Chapter 68: The Underground Starry Sky |
Vanessa turned her head away in disgust, sweeping her gun across their surroundings.
Taking in the gruesome scene, Number 3 let out a heavy sigh and handed the medical kit to Number 4, who was crouching nearby.
With a single injection of a tranquilizer, the D-Class personnel groveling on the ground finally stopped screaming in agony.
Number 4 maintained a safe distance while observing the man's vital signs. "He is severely dehydrated."
Even knowing that D-Class personnel were mostly repurposed felons on death row, it was still difficult not to feel a shred of sympathy for a fellow human being.
N4-2 chimed in, "I am more curious about how he made it all the way down here without getting hacked to pieces."
N4-4 asked, "Whose hydration system is fully loaded? We need to give him some water—"
"No need." Vanessa picked up a canteen from the ground and tossed it to Number 4. "Team 3's supplies are all right here."
The gear of the missing personnel was scattered across the stalagmites and the uneven floor of the karst cave. These items were now relics of the dead, and leaving them unused would be the greatest disrespect. Vanessa scavenged a few compatible magazines and distributed them to the group, also managing to find several offensive grenades.
Under the effects of the tranquilizer, the interrogation became quite straightforward.
"When those things rushed out, there was gunfire everywhere. I could only hide in a corner. Then, out of nowhere, that monster appeared and bit my foot. I managed to grab a gun and kill it, but my leg had already been swallowed... When I woke up again, I found an oxygen tank and a gun here. Those people of yours, uh, they... they were on the wall, they melted into the wall..."
Before the D-Class could finish his disjointed and incoherent account, a faint, almost imperceptible tremor rippled across the ground.
The team immediately raised their weapons, aiming at their surroundings.
The moths clinging to the D-Class's leg simultaneously fluttered their wings.
The supposedly semi-anesthetized D-Class instantly let out a bloodcurdling shriek. He jolted up like a dying shrimp, desperately trying to clutch his leg.
"They're... they're coming—!"
Taking decisive action, Number 4 slammed his boot down on the man's throat, cutting the scream off halfway. However, the remnants of his cries still echoed through the cave, stirring up a buzzing reverberation. The surrounding ovisacs flared with intense light, the glow pulsing along the cave walls into the distance as if it were alive.
Everyone fell into a tense, silent state of high alert.
The faint tremors rapidly escalated into violent shaking of the ground, and those ovisacs began to strobe rapidly from within.
They could clearly feel that the epicenter of the vibrations was right on top of them.
Number 3 rushed forward, attempting to heave the delirious D-Class over his left shoulder, but the feed on his eyepiece suddenly lagged. The red eyes on the wings of all the moths seemed to glow before being eclipsed by patches of pitch black. Even so, he was overcome by a profound wave of sheer terror—the creatures had already been drawn in. They must have scuttled up the stone walls with their scythe-like limbs and were now dangling right above their heads. If he just looked up, he would see their glowing eyes packed as densely as a starry night sky...
"Visual cognitohazard!"
His teammates immediately snapped their heads away. Number 3 clamped his eyes shut, reached for the simple sleeping bag on the side of his backpack, and whipped it open. He threw it completely over the D-Class, using a physical barrier to isolate the cognitohazard. Shoving the man and his oxygen tank entirely into the bag, he hoisted the bundle onto his shoulder.
N4-4 yelled, "Leave him behind!"
N4-3 shouted back, "They are already here! It makes no difference whether we leave him or not!"
"Just treat him as an infected sample! We can always ditch him later!" Vanessa rushed over to help, fully stuffing the thrashing D-Class and the oxygen tank into the sleeping bag before swiftly delivering a hard strike with the butt of her rifle, physically anesthetizing the man.
Other than the hulking Number 3, no one else in the squad could handle the extra dead weight.
"Still kicking and screaming after getting drugged? Did the research department dilute the tranquilizers with water?" Number 2 dropped a beacon, clipped a sonar device to the back of his pack, and led the team toward one side of the cavern. "There is a path! This way."
Number 2 took point, Number 4 stayed in the middle of the formation, and Vanessa brought up the rear behind the burdened Number 3, guarding his exposed back.
As the team passed by, the ovisacs on the cave walls continued to glow in rhythm with the tremors. Their light pierced through the light-absorbing properties of the black mineral, making them easily observable even from a distance.
Vanessa had been aiming down their back trail, occasionally sweeping her muzzle over the nearest ovisacs, but she suddenly froze in her tracks.
They had rushed into an open area of the cavern completely devoid of stalagmite cover. To their horror, they realized the entire cave was illuminated like a brilliant starry sky. Countless ovisacs were flashing in sequence with the tremors, creating the streaks of light they had seen shooting into the distance just moments ago!
