Volume One: Planet of Beasts Chapter 51: Shift Change

Volcano scorpions are, strictly speaking, dark red. By day, they look like burning lumps of coal, though they do not emit light on their own, rendering them invisible once night falls. Powerful searchlights sweep across the city walls, but there are inevitably blind spots the light cannot reach. When human eyes adjust between glaring brightness and pitch darkness, blind spots and delays easily occur—enough to be fatal at a critical moment.

Boom—

A surface-to-surface missile traced a dazzling red arc through the void, vanishing into the darkness. The next second, a blinding flash pierced the firmament, and an earth-shattering explosion made the entire world tremble. With the detonation of each surface-to-surface missile, a vacuum was cleared upon the earth, and the onslaught of the volcano scorpions briefly waned. Yet as more and more volcano scorpions surged forward, both the duration and the scale of this respite shrank.

The lethality of the missiles was undoubtedly immense, with each one clearing a radius of one kilometer. Still, they were no match for the sheer, endless waves of volcano scorpions.

The missiles could not be fired too close, meaning the volcano scorpions right beneath the city walls had to be dealt with manually.

"Grenades! Grenades! Over here, hurry!"

"The volcano scorpions are about to scramble up! Everyone, push harder!"

"Don't be afraid! The more afraid you are, the faster you die! You must not retreat right now—if anyone falls back, everyone else is doomed!"

...

Experienced veteran hunters shouted words of encouragement to the others. They formed a defensive line; dangerous though it was, they could barely hold it. Once someone faltered, the defense line would instantly collapse, and by then, not a single person would escape the volcano scorpions scrambling up. Running meant certain death, while fighting with their lives offered a slim chance of survival.

What one fears most is precisely what happens. A young man wearing a beret, responsible for suppressing fire, saw his ammunition run dry just as the supply crew had yet to arrive. He caught sight of two volcano scorpions poking their heads out, their stingers already cocked. The correct course of action would have been to draw his pistol and fire; at a distance of less than a meter and a half, anyone who had practiced shooting for ten days or half a month could have managed it effortlessly. Instead, he made the worst possible choice: he tossed aside his heavy machine gun, turned, and ran.

And he ran fast, darting five or six meters away in a single bound.

Splat—

Dark red venom spewed forth. The hunter standing closest took the hit head-on, white smoke instantly rising from his face. Three men let out miserable screams, clutching their faces with both hands, yet the agony could not be relieved at all. Two other hunters standing slightly further away were splattered with a considerable amount of venom. One of them reacted with swiftness, stripping off his jacket directly before drawing a hunting knife. With a swift stroke, he carved away the skin that had been splashed with venom. Blood gushed forth, but the danger was averted. The other man, though he also managed to strip off his jacket in time, lacked the ruthlessness to make the cut, hesitating with the dagger in hand. Within a few seconds, the corrosion had already spread across half his chest, affecting his internal organs. The surrounding people looked at him with eyes full of pity; it was too late to act now even if he wanted to.

Bang! Bang!

Two gunshots rang out, and the two volcano scorpions preparing to spit venom a second time exploded. It was Li Juxu who fired. Snipers cultivated the habit of keeping an overview of the entire battlefield; before anyone else could react, he had already shifted his muzzle and taken aim. Rushing forward a few paces, he swapped his Huben-74 assault rifle for a pistol, firing continuously toward the outside of the wall. Once the magazine was emptied, he immediately reloaded. Seizing that window, Little Sister also rushed up, her submachine gun unleashing a continuous barrage outward for over a dozen seconds, finally blasting all the volcano scorpions clinging to the wall to death.

Seeing this, everyone breathed a sigh of relief, their gazes toward Li Juxu and Little Sister filled with gratitude. Because the targets were volcano scorpions, the vast majority of hunters chose heavy weaponry characterized by ferocious firepower, bulky frames, and heavy weight, which made movement rather inconvenient. It was not that they didn't want to help, but that they lacked the time.

Bang—

Following a crisp gunshot, the fleeing beret-wearing youth collapsed rigidly, a single bullet hole in his temple oozing fresh blood as the cold voice of the newly arrived deputy squad leader, Mountain Eagle, rang out.

"Desertion in the face of battle results in on-the-spot execution!"

The hunters on the city wall fell into a dead silence. Everyone had hated, resented, and despised the beret for fleeing. Yet seeing him executed, they inevitably felt a sense of shared sorrow for a kindred spirit, their complex emotions churning. The deputy squad leader fired several more rounds, putting an end to the few venom-splattered men who were still struggling and screaming in agony.

They could no longer be saved; putting them out of their misery was a release.

The ammunition finally arrived. The staff members were dripping with sweat—they were not slacking off or dragging their feet, but truly overwhelmed. On the city walls, the consumption of ammunition every minute was astronomical. The deputy squad leader temporarily transferred five more hunters to stabilize the sector's defense line, but everyone knew that without super firepower on the scale of surface-to-surface missiles, they could not hold out much longer.

Setting aside the questions of adequate ammunition or weapon wear and tear, human stamina is finite. When stamina wanes, reaction times slow down, and mistakes become inevitable. The command staff must have factored this in, for whenever the situation grew perilous, the close-in weapon systems roared to life.

The low, engine-like roar set blood boiling. Dozens of metallic lines composed of bullets swept back and forth across the ocean of beasts, slicing it into fragments. The sheer lethality was beyond calculation; Li Juxu estimated that five thousand volcano scorpions were blown to pieces every single second.

The close-in weapon systems roared continuously for 180 seconds before falling silent.

The gun barrels needed cooling, and the ammunition required replenishment; it was not as simple as laymen imagined that they could fire infinitely. The close-in weapon systems could discharge 25,000 rounds per minute, each round costing roughly eighty copper coins. With twenty such systems firing simultaneously for three minutes, one could imagine how exorbitant the cost was.

Even with such devastating strikes, the onslaught of the volcano scorpions was merely slowed down. The overall horde did not seem to diminish; there were simply too many of them.

Every batch of rocket-propelled grenades brought up was fired off immediately, the explosions resembling massive fireworks. Every invited hunter had believed themselves to be the hero who could turn the tide before ascending the city wall. Yet upon beholding the scene outside, they fell utterly silent. All grandiose boasts and delusions of being the protagonist of this era vanished like a dream. Once they set up their machine guns and began firing, their mindset shifted again: they no longer harbored hopes of winning the war, praying only that they would not be targeted by the volcano scorpions and could hold out a little longer—long enough to reach the shift change, which would be the ultimate victory.

Li Juxu and Little Sister trusted each other implicitly and cooperated seamlessly. Though they encountered danger repeatedly, their tacit coordination successfully resolved every crisis. The others were not so fortunate; one after another fell. Even before the shift change arrived, half the hunters around Li Juxu and Little Sister had been replaced.

A super cannon atop the city ramparts suddenly flared with light like a glowing bulb. In an instant, an overwhelming sense of oppression gripped everyone. Accompanied by the sudden dimming of all lights across the entire settlement, a blue ripple swept across the earth.

Hum—

The ground suddenly dropped significantly in elevation. Upon closer inspection, the earth had not been shaved down; rather, a thick layer had been sheared right off the volcano scorpions, turning at least hundreds of millions of them to ashes in a fraction of a second.

An electromagnetic railcannon!

Every hunter and soldier upon the city wall breathed a sigh of relief. The shift change had finally arrived.