The Creatures That We Are

Chapter 359: Zero Casualty

Thus, he noticed before anyone the freerider perching on a condenser unit on the third floor of a building. Its chest bulged and mouth opened, shooting a deadly ray at Qing Ling.

“Watch out, Qing Ling!” Wu Dahai was too far from the freerider to stop it, so he called out instead.

Bang, bang!

Officer Huang quickly made two shots, hitting the freerider in the throat. Although that didn’t stop it, the angle of its deadly ray was knocked awry, ending up shooting to Qing Ling’s left and cutting a devourer flanking her.

The devourer’s three tentacles were cut like noodles, the cut surfaces spurting blood and oozing thick, light-green corrosive smoke.

The devourer howled in pain.

Boom!

A violet lightning as thick as a thigh came down from the sky, putting it out of misery.

Wu Dahai raised his hands and smirked, pleased with himself. Hmph! You’re courting death by touching the woman I love!

Crackle.

Another two deadly rays shot from the rooftops of a building on each side of the road. Mischievous Monkey raised his hand, and a concrete wall rose from the ground just in time to barely block the attacks. However, the corrosive green fluid the rays brought splattered and almost hit Lovely Lamb’s face.

Dead Pig shielded her with his large palms.

Immediately, the skin of his palm and arm sizzled as the green fluid ate away his flesh. Dead Pig was entirely unfazed. The corrosion stopped in less than ten seconds, and his skin started healing.

“Brother Pig! I’ll treat you...” Fat Jun rushed to Dead Pig, finally spotting a chance to prove himself useful. When he looked down, though, Dead Pig’s arm had already healed.

Caught by surprise, he awkwardly scratched his head before going back to taking cover behind Dead Pig, as he should be doing.

Bone Man, the one in a fitted black battlesuit from Goldthread’s unit, aimed a hand at a freerider on a rooftop. On his black mask was a macabre-looking neon skeletal mouth. “Lock on!” He splayed his fingers. A second later, he shouted, “Displace!”

In the blink of an eye, Bone Man disappeared and reappeared on the rooftop, where the freerider had been, while the freerider was where Bone Man had been.

His Talent was Displacement, serial number 46, Time-Space-type.

It allowed him to instantly swap places with his target and impose a comprehensive debuff.

Displaced, the freerider was stunned for a moment before quickly reacting. Instead of shooting deadly rays, it lunged at Goldthread.

As long as it managed to bite Goldthread, it would become part of him, existing in his body as energy and consciousness at the price of abandoning its original body.

Then Goldthread would acquire part of its power, but also be subject to the after effect it brought, same as what had happened to the freerider, Officer Liu[1].

However, the freerider was stopped short before it could reach Goldthread, floating in the air without control over itself.

Goldthread had activated Gravity, making its surrounding area weightless.

Meanwhile, War Tiger had returned after a killing spree, whooshing past the floating freerider like a phantom and cutting off its head on his way to another group of elite monsters, even finding the time to say, “Don’t thank me!”

Instantly, the decapitated freerider disappeared, and Bone Man reappeared, having swapped places with it again.

Three minutes had passed.

The three minutes dragged for some of them, such as Fat Jun and Lovely Lamb. For others, however, it was incredibly short. War Tiger, having been slaughtering monsters left and right, felt like he had just finished warming up.

After finishing the song, Songstress opened her eyes. The road and buildings were in ruins, and the bodies of elite monsters scattered with their blood pooling into streams.

The last devourer standing was then pierced in the chest by Qing Ling’s Tang Dao.

She turned around and pulled out the knife before vanishing it, one motion flowing to the next smoothly. That marked the end of the battle perfectly.

“Let’s keep going!”

War Tiger sheathed his Green Dog Demon Blade and walked up to the cars parked by the road. The other members of the Twelve Zodiac Signs quickly followed.

Goldthread and his teammates watched them go, plagued by complicated feelings.

They were incredible.

Although Goldthread didn’t find the skirmish too hard to deal with, it was still absurd to the point of horrifying that they managed to kill more than fifty elite monsters, including powerful overtakers, in only three minutes, and without any casualties at that.

At that moment, Goldthread felt a little more confident about the ultimate battle on the horizon.

Perhaps many would die tonight, including himself, but humanity wouldn’t easily go extinct.

Just like the fire that had almost killed Goldthread years ago, they would meet their demise if they failed to endure it, but if they did, they would be reborn anew.

Humans might be weak, foolish, and prone to mistakes, but deep in their souls, there was always the courage and determination to face the fire that would bring them rebirth.

They were in no way great, but neither were they insignificant.

...

Team Vermilion Bird, 4:07 in the morning.

Sunflower Garden, Botanical Garden in the Beiyong District.

A bloodied sunflower bloomed out of Crimson Scorpion’s mouth!

It happened so suddenly and in such an eerie way that everyone was stunned for a second.

“Brother!” A young man with round face belonging to the sixth team rushed toward the dead man. His name was Crimson Bee. Having grown up together in the same orphanage with Crimson Scorpion, they were close like brothers and joined the Qilin Guild together, getting matching codenames as well.

“Stop!” Vermilion Bird grabbed Crimson Bee.

“Save him, Elder Vermilion Bird!” Crimson Bee shouted.

Vermilion Bird shook her head gravely. She could no longer sense vitality from the man.

“He’s dead.”

“No, impossible...”

As if to prove Vermilion Bird right, Crimson Scorpion’s body split open in all parts, from where bloodied sunflowers bloomed.

One of the flowers had bloomed out of his chest with his no longer beating heart taking the place of the pistils and stamen. Under the red moonlight, the sight was eerie in a devilish way.

Not even gods would be able to save him, let alone Vermilion Bird.

“No!” Crimson Bee cried out in heartbreak.

“Here it comes!” Grass warned panickedly, her face pale. “Eight o’clock! 50 meters...30 meters...”

She had activated Insects King to send her scouts out to look for the enemy, and she got an accurate ping.

Turning to her eight, they saw only the dense sunflowers and the half-a-meter tall blood fog that obscured the roots of the stems. They served as effective cover for whatever was coming their way.

Thirty meters from them, the sunflowers shook and rustled, as if some creature was approaching while staying low on the ground.

“Watch out!” Colorless shouted at her teammates. “Back off!”

With a battle cry, Amon threw the large boomerang in her hand with full force.

It spinned at high velocity near the ground, cutting and scattering the green stems and yellow petals of the sunflowers everywhere like a lawn mower.

Just when the boomerang was going to reach the target, however, clusters of sunflowers writhed and intertwined, the flowers and leaves changing shapes at the same time.

In less than two seconds, the flowers had turned into a straw man.

The boomerang got stuck in it.

Amon looked in shock. Impossible. Even when combined, regular leaves and flowers shouldn’t be able to stop her boomerang!

She didn’t have the time to dwell on it, however. The unknown creature continued to rush at them.

“I’ll kill you!”

His rationality evaporated due to his brother’s death, Crimson Bee charged at the creature, the nails of his two hands transformed into long dark brown stings.

1. Gray Bear’s once colleague, whom Gao Yang and his team fought at the end of the murder investigation. ?