Chương 51: Evacuation

"Where is Grey Raven?" Solly's voice was hoarse. Rowan shook his head.

"I didn't see him. When I woke up, the area around me had already collapsed. I could only find a way around from below." He could feel Solly watching him. Adams still had one hand pressed near the wound on Solly's leg, carefully cutting away the cloth that had stuck to the bloody mud. Solly looked at Rowan as if he wanted to ask more. But Adams had already lowered his voice.

"Now is not the time for that." He snapped open a vial, pushed the needle into the skin near Solly's waist, and injected the pale purple medicine. After the liquid entered his body, Solly's brow only shifted slightly. He did not even let out a muffled groan. Adams's expression grew worse.

"I can only stabilize him for now," he said.

"We don't have proper surgical conditions here. If we want him to last until we get back to the city, we need to return to the entrance hall and get the backup pack." Syringe immediately said, "The entrance?"

"Yes." Adams did not look at him.

"Before we set out, I left a spare emergency kit there. It has healing stabilizers, severe-wound sealing patches, and trauma wash. The medical kit I carried was crushed in the collapse. The most important vials broke." Syringe's throat moved. It was as if he had finally found a rope that could save a life.

"Then we go back," he said.

"We go back right now." Solly leaned against the wall and glanced at his wound.

"Dragging me?" Syringe's lips moved, but no words came out. Adams packed away the remaining half of the vial.

"We need to make a simple stretcher." Rowan looked around. There was not much usable material left in the maintenance node. Half a preservation cabinet bottom plate. A few broken life-support pipelines. A small bundle of magitech clamps Syringe had left behind. Several signal spikes with only shallow cracks. Syringe quickly reacted. Bracing himself against the wall, he stood up. His legs were still weak, but his hands were already moving.

He dragged the preservation cabinet plate over, fixed the edges with magitech clamps, then locked two thinner life-support pipes along the sides, barely turning it into a rough drag stretcher. Adams reinforced Solly's wound again. The mud shell could not be fully removed. Otherwise, Solly would start bleeding heavily at once. Adams could only place sealing patches over the outside, then wrap the area below the waist in layers of medicated cloth. Throughout the process, Solly did not speak.

Only Syringe's breathing grew faster and faster. Rowan glanced at him. Realizing he was in the way, Syringe immediately stepped aside, but his fingers were still trembling. He was not a combatant. Over the past day, he had woken up, fed medicine to Solly, tried to find a route, been driven back by monsters, and in the end could only rely on knocking signals and wait for someone to find him. The fact that he had lasted this long was already not bad. But no one said that out loud.

When Solly was moved onto the drag stretcher, his face turned even paler. Adams pressed down on his shoulder and said quietly, "Don't move. If the wound tears open again, we'll have a real problem." Solly closed his eyes briefly.

"Syringe leads," he said hoarsely. Syringe wiped his eyes with his sleeve and immediately picked up the damaged terminal.

"From here, go left and take the maintenance side corridor. It can loop back to the outer ring. The main gate is blocked. It's completely locked. There's a section in the middle close to the waste-fluid shaft. Don't keep the signal too strong there." Rowan asked, "Why?" Syringe glanced at the dark gray mucus on the floor.

"Normal life detection can't scan it. Heat source, breathing, Source Crystal Core fluctuation—everything is chaotic. But there should still be an old experimental locator inside its body." Syringe shook the damaged terminal.

"When I was trying to find a route earlier, I connected to a maintenance port and picked up a very weak back-link." His throat tightened as he spoke.

"That was how it caught up from the waste-fluid shaft." Rowan understood. The red dot he had seen on the Blackwater terminal really had been the locust-octopus. It should have been driven back by the spell card Solly used. The group began withdrawing. Rowan walked at the front, responsible for scouting. Adams stayed beside Solly, watching his condition at all times.

Syringe followed behind, maintaining short-range detection at the lowest power while doing his best to keep the signal spikes from glowing too brightly. The drag stretcher scraped over the metal grating with a muffled grinding sound. Each scrape seemed to remind them that this place was still not safe. The maintenance side corridor was harder to traverse than when Rowan had come through earlier. After a day, the old system seemed to have gone through several more isolation adjustments.

Some passages had sealed completely. New cracks had opened in parts of the walls. Cloudy nutrient fluid flowed from the pipelines and gathered in shallow pools in the lower areas. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. They moved slowly. Solly rarely made a sound. Only when the drag stretcher passed over larger debris would his body tighten slightly from the vibration. Every time, Adams noticed at once.

