Chapter 95: …There Was No One on the Other End of the Rope
At the South Wall.
As darkness fell, the members of the special strike team crouching atop the ramparts kept their eyes glued to the desolate wastes outside.
It had been quite a while since their captain descended.
From below came the ceaseless, guttural shrieks of mutated beasts.
Down in the gloom, nothing could be seen clearly.
They had no idea how the battle was playing out.
Only the slight, rhythmic swaying of the line proved that the person on the other end was still moving.
“The captain signaled!”
The spotter by the winch noticed the rope twitch a set number of times and shouted the report immediately.
“Haul her up!”
“Yes, sir!”
Whoosh—
The winch spun, reeling in the cable.
Before long, Mori broke into view. Using the line’s upward momentum, she vaulted over the parapet.
“Hah—”
The moment her boots hit stone, Mori stumbled. She planted the butt of her short blade against the masonry to catch herself.
Her protective suit was shredded in several places, bleeding from multiple wounds that bore the unmistakable jagged marks of different mutated predators.
Her waist, combat trousers, and boots were caked in foul black muck, littered with bizarre green spore clusters.
The spores were still pulsing.
The recovery detail moved in at once, crushing the mutated green spores underfoot and assessing her injuries.
—The most harrowing was a vicious slash across her back, like the swipe of a massive claw.
It ran diagonally from her upper left shoulder all the way down to her lower right hip.
Blood was steadily welling from the gash.
The guards on the wall signaled down to the courtyard for immediate medical aid.
Moments later, Mori was helped off the ramparts to have her wounds tended.
The emerald hue staining her skin had deepened drastically, creeping toward the edges of her pupils. She had clearly pushed herself to her absolute physical threshold.
“How was it?”
Yves, who had also donned a hazard suit, stepped forward to check on her.
Mori shook her head. Unclipping a satchel from her belt, she dumped the spoils from her sortie onto the table.
Several large energy crystals, accompanied by two blue-green beast cores.
This meant that without any Awoken abilities, relying purely on mortal grit and cold steel, she had put down two E-rank mutated creatures beyond the South Wall.
“Well done. Rest for now,” Yves said with a firm nod. He turned to an aide. “Give her a roasted sweet potato to purge the toxins.”
“No.” Mori waved her hand, gritting her teeth against the agony. “Hold off on the detox. I want to go down again.”
“Night has already fallen.”
Yves’s voice dipped with disapproval. “Going out now will spike the danger exponentially.”
“You said it yourself—awakening is most likely to trigger right on the edge of life and death.” Mori’s gaze was unflinching.
“Mutants are far more active after dark. Fire support won’t be able to cover you in time.”
“Then that’s true life and death.”
“Mori.”
Yves’s brow locked into a deep frown.
“Commander, we don’t have the luxury of time to waste on safe rehearsals. Seed City is running out of time, and so is the South Wall. If we only move when everything is safe, we’ll remain trapped on the defensive forever.”
“…”
Just before she was pulled back up, Mori’s honed senses had picked up an ominous tremor deep within the swamp.
A wet, scraping crunch. It sounded terribly like that B-rank monstrosity creeping closer.
Silence fell.
The wooden shed serving as an improvised field infirmary beside the wall went dead quiet.
The medic worked swiftly, cleaning and binding Mori’s lacerations.
Mori let out a sharp hiss between clenched teeth, then forced a faint smirk.
Looking up at Yves, she said, “This is my own request, born of my own free will. Please grant it, sir.”
“Do you understand the consequences of failure?” Yves asked, his voice low and heavy.
“I do. But Commander, I understand the cost of hesitation even better,” Mori replied. “I take full responsibility for my actions. Trust me.”
“…”
A few moments later.
Her wounds bandaged and sealed inside a fresh hazard suit, Mori stood ready to scale the wall again.
A tempest of emotions churned behind Yves’s eyes as he stared at his finest squad leader. “Don’t push past your limits. Signal the moment things go wrong.”
“Yes, Commander.”
