Chapter 24: Endless Battle
Three flares hung high in the sky, illuminating the main battlefield below as if it were daylight.
The roars of ground-walkers, the sounds of slashing, and explosions intermingled. Broken corpses and blood splattered everywhere.
A ring-shaped blade aura spread out, and a large group of ground-walkers around Su Xiao fell. Before he could catch his breath, three translucent purple fireballs flew toward him.
A crystal layer spread over Su Xiao's hand, forming three handleless short blades. He flicked his arm, sending the crystal blades flying to meet the incoming fireballs. These things had tracking properties and couldn't be dodged—he had personally tested that half an hour ago.
The moment the three crystal blades pierced the fireballs, they exploded. The splashing flames corroded everything they touched, hissing loudly. This was a supernatural ability, one that some exceptionally powerful fission-variants possessed.
While throwing the crystal blades, Su Xiao leaped a meter into the air. The instant he jumped, a claw wrapped in scales emerged from the soil.
Su Xiao flipped the long blade in his hand, reverse-gripping the hilt. Using his descent, he raised the blade and stabbed downward.
Pfft~
A bit of blood seeped from the soil, and the claw protruding from the ground went limp.
No sooner had Su Xiao killed the fission-variant hiding underground than two ground-walkers lunged at him from the front, claws bared.
Su Xiao leaped back while pulling his long blade from the soil, flipping the hilt in his hand from a reverse grip to a standard grip.
With a swoosh, he slashed sharply mid-leap. A pale blue slash mark appeared in front of him, and the two charging ground-walkers were cut into four pieces.
The moment Su Xiao landed from his backward leap, a sense of crisis struck from his right. Given the situation, he could only continue leaping back.
Bone spears nearly five meters long flew toward him, thudding heavily as they struck the ground.
Su Xiao kept leaping back, but as soon as he jumped low, the bone spears followed closely, embedding themselves in a diagonal row before him, disappearing into the ground and leaving only dark holes.
The moment Su Xiao steadied himself, his perception successfully locked onto a fission-variant with fleshy wings flying in the air.
‘Blade Path: Azure Demon.’
A cyan-blue blade aura shot out. In an instant, black-red blood splattered. A fission-variant fell, its head severed and the upper halves of both fleshy wings cut off. It was dead before it hit the ground.
Crack, crack, crack~
Gray rock appeared on Su Xiao's legs—a parasitic variant. This was a parasitic variant with a very troublesome ability. Su Xiao had never seen it before, but he recognized its power.
Within at most 0.3 seconds, the gray rock, resembling volcanic stone, encased Su Xiao's lower body. He instinctively raised his left arm, and a crystal layer climbed up it.
A whimpering sound of breaking wind came from his side. While blocking his head's side with one arm, Su Xiao tilted his body to the right.
Bang!
A long-handled warhammer, with a bone interior and a hard keratin shell, struck Su Xiao's left arm. The gray rock encasing his lower body shattered, and he was sent flying sideways.
Midair, Su Xiao sheathed his long blade and slowly inhaled.
Landing, drawing the blade, Ring Break! The sequence was seamless and fluid.
Blood from ground-walkers rained down around Su Xiao like a downpour. He spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva. The injuries accumulated from fighting until now were already severe. This was the third wave of the alien army's assault, and the intervals between the three attacks combined didn't even total half an hour.
In other words, Su Xiao had been fighting intensely for over 19 hours. During that time, he had only eaten one dinner, slept for 20 minutes, and, after repelling the second wave of the alien army, sat near a pile of corpses to smoke a cigarette.
The rest of the time was spent entirely in battle. Being surrounded by ground-walkers and fission-variants was routine. Sometimes, he was even besieged by over a hundred parasitic variants.
Counting the bonus from the Demon Hunting King, Su Xiao's current true stamina attribute was as high as 149 points. Yet even so, he still felt fatigue, because the "grunts" he was dealing with were all sixth-rank creatures.
Any single ground-walker, thrown into the fifth rank, would be a minor boss. At the fourth rank, even without a boss template, just having two true attributes would make it a major boss level.
