Vassals of the Herrscher?

"Captain, your big sniper rifle is useless now!" Mary looked at the closed sniper rifle case and couldn't help asking curiously, "So what should we do next?"

"Then let's rest! Sister Mei will come pick us up tonight anyway! As for the sniper rifle, it was just a prototype anyway. We can find someone to fix it when we get back." Xina yawned, found a relatively clean shady spot on the rooftop, leaned against the wall, and started catching up on sleep.

"..."

Mary and the other woman looked at each other, as if they wanted to say something more, but seeing their captain fast asleep, they ultimately chose to slack off together.

Evening...

"Beep beep beep—"

The horn of an assault vehicle blared downstairs, jolting Mary and the other woman awake from their slumber. They quickly drew their pistols from their waist holsters with their right hands while rubbing their eyes and looking around to assess the situation.

The two peered downstairs with binoculars and finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Mary holstered her gun while yawning, "Oh, it's Captain Mei and the others coming to pick us up. Scared me for a second."

"Mm." Rosa put away her sidearm, stepped forward, and gently nudged Xina: "Captain, time to get up. We need to head back!"

"..."

Even though Rosa's voice wasn't quiet, Xina still kept her eyes tightly shut, leaning against the wall as if she hadn't heard Rosa's call at all.

"Hey... Captain?!"

Rosa increased the force in her hands. Under her stronger push, Xina's head tilted to the side, and her entire body toppled over stiffly in that direction.

"!"

At that moment, Rosa finally realized something was wrong. She quickly bent down, one hand feeling for a pulse and the other checking for breath. "It's okay, steady heartbeat and normal breathing! Probably nothing serious. Let's get the captain downstairs quickly!"

"Yeah!" Mary grabbed Xina's weapon case with one hand and hurried after Rosa toward the stairwell.

A thousand meters deep underground in the dark depths, an ice-blue ball of yarn-like object began to unfurl. A single black-red eye slowly opened within its long, thick body.

Beep beep—beep beep—

"Huh! Why is the detector going off?"

Following the direction Heavy Armor Bunny pointed, Mei saw a small red dot rapidly flashing on the detector next to the dashboard, its brightness steadily increasing.

"This is... something's up!" Mei grabbed the detector, opened the car door, and stepped out, looking toward the direction where the red dot was flashing.

The vast road was completely empty. Forget large Honkai Beasts—even a Death Stalker had only just crawled out of some unknown corner a moment ago.

"Captain Mei, what's wrong?"

Having carried Xina all the way down the stairs in one go, Rosa saw Mei holding the detector and comparing it to the road as soon as she walked out the door. Thinking something was wrong, she quickly hurried over.

"A Honkai Energy Reaction Point has appeared ahead of us, and its Energy Level Intensity is still rising. But all I see in front is a very ordinary Death Stalker."

Mei pointed at the detector and said.

"Then maybe the instrument is malfunctioning!" Mary tossed the equipment into the trunk while patting Kiana, who was sound asleep in the back seat, awake: "Classmate Kiana, time to eat!"

"Mmm... where? Did Mei make it?" Kiana groggily opened her eyes, still half-asleep, and sat up from her lying position in the back seat.

"Instrument malfunction? Maybe!" Mei patted the device in her hand and only then noticed Xina being carried on Rosa's back: "What's wrong with Xina?"

"Don't know. The captain was like this after sniping a whole block from several kilometers away this morning. Can't wake her up no matter how much I—"

Before she could finish, the pebbles on the road began to tremble slightly. That extremely obvious vibration quickly cut off their conversation.

Kiana, who had just been half-asleep, snapped her eyes wide open. She got out of the car with Mary, grabbed their weapons, and warily looked toward the source of the commotion.

Rumble rumble rumble...

As the noise grew louder, the already battered road surface cracked open with pitch-black fissures.

Muffled, heavy sounds came from within the cracks, as if some massive object like a subway train was moving underground.

Beep—

Just as the underground noise reached its peak, the red dot on the detector suddenly vanished.

If it could freely control its Honkai Energy fluctuations, and if it was a Honkai monster, then it was at least an Emperor-class Honkai Beast. They had to notify the Hyperion for support immediately.

"Bronya, quickly—"

Mei turned her head, but a slender hand promptly covered her mouth.

"Don't make a sound!" Xina, who had somehow opened her eyes, covered Mei's mouth with her hand and mouthed to Bronya to kill the engine!

Click! Bronya understood and shut off the rumbling engine of the assault vehicle.

Boom!

The Death Stalker that had been slowly walking on the road earlier seemed to suffer some terrifying attack—it just... flew straight up into the air.

It happened so fast that everyone barely had time to react.

Then, a massive unknown creature burst out from underground, carrying a torrent of sand and gravel. After swallowing the Death Stalker in one gulp, it dove back into the ground.

Thud!

Listening to the dull rumbling of the ground scraping and colliding with the unknown creature, even someone as thick-skulled as Kiana nervously swallowed a mouthful of saliva—that big thing was moving right beneath their feet.

Time ticked by, minute after minute. The vibrations under their feet grew fainter and fainter, as if... that thing had already gone far away.

"Captain, when did you wake up?" Rosa lowered her voice, staring in surprise at Xina, who had just jumped down from her back.

"From the moment you knocked my head against the wall when you came downstairs!" Xina grumbled, brushing aside her stray hair to reveal a bump that had just been smashed against the wall.

"Ahem... that was an accident..." Rosa's face flushed red as she silently turned her head away, pretending to be calm while whistling.

Mei, standing nearby, looked at the Detector in her hand, which had now returned to normal, and couldn't help but feel a bit puzzled.

"Xina, how did you know not to move or make a sound when encountering that thing?" Mei put down the Detector and asked in a low voice.

Was there even a need to ask? That little cutie was the one I called over!

After muttering this to herself, Xina looked at Mei and deliberately put on an expression of surprise: "Mei, don't you usually watch movies?"

"Movies?" Mei seemed not to grasp the connection and rubbed her temples in confusion: "What does that have to do with movies?"

"Last time, Kiana dragged Bronya and me to watch a really old movie. The monster in it had no sight and could only hunt prey by sensing vibrations in the ground!"

"As soon as I saw it emerge from underground, looking so similar to that movie, I thought, since it also lives underground..."

"Maybe it has similar habits to earthworms or moles, right? Besides... even if we ran, we couldn't outrun it, so why not take a gamble?"

"So that's how it is..." Mei thought for a moment, found the reasoning plausible, and walked toward the Assault Vehicle: "Let's head back first and report to Teacher Himeko and the others on the way!"