"Poseidon, I've found the second Yautja Youth's body."
Chris surveyed the wreckage before him and reported with a slight furrow in his brow.
The Yautja Youth lying in a pool of fluorescent green blood wasn't Celtic, whom Chris had encountered earlier. Nor was he Chopper, the first to bite the dust. He was Scar, who should have been one of the main characters in the movie.
Scar's body was facedown, with a bloody hole in the back of his head. It looked as though a Xeno had ambushed him from behind, then blown his head apart with its inner jaw.
By contrast, Celtic, who had originally died because of his carelessness, had now scored two kills because Chris and the others weren't like the movie's protagonists and had put an end to their playful attitude ahead of time.
According to custom, Celtic removed his mask and used the acidic blood of a Drone to carve two symbols, resembling pie and ㄟ, into his forehead and his mask.
This meant that Celtic was no longer a youth, but a fully-fledged adult Yautja.
The Facehugger had ambushed Celtic while he was carving the symbols. But unlike Scar in the movie, Celtic, as the strongest of the trio, naturally didn't let the Facehugger's ambush succeed.
The Boomerang sliced the Facehugger cleanly in two.
After carving the symbols and putting on his mask, Celtic prepared to reclaim his Shoulder Cannon. The first thing he had to do was deal with the fish that had slipped through the net—
Chris.
After ten minutes, the door to the sealed room opened, allowing Chris to continue searching for an exit from the Pyramid.
When Chris crossed a ravine and reached a corridor on the Pyramid's middle level, he encountered Celtic around a corner. Celtic had a double-bladed Wristblade extended on his right hand and held a Combistick in his left.
"Gah... gah..."
Celtic made the distinctive sounds of the Yautja Clan and brandished the weapons in his hands, as if inviting Chris to a duel.
After all, Chris had survived Chopper's attack and successfully killed a Xeno. Regardless of whether luck had played a part, he was worthy of a one-on-one duel with Celtic.
Understanding what Celtic intended, Chris stopped and faced off against him.
In an instant—
"Bang, bang, bang!"
"Whoosh—!"
Chris and Celtic attacked each other at the same time.
The MA5B roared with gunfire, while the Combistick hurtled through the air.
Chris barely dodged the spear, then shifted his stance and continued firing precise bursts at Celtic.
But Celtic used the armor on his left arm to shield his unarmored abdomen and charged at Chris without fear.
"Clang! Pop!" The bullets all ricocheted off the armor.
Though the young Yautja's armor couldn't withstand acid, the MA5B's caliber wasn't enough to easily punch through it.
Seeing this,
Chris immediately adjusted the muzzle and fired bursts at Celtic's unarmored thigh.
"Thwack! Thwack!" The attack worked. Three bullets burrowed into Celtic's right thigh.
"Ragh!!" The pain of the bullets tumbling violently through his flesh made Celtic roar.
But Celtic was a Yautja, not a human. His muscle and bone density far exceeded a human's, and three shots weren't enough to stop his charge.
On the contrary, the pain caused Celtic's body to start secreting large amounts of hormones similar to adrenaline.
The distance of more than ten meters vanished in an instant. Celtic swung his double-bladed Wristblade at Chris with all his might.
!!!
The attack was so fast that Chris instinctively raised the MA5B to block it.
"Clang!"
The MA5B, made of titanium alloy and polymer, did slow the Wristblade's downward slash to some extent. Though it couldn't avoid being cut into several pieces, it bought Chris enough time to counterattack.
Chris leaned back, then put all his strength into a straight kick to Celtic's lower abdomen.
"Pong!" A dull thud rang out.
"Rrrgh...!" Celtic howled.
Struck with the ton-level force of the Mechanical Exoskeleton, even Celtic, who weighed over half a ton, was sent crashing to the ground by Chris's kick.
"Thud!" Celtic hit the floor hard, kicking up a cloud of dust.
If Chris's kick had landed a little lower, Celtic might have become the first Yautja eunuch in history.
If that had happened, Chris would never have completed his mission to earn the respect of the Yautja Clan.
As Celtic fell, Chris had already drawn the .40-caliber STARS Samurai Edge from the holster on his right thigh.
The moment he finished drawing his gun, Chris felt a cool gust of wind behind him and immediately dodged to the right.
"Hiss—!" After its ambush on Chris failed, the Drone charged straight at Celtic, who was lying on the ground.
"Ragh..." Pinned beneath the Drone and unable to get up, Celtic hadn't yet recovered from the impact and couldn't push it off.
"Cha! Cha!" The Drone snapped its inner jaw at Celtic's head several times, but Celtic managed to dodge every attack.
The two became locked in a stalemate.
But anyone could see that, if things continued this way, the Drone would eventually kill Celtic.
So...
Chris hurried forward and kicked the Drone with another "Pong!", using the Mechanical Exoskeleton's powerful, ton-level force to send it flying.
After kicking the Drone off Celtic, Chris aimed at the parts of its body not protected by an exoskeleton and pulled the trigger without hesitation.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
"Thwack! Thwack!"
To show proper respect, Chris emptied the extended magazine, which held 24 bullets and was loaded with high-velocity armor-piercing rounds.
Faithful to Sui Bian's double-tap policy, Chris reloaded with a full magazine and fired five more shots at the same spot on the Drone's head.
That was the end of the Drone that had failed its ambush and been killed instead. It was truly dead, and there'd be no jump scare like in the movie.
"Hiss—!"
But just after taking care of the Drone, the howls of a large number of Xenos echoed from the far end of the corridor.
Chris turned and saw at least seven Xenos racing toward them from the dimly lit end of the corridor.
That was more than the six in the Sacrificial Chamber. In other words, when they'd been ambushed in the narrow hall, quite a few D-Class Personnel hadn't died completely and had been dragged away by the Xenos to breed more of their kind.
Seeing this, Chris turned to Celtic, who was struggling to get to his feet beside him, and tentatively suggested:
"Hey, big guy. I know your mask can translate what I'm saying. We're both trapped here. If we don't work together, we're both going to die."
After speaking, Chris returned his pistol to its holster, freeing both hands to quickly take off his backpack. He pulled out the longest silver Shoulder Cannon inside.
He pulled out the Shoulder Cannon.
Zipped the bag shut.
After slinging the pack back on, Chris held out the Shoulder Cannon to Celtic with his right hand and said, "What do you say? We're running out of time."
Celtic, who had mostly recovered, didn't roar angrily as he usually would. Instead, he stared silently at Chris for two seconds.
In the end, Celtic chose to accept the Shoulder Cannon.
Meanwhile,
In Poseidon's operations room.
[Anomaly detected: Chris Redfield's special attribute, "Good Luck," has activated.]
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