Blood Queen - Chapter 2 Part 3

As soon as he finished speaking, Meng Huai, the first to recover from the shock, immediately grabbed a portable rocket launcher carried by one of the team members and pulled the trigger, aiming at the huge meatball that occupied most of their field of vision. A high-explosive incendiary warhead rocket flew towards the target.

Unfortunately, a tentacle suddenly lashed out in mid-air, deflecting the subsonic rocket, which exploded into a scorching fireball on the thick ceiling.

Almost the instant the explosion sounded, more than 30 vampires of varying heights and builds rapidly approached, a third of them Knight-level! Just the sight of several highly boiling blood-deformed bodies was enough to know they were not to be trifled with.

This scale of charge meant an absolute disadvantage for the Black Armor Squad assault team members, who numbered less than 60 and were already in a state of extreme fatigue. To the extent that the vampire Baron hiding in the darkness had not yet deigned to personally intervene.

The intelligence had clearly been inaccurate; the strength of this so-called vampire Baron’s small family had been severely underestimated.

It seems we’ll be leaving our lives here today… Xia Yan thought as he numbly pulled the trigger, a cold expression on his face. Suddenly, an image appeared in his mind, and the corner of his mouth revealed a bitter smile.

Semi-automatic shotguns, long-range support sniper rifles, pistols, hand grenades, the Dark Arrow Unit officers and soldiers desperately unleashed the ammunition in their hands. One demolition expert even wrapped several high explosives around himself with a look of despair on his face.

“Xia Yan, I leave this to you! Organize and establish a defense line!”

Meng Huai tossed aside the empty portable rocket launcher and unstrapped a large-caliber anti-materiel sniper rifle from his back that he had not used until now. Without looking back, he ran towards a dark corner.

Amidst the intermittent gunfire and even explosions, in the blood pool, the naked girl had already walked to the front of the giant blood mass, smilingly looking at the fleshy tentacles suspended in mid-air, ready to embrace the blood mass to complete the final blood seed planting ceremony and become a dreamlike existence.

In a dark corner in the distance, atop a tall abandoned locomotive, a flash of fire erupted. A large-caliber silver alloy bullet, propelled by expanding propellant, shot out of the barrel at nearly three times the speed of sound, raising a thunderous roar in the enclosed and spacious underground warehouse.

In the blood pool, the naked girl’s head suddenly burst like a watermelon hit by a heavy hammer. Her petite body, after a few seconds of stupor, slowly fell forward into the blood pool, just like the lowly Thralls that had been used as blood food before.

The old man, who had been watching family members attack the Dark Arrow Unit, now had eyes that were almost burning red. He turned his head towards a certain corner in the darkness, revealing an expression of uncontrollable anger.

The old man’s eyes flashed, and slowly the blood temperature in his body rose. A certain special protein accumulated in his bone marrow began to rapidly break down. The muscle tissue and vocal cords in his throat simultaneously underwent an imperceptible deformation, and a directional high-energy infrasonic wave rushed towards the dark corner where the long-range sneak attack had come from.

At the same time, the huge meatball in the blood pool seemed to sense the death of its seeding target and began to become agitated.

More tentacles extended from the meatball, angrily and chaotically lashing at the surroundings, even breaking several low-level vampires in half, splashing up clouds of blood mist.

“Clan Leader… Grandmother has lost control. If we don’t leave now, we’ll all be devoured by her… Let’s go quickly, Clan Leader!” The middle-aged man behind him, with a pale face, grabbed the old man’s arm and retreated.

“Such a good opportunity, such a good opportunity! Alas…” The Tang family clan leader now shed tears of bright red, beating his chest and stamping his feet, his face full of regret. “Kill! Kill them all!”

After shouting hoarsely, the two quickly walked towards the other end of the darkness in regret and anger, not caring at all about the gunfire that suddenly intensified several times behind them.

Following the old man’s order, almost all the vampires present had blood-red eyes, recklessly burning and decomposing the special blood energy protein painstakingly accumulated in their bone marrow, breaking through the threshold of the boiling blood state. One by one, their bodies, whether thin or sturdy, rapidly deformed as they ran at high speed.

…

Inside the underground storage area, following a thunderous explosion, all sounds unanimously ceased. Except for the burning ruins and choking disgust, it seemed to have fallen into a strange silence as if time and space had been transformed.

At this moment, in the underground factory that had been silent for decades, the dull sound of mechanical movement suddenly rang out.

The dark ceiling vibrated deeply and rhythmically, and streams of outside air began to pour into the enclosed space. The underground warehouse area, filled with gunpowder smoke, actually felt a few hints of coolness.

It was probably the support team remaining on the ground that had found and activated the emergency ventilation system.

Severed limbs of Dark Arrow Unit officers and vampires were everywhere. The few team members who still had intact bodies were all lying unconscious on the ground.

In the blood pool, the terrifying meatball was constantly expanding in volume. Even each tentacle had grown considerably thicker, slowly moving out of the blood pool while picking up vampire corpses along the way and absorbing them into its body.