He would hold the edge of the stretcher still and wait until Solly recovered before continuing. Rowan did not look back. His attention stayed ahead. The first cut mark appeared on the wall. It was deep. It slanted down across the alloy wall from top to bottom, with dark gray mucus still clinging to its edges. It was not a spell cut. Nor was it a tear caused by collapse. It looked as if some enormous scythe-limb had scraped along the wall. Farther ahead, a second cut mark appeared. Then a third.

Near the waste-fluid shaft, the floor still bore several wet traces left by dragging tentacles. The marks had already dried a little, but it was still easy to tell how large the thing had been. Syringe's breathing became noticeably lighter. Adams lowered his voice.

"Is it still nearby?" Syringe looked at the terminal. There was no red dot on the screen.

"The locator signal is far away," he said.

"But the wall interference here is heavy. It's not accurate." After he said that, the group fell silent. They circled around the edge of the waste-fluid shaft. Halfway through, Rowan suddenly stopped. Ahead came a very low breath. Heavy. Wet. Like something crouched behind the bend in the passage. Syringe's face changed at once. Rowan raised his hand, signaling the others not to move. For an instant, he almost thought the locust-octopus had circled back again.

If it really was that thing, this team no longer had a spell card, nor a front-line fighter like Carl to hold it back. Rowan placed his hand on his sword hilt and let his Mental Power sink slowly into his Source Crystal Core. The next moment, whatever was around the bend moved. A pincer-like eye organ emerged first. Then gray-green bumpy skin, a swollen belly, and a row of flower buds on its back that had withered and swollen again. Not the locust-octopus. A Pincer-Eyed Toad.

It was smaller than the ones in the containment room. Half its body was burned, and the furry claw in its throat dragged along the ground like a tongue that had not fully retracted. Syringe had only just let out half a breath before his expression tightened again. A Pincer-Eyed Toad was still trouble. Especially in their current state. Rowan did not attack immediately. He remembered how the toad in the manufacturing room had hunted Electric-Fungus Rats.

Pincer-Eyed Toads were sensitive to the discharge fungi on the rats' backs. Normally, the Electric-Fungus Rats scattered through wall seams and pipelines, not making enough disturbance to draw a toad's attention. But once a signal spike gathered them together, the electric arcs, screams, and fungal glow would stimulate the toad into hunting. Rowan slowly took a half-broken signal spike from his waist. He rolled it along the floor toward another fork in the passage. The green light flickered twice.

Several Electric-Fungus Rats hiding in the pipeline gaps poked their heads out, the fungal light on their backs gradually brightening. They did not immediately rush out. They were only drawn by the faint signal and began moving along the wall corner. Syringe glanced at Rowan in surprise. The Pincer-Eyed Toad's pincer-eyes opened and closed once. It did not look at Rowan. It looked at the Electric-Fungus Rats. The signal spike flashed again.

The Electric-Fungus Rats finally lunged toward it, and the blue-white arcs on their backs linked together in a small net. The furry claw in the Pincer-Eyed Toad's throat shot out, wrapped around the rat at the front, and dragged it into its mouth. Rowan immediately turned sideways against the wall and opened a path.

"Move." Adams and Syringe slowly dragged the stretcher past from the other side. Solly lay on the stretcher, his eyes half-open. His gaze swept once over the toad, but he said nothing. The toad was busy feeding. They did not disturb it. Only after turning around the next bend did Syringe let out a long breath. His voice was dry.

"Didn't expect signal spikes to save us again." After another ten minutes, Syringe's terminal suddenly lit up. He lowered his head and looked. His expression stiffened.

"Team chip." Adams asked, "Whose?" Syringe did not answer. He looked toward a narrow branch passage on the left. The passage was pressed down by a half-collapsed alloy plate, leaving only a gap just wide enough for one person to squeeze through sideways. There was no light inside. Only a faint blue fungal glow flickered within. Everyone had already guessed. The stretcher stopped. After a moment, Solly spoke.

"Take a look." Adams frowned.

"You're in no condition—""Take a look," Solly repeated. This time, no one objected. Rowan handed the front of the stretcher to Adams and squeezed sideways into the branch passage. The passage was short. At the end, a person sat against the wall. Logan. His shield plate lay beside him, its edge gnawed with rows of tiny bite marks. Logan leaned against the wall with his head lowered, one hand still resting near the shield handle, as if he had sat down to rest after reaching this place.

Only he would never stand again. There were clear signs of feeding along one side of his body. Several Electric-Fungus Rats, startled by Rowan's footsteps, crawled out from gaps in his armor. The fungal light on their backs brightened once, then they quickly darted back into the wall seams. Rowan stood there and looked for two seconds. Logan had probably woken up. He had probably tried to walk. And then he had died here. That was all. Rowan crouched down and removed the half-cracked team chip from Logan's chest.

