Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 958: Entering the Maze
Noir lowered his eyes and glanced at his watch - he had just set the countdown, and now there was only one minute and twenty-five seconds left before the countdown reached zero.
"Here it comes." Nouval mouthed to Soap, reaching into his backpack, taking out a folding-handle pickaxe and an engineer shovel, and throwing the engineer shovel to Soap.
"Use this thing? To chisel open the well wall?" Soap looked at the engineer shovel in his hand, then looked at Nouval, his eyes full of speechlessness.
The workmanship of this engineer shovel is indeed very fine. The edge of the shovel blade is even coated with a thin layer of Nino alloy to increase strength and durability. The hollow handle also has four high-ratio Nino alloy reinforcement ribs to prevent the handle from breaking when swinging and under stress. If you want to buy an engineer shovel like this in the black market of the Ark, you have to spend at least nearly five figures of credit points. If you sell it in a place like Mukach Fortress, the price will be even more expensive.
But no matter how good the tools were, what Soap was facing was a well wall that was made of steel bars and high-grade cement concrete, with a thickness of more than half a meter. Even if Soap's powered exoskeleton was not scrapped, it would not be easy to drill through such a well wall with an engineer shovel.
But now, all he can rely on is his own hands...
"This is impossible." Soap said directly, "There is only one minute left, don't waste your energy, unless--"
Before he could finish his words, the Joker attacked.
Along with a dull rumble and a buzzing sound that kept echoing in the cochlea, a hole with a diameter of one meter was directly blown open in the well wall in front of the clown. At the edge of the hole, one could even see steel bars as thick as a thumb that had been torn off by the huge force.
"Have you forgotten that we have this monster... this 'master' next to us? We don't have to put in any effort for this kind of thing." Soap patted Noir's backpack and said.
"I didn't ask you to drill the wall of the well," Noir responded, but he didn't look at the soap, but instead stared at the huge hole.
Under the illumination of the tactical flashlight, they could see a dark pipe slowly approaching them. Without a doubt, these were the two disconnected pipes mentioned by the Joker... part of the Ark's underground maze.
The pipeline is suspended by countless steel cables, and is surrounded by suspended abysses. Looking into the distance, one can only vaguely see some load-bearing steel structure beams... If you jump from here, the depth will be at least one hundred meters. If there are no protective , this height is enough to smash a living person into a pool of meat paste that even his parents cannot recognize.
Soap lowered his head and looked down, subconsciously took a half step back and swallowed his saliva.
"Oh my god, this is... too high, isn't it?" Soap took a deep breath, "Is there no place to climb?"
They did bring parachutes, but they threw the heavy parachute bags away when they left the transport plane - what was the use of the parachutes if the plane was gone?
As if guessing what Soap was thinking, Noir whispered to him, "Even if you still have a parachute, it's useless. You can't open the parachute at this altitude. There's a high probability that you'll hit the ground before the parachute opens."
Soap:"……"
"There are only thirty seconds left." The Joker reminded.
The pipe stopped ten meters away from the abandoned shaft, followed by a teeth-grinding friction sound. The two sections of the pipe seemed to be rotating in opposite directions, and the originally tight joint gradually separated.
"I, we are not going to jump from such a long distance, are we?" Soap's eyes widened, "Even if they are enhanced humans... their jumping ability can't be so abnormal, right?"
"That's why I gave you the engineer shovel." Noir took out a nail gun. "Although I don't know the movement rules of the underground maze, I know that all the movable pipes in the Ark structure have strictly specified safety distances to prevent the pipes from colliding when moving, so the situation where two pipes are close to each other will never happen."
After saying that, Noir looked at the Joker and asked, "Is it time to go over there?"
The clown nodded, took a deep leap, and jumped directly out of the cave.
Just as his body was about to start falling, two tentacles shot out again, grabbed the edge of the left pipe opening, pulled hard, and lifted him up directly.
With the help of this force, the clown flipped forward in mid-air and landed steadily inside the pipe.
"In thirty seconds, this section of pipe will move, hurry up." The clown turned around and urged.
Noval pulled the trigger, and the nail rope shot in and fixed on the inner wall of the pipe. Then he took out an explosive screw powered by gunpowder and pressed it on the top of the shaft.
With a slight explosion, the ten-centimeter-long screw drilled into the well wall, and the nail gun was hung on the metal ring at the end of the screw. Noir pulled the cable a few times, and after making sure that both ends were fixed firmly enough, he placed the pickaxe in his hand on the cable, kicked his feet on the edge of the hole, and slid towards the section of the pipe.
The location of that section of pipe is slightly lower than the abandoned shaft. It is a bit difficult to cross a distance of ten meters by taking advantage of this height difference, but if it is a zipline, it would be completely sufficient.
Soap then understood the purpose of Nouval throwing the engineer shovel to him. He immediately followed suit, placed the engineer shovel on the cable, gritted his teeth and slid out.
However, an accident happened at this time - the place where the shovel handle touched the cable was exactly where the anti-slip grooves were engraved, and the friction was much greater than that of the smooth place. Therefore, the soap slid much slower than Noir, and even had a tendency to stop halfway.
"Damn it, I can't be so unlucky?" Soap's heart skipped a beat and he began to twist his body, hoping to speed up with the force generated by the twisting. However, the result was just the opposite. When he was still four meters away from the pipe, he stopped completely.
"Damn it... can you, can you pull me over?"
Soap felt that his underwear had been soaked by cold sweat, and even his palms were oozing with sweat... Fortunately, the tactical gloves had anti-slip designs on both the inside and outside, otherwise he would not even be able to hold the engineer shovel.