“Is anyone there, is anyone still alive… that monster… the monster… it can regenerate… kill it…”

From a dark corner in the distance came Meng Huai’s weak but stubborn murmur, accompanied by coughing from severe lung injury, clearly audible in the vast underground space.

Seeming to understand the Captain’s meaning, Xia Yan vomited a mouthful of fresh blood, then staggered towards the blood pool, still clutching the last incendiary grenade in his hand.

“Brother!”

A familiar voice came from behind, and a young man ran out from the smoke, directly supporting Xia Yan’s body.

“Give me all the hand grenades… Xiao Yao, go check on the Captain…” Xia Yan said while spitting blood and reaching for Gu Yao’s front.

“Brother! I’ll do it!”

Looking at the giant meatball still twisting and expanding in the distance, as well as more than a dozen flamboyantly waving blood and flesh tentacles, Gu Yao snatched the incendiary grenade with the red mark from Xia Yan’s hand and combined it with the few hand grenades on his own body.

Running forward for more than ten meters, Gu Yao threw the ammunition in his hand with all his might, then rolled on the ground with a standard tactical move, ducking behind a dilapidated, rusty pressure vessel.

A huge flame rose from the terrifying meatball, the shock wave almost sweeping across all protruding objects in the underground space. The high temperature boiled the fresh blood in the blood pool, evaporating it into clouds of foul-smelling steam.

The meatball in the blood pool was unrecognizable in the flames and high-temperature shock wave. All the tentacles were either broken or fell powerlessly from the air into the boiling blood pool.

Not even bothering to look back at the direction of the blood pool meatball, Gu Yao got up and rushed towards Xia Yan, supporting his body to stand up.

“Brother… Did I… did I do alright?”

Nervous, fearful, excited, sad, countless expressions piled up on Gu Yao’s baby face, which was blackened by gunpowder smoke. The few misaligned lip muscles left from his childhood cleft lip corrective surgery trembled slightly.

“Go check on the Captain…”

Xia Yan spat out another mouthful of fresh blood, his face gradually turning pale, but still stubbornly pointing towards a certain dark corner.

Just as the two turned around, two long black shadows flashed out of the blood pool again, whistling through the air like long whips, directly piercing into Xia Yan and Gu Yao’s bodies.

The huge charred blood and flesh mass that occupied most of the blood pool, along with its last two blood and flesh tentacles, as if completing the final ritual, began to carbonize, crumble, and disintegrate, piece by piece, chunk by chunk, melting into the boiling blood.

“Brother…”

Gu Yao moved his lips, staring in disbelief at the wound on his abdomen, as if unable to believe what had just happened.

Xia Yan, whose side waist had been pierced by a tentacle, had already forgotten the pain and was quietly looking at Gu Yao’s gradually reddening pupils, feeling a bone-chilling coldness in his heart.

Gu Yao had been blood-infected… Looking at his own side waist, the mangled wound was clearly visible.

“My eyes… quickly, look at my eyes!”

Xia Yan weakly knelt on one leg, grabbing Gu Yao’s hand and speaking weakly but anxiously.

“Brother… have we both been blood-infected…”

Gu Yao crouched beside Xia Yan, touching the wound on his abdomen and looking at the other’s reddening irises, and actually smiled: “Brother, I didn’t drag you down, did I…”

After saying this, he collapsed to the ground.

Scanning the underground space as the dust settled, apart from the scattered Dark Arrow team members still slightly twitching, there were endless severed limbs as far as the eye could see. Xia Yan painfully closed his eyes.

A few seconds later, Xia Yan lifted Gu Yao up again and slowly moved towards a certain corner. Soon, under a shattered large machine, they found Meng Huai, whose body was intact and slightly twitching.

After killing the dangerous target, Meng Huai himself had suffered internal organ rupture and massive bleeding from the subsequent infrasonic attack. Only by injecting himself with adrenaline at the last moment did he still have a few breaths left. The large-caliber anti-materiel sniper rifle that had done the job had long since disappeared.

Looking at Meng Huai’s eyes, Xia Yan smiled happily: “Captain, it’s alright, you’re not blood-infected…”

After saying this, he tremblingly pulled out a vial of painkiller from his waist and mustered his strength again to inject it into Meng Huai’s body, while muttering: “Hold on a bit longer… support is almost here…”

“Are you… are you leaving…”

As the painkiller took effect, Meng Huai’s mind began to blur, but his gaze remained firmly fixed on Xia Yan and Gu Yao’s now-red pupils.

“I promised the director I would take care of Xiao Yao… I’m sorry, Captain Meng, but Xiao Yao needs to live, and I need to live too…”

After saying this, Xia Yan hugged the unconscious Gu Yao tightly and slowly turned around, stumbling towards a certain corner.

“No… you can’t leave… on the spot… on the spot…”

Meng Huai on the ground struggled to support his upper body, tremblingly pulling out a pistol from his waist, searching for Xia Yan’s back in his swaying and confused vision.

The two young men moving away seemed to split into multiple shadows in the smoke and flames, making it impossible to distinguish the real from the false.