Then he took the identity tag beside him, which was still mostly intact. When he came back out, Syringe saw the identity tag in his hand, and his eyes darkened at once. Adams turned his head away and cursed under his breath. Solly closed his eyes. No one suggested bringing Logan's body out. Because everyone knew they could not. Syringe marked Logan's location on the damaged terminal. His finger missed several times before he finally confirmed it.

"Recorded," he said. The team continued outward. The rest of the way was somewhat smoother. When they finally looped back to the entrance hall through the outer ring side corridor, every one of them looked as if they had crawled out from inside a corpse, covered in blood, mud, nutrient fluid, and monster fluids. The lights in the entrance hall were still on. The relay point Syringe had set up at the beginning remained in place, though the green glow was much dimmer than before.

The preservation boxes collected from the outer warehouse were stacked neatly to one side. Most of them still kept their numbers. Looking at those boxes, Rowan felt something strange. They were from only a day ago. Yet it felt as if far longer had passed. Adams rushed to the backup medical pack at once. He opened the box and took out healing stabilizers, severe-wound sealing patches, and two trauma wash vials. First, he gave Solly another stabilizer, then began treating the edges of his wound again.

Syringe crouched beside the relay point and checked the remaining records.

"The local network is broken in many sections," he said.

"Most of the core area footage is missing. The Association marker is still active, but the site playback is definitely incomplete." Solly lay on the drag stretcher, a little color finally returning to his face.

"Enough," he said. Syringe looked up at him. Solly kept his eyes closed.

"As long as it proves we entered, proves the core area lost control, and proves the mission ended here, that is enough." Those words made the entrance hall fall silent again. The mission was over. The phrase did not sound heavy. But it landed on everyone. Two dead. One missing. The captain's legs ruined. After treating Solly, Adams injected himself and Syringe each with one dose of medicine. Rowan refused the injection and only took some ointment for his palm. He did not want Adams examining him too closely.

There were too many traces on his body that should not have appeared here. Next came moving the cargo. Fortunately, the outer-layer gains had already been preserved and numbered. There was no need to collect them again. They only had to drag the boxes to the transport vehicle outside. That sounded simple. It was not fast. Solly was carried into the vehicle first and fixed at the innermost part of the rear compartment. Adams stayed in the vehicle to continue monitoring him.

After resting for a few minutes, Syringe forced himself back out to check the box numbers. Rowan was responsible for the two heaviest boxes. They abandoned one sample box that had not been fully sealed, as well as several sample remains that were too heavy to move. The preservation fluid, crystallized bone plates, low-contamination plant samples, memory crystal chips, and the already sealed Electric-Fungus Rat and Pincer-Eyed Toad tissue samples from the outer ring sample rooms were mostly carried out.

Only what could be taken out counted as profit. Things that could not be carried away, no matter how valuable, were only part of the ruin. When the last preservation box was pushed into the vehicle, gray-white wind and sand blew through the gap at the entrance, bringing in a cold, dry current of air. Rowan stood at the edge of the compartment and looked back at the Fifth Biological Warehouse. The Association seal still hovered at the door. Silver patterns brightened and dimmed like a cold eye.

Syringe walked over and touched the seal array with the team authorization. Pale silver text appeared. [Team status abnormal.] [Mission record damaged.] [Member death/missing status pending review.] [Please submit site records and sample list after return.] Syringe stared at those lines for a long time before cursing softly.

"They'd better count this as disability compensation." Adams poked his head out from the vehicle.

"Survive the trip back first." Syringe did not argue. He locked the last record box into the vehicle, then turned back to the seal array to verify the mission record. After confirming that Solly's breathing was stable for the moment, Adams also got out of the vehicle and returned to the entrance hall to retrieve the remaining backup emergency kit. Rowan pushed the last preservation box into the vehicle. The box was heavy. Its bottom scraped against the metal floor of the compartment with a low, rough sound.

He pushed it into the fixing slot and fastened the locks on both sides, making sure it would not slide out on the road. Only he and Solly remained in the compartment. Wind and sand poured in through the gap at the door, making the labels on the preservation boxes tremble faintly. Outside, Syringe was muttering curses beside the seal array. Adams's footsteps had already returned deeper into the entrance hall. Rowan was about to jump down from the vehicle. Solly's voice came from behind him.

"Rowan." Rowan stopped. Solly leaned in the shadow of the compartment, still pale, his lower body temporarily fixed in place. The backup medicine had made him clearer for the moment, and a familiar calm had returned to his eyes. He did not speak immediately. He only looked at Rowan. After a moment, Solly said in a very low voice,"Where is Grey Raven?"