Chapter 426

Chapter 426: The Final Counterattack

Sounds echoed from the depths of the corridor, but they were mixed and hazy, impossible to make out.

There seemed to be the sound of cold wind, muffled whispers, dense footsteps, and gunfire.

Everything had blended together. Everything had lost its clear borders. The whole world seemed to be kneaded into a single mass. There was no front or back, no yesterday or today—just like the dim corridor ahead, choked with mist, heavy and dull as if it could swallow everything.

A hunched old man shuffled forward slowly down the corridor. The heavy wrench in his hand sometimes bumped into the pipes on the walls, making a low, strange clanging sound.

[Who am I? Where is this place? Where am I going? Why am I going there?]

[The assault had begun… Midnight, zero hour, was when the Queenguard Corps launched their attack. But what exactly were we attacking? Which way were we supposed to advance?]

Old Ghost’s foggy mind now and then produced some scattered, broken thoughts, some long-faded memories. But soon they all melted back into his muddled brain. Sometimes he felt as if he were walking on two split roads at once, his jumbled senses and memories of past experiences tangled inside this body. Yet sometimes he felt he had never moved at all, that he had only stayed where he was, waiting in place for fifty years for orders.

The heavy wrench hit something with a clank. Old Ghost slowly lowered his head and saw that it was a helmet—black, narrow brim, marked with the sign of the Queenguard Corps. It was something from fifty years ago, something no one saw anymore.

He stared blankly at the helmet as it fell to the ground and rolled, rattling, into the drain at the side. It seemed as if something was struggling to crawl out of that drain, but it soon blended into the surrounding darkness and vanished.

He let out a vague mutter and went on walking into the dark, as if he were slowly stepping into a clump of thick black sludge. He did not know how much time passed before he finally stopped at the end of the corridor.

Crisscrossing pipes, collapsed rubble, and smoke and black matter seeping between the stones blocked the old man’s way. He stopped there and looked around, confused.

He did not recognize this place. He did not even remember there being such a spot in the Second Waterway. But he still stopped here, because… there was something here waiting for him to finish.

Old Ghost lowered his head and looked at a puddle beside the rubble. His own confused eyes were reflected in the water.

[What was I supposed to do here?]

Just then, a strange scene suddenly appeared in the puddle—

soldiers of the Queenguard Corps trampled over the endless monsters swarming through the corridor. The guns and bayonets in their hands turned wave after wave of replica freaks into cold, dried sludge. Wherever they passed, no more muck seeped from the walls, and even the darkness in the corridor seemed to thin.

Everything was just as Lawrence had guessed: the very existence of the Queenguard Corps was suppressing the corruption in this city-state of mirror world.

If everything happening in this city-state was seen as the clash of two forces, then the sludge monsters and the Queenguard Corps were clearly the two sides made flesh. This struggle and entanglement had likely gone on for half a century already.

Lawrence’s marine squad ran quickly along the corridor. Following the path the Queenguard Corps had opened, they covered in a dozen minutes ground that had held them back for hours before. All the way, Lawrence kept watching and thinking.

He tried to figure out the true nature of this Queenguard Corps and even tried to communicate with these phantoms. But every attempt failed.

The Queenguard Corps could not see him. They did not even sense the presence of these uninvited guests. These soldiers were like memories projected from a distant past, mechanically repeating a battle from decades ago. They advanced, fired, fought hand to hand, and fell… and all of this had likely happened every day for decades.

The information Martha had given him about the Queenguard Corps was right, but clearly not complete.

He could not build any kind of cooperation with these “helpers”.

“Captain! They can’t see us. What do we do?” A sailor ran up beside Lawrence and shouted: “With just the dozen of us tagging along, it feels like we can’t help at all!”

Lawrence’s expression grew complicated. He glanced down at the pocket mirror on his chest. But Martha’s voice came out of it before he could speak: “Don’t ask me. I have no idea how to handle what you’re seeing. I only knew they existed, I’ve never dealt with them myself…”

As she spoke, faint sounds of artillery came again from the mirror. Martha was clearly very busy on her side; the situation there was no simpler than in these sewers.

“Has the Queenguard Corps just been repeating this battle all these years?” Lawrence called out. “And each time the outcome is the same?!”

“Yes. The result is always the same. They appear at midnight, and fade at the next full hour. Every time, they fail to break through the obstacle at the end!”

Fail to break through the obstacle at the end?

Hearing this, Lawrence instinctively looked up toward the direction where the phantom soldiers were charging.

