novelraw Chapter 255: The Aerial Pursuit Battle
Chapter 255: The Aerial Pursuit Battle
Hawk Hawkeye's entrance was like a thunderbolt tearing through the darkness, transforming this steel tomb on the verge of collapse into his own personal hunting ground.
Each swing of his battle-axe, wreathed in blue-white electric arcs, carved a magnificent and deadly streak of lightning across this stage of death.
However, the UMA codenamed Mothman was far more cunning than he had imagined.
After the initial chaos and shock, this predator swiftly broke free once more from the falling crossbeam it was perched on.
With a single beat of its wings, its entire body floated as lightly as a weightless ghost, easily evading Hawk's seemingly certain fatal strike.
"BOOM!"
Hawk's battle-axe slammed heavily into empty air, cleaving a crossbeam clean in two!
The searing ionic arcs even melted the steel at the breakpoint into flowing molten iron!
Meanwhile, the Mothman had already taken advantage of this opportunity to fly to another, not-yet-fully-corroded steel girder higher up in the warehouse.
Its enormous compound eyes, glowing with an ominous red light, gazed down imperiously at the intruder below who radiated such a strong sense of threat.It realized that this wildly behaving Native American man was different from the passive prey it had encountered before.
"Interesting."
Hawk straightened up, a ferocious grin spreading across his rugged face.
He wasn't discouraged by missing his first strike.
On the contrary, the cunning of this UMA ignited the competitive spirit deep within his Native American bloodline!
"A flying bug, eh?" he muttered to himself in a provocative tone. "Let's see if your wings are faster, or my axe is!"
As his words fell, he moved again!
Instead of charging straight ahead, Hawk moved with the nimbleness of an ape. Using the crisscrossing metal shelves and steel girders, corroded and teetering on the brink of collapse, he began rapidly scaling upward through this three-dimensional, continuously collapsing steel jungle!
He was going to extend this battle from the ground into the air!
A three-dimensional chase, showcasing the beauty of primal savagery, between a top-tier hunter and a cunning prey, commenced within this doomed warehouse.
The Mothman hadn't expected this seemingly cumbersome "two-legged beast" to possess such terrifying leaping and climbing abilities.
Its wings beat constantly as its body weaved and dodged between the narrow steel girders, trying to put distance between itself and Hawk.
Simultaneously, it continued to ceaselessly disperse its all-pervasive pheromone dust, which accelerated the corrosion of all metal.
It was weakening Hawk's footholds in this battlefield in the smartest and most malicious way possible!
The steel girders beneath Hawk's feet were corroding at an ever-increasing rate.
Several times, he narrowly avoided plummeting from over a dozen meters high when his footholds suddenly gave way.
Yet, he always managed, at the very last moment of losing his balance, to bury his battle-axe into another nearby girder, then swing like a pendulum to regain his footing.
The entire scene of the battle became exceptionally perilous and exceptionally spectacular.
One was a berserker descended like the Thunder God, wielding lightning that tore through everything!
The other was the calamitous incarnation of a hellish messenger, spreading death-shrouding wings that blotted out the moonlight!
They were staging a duel worthy of textbooks within this steel temple.
However, Lin Jie, standing on the ground, keenly spotted a fatal hidden danger within this seemingly evenly-matched, magnificent duel.
Hawk was too overwhelmingly forceful.
Each of his attacks contained earth-shattering power.
But it also consumed a tremendous amount of physical strength.
In contrast, the Mothman was handling the situation with ease.
It never engaged Hawk in any direct confrontation, only using its flight advantage to constantly evade and harass him.
It had become the most masterful matador, steadily draining the stamina and patience of a bull that relied solely on brute force.
Lin Jie calculated that if things continued like this, in at most three more minutes, when Hawk's stamina began to falter from the continuous bursts of exertion, and when the warehouse's structure reached its critical point from the ongoing corrosion...
That would be the moment of their collective doom, buried alive here.
"No good, I must find a way to break this stalemate."
"I must find a way to create a one-hit-kill opportunity for this man."
Lin Jie activated [Mental Staircase], his brain entering an absolutely calm, overclocked state.
His gaze became the most precise camera, rapidly capturing every detail on the battlefield.
Every axe swing from Hawk, every leap.
Every dodge from the Mothman, every wingbeat.
And those constantly peeling off and falling from the ceiling, the corroded chunks of metal...
Chunks of metal...
Falling...
Wait!
A flash of sudden understanding lit up Lin Jie's eyes.
He couldn't stop those metal chunks from falling, but perhaps he could alter their trajectory!
Even use them!
A "chain strategy" involving three people took shape in his mind.
He rushed out from behind his cover and let out a roar that echoed through the warehouse, directed simultaneously at Ethan on the other side and the burly figure grappling with the UMA above.
"Ethan! That largest load-bearing pillar at eleven o'clock! Use [Morning Star]! Axe-wielder! Prepare to change direction! On my mark!"
