The search and rescue team members had not yet recovered from the successive shocks.
Immediately after, another figure descended wobbly from the sky—this one’s manner of landing was much more normal.
At the very least, he used a parachute.
The second reinforcement to land was a brawny man over two meters tall, built like a tower of iron.
He was covered head-to-toe in blackened metal armor, the joints emitting a dull scraping sound.
When he landed, the ground seemed to tremble in response.
As soon as the giant landed, he roughly tore off the parachute pack from his back.
His eyes were wide with anger as he stomped over to Qingluan in a few aggressive strides, roaring with a voice like a great bell, “Qingluan! Jumping down without a parachute pack again?! Do you think you’re a lead weight?!”
Hearing this, the previously majestic Qingluan instantly shrank her neck.
Her eyes darted around as she whispered, “I… I just wanted to spend more favorability points… Why are you being so mean…”
“What are you muttering?!”
The giant’s eyes widened further, his tone growing colder.
Qingluan quickly hopped back half a step, her face instantly piling on a flattering smile as she tried to use banter to gloss it over.
“Nothing, nothing! You misheard. Come, come, let me introduce everyone first—!”
She quickly turned her head toward the group of search and rescue members who were still in a state of shock and bewilderment.
She raised her hand toward the grim-faced giant, her tone carrying a hint of boasting.
“This is our Night Hunt squad’s current temporary captain, codename Blacksmith. Just like me, he was ordered here to perform support combat missions.”
Upon hearing this, Blacksmith also temporarily suppressed his anger toward Qingluan.
His gaze turned toward the search and rescue team members, who were supporting each other, everyone wounded and their auras withered.
When he clearly saw the injuries on these people and the “fight to the death” look in their eyes, the sharp glint in his eyes softened rapidly.
His tone couldn’t help but ease significantly, carrying heartfelt respect.
“Brothers, you’ve worked hard… Leave the rest to us.”
The weak Special Intelligence Chief forced himself to lift his head, his face carrying deep concern as he said in a heavy voice, “You two… thank you for the support, but the number of aberrations here is very high, far exceeding expectations…”
The implication in his words was clear: he didn’t want these two powerful reinforcements to be trapped and die in this desperate land just because they were trying to rescue them.
Upon hearing this, Blacksmith waved his hand nonchalantly.
His voice was steady and powerful, carrying a convincing confidence.
“It’s fine. You guys focus on resting and tending to your wounds. Here… it will be over soon.”
After saying that, he slowly turned around.
His blackened armor reflected a cold metallic glint under the westward sun, the plates making a crisp and rhythmic clacking sound as he moved.
He simply stood there, facing the tide of aberrations.
That back, broad as a mountain, seemed to carry a magical power that gave the scarred search and rescue members behind him a long-lost sense of peace for no apparent reason.
“Roar…!”
At this moment, the Tyrant that had been dazed by Qingluan’s aerial drop shook its massive head.
Its feet stumbled a few times, but it eventually managed to stand firm.
A large chunk of its skull was clearly caved in, with dark red blood and unidentified fluids slowly seeping from the cracks.
Instead of weakening it, this only further stimulated its ferocity.
Special variants of this kind, discovered at the dawn of the Oracle Era and known for their absolute destructive power, possessed a tenacity of life far beyond ordinary imagination.
The Tyrant growled, shaking its head.
Its blood-red pupils instantly locked onto Blacksmith—it clearly identified this largest human as the culprit behind the previous sneak attack.
“Roar—!!!”
The confrontation lasted only a few seconds before its brutal nature overrode its brief scrutiny.
The Tyrant suddenly raised its one intact fist, which was comparable to a siege ram.
Carrying a stench of wind that tore through the air, it smashed down with thunderous momentum toward Blacksmith, who stood there seemingly defenseless.
The next moment…
Time seemed to freeze for a split second.
That terrifying fist, capable of flattening an armored vehicle into a pancake, suddenly stopped less than half a meter from Blacksmith’s face.
Qingluan curled her lip to the side, looking as if she had “seen this a thousand times before.”
However, the search and rescue members behind her all wore expressions of sheer horror, as if they had seen a ghost.
Their eyeballs nearly popped out.
In front of the Tyrant’s unstoppable fist, Blacksmith had merely raised his right arm casually and then… extended an index finger.
And yet, he easily blocked the Tyrant’s violently crashing fist!
He didn’t budge an inch!
He didn’t even take half a step back, and not a single crack appeared in the ground beneath his feet!