A distance of four meters may not seem far, but it is difficult to jump over it without any leverage. Soap can only try to swing his body back and forth like a swing, trying to use inertia to "throw" himself over.
But he soon discovered that this method was simply not feasible - the fixing point of the front end of the nail rope was in the middle of the inner wall of the pipe. If he swung over, even if the distance was enough, he would hit the lower edge of the pipe opening.
Unless Noir or the Joker could grab him in time, he would definitely not be able to grab the edge of the pipe by himself.
"Try to jump over here, I should be able to catch you!" Nouval lay on the edge of the passage and stretched his arms forward as far as possible.
As for the clown, he just stood in the shadow of the pipe, looking like he didn't care whether Soap would fall to his death or not.
Seeing that the clown didn't move, Soap's heart sank. He asked the clown for help, but he found that the clown didn't seem to want to save him. Come to think of it, an ordinary person like himself is at best a cannon fodder in such an action... The only role he can play is probably to serve as bait...
At first, this clown seemed to only intend to take him away, which meant that only one bait was needed. Now, with Noir already there, his life or death probably didn't matter to him...
Damn it, this person... no, this monster, is he really so cold-blooded and heartless?
At this moment, both Nouvel and Soap heard a despairing "click" sound - the thirty-second countdown had ended, and the section of pipe began to move away abandoned shaft, and the nail rope began to loosen at the two fixed anchor points under the pull of this force.
"Hurry!" Noir glanced at the place where the nail rope was fixed and shouted urgently, "The nail rope can't hold on for much longer, swing over quickly!"
"I... I don't want to die... ah!" Soap shouted breathlessly. Maintaining this posture was already very physically demanding. Even speaking became difficult for him.
"Can't you help him?" Noir turned to look at the silent clown, "This is a very easy thing for you, right? Since you brought us with you, you can't just let us die in a place like this, right?"
"There is something in the pipe. The direction I'm facing is more dangerous than your side. I can't be distracted." The clown said in a deep voice.
"What?!" Nouval turned his head, and only then did he notice that at some point, countless pairs of blood-red eyes had lit up in the depths of the pipe!
Those monsters lurking in the underground maze in urban legends actually exist? !
Nouval felt nothing unusual when he entered the pipe. He even scanned the area with a tactical flashlight, but found nothing except the bare pipe wall.
Where on earth did these eyes, these creatures, come from?
Signs of pipeline movement became more and more obvious. One third of the anchor nails of the nail cable had been pulled out, and the entire cable was stretched straight.
"What's-what?" Soap hissed. "He-he really-won't help?"
"No, there are monsters in the pipes, lots of them!" Noir said in despair, "He is confronting those monsters, we...we can only rely on ourselves."
"Monster? What...monster?" Soap's face was completely distorted, on the one hand because of exhaustion, and on the other hand because of inner fear and despair.
"I don't know either!" Noir said. "Anyway, just swing over here and I'll catch you!"
"No! I really don't want to die!"
"If you don't swing over, you will surely die! Either you will not be able to hold on and fall, or the nail rope will be pulled apart! The longer you delay, the worse the situation will be!" Noir roared.
“I don’t want to die ahhhhhh!”
Soap screamed loudly, closed his eyes, and swung his body forward with his last bit of strength, then loosened his hands.
At the same time , in the pipes at the rear, the monsters seemed to be stimulated by Soap's shouting and rushed towards them suddenly!
Although he knew that a large group of monsters were coming behind him, Nouval did not even look back. Instead, he leaned his upper body out of the pipe and grabbed the soap that was swinging over!
"Don't close your eyes! Look carefully!" Noir shouted.
"Ah!" Soap opened his eyes and stretched his hands forward desperately, but he was still more than ten centimeters away from the bottom edge of the pipe. Just when he thought he was dead, a huge force came from under his ribs - Nouval grabbed the shoulder straps of his tactical vest and "lifted" him up.
But the next moment, fear surged up again - in order to catch himself, the part above Nouval's waist was already outside the pipe. It was impossible for him to pull himself into the pipe. Instead, he would be dragged down by the weight and inertia!
Both of them will fall to their death!
Before Soap could react, he found that he and Noir were being pulled up little by little, and they did not fall into the abyss together as he had imagined.
“What… happened?”
"It's the clown. He has two tentacles wrapped around my ankles and is pulling us up," said Noir.
His face was also pale. It was obvious that he didn't know the clown would make a move in advance, and his leaping out to grab the soap was just a subconscious behavior... But even so, his hands were still tightly grasping the shoulder straps of Soap's tactical vest, with no sign of letting go.
The white joints creaked, and a large area of skin on the wrist was rubbed off by the edge of the pipe. Bright red blood was smeared directly on the ground, leaving a winding blood trail. Only when both of them were pulled into the pipe did Nouval dare to breathe deeply.
Although his hands had left Soap's tactical vest, his fingers were still grasping... Noir wanted to try to move his fingers, but his stiff fingers were completely out of control.
"Hu...Hu...Brother, I owe you a life." Soap sat on the ground, his back against the wall of the passage, speaking intermittently.
"I, we... all owe... the Joker a life." Noir shook his head, raised his bloody hands that he could not move, turned around and sat down opposite the soap.
The two looked at each other, and then looked in the direction of the clown at the same time.
The clown had already rushed deep into the pipe. The two men had no strength to raise their tactical flashlights, so they could not see the clown's figure in the dark. They could only see those bloody eyes running around... Every second, a bloody eye "extinguished". As the number of eyes decreased, a strong smell of blood gradually spread in the pipe.