No, the numbers did not add up.
The Midnight Visitor had caused fewer than ten disappearances. Several people had reported it to the police, which was what initially drew Agent Kyle's attention to the anomaly here. Even if they factored in all the members of Team 3, rounded up the total, and tacked on an extra zero, it still would not match the sheer scale of what was right in front of them.
If each of these eggs represented a victim, there had to be hundreds—no, thousands upon thousands of corpses down here!
So many people had vanished without anyone batting an eye. And to think, she had assumed the rumors of the Tenth District's horrific crime rates were just regional prejudice!
Every so often, an ovisac would stop flashing. Accompanied by sickening, wet bursting sounds, objects plummeted from above and hit the ground. Pairs of bright eyes materialized from the darkness in every direction, lunging straight for the squad.
Everyone opened fire.
Enemies were everywhere. They swarmed from the flanks, the front, and the rear, raining down from above. Their scythe-like limbs whirled in the pitch black, gouging into the black stone as they morphed into four-legged beasts that sprinted low to the ground. Gun down one, and three more took its place. Mow down an entire cluster, and even more leapt out. The mountain of corpses had been reborn as a tidal wave of death crashing down on the squad. The deadly surge rolled in from a hundred meters away, drawing closer with every passing second.
"It's clear inside!"
Number 2, leading the vanguard, reached the entrance of the tunnel, with Number 4 arriving right on his heels. The two men flanked the entrance, providing covering fire to hold the line for their teammates.
Number 3 had the D-Class hauled over one shoulder while he wielded a light machine gun with his free hand. Roaring at the top of his lungs, he sprayed a relentless storm of lead into the sea of stars lurking in the darkness. He did not stop until the magazine clicked empty. Hurling the now-useless hunk of scrap metal far into the mob, he threw himself into the tunnel. Vanessa's submachine gun lacked the necessary ammo capacity. As she yanked out a fresh magazine, her hand slipped. She bent down to scoop up the dropped magazine, using the momentum to push off the ground and sprint wildly after him.
The closest scythe monster had already breached the beam of the flashlights. Number 4 aimed dead center at its chest, blasting it to the ground the very second it entered the ring of light.
With a sharp click, his gun ran dry as well.
According to their formation, it was his duty to cover the rear. However, upon noticing that his ammo was spent, Number 2 shoved him into the tunnel without a word, taking it upon himself to act as the rearguard.
"Get inside!"
Number 2 never noticed the pair of bright lights plunging down from directly above them.
He kept firing, slowly backing into the tunnel as the rearguard, utilizing the narrow chokepoint to hold back the unending tide of scythe monsters. He took a step backward, reaching out a hand behind him to verify Number 4's position, and then he stopped forever.
His head slid clean off his neck.
Blood splattered across Number 4's eyepiece, painting his vision in a splash of bright crimson.
"Benjamin!"
The sight of the headless corpse collapsing shattered the last remnants of Number 4's sanity. He fired madly at the monstrosities pouring into the tunnel, continuously squeezing the trigger long after his magazine was empty. A scythe blade sliced through the beam of his weapon light, hacking downward at him. With his life hanging by a hair, a gun barrel suddenly thrust past his head and blasted the monster away.
"He is dead! Fall back, retreat!"
Vanessa ruthlessly grabbed Number 4's backpack, dragging him down the passage. Hauling him along like a wounded soldier with one hand, she raised her gun with the other, pouring suppressing fire down the tunnel behind them.
When her gun clicked empty, she gave him a vicious yank, finally snapping Number 4 back to reality.
The two of them hit the ground running, sprinting desperately through the corridor to catch up with Number 3, who had been tasked with breaking a trail but was now completely isolated due to his teammates falling behind.
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Number 3 clung rigidly to his mission. He ran with his head down, using his own body to carve a path forward for his squad through the darkness. However, it was only when he slammed violently into a solid wall that he realized it was a dead end.
The path was blocked.
He frantically felt around his surroundings, desperately trying to find a hidden fork in the tunnel before the monsters could catch up...
Suddenly, a burst of static crackled through the comms channel.
"N4... there is... a breach..."
It was the Command Center.
N4-3 shouted, "We have casualties! We need immediate backup! There are at least thousands of entities down here! Command Center, do you copy? Damn it, we need backup!"
Tremors and the deafening sound of a collapse erupted from directly in front of him. Some unknown force ripped away the obstruction blocking Number 3's path, tearing open a route to survival.
The beam of a flashlight pierced through the dust from behind the crumbled wall.
Number 3's finger hesitated on the trigger for a split second. Upon confirming that the approaching figure lacked any identification lights, he squeezed the trigger.