Borrowing a place to recuperate
Most of the armored vehicles and soldiers sheltered behind buildings along the street or in other concealed corners, while one squad of soldiers slowly approached with tense expressions.
Earlier, they had tested the monster several times by throwing heavy objects at it and firing machine guns, but it had shown no response.
Now it was time for someone to approach on foot.
The closer they got, the slower their steps became.
Norton stayed concealed in the command vehicle behind them, watching the soldiers' movements through a drone's camera feed the entire time.
Once they were close enough, the soldier leading the squad raised a clenched fist, signaling them to stop.
They were less than ten meters from the Flame Demon.
Waves of heat still rolled off it. The standing water beneath the Flame Demon evaporated, pooled again, then evaporated once more.
They carefully scanned it with their instruments.
"Thermal readings show its temperature is continuing to drop. It's now at five hundred degrees Celsius, with an estimated internal core temperature of over a thousand degrees."
The squad leader gestured toward the sky, then stepped back several paces. The crew aboard the firefighting helicopter circling overhead immediately opened the release valve, dumping a large volume of cold water.
After several rounds of aerial spraying and close-range measurements, the temperature of the Flame Demon's corpse was steadily dropping.
An hour later, Norton grew bolder and directly ordered the firefighters to hook up their high-pressure hoses, using more than a dozen nozzles to spray the monster and cool it down.
It really should be dead this time!
Everyone shared that relieved thought, feeling as though a great weight had finally lifted.
Unlike at the start of the battle, when they had wanted nothing more than to tear the