They were rushing toward the deepest part of the corridor. In that dark, chaotic space, thick malice churned in his senses like sludge made solid.

“I understand!” Lawrence suddenly shouted.

Martha’s voice came from the mirror: “Understand what?!”

But Lawrence no longer had time to answer the woman in the mirror. Once he faintly sensed what he needed to do, he gathered his subordinates and ran ahead faster.

At the same time, the battle in the corridor reached a fever pitch. The Queenguard Corps launched their final charge. Warriors formed from countless phantoms roared and cut down the monsters blocking their way with their weapons. Warriors kept falling, turning into bubbles that vanished in the air, and monsters kept falling, turning into sludge that flowed into the drains on both sides. As the fierce fighting went on, the assault force finally drew close to the end of the corridor.

Lawrence finally saw the end of this brutal fight. He saw the obstacle that had blocked the Queenguard Corps for half a century—

It was a door. A huge door covered with countless clumps of brambles and filthy black mud, so dreadful in appearance it made the heart tremble.

On the surface of the door, the tangled brambles were like dead branches woven into a crown. Dim lights wandered deep in the thorns without pattern, like countless eyes hidden within them. An ordinary person would only need to glance that way to have fear and madness seize their heart.

Even Lawrence, who now served as a vessel for spirit flame, felt his mind shake and his head roar when he saw the door blocked by the thorns.

And that was the target of the Queenguard Corps’ assault.

In front of the door, uncountable black sludge gathered, and countless monsters rose from the muck. They crudely mimicked human shapes. Some wore the uniforms of the city Guard Corps and the navy, some were pirates with mismatched gear or armed citizens, and there were even monster-shapes like ancient cannons and demons made from heaps of bone.

These monsters used the crude fortifications in the hall as cover and defended the thorned door like fanatical believers guarding their master.

The final battle began.

The Queenguard Corps poured all their firepower onto the monsters across the hall. The monsters’ counterattack shook the entire Second Waterway. In almost the blink of an eye, both sides lost more than half their strength. Lawrence and the dozen sailors he had brought could only try their best to find cover at the edge of this deadly battlefield.

With fire that dense, even Lawrence, protected by the flame of his spirit form, did not dare bet that he truly could not die.

But he was not only hiding. He was watching.

He watched to see just how far the Queenguard Corps could go in this battle.

As the fight went on and both sides kept losing people, the defenses before the door finally weakened. The deadly cannons and demonic creatures there were torn apart, and gaps opened in the line before the thorns.

“Demolition team! Go!”

Crouched beside the Queenguard Corps’ position, Lawrence suddenly heard a shout. It was the voice of some Guard Corps commander.

An instant later, he caught sight of several figures crawling forward at the edge of the battlefield.

A squad had broken off from the main line. Using the monsters’ blind spots, they slipped into the drain along the edge of the hall and inched toward a hidden spot beside the thorned door.

At the same time, the fire from the front line suddenly grew even heavier. A storm of bullets poured out, trying to pin down and draw the attention of the monsters in front of the door.

Lawrence held his breath without thinking. Even though he knew this was likely only a phantom scene that the outside world could not change, he still did it by instinct.

But the thing he feared still happened.

The demolition team creeping along the battlefield edge toward the thorned door was discovered.

A burst of bullets tore into the drain. Several soldiers carrying explosives fell into the channel at once.

But almost at the same time, another demolition group slipped into the dark trench on the hall’s other side and kept crawling toward the door covered in thorns.

They were discovered too. The second demolition team fell only a dozen meters from the thorned door.

Just then, a sailor’s low cry reached Lawrence’s ears: “They’re about to disappear!”

Lawrence looked up at once, and the scene in the corridor filled his eyes—

The Queenguard Corps was disappearing.

After the second demolition team failed, all the Guard Corps soldiers froze for a moment. Then each of their figures began to fade and dissolve. In the blink of an eye, a third of them were already half-transparent phantoms.

Something Martha had said suddenly surfaced in Lawrence’s mind:

“…Every time, they fail to break through the obstacle at the end…”

Lawrence suddenly understood what those words meant. He understood the outcome of this battle every single time: the Queenguard Corps failed. They kept fighting. They stubbornly repeated it. But the unchangeable fact was that, in this “last counterattack” at midnight, they failed.

This operation had failed fifty years ago.

Every repetition since then had only repeated that failure.

Lawrence felt dazed for a moment. But just then, from the corner of his eye, he saw another figure appear on the battlefield.

