novelhk Chapter 30 Let's Give Up the Forceful Attack
Chapter 30 Let's Give Up the Forceful Attack
The night owl lay in the cold mud, slowing its breathing to an almost halting pace.
As one of Pearl Harbor's top scouts, he once moved freely within the heavily fortified camps of the Upper City.
He knew very well how heavily fortified the camp of a mysterious army that had just experienced a bloody battle and possessed terrifying lethality.
Overt sentries, covert checkpoints, magical early warning arrays, and patrolling heavily armored guards.
The night owl peeked out half its head from the edge of the old shipping container, its gaze sweeping across the center of the camp like a hawk's.
However, the scene before him caused a brief blank in the mind of this battle-hardened assassin.
There were no barricades, no visible or hidden sentries, and not even a single patrolman.
Several huge bonfires burned in the center of the open space, illuminating the surroundings.
What shocked him was not the terrifying alchemical weapon, but the way these people dressed in the freezing night.
There were no fully armed sentries on the open ground ahead as expected.
The group was dressed in bizarre, uniform clothing: dirty white T-shirts paired with baggy shorts, and each person casually wearing a bloodstained leather armor over them.
The burly man who was leading the group was loudly complaining to his companions as he worked.
"Damn it, this leather armor is so worn out from carrying bricks, the durability seems to be dropping incredibly fast, and it costs dozens of credits to repair. If I weren't afraid of being ambushed by monsters, I'd really like to work shirtless!"
A night owl lurking in the shadows, its head full of question marks.
He understands durability, but credits? That's strange.
He couldn't understand the tongue-twisting vocabulary, but he witnessed an extremely horrifying scene.
In this environment where a night attack could break out at any time, this group of people not only relaxed their defenses, but even regarded their defensive armor as a burden to their work!
Just as the night owl was filled with doubt and surprise, the burly men in T-shirts and shorts made their move.
They stood around a huge mud pit, holding rough wooden sticks, and began frantically stirring the grayish-white mud inside.
As a professional scout, Night Owl naturally recognized the grayish-white powder. It was industrial coagulant and gravel used in the Upper Town for repairing buildings.
But what shocked him was the group's fanatical attitude.
The man in charge stirred the mixture while letting out rhythmic roars, and the laborers around him stirred it rhythmically under his guidance.
"Eighty! Eighty! Give it your all! The water-cement ratio has to be perfectly controlled; even a slight deviation will result in insufficient hardness!"
A young man with a dog nearby shouted excitedly, "Holy crap! I feel all my muscles heating up, I just leveled up again! Guys, manual labor really does build muscle! Big Goose, pour less water!"
Night Owl's muscles tensed up as he listened.
Staying up all night, frantically stirring industrial coagulants by pure human labor?
Eighty? Is it some kind of countdown spell?
Surely this person's name can't be "Big Goose," right? And what kind of code name is this?
He watched as the group cheered like pilgrims over a hole of mud, and a storm raged within him.
This kind of fanatical, almost mechanical execution is something even the brainwashed assassins in the Upper City couldn't achieve!
Night Owl swallowed hard, forcing himself to look away and gaze at the other side of the camp.
He needs to find the army's armory.
But as soon as he turned his head, his worldview shattered once again.
In a corner of the ruins, a tall, thin man with a buzz cut was standing with his back to him, frantically making some kind of bizarre up-and-down motion in the mud.
Lie down, push yourself up, jump.
It moves at an extremely high speed, like a tireless machine.
"Ninety-eight...ninety-nine...one hundred!"
The tall, thin man collapsed in the mud, drenched in sweat. Far from being in pain, he excitedly pulled out a small notebook and loudly wrote: "Test complete! Currently at full strength, I can do one hundred standard burpees consecutively. My stamina is completely exhausted; I must eat immediately!"
What is he doing? Self-punishment? To train his lung capacity and extreme endurance?
Cold sweat trickled down the Night Owl's forehead. Was this why they could fight like mad dogs on the battlefield, tireless and relentless?!
What happened next completely shattered the common sense of night owls.
The tall, thin man, who had just exhausted himself, casually grabbed a mutated rat, as long as his forearm and covered in pustules, from the muddy puddle beside him.
It wasn't skinned, its internal organs weren't removed, and it wasn't even cooked through.
He opened his mouth and took a bite without hesitation!
"Pfft."
The foul-smelling black blood splattered all over the man's face.
"Ugh...yue..."
The tall, thin man clutched his stomach, his face turning deathly pale, but his tone was one of extreme excitement.
"Holy crap! My stomach is starting to cramp violently! Guys, this is definitely poisoning, it's triggered a weakened state! I can feel my vital signs dropping rapidly! But obviously, this rat isn't as dangerous as the poisonous seawater!"
