Volume 4: Shadows Under the Neon Lights Chapter 203 Escape
"Do you have any good ideas?" Ke Lan turned her head and glanced at Victoria beside her, forcing a bitter smile on her face.
"No." Victoria answered simply.
"I think we can choose to retreat." Ke Lan said. He still had two and a half magazines of bullets in the Gauss assault rifle in his hand, and the three remaining chambers of the large-caliber hunting pistol in the holster on his waist were full. Four defensive fragmentation grenades were hanging next to the holster. In addition, there were weapons scattered on the ground everywhere at his feet, which could be picked up and used - but none of these things could cause fatal damage to the monster.
Even the large-caliber machine gun mounted on the "Bloodhound" mecha could only injure it with a direct hit. The 25mm high-explosive shells could not even break the monster's skinny arms.
"I wouldn't laugh at you if you just said you wanted to run away," Victoria said, her eyes fixed on the monster that was crawling towards them. "But... do you think we can escape?"
"If you can hold out against this thing for more than twenty minutes, my chances of escaping are pretty good." Ke Lan said sincerely.
"...Should I praise you for your honesty or scold you for being shameless?" Victoria glanced at Ke Lan out of the corner of her eye, then immediately retracted her gaze.
"Thank you for the compliment." Ke Lan raised the gun, pointed at the biochemical monster dozens of meters away, and pressed his finger against the trigger guard. "When I'm too nervous, I always can't help but say a lot of trash. Maybe this can help me relieve my emotions... maybe..."
"But in fact, even if I decide to sacrifice myself to help you, I can't hold on that long." Victoria shook her head slightly, "The equipment I configured today is all specially designed to target the Seed of Corrosion... If, as you said, this monster has no reaction to the active cells of the Flesh-Eating Worm, then all the cards in my hand will become useless."
"I should have allowed you to bring in some heavy weapons earlier... That weapons restriction law should not have much binding force on your Security Bureau, right?" Ke Lan said.
During the conversation, he and Victoria were slowly retreating, while the monster that emerged from Arasaka Yui's body was getting closer... It didn't seem to be in a hurry to hunt them down, as if it was enjoying the feeling of making its prey fall into despair step by step...
The distance between Ke Lan and the other person and the monster has been shortened to less than thirty meters.
"Even with heavy weapons, we may not be able to hit it... With the speed it used to deal with the two Bloodhounds, it can dodge even precision-guided missiles." Victoria whispered.
The only way to guarantee a hit is a large-area coverage attack, but in this case, not only will Ke Lan and Victoria be affected, but the Ark itself will also suffer immeasurable damage.
Of course, the biggest problem is that they simply don’t have such heavy weapons in their hands now.
"Hello, Ke Lan." Victoria suddenly called Ke Lan's name.
"If you want to leave a last message, I'll turn on the recording function on my phone now."
"No, I just want to ask, do you have any hidden tricks?"
"Huh? Hidden means? Why do you think so?" Ke Lan asked with some confusion and vigilance.
"In fact, I have always been curious about you. There are too many suspicious things about you... You were the one who unlocked the seventh-level mercury lock under the glacier ruins, right?"
"No... Actually, I didn't do anything..." Ke Lan shook her head, "If I unlocked that thing myself... It seems that it was not locked at all."
"How did you manage to survive the miraculous underwater city?"
"I've already told you that I was washed to the surface of the sea by the turbulence... why don't you believe it?" Ke Lan explained helplessly... In fact, he did not lie about this. He did fall directly into the sea. By the time his consciousness emerged from the chaos, he was already floating on the surface of the sea.
" ...To be honest, until today, you are still the key suspect of the Security Bureau. Some intelligence personnel even think that you may have a very high status in the heretical sect." Victoria said. Her words reminded Ke Lan of the time when he was mistaken for a "prophet" by those believers in the exile camp. However, that was entirely because of the stone tablet. Before that, he had never even heard of the existence of heretical sects.
"Do you still have doubts now?"
Victoria nodded.
"...It would be great if I was really a senior member of the heretical sect. At least I wouldn't have to die here with you." Ke Lan said. He thought carefully about his "hidden means"... then it might only be the stone spike in his pocket and the language of the Alpha civilization. But since this monster is immune to the active cells of the flesh-eating worms, the stone spike probably won't have any effect. What's more, Ke Lan has no way to stab it with the stone spike... As for the language of the Alpha civilization, it is of no help to the situation in this situation - although it can be used as a code to detonate the bomb installed in the Six Samurai's brain, Arasaka Yui's head had already fallen to the ground. Even if there is a bomb inside, it can't kill the monster!
However, if this monster has a certain level of intelligence and can understand Alpha language, perhaps I can use this method to deceive it and make it think of me as a "lurker" of its own sect...
Ke Lan glanced at Victoria again, and seeing that she was not paying attention to him, he made up his mind and "said" to the monster in Alpha language: "I am not your enemy."
There was no response. It seemed that the monster, like humans, could not hear the language of the Alpha civilization at all.
"Stop! I'm not your enemy!" Ke Lan repeated again.
It still didn't work. The monster was still approaching and was only twenty meters away from them... Ke Lan and Victoria were already within its jumping range and it could attack them at any time.
"Are you planning to run away?" Victoria said in a deep voice. Ke Lan could not hear any emotion in her tone.
"What did you say?" Ke Lan asked in surprise. He almost doubted whether he had heard it wrong.
"I will help you delay as much time as possible. You seize this opportunity and escape back."
“…I was just joking.”
"But I'm not kidding you. Instead of letting the two of us be killed here meaninglessly, it's better to let you escape... At least, you can take the news out." Victoria said to Ke Lan very seriously.
