"Captain, your Large Sniper Rifle can't be used anymore!" Mary looked at the closed sniper rifle case and asked curiously, "So what are we supposed to do next?"
"Then we rest! Mei and the others will come pick us up tonight anyway! As for the Sniper Rifle, it's just a prototype. We can find someone to fix it when we get back." Xina yawned, found a relatively clean patch of shade on the rooftop, leaned against the wall, and went back to sleep.
Mary and Rosa looked at each other. They seemed like they wanted to say something, but seeing their captain fast asleep, they ultimately chose to slack off together.
Evening...
"Beep beep beep—"
The Assault Vehicle's horn sounded downstairs, jolting Mary and Rosa awake. They swiftly drew the pistols at their waists with their right hands while rubbing their eyes and getting up to survey the surroundings.
The two looked downstairs through their binoculars and finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Mary holstered her gun and yawned. "So Captain Mei and the others came to pick us up. You scared me."
"Mm." Rosa put away her sidearm, stepped forward, and gently pushed Xina. "Captain, wake up. It's time to go home!"
Although Rosa's voice was not quiet, Xina still had her eyes tightly shut as she leaned against the wall, as if she had not heard Rosa calling her.
"Huh... Captain?!"
Rosa put a little more strength into her hands. Under the stronger push, Xina's head tilted to the side, and her whole body toppled stiffly in that direction.
"!"
At that moment, Rosa finally realized something was wrong. She hurriedly bent down, checking Xina's pulse with one hand and her breathing with the other. "Thank goodness, her heartbeat is steady and she's breathing normally! It shouldn't be anything serious. Let's hurry and take the captain downstairs!"
"Mm!" Mary picked up Xina's weapon case with one hand and hurried after Rosa toward the stairwell.
A thousand meters beneath the surface, in the dark underground, an ice-blue ball of yarn-like matter began to unfurl. A black-red single eye slowly opened within its thick, elongated body.
Beep beep beep—beep beep beep—
"Huh! Why is the Detector going off?"
Following the direction Heavy Armor Bunny pointed, Mei saw a small red dot flashing rapidly on the Detector beside the dashboard, its brightness steadily increasing.
"This is... something's happening!" Mei took the Detector, opened the car door, and stepped out, looking toward where the red dot was flashing.
The broad road was completely empty. Let alone a massive Honkai Beast, there was only a single Death Stalker that had just crawled out from some unknown corner.
"Captain Mei, what's wrong?"
The moment Rosa rushed out after carrying Xina downstairs in one breath, she saw Mei comparing the Detector against the road surface. Thinking something had happened, she hurried over.
"A Honkai Energy Reaction Point has appeared ahead of us, and its Energy Level Intensity is still rising. But all I can see ahead is one very ordinary Death Stalker."
Mei pointed at the Detector as she spoke.
"Maybe the instrument malfunctioned!" Mary tossed the equipment into the trunk while waking Kiana, who was snoring in the back seat. "Kiana, food's ready!"
"Mmm... Where? Did Mei make it?" Kiana groggily opened her eyes and sat up from where she had been lying flat in the back seat, still half-asleep.
"A malfunction? Maybe." Mei tapped the device in her hand, only then noticing Xina on Rosa's back. "What happened to Xina?"
"I don't know. The captain was like this after blowing up an entire block from several kilometers away with the Large Sniper Rifle this morning. We couldn't wake her no matter how much we called—"
Before she could finish, pebbles on the road began to bounce slightly. The extremely obvious tremors swiftly interrupted their conversation.
Kiana, who had just been half-asleep, abruptly opened her eyes. She got out with Mary, took out her weapon, and warily looked toward where the disturbance was coming from.
Bzzz...
As the disturbance grew stronger, the already battered road cracked open with pitch-black fissures.
Dull sounds came from within the cracks, as though some huge object like a subway train were moving beneath them.
Beep—
Just as the movement underground grew louder, the red dot on the Detector suddenly disappeared.
It could freely control its Honkai energy fluctuations. If it was a Honkai monster, then it was at least an Emperor-class Honkai Beast. They had to quickly notify the Hyperion for support.
"Bronya, quickly—"
Just as Mei turned around, a slender hand covered her mouth.
"Don't make a sound!" Xina, who had opened her eyes at some point, covered Mei's mouth with her hand and silently signaled Bronya to shut off the engine.
Click! Bronya immediately understood and turned off the Assault Vehicle's rumbling engine.
Boom!
The Death Stalker that had been slowly walking along the road seemed to have suffered some terrifying attack. It just... shot straight into the air.
It moved so fast that no one even had time to react.
Then, a massive unknown creature burst from underground amidst a spray of sand and rocks. After swallowing the Death Stalker in one bite, it burrowed back into the ground.
Thud!
Listening to the deep rumbling sounds of the ground colliding and scraping against the unknown creature, even Kiana, as carefree as she was, nervously swallowed. That huge thing was moving beneath their feet.
Second by second, the vibrations beneath their feet grew weaker and weaker. It seemed... that thing had gone far away.
"Captain, when did you wake up?" Rosa lowered her voice and looked in surprise at Xina, who had jumped down from her back.
"From when you slammed my head into the wall while carrying me downstairs!" Xina irritably brushed aside her loose hair, revealing a bump where the wall had struck her.
"Ahem... That was an accident..." Rosa's little face reddened. She silently turned her head aside and pretended to whistle calmly.
Mei looked at the Detector in her hand, which had returned to normal, and could not help feeling somewhat puzzled.
"Xina, how did you know we couldn't move or make a sound when we encountered that thing?" Mei set down the Detector and asked solemnly.
Isn't that obvious? That little cutie was called here by me!
After grumbling to herself for a moment, Xina looked at Mei and deliberately put on a surprised expression. "Mei, don't you usually watch movies?"
"Movies?!" Mei seemed not to understand the connection at all. She rubbed her temples in confusion. "What does this have to do with movies?"
"Last time, Kiana dragged Bronya and me to watch a very old movie. The monster in it had no vision and could only hunt prey by sensing vibrations through the ground!"
"When I saw it burst out of the ground just now looking so much like the one from that movie, I thought, since it also lives underground..."
"Could it have habits similar to an echidna? Besides... even if we ran just now, none of us could outrun it. So we might as well take a gamble!"
"So that's how it was..." Mei thought about it for a while, found the explanation fairly reasonable, and walked toward the Assault Vehicle. "Let's head back first and report this to Teacher Himeko and the others on the way!"
Before you continue