Chapter 281

His edge right now was simple: he had plenty of Metal Crystal, and he was hidden.

Their edge was simpler: too many men.

With Cliff Baxter’s kind of greed for Crystal, there was no way that bastard had handed out two Metal Crystal to every squad. Not a chance.

So Magnus Specter lay flat in the rubble and kept thinking.

There was still time. Plenty of it.

If things really went bad, he could wait until the second half of the night, when men got drowsy and their bones softened, then take a Nature Crystal and sneak a hit on their infantry fighting vehicles. Kill as many as he could. If that still wasn’t enough, he could just clutch a pile of grenades and rush the power house head-on, blast the whole damn place apart.

He stayed there in the ruins for nearly three hours.

The six infantry fighting vehicles never moved once.

Not a sound. Not a stir.

Magnus Specter even started wondering if there was anyone inside at all. Maybe they were playing some empty-fort trick.

Just as he was hesitating, his ear twitched.

Noise.

Not far off.

A mess of voices, rough and hurried, like men arguing under their breath. Then, all at once, a man’s scream ripped through the dead night, sharp as a knife. The scream kept going. The noise around it swelled fast.

Magnus Specter quickly raised his night-vision binoculars and swept the dark.

Then he saw it.

At the far corner of a building, around the bend, there were points of light. Several at first, then more. Shadows moved in a hurry, too many to count cleanly. At least a hundred of them, moving in formation, coming this way fast.

Above them, dozens of giant bats were diving in turns.

More firelight flared among the shadows. Shovels with torches, most likely.

The soldiers below were shouting, swinging their flaming shovels back at the bats, but every so often someone still got snatched into the air, followed by a burst of miserable howling.

Magnus Specter stared, a little dumbstruck.

More than a hundred men.

Not one of them carrying a gun?

People were already dead, and still they weren’t using Metal Crystal. Hell, not even a single shot had been fired.

Just how poor were Cliff Baxter’s supplies?

As he watched, stunned, one soldier suddenly dropped from the claws of a giant bat. The man hit the ground, scrambled up at once, and hurried back into formation.

That one had to be an officer.

If there was any Metal Crystal, it was probably on him.

Magnus Specter couldn’t make sense of it. They would rather throw away a soldier’s life than spend one Metal Crystal.

The group of a hundred-plus kept drawing closer. The infantry fighting vehicle nearest them had already opened its rear hatch. A dozen or so soldiers jumped down, nervous as cats, each holding a torch.

The moment they hit the ground, bats dove at them too.

A shift change?

Magnus Specter understood in a flash.

But then another thought hit him, and it made no damn sense.

Why switch guard at night?

They had electric grid all around them. What they had to deal with were sparrows and bats. And at night, the bats were clearly fiercer than the sparrows in the day.

So why now?

Why in the dead middle of the night?

Why not change in daylight?

His thoughts started spinning hard.

This was the best time to strike. No question.

They had numbers, sure. But the fresh batch had all their Crystal on one man. Without Metal Crystal, killing them would be easier than crushing ants.

He looked at their clothes again.

Same as his.

Exactly the same.

If he could rush into the middle of them while things were chaotic, they wouldn’t be able to tell who belonged and who didn’t.

Maybe they had some code words, some passphrase.

Didn’t matter.

There was no time to waste.

Magnus Specter made his choice in one clean cut.

He pulled thirty grenades from his space, crawled out of the rubble, ran forward, yanked the pins one after another, one a second, and hurled five straight into the guard-changing column. Then he spun around, rushed back into the rubble, and stuffed another five grenades into his pockets.

On the second run, he went the other way, circling to the far side of the power house.

An infantry fighting vehicle spotted him at once.

The heavy machine gun on the vehicle’s flank swung toward him and opened fire.

Your own men are dying over there, and I didn’t see you bastards fire that thing once.

Now I’m just running over here, wearing the same damn clothes as you, and suddenly you’re not afraid of wasting bullets?

