After the one-armed girl left, quite a few more recruits came to the armory to get weapons. Before long, there were nearly twenty people inside.
"Team up." Hela walked over to Keke and suddenly blurted it out.
"Ah, oh, right, we do need to team up! Otherwise, there's no way we can beat the instructors." Keke hesitated briefly, then hurriedly nodded in agreement.
Keke looked around. "Then who should we team up with? We can't all team up together, can we?"
"Pick someone strong."
"Then who's strong?"
"People with strong abilities are strong," Hela said expressionlessly.
Keke froze. Her little brain began racing as she tried to understand the deeper meaning behind Hela's words.
Meanwhile, Hela had already walked over to a recruit and started asking him directly about his strength.
"Are you strong? Can we team up?"
The recruit was startled at first. Then, seeing Hela's heavenly beauty and the clear innocence in her eyes, he blushed, feeling as if his spring had finally arrived.
"Don't worry, miss. With my strength, I'm-"
Boom-!
Before the recruit could finish, an explosion suddenly erupted at the armory entrance. Immediately afterward, a figure came hurtling backward at incredible speed.
He slammed straight into the recruit standing in front of Hela, sending him flying. The recruit's eyes rolled back, and he instantly lost consciousness.
Yan Wusheng struggled to his feet and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. Then he glanced at the recruit he had knocked unconscious and cursed with a look of disgust.
"Tch! Bad luck."
"Go on, run! Aren't you good at running?!" An instructor in a filthy, disheveled uniform walked out of the smoke from the explosion, his face full of fury.
At the sight of Yan Wusheng, his eyes practically blazed with fire.
Seeing the instructor emerge from the smoke, Yan Wusheng hurriedly turned and dashed toward the firearms hanging on the wall.
Instructor Hongwei had just raised a hand to trigger an explosion when Yan Wusheng grabbed a rocket launcher and pulled the trigger without hesitation, firing at him.
"Fuck! You lunatic! You're using that thing indoors?!" Instructor Hongwei cursed.
The rocket exploded the next instant, and a fierce wave of fire engulfed the entire armory.
"Ah!" The powerful blast sent almost all the recruits flying. They slammed hard into the walls and lost consciousness.
"Ahhh~~~! H-Hela, are... are you all right?" Curled into a ball with her head clutched tightly in her arms, Keke spoke in a trembling voice.
A metal wall about two meters tall stood in front of Keke. It had blocked the blast and kept her from getting hurt.
When she received no answer after a long while, Keke lifted her head from her arms and cautiously looked around.
The walls hadn't been blasted black as she had expected. The weapons on the walls and racks had merely been shaken loose.
But a person-sized hole had appeared in one wall. It looked freshly gouged out, and chunks of stone were still falling from it.
Hela was nowhere to be seen.
Yan Wusheng, the culprit behind it all, had vanished as well.
"Cough! Cough! Cough..." Instructor Hongwei coughed.
Instructor Hongwei was bracing himself against a wall with one hand. His face was deathly pale, cold sweat kept beading on his forehead, and he looked utterly weak.
"Fuck! He's a damn lunatic. If I hadn't used my ability to reduce the blast, those little bastards would be dead or crippled."
After cursing, Instructor Hongwei looked at Keke, the only person there still able to move.
Keke's body went rigid under his gaze. Flustered, she didn't know what to do.
If she ran, the instructor was already so weak that this was definitely her best chance to get a bell.
But if she went for a bell now, she'd be taking advantage of his weakness and showing a lack of martial virtue. Besides, even with the instructor in this state, Keke didn't think she could necessarily beat him.
Just as Keke found herself caught in a dilemma, Instructor Hongwei suddenly held out a hand and spoke with difficulty.
"Help me up..."
Elsewhere.
Hela was racing forward at incredible speed, faster than she had ever run before.
She didn't stop until she had rushed into the cafeteria.
The injuries she had sustained to both hands while gouging through the wall instantly healed.
Behind her, Yan Wusheng leaned one hand against the doorframe, panting. He looked at Hela with a trace of surprise in his eyes.
"Someone who looks like such a frail girl actually gouged through a cement wall nearly half a meter thick in less than two seconds.
"And you run so fast, too. That really is rare."
Yan Wusheng wiped away his sweat and straightened up, putting on an extremely arrogant manner again as he continued:
"Although I know you didn't mean to help me, you did let me escape, so I owe you a favor.
"I hate owing people favors.
"So, thanks." Then he ran off elsewhere without looking back.
Hela, who had had her back to him the whole time, hadn't taken in a word he said.
She was still caught up in the explosion from earlier, unable to come back to her senses for a long while.
"Explosion, explosion! Explosions can kill, can kill!" Memories of nearly being blown to death by the [Thunderstorm] in City C kept playing through Hela's mind.
A strange feeling she had never experienced before began to linger within her.
It felt as though someone were scraping her spine with an icy-cold dagger, making her want to tremble and run away.
Clang.
Puchi! Whoosh-!
The moment a footstep sounded from the cafeteria entrance, a bone whip burst from Hela's back and lashed out.
Head Instructor Li Hu's face changed in surprise. He hurriedly drew his tachi and held it across his body.
Clang-!
The bone whip struck the tachi, sending fierce sparks flying. The force shoved the head instructor several meters backward before he barely managed to stop.
Looking at the scratches on his tachi and listening to its incessant hum, Instructor Li Hu couldn't help swallowing. If that blow had struck him, he would probably have lost a layer of skin even if he hadn't died.
Hela turned to look at Instructor Li Hu. The faint fear in her heart vanished in an instant, as though a wound on her body had healed.
"A [Symbiote]'s abilities really are much more varied than an [Awakened]'s. It looks like you can do more than just heal yourself."
Li Hu gripped his tachi tightly with both hands, his expression grave. The instant he took that blow, he understood that Hela's strength had long since reached the High Rank realm as well. If he didn't get serious, Hela might very well defeat him.
With a puchi, another bone whip emerged from Hela's back.
Two bone whips as thick as thighs swayed slowly behind Hela, making her look like a monster that claimed lives.
Hela looked at Instructor Li Hu, who had already taken his stance, and quietly shifted her gaze to his waist.
All five bells were still there.
As long as she could get one bell, Xing Lan had said she would get full marks. Then she could become an even more powerful Night Star, fight more and stronger Variants, and eat them.
At that thought, Hela's hands also began to squirm and change, slowly splitting apart.
Before long, her two hands, once as fair as lotus roots, had turned into several thin whips.