Chapter 425

Chapter 425: The Last Queen’s Guard Corps

The enemies had appeared suddenly after the team entered a corridor that led straight into the depths of the darkness—and there seemed to be no end to their numbers.

A sharp whoosh cut through the air beside him as a curved blade swung at his neck from a vicious angle. At the last possible moment, Lawrence leaned back and grabbed the arm holding the blade. Ghostly green flames surged up from the edge of his palm and burned a monster in a navy uniform whose head was split vertically into ashes. Before he could react, several gunshots rang out from ahead.

The shots came from a crawling monster that had suddenly climbed out of a drain. The monster had an upper body like a human’s, but its lower half was nothing but heaving piles of tissue like warped internal organs. It clutched a “rifle” that looked as if it were pieced together from bone and flesh, yet the muzzle of that obviously wrong creation spat fire.

Lawrence’s gaze sharpened at once. Time around him seemed to slow. In that instant he felt his sight grow sharper than that of ordinary people by countless times. He could even see clearly the bullets’ path as they flew toward him. In the next moment he twisted his body and dodged the bullets coming at him with impossible angles and movements.

He dodged three times and got hit by six rounds.

“You damned monsters!” The intense pain hit, and the old captain cursed. Then he raised his revolver and fired twice at the monster.

He lowered his head and looked at his chest. Several shocking bullet holes had torn the flesh there, yet under the burning of ghostly fire the half-transparent spirit form flesh was healing at a speed visible to the naked eye.

It was not fatal, but it still caused intense pain and fatigue. The Power of Flame also seemed to be slowly draining—right now it was still full, but no one could say whether it would run out.

All around Lawrence, his fully armed subordinates were still fighting. These sailors wrapped in ghostly flames had realized their current temporary undying state, and their fighting style had grown more and more fierce. They used rifles, bayonets, and short swords to hold back the monsters that never seemed to end, while trying with all their strength to push deeper down the corridor.

Yet like Lawrence himself, none of them were used to their current spirit form state, much less able to control those ghostly flames. These sailors who had accidentally gained undying bodies were only squandering their strength and firepower. The battle in the sewer corridor had become so chaotic it was hard to even look at.

So even with bodies that could regenerate, they could only advance at an unbearably slow pace under the endless monsters’ blockade. There was no hope of breaking through.

The only one on the field not affected by the ghostly flames was the mummified corpse. Anomaly077 was also fighting. He swung two curved blades and moved through the battlefield with a speed and agility completely unlike that of a mummified corpse, charging back and forth like the wind. If his vision had not been greatly enhanced, Lawrence would have doubted he could even follow the mummified corpse’s movements.

But now his sight far surpassed that of ordinary people, so Anomaly077’s speed no longer looked so outrageous to Lawrence. He could clearly see the mummified corpse slip past every fierce-looking monster, moving along the safe routes on the battlefield. The curved blades in its hands flashed up and down, and after slashing about for half an hour they were still as new as ever—the edges had not touched anything at all.

The “sailor” was only running up and down the corridor waving his two blades. The only thing louder than anyone else was his shouting.

“I will cut the path with my blades!” The mummified corpse’s harsh voice echoed in the corridor, mixed with the blades’ whistles through the air. “These ugly blasphemous things are no match for me!”

Lawrence strode forward and grabbed the “sailor” by the neck as he tried to charge past. His strength was shocking now; he lifted the charging mummified corpse by the throat and hauled him up to his face. His hoarse voice crackled with the sound of bursting flames: “If you cannot help, then at least be quiet for me!”

Anomaly077’s dried-up head was only a few centimeters from Lawrence’s face as Lawrence gripped his neck. The mummified corpse trembled all over. “Y-yes… yes… yes, Captain!”

Lawrence raised his hand and hurled the mummified corpse ten meters ahead. “Get out there and clear the way—if we do not break through today, I will stuff you into the steam core’s combustion chamber!”

The mummified corpse let out a strange yell as he flew through the air and finally got tangled up with the mud-born monsters that kept pouring out. A crew member with a rifle ran up beside Lawrence and shouted, “Captain! We are almost out of bullets!”