And now, the battlefield was swarming with ground-walkers. According to Baha's estimate, this wave had around 290,000 to 300,000 ground-walkers, fewer than 20,000 fission-variants, and the number of parasitic variants was still unknown.
No one knew when the alien army's assault would stop, nor how much longer their own contractors could hold out. As far as Su Xiao could see, the scene was filled with ground-walkers and fission-variants, with no sign of their own contractors.
Baha's situation was also dire. He absolutely couldn't give up his aerial advantage. Many fission-variants could fly, which greatly increased his risk of dying in battle.
As for Amu, he was one of their main forces. His attack power was indeed mediocre, but his self-healing ability, combined with Bubu Wang's aura, made him formidable on the battlefield.
Amu occasionally transformed into a "battlefield cow." When a friendly contractor was surrounded by ground-walkers and about to die, he would charge in, ignoring enemy attacks, drag the ally out from among the ground-walkers, and then the half-healer on his back would perform emergency treatment.
That's right, Amu now had a healer tied to his back. As for why she was "half," she had originally been a combat healer. After 17 hours of chaotic fighting, she was overwhelmed by ground-walkers. Amu pulled her out and saved her, but the lower half of her body had been gnawed down to bone.
Amu used the emergency treatment he had learned from Su Xiao: he froze a large ice blade in his hand, chopped off the healer's lower half, froze the wound, and then tied her to his back, forming a "milk-cow" combination.
Compared to the enemy, their own numbers were less than a thousandth. This led to all sorts of desperate rescue tactics emerging.
Bubu Wang hadn't been hiding in the base camp. The base camp no longer needed guarding—it was now a super-massive pile of corpses nearly 60 meters high, burying the camp inside.
Starting from the tail compartment, Bubu dug a tunnel. First, a main tunnel, then branching tunnels.
Using these underground passages, Bubu Wang, who blended into the environment, could enter the battlefield. After the "milk-cow" combination rescued someone, Bubu would drag the severely wounded back to the base camp.
Inside the base camp, the severely wounded could not only recover but also receive treatment from the evil-living variant, a mechanic. He could use his summons as materials for mechanical modifications, creating biological-mechanical prosthetics.
The advantage of these prosthetics was that they had sensation. The downside was that they needed to be fed; otherwise, they would become uncontrollable and backfire on the user, permanently reducing their stamina attribute.
If fed, there were ground-walker corpses everywhere. Letting the prosthetic eat a few bites would keep it obedient for several days.
On the battlefield, Su Xiao was surrounded by ground-walkers and fission-variants. He only had one blade in his hand, but that was enough. As long as he still had the strength to grip the blade, the battle wasn't over.
"Huff, huff~"
Su Xiao's breathing was somewhat heavy. Blood dripped from his chin. He had just unleashed Ring Break, buying himself 2 to 3 seconds of respite.
He moved his left arm. It still ached slightly, but thankfully, sensation had mostly returned. This relieved him. Earlier, a "Peru Explosive Barrel" had landed near him, and the flame python had blasted him with fire for a full half-minute. Fortunately, the crystal layer's heat resistance was decent.
In Su Xiao's view, the alien army was hard to deal with. They had no morale whatsoever. Ground-walkers embodied the word "fearless" to the extreme.
Ground-walkers weren't like combat insectoids, which lacked emotion. Ground-walkers felt pain. They had intelligence higher than beasts but lower than humans. In fact, female and male ground-walkers would even form lifelong mates.
When one died, the other wouldn't seek another partner. Instead, they would live alone, waiting for death.
The ground-walkers weren't unafraid of Su Xiao. They were terrified of this god of slaughter, who had killed tens of thousands of their kin and was covered in bloodlust.
When charging at Su Xiao, some ground-walkers' bodies even trembled.
They couldn't retreat. Sleeping deep in the earth was worse than death. Everything was for the continuation of their race, for the sake of the... Alien King.
The contractors fought to live, while the aliens fought to find a new world to inhabit and continue their species. Some things couldn't be judged by right or wrong.