It was as if he wasn’t blocking the full-force strike of a Tyrant, but merely a light feather.
Blacksmith slightly raised his eyes.
His calm, ripple-less gaze pierced through the gaps in his faceplate, meeting the Tyrant’s blood-red pupils filled with brutality and disbelief.
His entire temperament changed abruptly, no longer peaceful and steady.
His voice came through the faceplate, carrying unabashed contempt and provocation.
“Is that it?”
As soon as he finished speaking, Blacksmith suddenly retracted the index finger that was blocking the fist.
In the same instant, the muscles in his left arm bulged, and he clenched his hand into a fist.
There was no fancy light on that fist, only the most pure and condensed manifestation of power.
With a straight punch posture that was precise to the millimeter and contained the ultimate truths of martial arts, he struck second but arrived first.
He smashed his fist, without any fluff, into the Tyrant’s yet-to-be-retracted fist.
“Crack—Squelch!!”
“ROOOAAAR—!!!”
A tooth-aching, crystal-clear sound of bones breaking mixed with the disgusting sound of flesh being forcibly torn apart by massive force.
This was followed immediately by the Tyrant’s scream, which was distorted by agony.
Under everyone’s horrified gaze, the Tyrant’s terrifyingly thick arm—starting from the point of contact with Blacksmith’s fist—began to snap and shatter section by section like fragile twigs.
White bone shards instantly pierced through the tough, blue-gray skin.
Mixed with a large amount of dark red blood and muscle tissue, it sprayed into the sky like a fountain!
Just one punch.
Blacksmith acted as if he had performed a trivial task, casually shaking off the foul blood clinging to his gauntlet.
His legs bent slightly, and a small crater exploded into the ground beneath his feet.
He soared into the air like a cannonball, raising his fist once more mid-air…
“Wait… stop…”
Driven by biological instinct, the Tyrant subconsciously raised its other relatively intact arm to block.
However, in the face of Blacksmith’s fist, which contained terrifying power, its proud defense was like wet paper.
“Crack!”
Another crisp sound, and the blocking arm snapped upon contact.
Blacksmith’s fist didn’t lose its momentum.
Carrying the bone shards and flesh of the monster’s own arm, it landed solidly and brutally on the side of the Tyrant’s already caved-in head!
“Boom!”
The Tyrant’s massive body was directly flipped by the terrifying kinetic energy contained in that punch.
Like a torn sack being batted away, it smashed heavily into the ground again, kicking up a cloud of dust.
For a moment, it showed no signs of life.
“How… how is this possible…”
One search and rescue team member looked at Blacksmith, who seemed like a god of war descended to earth, and muttered to himself in a daze.
His face was written with the shock of having his world-view overturned.
Hearing this, Qingluan, who had been watching from the side, merely gave him a flat glance before turning back to the blood-soaked Blacksmith, who stood tall like a demon god.
Her tone was calm as she spoke, as if stating an ordinary fact.
“Blacksmith was originally promoted from a border region branch. When our captain chose him to join Night Hunt, many people mocked him for being a useless bottom-tier trash…”
She paused for a moment and continued, “Because… his Divine Oracle rating is only C-rank. It’s the type that sounds very ordinary and can only slowly increase in strength through long periods of accumulation and arduous training—[Mortal’s Hundred Refinements].”
“Back then, many people felt that there was no reason for a C-rank Oracle to enter the headquarters’ elite tactical squad.”
Qingluan cracked her neck and lowered her head to inspect the exaggeratedly styled grenade launcher in her hand, as if speaking about something that had nothing to do with her.
“But, our captain said…”
At this point, her voice rose slightly, carrying an unquestionable trust.
“There are no useless Divine Oracles, only useless Awakened. So she ignored the opposition and recruited Blacksmith.”
“And as it turned out, the captain’s vision is never wrong.”
Qingluan lifted her head, her gaze sweeping across the restless aberration swarm ahead.
Her voice transmitted clearly into the ears of every search and rescue member behind her.
“It’s not just Blacksmith; every member of our Night Hunt squad is like this—”
She raised the heavy grenade launcher with one hand, propping it steadily on her shoulder.
The muzzle aimed at those aberrations that were growing agitated because the Tyrant had been wounded.
Word by word, she said with absolute certainty: “As long as you find the direction that belongs to you and persevere… every underachiever can become, in their respective field, a—”
“Super. Genius!”
The moment she finished speaking!
“BOOM—!!!”
A burst of blazing fire suddenly erupted from the muzzle of the grenade launcher.
