Chapter 166: The Last Lesson |
"Acute painkillers. I figure you still have the strength to unscrew the cap."
Bai Mu took a bottle of painkillers from his inventory and tossed it to Leon. He didn't have time to spoon-feed the pills to the young man; six Doppelgangers were glaring at him like tigers eyeing their prey. There were four slime Doppelgangers and two elite Doppelgangers left in the room.
The slime Doppelgangers raised their handguns again, trying to aim and fire, but their draw was neither fast nor lethal enough.
These creatures were far from mastering firearms; they simply knew how to pull the trigger.
Bai Mu suddenly drew his weapon. Four rapid shots rang out, striking the slime Doppelgangers' wrists and knocking their guns away.
The other two Doppelgangers lunged at him like wild beasts, but in Bai Mu's eyes, their movements were painfully slow.
After activating Berserk, his physical capabilities had nearly doubled. This wasn't just limited to strength and leaping ability; his hearing, vision, and even his reaction speed had been comprehensively enhanced.
He didn't need to think about how to swing his blade. Combat had become pure instinct. He reflexively dodged the Doppelgangers' pounces and slashed at their shoulders and necks.
A flash of the blade, and when the Doppelgangers hit the ground, they were no longer whole, reduced to nothing but dismembered chunks of meat.
This dilapidated old building could no longer withstand the devastation. With a loud crash, a slab of concrete plummeted from the cracked ceiling. The building was on the verge of collapsing from the fire. Bai Mu glanced back to see Leon downing the bottle of painkillers. The young man picked up his knife and forced his battered body to stand.
At the same time, Bai Mu saw the four slime Doppelgangers charging straight toward the two of them.
In an instant, Bai Mu realized this was a suicide attack. It wasn't his first time encountering such a tactic. Right before death, certain Mutants would explode in a burst of acid or toxic gas, attempting to take him down with them.
His intuition screamed that he absolutely could not let the slime Doppelgangers get close, so he executed four actions simultaneously.
He fired his Tranquilizer Watch, hitting one Doppelganger in the neck and incapacitating it. He summoned the Hand of Walrider to grab another Doppelganger's ankle, tripping it hard against the floor. He whipped out his Night Vision Camcorder, designating a third Doppelganger as a Model and snapping a photo to freeze it in place. Finally, he pulled out his shotgun and blew the head off the last slime Doppelganger.
These four actions happened almost at the exact same time, but the slime Doppelganger's body suddenly swelled up like a balloon and violently burst apart with a deafening boom!
An unknown liquid rained down like a light drizzle, releasing an utterly foul stench.
"Hold your breath!" Bai Mu shouted.
Anyone with half a brain would know this was toxic gas.
Having pulled something like a mushroom cap out of a Script before, he had naturally braced himself for this kind of absurdity.
His status bar didn't indicate that he was poisoned, but the shockwave from the slime Doppelganger's explosion had shattered the building's load-bearing structure. He felt the entire structure groaning as it tilted to one side. If they stayed, they would be buried in the rubble of the collapsing building.
Bai Mu instantly hoisted Leon over his shoulder and leaped out the window on his right.
Amidst the sharp shatter of glass, he plummeted from the fifth floor.
Leon was still struggling to process the situation when the bright moon filled his vision.
The curved crescent was pure and beautiful, like a little boat suspended in the night sky.
Fresh air rushed into his nose, and Leon coughed violently. Then came an intense sensation of weightlessness. Gravity inevitably pulled them down. If a normal person jumped from the fifth floor, they would be dead or critically injured.
But Bai Mu had already experimented with this in the training grounds. He reached upward, grasping the invisible Hand of Walrider.
That hovering third hand acted like a swing's rope, buffering his descent.
Like a gliding bird, he plummeted at a sharp angle toward the ground.
Seconds later, he touched down on a patch of exposed dirt. The only price paid was a tiny sliver of health.
But this didn't mean they were safe. A second before he landed, he heard a system notification.
[Your Summon "Witch" has died.]
[Best Friend's Help] entered its cooldown phase. Outside the blazing inferno, a dense throng of silhouettes surged forward.
Over the past hour, the Doppelganger reinforcements had arrived.
Bai Mu heard the rumble of car engines. Military vehicles were driving in from cities further away. He used a mobile ward to scout his field of vision, only to see that the entire ruined wasteland had been surrounded by the Doppelganger army.
Even more varieties of Doppelgangers had reached the battlefield. Among them were many Bai Mu had never seen before, coming in all shapes and sizes. He even spotted a Doppelganger with a head resembling that mushroom cap.
The entire burning area was surrounded so tightly that not even a drop of water could slip through. Although Witch was a monster, she was entirely alone. No matter how powerful she was, she couldn't withstand an endless siege. The gap in numbers was simply too vast.
Leon also seemed to sense the shifting situation. His voice was weak, yet he wore a serene smile. "I knew you were still alive, Uncle."
"Even I'm still alive. How could you possibly die?"
"Can you still walk, Leon?" Bai Mu asked, his gaze fixed on the shadows beyond the flames.
The reinforcing Doppelgangers stepped through the fire.
They had clearly seen the silhouettes of the two jumping from the building. Another batch of slime Doppelgangers, their faces devoid of emotion, closed in around them. Leon followed his gaze and shook his head. "Uncle, when I chose to stay behind, I was already prepared to die." He seemed to have given up, unwilling to be a burden.
Bai Mu turned around and hurled a Cherry Bomb at the approaching slime Doppelgangers.
With only 70 seconds left on his Berserk duration, he was running out of time.
Amidst the deafening roar of the fiery explosion, he said, "The people you saved have already reached the Evacuation Point. A total of fifteen people survived, and they are still waiting for you."
"Whether you can walk or not, you have to keep moving."
"This is the last lesson I will ever teach you, Leon. It doesn't matter if you die halfway, but as long as you still draw breath, never stop moving forward. As for whether you can reach the end, that is entirely up to you."
Leon froze. He realized what Bai Mu was about to do, yet he also knew he couldn't change this man's decision.
"I'm glad I got to see what you look like all grown up," Bai Mu said. "Keep moving forward. Truth be told, even without me, you all still made it this far, didn't you?"
"Say hello to Anton, Sam, and Katie for me, assuming they're still alive."