillin was wearing had to be the new armor, right? The materials to make it were more or less gathered, right? They could all have an armor of their own in the very near future, right?
This…
Is so…
Exciting!!
Cary and Xiaoshang looked as excited as a druggie. The small fatigue they had accumulated from fighting the parasites and mutated hosts suddenly disappeared as if it was never there. Even the gray fluid clinging stubbornly to their skin felt a lot less disgusting than before.
Cary shouted inside his own head: Worms, this is the last time I’m going to fight you fuckers unprotected, so let’s tango to our heart’s content! Woohoo! I can feel my motivation growing already!
Back to Cillin. The parasites kept charging into Cillin despite the futility of their efforts, and the impact left behind grayish blood on the armor. He paid it no heed, however. When the hatch finally entered his view, he immediately ordered Moon to open it.
The fourth entry point opened, and Cillin leaped out in one smooth motion. At the same time, Wheeze changed its form and transformed into a three meters tall metallic monstrosity. Its body gleamed with power and cruelty, and its wings spread out like a pair of thrusters and glowed a silver gray color. They enabled Wheeze to fly swiftly in space.
However, this was the first time Wheeze assumed this form, so it accidentally zoomed far, far away from the ship, rolling uncontrollably in the process.
Cillin: “...”
I knew I can’t rely on this cat too much.
Cillin fired a cable at the surface of the transport ship. Then, he reeled himself in until he was standing on top of it.
Outside, Udoze was piloting his fighter and shooting down the evolved hosts that were clambering toward the fourth entry point. However, he was limited to low-powered weapons because anything too powerful would affect the people still inside the ship.
Udoze’s ship wasn’t the only one fighter in space, but the pilots were Xi Kai’s robots. Their skill paled in comparison to Udoze, but they were better than nothing.
Of course, Hua Xi’s team—the ones that were standing by outside—was doing their best to gun down the enemies as well. The evolved hosts were a lot tougher than the normal ones thanks to the hardened substance protecting their body. Their mutated limbs also allowed them to cling to the surface of the transport like some sort of twisted spider and clamber toward their target at high speed.
They couldn’t afford to delay the rescue by even a second because the longer they delayed, the greater the chance the parasites were going to mutate a second, or even a third time. There were still a lot of parasites and hosts sitting close the radioactive source depots, and the transport ship had a crew of over two thousand. Even now, they had only killed almost a thousand parasites in total. At least half of them were still inside the ship doing god knows what.
The fighters couldn’t shoot the parasites and mutated hosts that had gotten to close to the entry point, so it was up to Cillin, Wheeze and Moon to deal with them.
Cillin’s hand flickered, and a white gun appeared out of nowhere like magic. The next moment, three parasites that were bounding toward him immediately lost their heads.
The technicians on Luminous Flower noticed the oddity and started paying attention to Cillin. Then, they realized that the amount of times he shot his gun and the amount of parasites or mutated hosts weren’t a 1:1 ratio at all. In fact, it grew from 1:3, to 1:4, to 1:5…
No one on Luminous Flower recognized Cillin’s gun. Not only did it not exist inside or outside the GAL Gun Leaderboard, they couldn’t even find a gun that shared its shape.
From a distance, the gun looked like a snowflake in space: white, perfect, and soundless. However, every time it opened fire, it would reap an incredible amount of lives with effortless ease. Forget its abnormal hit ratio, its stopping power alone was some of the strongest they had ever seen from its type. The evolved hosts were much faster and tougher than the ones inside the transport ship, and yet Cillin killed them all the same. It was like an arctic chill that appeared out of nowhere, causing shivers with every touch. All the observers who were watching him from Luminous Flower’s ship were stunned beyond words as a matter of course.
Meanwhile, Wheeze had finally found the right balance and was currently pushing itself back toward the fourth entry point. However, it wasn’t able to brake in time and slammed right into a couple of parasites and mutated hosts. Considering its current tonnage and flying speed, there was nothing that could stop its momentum. Some of the enemies were sent flying into space, and there was nothing they could do except flail uselessly in a blind attempt to return to their target. Moon made sure to kill them all.