And this game's taste-blocking system is amazing! I didn't even throw up! Hey Goose, get me some of that antidote you made the other day! I need to test this body's poison resistance limit!
The night cat, hiding in the shadows, bit its lip hard to keep from letting out a terrified groan.
As an assassin, he was an expert on poisons.
The toxin in that mutated rat was enough to make a person vomit until they were dehydrated!
Eating it raw? And recording the body's reactions to the toxicity with an excited expression?
The night owl felt a chill run down its spine. In order to cultivate resistance to toxins, they didn't even consider themselves human!
These demons felt no pain and had no reverence for death.
Night Owl's mental defenses were crumbling; he dared not look at the madman gnawing on a raw rat any longer.
He just wanted to find his biggest target of the night—the surviving law enforcement adjutant—as soon as possible to confirm whether the man had confessed.
Despite his mental discomfort, Night Owl finally spotted his adjutant on the tallest wooden stake in the center of the camp.
Night Owl initially thought his adjutant was being subjected to brutal torture, but what he saw was a hellish scene even more agonizing than physical torture.
The adjutant's eyes rolled back, drool dripped from the corner of his mouth, and his whole body convulsed; he was clearly on the verge of a complete mental breakdown.
Because several outsiders were surrounding him, conducting a creepy interactive test.
A man was standing in front of the adjutant's face, frantically repeating the motion of squatting and standing up, his hips almost touching the adjutant's nose.
"Damn it, why is this guy like a block of wood? I've been trying to get him to talk to me for ages, why isn't he going to give me any information? Is there a hidden mission or not?"
Another man was holding a rusty iron sword and repeatedly scraping it against the adjutant's prized steel armor.
"Ugh, the armor's detail detection is terrible. I've been trying to scrape it for ages and I haven't even gotten a spark. Thumbs down."
Just then, a man in black walked over.
Night Owl recognized him at a glance—this was the demon the scout had described as "melting people into bones and blood with potions."
The demon was holding a chipped, broken bowl, from which pungent green bubbles were rising.
"Stop fussing and move aside." The demon looked expressionlessly at the lieutenant tied to the pillar. "Let me force-feed him this and see if his corpse can reform into a living person tomorrow after turning into water."
Upon hearing this, the adjutant, who was tied to the pillar, let out an extremely pitiful sound, his head lolled to the side, and he was so frightened that he fainted.
The night owl hiding in the shadows had its worldview and common sense about the world completely shattered.
The ultimate humiliation ritual of squatting and standing up...
A vicious curse that scrapes the soul with iron...
And there's that poison that melts flesh and blood... They're actually discussing whether a melted corpse can reassemble?!
The pride of a top assassin vanished in that instant.
Night Owl was horrified to discover that his prized assassination skills and poisoning techniques were as laughable as a baby's toy in the face of this group of vicious demons who ate poisonous rats, were fearless, and had a penchant for perverse torture.
Assassination?
To assassinate a bunch of lunatics who spend their days discussing how to torture themselves and how to test the speed of death?!
Night owls didn't even have the courage to take another look.
Like a water snake that has lost its fangs and only wants to escape, he silently crawled backward and withdrew from this place that disgusted him without looking back.
……
An hour later, just before dawn.
Uptown, Bolton's luxurious study.
The embers in the fireplace were almost out, and Bolton sat in a large, soft chair, his eyes bloodshot.
The shadows shifted, and the owl's figure reappeared.
Bolton jumped to his feet and took a hasty step forward: "How's it going? Have you figured it out? Where are their firepower deployed? Have the armories been marked?"
The night owl stood still, not answering immediately.
The usually confident top assassin now had a look of undisguised confusion and fear in his eyes.
Night Owl untied the heavy bag of gold coins that Bolton had given him a few hours earlier from his waist and tossed it expressionlessly onto the velvet carpet.
"My lord, I'll return this money." Night Cat took a deep breath, his voice very strange. "Give up the idea of a direct assault."
"Also, there's only one survivor. Based on my judgment, he probably didn't confess, so this message is free."
Bolton froze, his brows furrowing deeply. "What do you mean? Do you mean there are thousands of them? Or is the armory underground?"
"No, they don't have an armory."
The night owl slowly raised its head, its expression very complex.
"I have never seen their sacrificial rituals before. My lord, we are facing... a group of hellish lunatics who eat mutated rats alive to test their toxicity, take pleasure in torturing themselves, and have no fear of death whatsoever."
A deathly silence fell over the study.
Bolton looked at the sharpest and most rational assassin in his hands and felt a chill run up his ankles and straight to the top of his head.