She rendered a crisp salute, turned on her heel, and climbed back up the ramparts.
The world outside the wall was entirely different from when she first descended.
The swamp was swallowed by pitch-black night, teeming with the crawling signs of mutated life.
Mori drew a deep breath, fixed her eyes on the murky depths of the fen, and stepped off the ledge.
Down into the dark.
Whoosh—
The tether hissed through the carabiner.
“Ready fire support.”
Sensing a shift in the air, Officer Two barked at the squad to raise their weapons.
Wuuu—
A mournful shriek drifted from the black heart of the marsh, sounding eerily like a dying human wailing in agony.
Crunch, crack—
Skreee—!
The wet snaps of bone beasts clashing with other predators echoed through the dark.
The B-rank mutant was here!
Officer Two’s face hardened as he shouted down the line, “B-rank entity incoming! Steady your nerves, everyone!”
Whenever this B-rank predator prowled the marsh, it was flanked by swarms of armored bone-fish bristling with razor-sharp fangs.
When they threw themselves against the masonry, the air filled with a sickening chorus of chewing and gnawing.
Worse, this B-rank beast broadcast a heavy aura of mental corruption.
An absolute nightmare to deal with.
Every time it surfaced, it had to be driven off with concentrated long-range fire.
For their captain to be down there right now… the danger was off the charts.
“Report!”
The guard holding the winch of Mori’s safety line called out, his voice shaking. “The captain’s tether… it’s gone slack! It might be severed!”
“What?! Check it again!”
Officer Two froze, then roared in panic.
The guard spun the winch handle frantically.
Light as a feather, the line reeled in within seconds.
—There was no one on the other end of the rope.
The heavy polymer cable had been sheared clean through by the razor teeth of the bone-fish.
Beyond the North Wall, in the urban ruins.
The two Awoken squads were utterly bogged down by the relentless onslaught of creeping vines.
Enraged that these interlopers had destroyed the banyan tree before it could finish draining it, the creeper’s strikes were several times more vicious than when they first engaged.
It seemed desperate to pulp these human pests on the spot, using their flesh and blood to replenish its lost energy.
“Captain! Watch your left!”
“The shield is about to drop!”
“Levitation, get down! You’re a sitting target up there! Look out—they’ve snagged you!”
“Hold on, cutting you loose with Ice Blades!”
“Luo Xianghuai, take this machete!”
“Anyone got a spare weapon? My club just snapped!”
“We can’t keep this up.” Zhou Xue’s arms were growing numb from hacking through the endless tide of wood. “We have to find the creeper’s core, or we’ll be ground down until we drop.”
She still had the strength to cover the others, but once the team’s energy reserves ran dry and the crystals they brought were depleted…
Their situation would take a nose-dive straight into hell.
At that point, no god in heaven would hear their screams.
“How the hell do we find its core?!” the [Ignition] user screamed over the din.
“Follow the vines!” shouted the [Paralysis] user, a tall woman who seemed to notice a pattern. “Some are thick, some are thin! If we follow the thickest runners back, we might trace them straight to the taproot!”
“Is the core even in the roots? That banyan’s core was right in the middle of its trunk!” Shelley shouted back.
“No one knows!”
“Track the vines anyway! Keep stalling and we’re all going to be fertilizer!” Heixi barked.
“Luo! Can you track it? You can sense the creeper’s reach—can you find the origin point?!” Zhou Xue yelled over the noise.
“I can try! Clear me some breathing room!”
“Ignition, Piercing, Entangle, Ice Blades! Form up with me and clear a perimeter! Aegis, shield Tracking! Paralysis, Seduction, Petrification, Screech—defensive screen, hold the line!”
“Got it!”
As true night set in, the emerald mist in the air thickened at a visible rate.
The thrashing vines grew noticeably heavier and faster.
A thick runner, broad as a man’s bicep, slithered across the broken tarmac under the cover of the lesser branches.
Closing in on the group, it struck like an uncoiling viper.
It shattered the energy ward with a brutal snap and coiled tight around Luo Xianghuai’s leg.