…
A seemingly ordinary grenade shot out of the muzzle at a speed difficult for the naked eye to catch.
It traced a graceful arc in the air and landed precisely in the area where the aberrations were most densely packed in the distance.
The next moment, the earth shook and the mountains trembled.
An explosion far louder than a conventional grenade’s blast erupted!
Blinding fire and thick smoke soared into the sky, and actually… actually a small, slowly expanding mushroom cloud rose from the spot!
The violent shockwave instantly tore the aberrations within range into fragments, while those further away were flipped head over heels.
All the search and rescue members looked at this scene in disbelief, exchanging glances.
Their minds were filled with question marks—how could a single-man grenade launcher produce power comparable to heavy bombing?!
“My Divine Oracle is called [Fair Trade], B-rank…”
Qingluan explained to the stunned members behind her as if she were chatting, all while nonchalantly reloading the grenade launcher.
“The effect is absorbing energy, converting it, and re-empowering it.”
She shrugged.
“At first, I went down the wrong path, stupidly taking hits and then converting the power for close-quarters combat.”
“But that was unstable, and the conversion efficiency was pitifully low. Until… I was recruited by the captain.”
As Qingluan spoke, she pulled the trigger again.
“Boom!”
“Boom!”
“Boom!”
With every shot she fired, she cleared a large vacuum zone within the aberration swarm.
The power of the explosions was simply irrational.
She even leisurely fired while turning her head back to look at the members behind her, saying with a chuckle, “The captain said my ability’s characteristics were better suited for… a long-range Sett route? She also said something about maximizing efficiency, actively building up favorability points, and the Haymaker style with thermal weapons… To be honest, I still don’t fully understand those weird phrases, but—”
Her smile became incredibly bright and confident.
“The captain was right! Even a bottom-tier underachiever can become a hero who stands between heaven and earth if they find the right path!”
After saying this, Qingluan suddenly tossed the now-empty grenade launcher aside.
It landed on the ground with a loud clang.
At the same time, she shouted, “Shadow! The gear!”
The next moment.
A search and rescue member standing at the edge of the defensive circle suddenly felt a chill beneath his feet.
He looked down in horror and discovered his own shadow was rippling like the surface of water.
Immediately after, a head popped out from the shadow with a “pop” sound.
“Catch—!”
This sudden scene and voice nearly made the surrounding members jump out of their skins.
They looked over in terror.
They saw the person who had emerged from the shadow quickly toss two massive, silver-white revolvers—almost comparable to small hand-cannons—toward Qingluan.
Then, his head instantly retracted back into the shadow as if he had never appeared.
The coordination between Qingluan and Shadow was clearly instinctive.
Without looking back, she simply reached out and caught the two giant, python-like revolvers spinning through the air with perfect precision.
“Thanks!”
Holding the two heavy revolvers in both hands, she pushed off the ground lightly.
Her entire body lunged like a leopard toward the aberration swarm that had been decimated by the grenades and had not yet reorganized an effective offense.
“Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!”
Dual fire! The muzzles spat out blazing flames.
They were clearly firing bullets, but the moment they left the barrels, they seemed to be imbued with destructive energy.
Every bullet that hit a target exploded with the terrifying power of a falling mortar shell, sending limbs and gore flying everywhere amidst the blasts.
And a scene that made people’s scalps tingle happened next—
That fellow who had been hiding in the search and rescue member’s shadow—his head emerged silently and without warning from the shadow of a swift-type aberration that was about to ambush Qingluan from the flank.
In his hand, he held a triangular military bayonet that glinted with a ghostly cold light and featured blood grooves.
With a face carrying a nearly cruel calmness, he aimed at a certain… ahem… excretory part of that swift-type aberration and thrust it all the way in with precision and ruthlessness!
“ROOOAAAR—!!!!”
A scream mixed with ultimate agony, humiliation, and indignation erupted from the mouth of that swift-type aberration.
Immediately after, under everyone’s stunned gazes, the tip of that triangular bayonet, stained with dark red and filth, actually… burst out from the aberration’s wide-open mouth.
A bayonet no longer than a forearm had actually… achieved a total penetration of an aberration over one and a half meters tall…?!
This absurd, eerie, yet very real scene caused the expressions of every search and rescue member who witnessed it to freeze instantly.
Their faces turned deathly pale.
That was way too sinister!
A Swordbearer standing nearby subconsciously shuddered.
Almost instinctively, he quickly averted his eyes.
At the same time, his right hand uncontrollably and silently… covered his own backside.
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