Lawrence jerked his head around and saw that almost all the people he had brought were already fighting the monsters with cold weapons. They were relying entirely on their undying state to hold out in this corridor, but the team’s overall advance had clearly stopped.

They could no longer move forward.

And there was no way back.

Chaotic shouts and the chilling sounds of flesh bursting and limbs breaking filled the corridor. Black sludge kept seeping from the walls and ceiling, and his subordinates in their spirit form bodies were almost drowned by endless monsters. The spirit form flames on their bodies still burned, but fatigue was piling up, and that tiredness was slowing and muddling even his thoughts.

In the depths of this chaotic sewer, Lawrence suddenly felt dazed. He even began to feel that the whole world was unreal.

Who was he, where was he, what was he doing… The monsters here were endless, and yet the agreed-upon midnight… how much longer would it be?

Just then, as if to answer his trance, Lawrence suddenly heard Martha’s voice coming from the Pocket Mirror at his chest:

“They are here.”

The old captain snapped out of his haze at once. He hurriedly raised his hand, drew a short sword from his waist, and ran through a monster lunging at him. Then he stepped back to avoid the black sludge that nearly splashed onto him and quickly looked up.

Footsteps sounded in the corridor—very, very many footsteps. With them came distant, faint shouts and calls of orders. Then these sounds rushed closer and, in almost an instant, reached the area where Lawrence and the sailors were fighting for their lives.

In the blink of an eye, countless figures appeared.

It was as if they had stepped out of days long past. One shadow after another gathered out of the air and took shape as fully armed soldiers. They gripped old-style rifles from half a century ago, and the bayonets on their muzzles gleamed coldly in the dark corridor. They charged out of the darkness toward another stretch of darkness. The forming of their bodies did not slow their charge at all, as if their battle had never stopped and only at this moment could their figures be seen.

The sailors fighting in the corridor were stunned by this sudden sight and stopped without thinking. They watched the unit charge in, watched them fire at the monsters that were everywhere here, watched them roar as they threw themselves into the fight. Several seconds passed before one sailor finally reacted and muttered in shock: “The last Queen’s Guard Corps…”

Lawrence also came back to himself. He stepped forward without thinking and walked toward a young soldier who was loading his rifle. The soldier looked at most twenty. The Old Era city-state Guard Corps uniform on him was ragged, as if he had been crawling and fighting in this sewer for a long, long time.

“Hello, we are here to hel—” Lawrence reached out to pat the young soldier on the shoulder, but his words cut off halfway.

His hand passed straight through the other man’s body.

Was this only an illusion?

Lawrence lifted his head in shock, only to see that those ghost-like soldiers were already locked in fierce battle with the monsters in the corridor. Their guns kept firing, and those inhuman things of filthy mud that only resembled people fell one after another.

A tall soldier charged in from the other side. Lawrence hurried to dodge but was too slow. He watched as the tall soldier ran straight toward him as if he could not see him, then passed through Lawrence’s body like a phantom. A stray shot from a monster struck the soldier a heartbeat later, and the tall figure crashed to the floor of the sewer.

The other Queen’s Guard Corps soldiers ran around the corpse and continued deeper down the corridor.

A sailor walked up beside him and muttered behind Lawrence, “They are phantoms…”

“But these phantoms can fight those monsters. They can even destroy them…” Lawrence said blankly, still feeling as if he were dreaming.

“The monsters in the corridor are not increasing anymore,” another sailor said nearby.

Lawrence reacted at once.

For the first time, the number of monsters in the corridor was truly going down. After that phantom Queen’s Guard Corps appeared, the black sludge that had been pouring from the walls and ceiling finally stopped seeping out. The twisted freaks that they had never been able to kill off before were now actually being reduced!

Could the existence of the Queen’s Guard Corps restrain those monsters’ “regeneration” and “multiplication”?

Countless questions filled Lawrence’s mind, but he knew something more important than chasing those answers.

“Follow the Queen’s Guard Corps!” He raised his hand high and shouted the order. “Follow the path they open!”

“Yes, Captain!”