Every bullet that hit him knocked his body half a step back. He clenched his teeth and drove forward at top speed, running and throwing at the same time, flinging grenades straight toward the power house.

One blast after another tore the night apart.

The rear hatches of the other five infantry fighting vehicles slammed open. Soldiers poured out in a rush, all of them tense, all of them rattled.

The instant the power house got hit, they knew disaster was on them.

Magnus Specter kept circling the power house.

He had no idea what it looked like inside, no idea whether there were protective measures around the generators. So he only had one thing to make sure of—

if he blew it, he had to blow it clean, all at once, no room left for luck.

So he ran the perimeter, throwing grenades as he moved.

The soldiers under Cliff Baxter’s command were already in chaos. Some had used Metal Crystal, but even now they still couldn’t find where the enemy was.

Magnus Specter threw another thirteen grenades at the power house.

Inside the wreckage, beneath smashed brick and shattered debris, something caught hard and fierce. Fire gushed outward, roaring through the ruin.

If he had guessed right, the place was running diesel generators.

And that fire—

that had to be diesel going up.

The power house sat near the center of Lightwater Residences, so from where he was, there was no way to see whether the beasts outside had already begun their assault.

But Magnus Specter was sure of one thing now.

The power house was done for.

That was enough.

He lifted his head and flicked a quick glance into the air. Then his feet shifted, and he ran toward a cluster of bats wheeling in the dark.

One giant bat folded its wings and dove.

Its two huge claws snapped down, one seizing both his legs, the other locking around his upper body, and in the next breath Magnus Specter was hauled into the air again.

This was exactly the escape he had been waiting for.

Up in the sky, he didn’t panic. He looked down calmly.

Too dark.

He couldn’t make out much.

He could only judge his position by the torch-glow near the power house, those scattered points of light growing smaller and smaller beneath him.

When he felt the distance was about right, he drew his meter-long military spike and drove it upward into the skull of the giant bat that was chewing at his body with savage force.

...

Lightwater Residences. Cliff Baxter’s force.

From the second red light until now, Cliff Baxter’s men had benefited from the electric grid design. The force had not taken heavy losses. Luck had favored them too—only one meteor had fallen into Lightwater Residences, and it had smashed into the ruined remains of the building Sophia Reid had blown up before.

After suffering that last loss at Sophia Reid’s hands, Cliff Baxter had become nearly paranoid. He sent out one patrol vehicle almost every hour, and for the power house alone, he had specially assigned a hundred Metal Crystal soldiers to stand watch around the clock.

And even then, someone still managed to blow the power house from the inside.

All this time, Cliff Baxter’s force had kept its head down and quietly built strength. They hadn’t just hollowed out all of Springvale City—even the towns and villages around Springvale City had been swept clean. Cliff Baxter had sent men out to dig every meteor dry.

Their method was far rougher than Magnus Specter’s.

They filled it with bodies.

They lit circles of meteor soil around the meteor. Ground-dwelling apocalypse beasts wouldn’t come near. As for the sparrows in daylight, soldiers simply killed them with the bayonets in their hands. On average, every meteor they dug cost Cliff Baxter’s force three or four dead or wounded soldiers.

Up to now, more than twenty thousand soldiers were still stationed inside Lightwater Residences.

And the number of Crystal they held had already climbed past forty thousand.

Just moments ago, right after Magnus Specter blew the power house, a huge roaring sound rolled out from inside Lightwater Residences.

That noise stirred the rat demon beasts packed layer upon layer outside, and the bats above as well.

On one side of the outer perimeter, more than ever before, over a dozen rat demon beasts made another attempt to slam into the electric grid.

They weren’t shocked.

The rat demon beasts had some intelligence. Not much, but enough. They weren’t the kind to stand there blankly.

In the first wave that hit the grid, over a dozen rat demon beasts crashed in. Seven or eight were flung back. Five smashed through the electric net and charged straight into the residential compound.

The moment the others saw their own kind get in, the second wave went mad.

From all around, hundreds of rat demon beasts lunged toward the electric grid at the same time...