Translator: Transn Editor: Transn
At the entrance to the Prism City.
The whole square was lit up, and the roar of machines rented the air. The rescue had lasted for nearly 16 hours, and the Defender, Rock, was waiting in the temporary tent for the latest news with a steely look on his face.
It was rumored that nothing could unsettle him. However, this was a mistake. Lan’s death actually shocked him a great deal, and he blamed himself for not fighting the Fallen Evils. Yet he knew it was not advisable to lament the loss now. The first thing he needed to do at present was to find out what was going on at the bottom level of the building.
After Exit No. 4 was under attack, Exits 01 and 05 were also surrounded by the Fallen Evils. Fortunately, the rescue team there learned Lan’s lesson and eradicated the enemies at a minimal cost, but the casualty rate was still astonishing. Like what had happened at Exit 04, all the Fallen Evils were transformed from the staff members at the bottom level. The death toll had reached 320, which was almost the total number of the staff members on duty.
Clearly, it would not be long before the Fallen Evils took over the entire bottom floor.
Rock did not know why those people would merge with the fallen cores within just a few hours of the breach. The Prism City was equipped with the most advanced emergency system. Even if the bottom floor was completely cut off, they could still sustain themselves for a while. They should have known that the Association would never abandon its members. As long as the exits were not blocked, they would soon be able to escape.
However, Rock currently had no time to give it much thought. He was only concerned about the status of the central hub. There were more than 3,000 fallen cores stored in the central hub. If those cores were released to the public, the consequence would be disastrous. There would be far more than 300 Fallen Evils as they were facing now.
“Mr. Rock.” Just at that moment, a man in a suit came into the temporary headquarters and whispered to him.
“Are we really so unlucky?” Rock’s face clouded over. The rescue team had just told him that the Erosion had suddenly expanded. There were two groups of touring martialists from Cargarde Peninsula currently in the Prism City. Since the Erosion had destroyed the middle part of the building, the floor closest to the Erosion slid into a hollow, and the two touring groups thus fell.
Based on the current situation, these tourists might not be able to survive.
“What should we do?” the man in the suit consulted. “Some celebrated martialists from Cargarde are among them. If we fail to handle this crisis properly, we may be caught in some diplomatic problem.”
“Try to find them and save as many as we can. How do I know what we should do? It’s something beyond our control.”
“But the Defender from the peninsula may not listen to you…”
Rock lapsed into a short silence and said, “I see. Just hush this thing down. I’ll ask the director of the Sky City to assist us.”
As soon as the suit man left, a liaison officer came up to Rock.
“We’ve heard something from Exit 01! They’ve opened up a passage and are now going down!”
“Connect them to the main screen,” Rock said in a low voice.
“Got it!”
After a brief noise screen, Rock saw what was going on at the front. From the shooting angle, he judged that the video footage was transmitted from the head-mounted camera that the team leader was wearing. The lighting down there appeared to be quite good, although a few lights were flickering. The emergency electric motor seemed to be working, so the elevator was still functioning. This could indeed save the rescue team a lot of time.
However, nobody cheered up at the scene. Everyone rested their eyes on a peculiar “red spot”. The red spot was in an irregular shape, but it was perfectly embedded in the concrete like a piece of asymmetric artwork.
Rock knew this was definitely not a coincidence. Everything contaminated by the Erosion would disappear, including the Force of Nature.
It was this red spot that separated the Prism City into two parts.
“Forget about the headquarters,” Rock instructed. “Go down to the bottom level and make sure that the central hub is intact.”
The rescue team, after receiving the order, immediately went down. Fortunately, they did not encounter any Fallen Evils on their way. Rock did not see a lot of traces of fight either. The building was dead quiet. Everything was in a perfect order, as though the building was simply abandoned.
When the rescue team reached the central hub, everyone in the temporary headquarters gasped.
Rock clenched his teeth.
Another Defender named Furious Flames was slashed in half, its upper body clinging to the steel gate around 10 centimeters thick, all his clothes reduced to ashes. In the center of the steel gate was a huge, irregularly shaped hole, which seemed to be drilled out under high heat.
Apparently, Furious Flames had attempted to stop the invaders from entering the central hub but had failed.
This was definitely not the work of Fallen Evils.
It took the rescue team a while to open the gate. All the cores were gone.
There was a dread silence in the headquarters. Everyone dazed at the screen, horror-struck.
Rock clenched his fist even tighter. He knew that the staff at the bottom would not take the fallen cores for no reason. He ordered solemnly, “Get the surveillance footage. I want to see what kind of monster it was!”
His sonorous voice jerked the audience out of the trance. Since they had immediately switched over to the contingency power, the surveillance system still worked well. Despite a few broken cameras, most of the video footages was still there. The technical support soon inserted the spare hardware, and the video was transmitted to the big screen. All the executives in the headquarters was taken aback by what they saw.
The moment the Erosion had expanded, several blood clots had escaped from the red hollow and hit the floor. These clumps of blood wriggled and gradually transformed into human-shaped monsters. One of them had the ability to melt everything down. It instantly penetrated the floor and reached the bottom level. Another monster was even more terrifying. It immediately impaled a few martialists and turned them into puppets, making them look like inferior Fallen Evils controlled by the Force of Nature.
Within half an hour, the bottom level was breached. People who were alive all merged with the fallen cores in a daze and became their enemies’ puppets. After that, the monsters “devoured” the rest of the fallen cores and created a passage in the central hub before they vanished from the camera.
It was Rock’s first time witnessing such an incredible power. The fact that the Erosion generated new Fallen Evils horrified him.
He somehow thought of the joint mission last time, where the survivors had told him about the monster coming from the “man-made Erosion”.
It appeared that the Erosion, which they used to believe could engulf everything, had changed.
Also, he sensed the blatant animosity from the Erosion from the way those monsters attacked the central hub and the people.
But Rock believed that as long as all the martialists worked together, they would eventually find a solution to eliminate these enemies, no matter how powerful they appeared to be. The most important task now was to raise the morale and not let the fear conquer them.
“Everyone, just as you’ve seen, this isn’t an accident. The Erosion is invading this city!” Rock announced as he straightened up. “It sounds quite strange but that’s the truth. Let me make it clear. This is a war! They aim to take this world! I’ll contact all the other Martialist Associations immediately, and we should unite together and exterminate the enemies!”
At these words, Rock paused for a second and then said, “Like my student Lan said, the Battle of Divine Will has begun.”