It was a figure rushing out from a corner of the hall—a phantom that had not yet begun to fade.

Lawrence and all the sailors fixed their eyes on that figure at once.

He was not a soldier, but a young man who looked like an army engineer. He wore coarse dark blue work clothes and a slanted soft cap that had been in style fifty years ago. On his belt, besides a pistol and ammo pouch, hung a big wrench.

He rushed toward the trench and toward the explosive charge the second demolition team had left behind. Then he grabbed the wooden crate full of explosives and hurriedly crawled toward the thorned door.

For a moment, Lawrence almost thought he would succeed.

But a bullet flew over. It struck the young man’s shoulder like a hammer. Half his body convulsed, and he fell just a few meters short of the thorned door.

The whole hall seemed to fall silent at once.

The last counterattack was over.

All the Queenguard Corps soldiers began to fade faster, and this scene that had repeated for fifty years returned to its starting point.

Perhaps this was also the last time it would repeat.

Lawrence, his gaze blank, stared at the young man who had fallen at the very end.

“The last of the Queenguard Corps,” the last of the fallen. His death seemed to be some kind of “focus” for this endlessly repeating battle.

But suddenly, Lawrence snapped out of his daze.

He leaped out from his hiding spot. Under the sailors’ startled cries and wide-eyed gazes, the old captain sprinted like the wind toward the spot where that last man had fallen.

The hall, which had fallen silent, was startled by his sudden intrusion. The monsters that had not yet faded reacted almost at once. Chaotic roars and the thunder of gunfire erupted again!

Shouts from the sailors came from behind: “Cover the captain!”

But Lawrence seemed unable to hear them. He just lowered his head and charged forward. It felt as if several bullets hit him, but to him that no longer mattered. He dashed across half the hall, jumped into the trench, and threw himself at the last explosive charge, reaching out toward it—

Then his fingers passed straight through the crate of explosives.

Lawrence fell awkwardly into the trench and stared blankly at the sight before him.

Just like the Queenguard Corps around him, that crate of explosives was also only a phantom to him.

The explosive charge that had failed to detonate fifty years ago could not be triggered today by someone who came after.

Bullets whistled in and slammed into the ground nearby. Roars drew closer. Some sludge monsters had already rushed into the trench, ready to tear him to pieces.

But Lawrence still stared at the crate of explosives, feeling only a vast sense of absurdity and mockery.

Yet at that moment, something suddenly moved at the edge of his vision.

The old captain looked up in shock and saw that it was the young man who had just fallen who was moving.

The young man with the heavy wrench at his waist trembled and slowly lifted his head. His eyes fixed on the figure before him—a man dressed like a captain, wrapped in strange green flames.

Lawrence froze for a moment, then suddenly realized: “You can see me?!”

But the young man seemed not to hear the question. His lips moved, as if he were quickly repeating some words. He repeated them several times before Lawrence barely caught what he was saying—

“…I’ve seen it. Right, I’ve seen this flame… I’ve seen it…”

“Seen it? Flame? What are you talking about?”

Lawrence stared with wide eyes and could not help asking.

But the young man did not answer. He only kept repeating the same words over and over. And while he muttered, he slowly pushed himself up. Covered in blood, he still managed to climb to his feet, bit by bit!

Under Lawrence’s disbelieving gaze, the blood-soaked young man picked up the last explosive charge again. With a muffled groan, he climbed up the embankment wall beside the slope and staggered toward the thorned door, still muttering something under his breath.

Lawrence heard what he was muttering, but could not understand it. It sounded like a string of names—

“Nemo… General Tyrian… Crow…”

That blood-soaked figure stumbled on, mumbling.

But he barely made it a few steps.

As soon as he reached level ground, gunshots rang out from the other side, and the bloodied figure fell.

But almost in the same instant he fell, a bent old figure suddenly rose from the spot where he had fallen.

Lawrence watched in disbelief. He saw exactly where the old man appeared—from the pool of blood.

He was the reflection in the blood at the moment the young man died.

“Ah, I finally made it…”

The hunched old man bent down and picked up the last crate of explosives. A smile then bloomed on his face, so bright and impossible to understand.

“I made it!”

He shouted, and he laughed out loud. Hugging the crate of explosives, he cheerfully lit the fuse and then almost gleefully ran straight toward the thorned door with it in his arms.

“I made it!

“Engineer Wilson reporting in!

“Engineer Wilson requests to return to the unit!

“I made it!”

Boom!!!

The earth-shaking explosion rocked the entire hall and every corridor connected to it.