Originally, Wheeze was going to tear these “things” to pieces with its prided claws, but it quickly discovered that knocking them into space was a faster way to kill them. So, it spread its wings as wide as possible and swept all the parasites and mutated hosts running toward it off the surface of the transport ship. Moon cooperated and shot the now defenseless enemies dead.
If it sounded like the duo were playing, that was because they were. Being who they were, they felt none of the anxiety and urgency that was eating the humans from inside out. Take Wheeze for example. It took a special cat—and that was putting it nicely—to be able to fall asleep atop Sigma’s head while everyone was fighting for their lives.
Finally, the group inside the ship reached the exit, and a large spaceplane belong to Luminous Flower moved closer to receive them. Hua Xi, Yewu and the old man all jumped into the ship.
“Time to leave!!” Eudy ordered the rest of the squad.
Tang Qiuqiu had put her protective suit and breathing mask back on. When she heard the order, she immediately put away her rifle and jumped onto Snowball’s shoulder. After shaking off two parasites that tried to attack them from behind, it leaped out of the exit and headed straight toward the spaceplane.
A bodyguard who entered the spaceplane with Hua Xi earlier stared at the scene in astonishment. “First miss, that bear isn’t wearing a protective suit. In fact, now that I think about it, it wasn’t wearing one since the beginning…”
Even the parasites and mutated hosts had to undergo an evolution before they could enter a space environment. Just where the hell did the Eleventh Squad get their crew?
Yewu herself wanted to ask Hua Xi something similar: where the hell did you find these… people?
It was at this moment the Eleventh Squad and Luminous Flower’s ship reported that a deadly high-energy object was flying toward them at high speed. Its power was equal to that of ten shipborne shockwave bombs, and all attempts to lock down and intercept it have failed! It was because it wasn’t moving in a straight line, and none of the computers were able to calculate its trajectory!
“Faster!”
No one knew if the object’s final landing point was the transport ship, the spaceplane that was receiving the group, or the other starships within the area. One thing was certain though: if they didn’t wrap up their business before the object hit, it would be too late.
Worse, the object was coming at them from a difficult angle. It was using the transport ship as cover almost as if it had a mind of its own.
“Commander, what are you waiting for? Jump already!”
“Let’s go, Cillin!”
Cary and Eudy urged from the spaceplane.
“I’ll catch up with you all later! Hua Xi, take your men and leave right now!”
Cillin answered before taking off toward the other side of the transport ship. He knew that this was the enemy’s hidden trump card, and the fact that they were using it now meant that they had full confidence it would take out the spaceplane everyone was in.
He even knew a bit more than the others about this unpredictable, fast-moving, high-energy object. I bet it’s an offshoot project of Project “Dream Tapir”, Phase 2. I just don’t know which ones exactly.
Meanwhile, the spaceplane had finally received its last passenger and closed its hatch. It took off as Cillin had told them too.
“What’s the commander doing?” Scarlet Wind asked.
“How the fuck should I know!?” Cary threw his rifle on the ground in irritation before gluing his eyes onto the display.
Outside the transport ship, Cillin spent one last moment to check his angle before facing toward the high-energy object.
Anytime now.
The high-energy object all the starships had deemed impossible to lock down and intercept—at least not in the amount of time they were given—suddenly shone yellow and split up into many tiny dots. Each dot gave off an incredible amount of energy.
The bright yellow dots continued to fly erratically toward the spaceplane, but something was different from before. From a distance, the yellow dots almost looked like a giant, open maw that was acting to devour them whole.
Everyone in the spaceplane was speechless.
What the hell is that thing?!
Cillin wasn’t idle during this time, however. While the yellow dots was changing forms, he too was putting together a bunch of parts so fast that his arms didn’t even leave behind a blur. It wasn’t long before an object took form, and its surface had a slithering lightning symbol on it.
Is that… a cannon?
White light erupted from the cannon before anyone could puzzle out the weapon. Then, a swarm of lightning cut through space and struck the gigantic maw head on.