novelraw Chapter 301: Reaping the Benefits as a Third Party
Chapter 301: Reaping the Benefits as a Third Party
The three-way melee that erupted on the frozen swamp surface ultimately reached its conclusion in a manner far more brutal than anyone had anticipated.
The Armored Crocodile that had ruled these waters for months failed to withstand the continuous venom injections from several highly toxic water snakes and the absolute-zero freeze, losing all signs of life.
That formidable pair of Russian siblings from the snowy north also met their heroic, tragic end.
After throwing her dagger with a desperate final strike, the sister, Anya, collapsed powerlessly into her brother's arms as the snake venom within her body erupted completely.
Her brother, Ivan, roared with mad laughter!
"Haha… HAHAHAHA!"
He struggled slowly to his feet on the ice, ignoring the venomous snakes biting his body.
His gaze pierced through the boundary between life and death, locking fiercely onto the culprit standing on the shore, the one playing the long flute.
"Ivan! No!" In her final moments, Anya sensed what her brother was about to do and let out one last, feeble cry.
But Ivan could no longer hear her.Summoning his last ounce of strength, Ivan pulled from his blood-soaked webbing belt the one remaining alchemical grenade on his person.
He paid no more mind to his sister's gradually cooling body in his arms.
Treading on ground covered in blood and frost, he launched his final, suicidal charge towards the Snake Cult squad leader.
"For… His Majesty the Emperor!"
Ivan roared out his last cry of loyalty and glory in Russian.
The Snake Cult squad leader on the shore watched the massive Russian man charging towards him, dragging his grievously wounded body. He could feel the other's desperate, mutually destructive resolve.
The squad leader was certain that if this madman closed the distance, he and his two half-frozen subordinates would be torn to shreds by the explosion of that alchemical grenade.
"Stop him! Now! Stop him!"
The Snake Cult squad leader let out a shriek of terror.
He blew into the snake flute in his hand at an extremely high frequency, so high it made his own head spin and vision blur.
The flute's sound became sharp and frantic.
The highly toxic water snakes transformed into countless black bolts of lightning, intercepting Ivan's suicidal charge from all directions.
Ivan paid them no heed.
He allowed those venomous snakes to become tough ropes, binding his legs, waist, abdomen, and arms tightly.
He allowed those dagger-like fangs to sink once more into his already numb flesh.
Bearing venom potent enough to paralyze a lion, Ivan took step after firm step, continuing his advance towards his enemy.
Ten meters…
Five meters…
Three meters…
Watching the mobile-bomb-like Russian giant about to detonate right before him, all color drained from the Snake Cult squad leader's face.
At the last possible moment, he let out a desperate shriek, abandoning any pretense of a victor's dignity, and threw himself towards the mangrove forest behind him with an undignified, clumsy roll.
At the exact instant he threw himself—
"BOOM!!"
A deafening explosion erupted, churning the swamp's waters into massive waves.
That alchemical grenade released its destructive power at the endpoint of Ivan's life.
The powerful shockwave, mixed with frost-encrusted flesh, blood, and serpentine debris, formed a storm.
Though the Snake Cult squad leader had thrown himself into cover at the last second, he was still sent flying by the residual shockwave, crashing into the mangrove roots with a pained grunt.
He wasn't fatally wounded, but he was covered in grime and looked utterly disheveled.
As for the Russian giant who had completed his final revenge with his life, he, along with his deceased sister, was consumed within the magnificent "funeral" he himself had orchestrated, leaving not a single intact bone behind.
"...Madman."
The Snake Cult squad leader, scrambling up from the ground, spat out a mouthful of saliva mixed with dirt and blood. He looked at the hellish, now-cleared battlefield before him and cursed under his breath, his heart still pounding with lingering fear.
His two subordinates weren't faring any better.
One had been turned into shattered ice, while the other, failing to dodge in time, was grievously wounded by the explosion's shockwave, breathing his last ragged breaths.
"Useless trash, the lot of you!"
The Snake Cult squad leader looked at his disheveled subordinates, then at the battlefield stained red with minced flesh and frost, and cursed again.
This "reaping the spoils" victory had been far more difficult than he'd imagined.
But he had ultimately won.
He carefully skirted around the twitching corpses of venomous snakes on the ice and the headless, massive carcass of the crocodile.
Finally, this captain walked up to the only remains left by the Ivan siblings—a few scorched, scattered fragments.
He crouched down, carefully sifting through the pile of gory, foul-smelling debris.
Soon, a greedy smile spread across his face.
He had found it.
He had found the target they had been observing for days—a geologist's exploration log, tightly wrapped in oilcloth, which had miraculously survived the violent explosion with only half of it torn away!
"Mine now…"
He muttered to himself, eager to open the logbook that held this place's secrets.
But the moment his fingers touched the "spoils of war," a powerful sense of crisis shot up from the depths of his heart!
The Snake Cult squad leader instinctively wanted to roll backwards to evade!
But it was already too late.
He saw a brass arm stretch out from thin air. That arm crossed the less-than-half-meter distance between him and the pile of remains.
And then, it "took" the logbook he already considered his prize, right from between his fingers.
"?!"
The Snake Cult squad leader's expression changed drastically.
His mind went blank for several long seconds.
When he snapped out of that shock, he let out a furious roar, "Who is it?!"
All he saw was that the arm had long since vanished.
And there was no one behind him either.
It was as if everything that had just happened was merely an absurd hallucination brought on by the intensity of the battle.
But the empty scene before his eyes told him a different truth.
He had been played.
Another patient, cunning oriole had been hiding behind him all along!
"Ah!"
At the same time, on another concealed waterway dozens of meters away from the bloody battlefield.
The flat-bottomed boat carrying Lin Jie and his two companions slid into the swamp mist.
Inside the cabin, Brewer looked on with amazement at the exploration log, still dripping with bloody water, held in White Ghost's hand.
"Good God…" he exclaimed sincerely, "I swear, I've never in my life seen… such a clean and efficient robbery."
He hadn't even seen clearly when White Ghost had left the boat, or when he had returned.
And White Ghost, wearing his white ceramic mask, remained as taciturn as ever.
He placed the spoils on the table, then curled back up into his dark corner.
Lin Jie withdrew his complex thoughts, focusing all his attention on the logbook before him.
He carefully used the tip of [Silencer] to pry open the oilcloth cover, swollen from soaking in bloody water.
As expected, the diary's contents were incomplete.
The explosion had torn away its front half, leaving only the last dozen or so pages.
The paper had become wrinkled and warped from water immersion, and the ink writing on most pages had bled and smudged, becoming difficult to decipher.
Lin Jie put on gloves, separated a few of the relatively well-preserved pages, and a simple map tucked inside a hidden compartment in the diary's back cover fell out.
The map had a rough pencil sketch of Delacroix town's outline, along with three large red X's marked with a warning tone.
The first was at the riverside church.
The second was deep in the swamp where they currently were.
And the third pointed directly to the massive Delacroix slaughterhouse located at the eastern edge of the town!
And right in the center of the map, at the geometric center of the large triangle formed by the three X's, a black vortex was drawn.
Beside the vortex, written in a trembling script full of terror, were a few messy Russian letters that Lin Jie couldn't understand.
While Lin Jie didn't know Russian.
He knew someone who certainly did.
"Brewer."
"Time for you to get to work."