This sudden command made both hunters pause slightly.
But in this situation, they had little time to hesitate and immediately chose to execute.
Ethan's figure flashed out from behind cover.
Relying on his instincts as an elite gunner, he aimed the muzzle of his left-hand [Morning Star] at the enormous, corroded, and teetering steel load-bearing pillar on the other side of the warehouse that Lin Jie had indicated.
A gunshot rang out, and a powerful gravitational field instantly manifested.
At the exact moment Ethan fired, Lin Jie also moved.
His [Serene Heart] silently spat out an invisible "death."
But his target wasn't the Mothman.
It was the seemingly empty airspace between the Mothman and Hawk.
The silent bullet hit nothing.
In the split second after the bullet passed, the Mothman, which had been preparing to dodge Hawk's axe to the right, suddenly stiffened.
It hadn't been hit by anything tangible.
Yet, its left wing, used for flight, felt as if clamped by an invisible vice.
This caused a fatal hitch in its entire dodging motion.
This was precisely Lin Jie's open stratagem.
He used the high-speed thinking capability of [Mental Staircase] to predict the Mothman's dodging path.
Then he fired in advance, laying down an invisible "kite string" with Serene Heart along that route. The Mothman's wing, during its beat, was inevitably affected by the rapidly passing bullet.
While this "kite string" couldn't cause significant damage,
it could interfere with the UMA's flight trajectory.
And at the very instant the Mothman was briefly stunned by this sudden interference,
the gravity bullet fired by Ethan from the other side finally took effect.
The enormous, teetering load-bearing pillar, violently yanked by the powerful gravity of [Morning Star], could no longer maintain its balance.
It toppled towards the center of the warehouse like a block pushed over by a giant.
And the direction of its fall, unerringly, was straight towards the Mothman, which had just regained its balance after Lin Jie's interference.
This series of changes happened as fast as a flash of lightning.
From Lin Jie's command to Ethan's shot, to Lin Jie's ambush, and finally leading to the pillar's collapse.
Everything occurred within two seconds.
The UMA was completely thrown into a flustered, passive state.
It had just shaken off Lin Jie's entanglement, only to immediately face this massive iron pillar crashing down on it with the force of a collapsing mountain.
It let out a strange shriek and could only frantically beat its unimpeded right wing, putting all its effort into dodging towards the only unblocked direction—three o'clock.
And this was precisely the final dead end Lin Jie had meticulously prepared for it.
"Axe-wielder! Seize the chance!"
Hawk, who had been poised in mid-air, saw the UMA blundering into his attack range like a headless fly. He no longer wasted energy chopping through obstacles.
He channeled all his strength into the battle-axe in his hands.
Then, using a falling steel plate as a brief platform, he launched himself high into the air.
Hawk used the entire stage Lin Jie and the others had created for him as the springboard for his final performance.
"Nicely done, kid!" Hawk's appreciative response echoed.
A smile also tugged at the corner of Lin Jie's mouth. This battle was already over.
With Lin Jie's prophet-like precise guidance and paving the way, Hawk was like a tiger that had grown wings.
His body transformed into an unstoppable bolt of blue-white lightning!
Again and again, in a sort of anti-gravity posture resembling flight, he ascended higher and higher through this three-dimensional steel jungle, relentlessly closing the distance between himself and the Mothman.
The Mothman sensed the shift in the battle's momentum. With a final shriek, it abandoned any thought of continuing the fight, beating its wings as it tried to escape through the hole in the warehouse dome.
But it was already too late!
In the final few meters before its body could exit the hole, a [Evening Star] repulsion bullet from Ethan pushed it back.
And Hawk's figure appeared right behind it.
With one last extreme kick-off and leap, he successfully caught up to this "calamitous incarnation" with flight capabilities—in mid-air!
"Game over, bug!"
A mid-air jumping slash, showcasing the beauty of power and destruction! The battle-axe in Hawk's hands, now charged with boundless lightning, viciously struck the Mothman's unprepared left wing!
"SCREEEEECH——!!"
The thick stench of burnt protein erupted.
The Mothman's wing was cleanly severed from the root by the searing electric blade!
Its unbalanced body spiraled and tumbled down from over a dozen meters in the air.
"BOOM!"
Another loud crash, creating a shallow crater in the ground.
But it wasn't dead yet!
Its single remaining wing flapped uselessly on the ground, kicking up clouds of dust.
It still wanted to struggle!
Unfortunately, what awaited it was a death gaze from a "ghost."
Lin Jie had, at some unknown time, appeared at its crash site.
The muzzle of his [Serene Heart] was aimed squarely at its constantly flickering red compound eyes.
"Rest in peace."
Lin Jie murmured softly and pulled the trigger.
The bullet that ended everything vanished into the red crystalline structures emitting ominous light.
The ruby-like compound eyes shattered into pieces.
Unidentifiable red fluid burst forth from within.
The Mothman's flailing body twitched a few more times, and the last vestiges of life faded from it.