Chapter 236: Before Death
"Beautiful, perfect ten."
Jessica couldn't help but applaud Lin Ye's clean and precise movements.
"It's just one missing leg. You can continue clearing the village, no need to worry about me."
Lin Ye quickly moved to Jessica's side while leaning on his sniper rifle. His excited mental energy was forcibly restrained within his body, making him want to abandon thinking for the first time in a long while, surrendering his body, the weapon in his hands, and everything else to this impulse.
"Truly reliable. Then I won't hold back. I hope you can keep up."
Jessica began running across the rooftops while carrying the light machine gun. Gunfire erupted continuously as she moved without needing to stop at all. Bullets swept through every enemy around like sharp swords, blasting apart villagers, oversized villagers, and all the black limbs.
Lin Ye followed behind Jessica while walking backward, his pistol bullets accurately hitting the tips of every limb attempting to sneak attack from behind. Occasionally he would swing the sniper rifle to blast some nearby thick limbs, using the rifle's recoil to evade attacks that were difficult to dodge.
The two of them carved a bloody path through the village filled with dangerous creatures, leaving only bullet casings and fresh corpses wherever they passed.
"Huff...huff... I'm out of ammo."
Lin Ye breathed heavily. He had actually been quite careful about controlling his stamina consumption, but Dylan's physical condition was average to begin with, plus the injury and massive blood loss meant he was only holding on through sheer willpower at this point. "I'm almost out too. Shotgun or submachine gun?"
Jessica threw away the rifle that had run out of bullets. That light machine gun had long been emptied of ammunition and she had thrown it to smash a villager's head.
"Shotgun."
Lin Ye's stamina had already hit rock bottom, so he needed a weapon with stronger recoil.
Jessica threw Lin Ye a shotgun along with several magazines for both the shotgun and sniper rifle. She picked up the only remaining submachine gun and casually discarded the now-empty backpack.
"We should have almost cleared out all the monsters in the village, right? Except for the one hiding underground."
Lin Ye felt the underground monster was the mature form of the parasitic foreign object found in the villagers' abdomens. Unfortunately, the underground monster only extended limbs from below to attack, never revealing its main body.
"There are still a few oversized villagers ahead. After dealing with them, it should be about done. Can you still hold on?"
Jessica glanced at Lin Ye's right leg. She had bandaged it tightly earlier, but after the intense fighting, it was now completely soaked with blood.
She wanted to help Lin Ye treat the wound again, but the surrounding limbs were increasing in number, and there was simply no environment here suitable for wound treatment.
"This body can't hold on any longer, but I can still continue. Feel free to move forward, I'll cover our backs."
Lin Ye forcefully drew oxygen into his lungs and picked up the shotgun with one hand. Through the previous battles, he had gained new understanding of force, inertia, and rotation.
Humans are accustomed to walking simply because humans have two legs. But what if humans were born with only one leg and had two firearms with massive recoil growing from their hands?
Perhaps humans would adopt a completely new way of moving.
He was going to start spinning.
Jessica began her final charge with the submachine gun. She actually didn't like these soft, weak-feeling weapons, but there were no other choices left now.
Numerous black limbs shot out from all directions, stabbing toward the two. Jessica quickly emptied the remaining submachine gun magazines, clearing a path ahead, then discarded the submachine gun and drew two short knives, clearing the limbs stabbing from both sides while running.
Lin Ye used the inertia from firing to spin forward like a top. Most of the time he was spinning and flying at low altitude, only occasionally touching down with his single foot to gain momentum for another takeoff.
Every metal barrage from the shotgun would hit the areas with the most limbs, while every sniper rifle bullet would blast apart several limbs at once. Entire sections of limbs were destroyed by Lin Ye, splattering black liquid everywhere.
Lin Ye ejected magazines mid-air, using inertia to perform one-handed reloads while continuing to spin. Nothing could make him stop until the bullets were completely exhausted.
Under Lin Ye's covering fire, Jessica successfully eliminated the remaining oversized villagers. The moment all oversized villagers were cleared, the entire Night Inscription Village began shaking violently.
The tremors split the earth open, revealing the main body of the hidden limb monster underground - a giant monster composed of numerous flesh chunks with slender limbs pieced together.
The shaking didn't affect Lin Ye's spinning; instead, it gave him the opportunity to kill the giant limb monster. He stepped on the edge of a building with his single foot, using the momentum to spin-charge deep into the fissure. Both firearms fired successively, bullets hitting the giant limb monster's main body while the recoil spun him back out of the fissure.
The giant limb monster emitted a piercing shriek, numerous limbs stabbing toward Lin Ye in mid-air. But Lin Ye continued spinning even in the air, blasting apart any limbs that approached him with bullets.
Jessica wasn't idle either. Seeing that numerous limbs were attracted to Lin Ye, she directly jumped into the fissure, wielding her twin knives to cut through the areas of the giant limb monster that had been blasted apart by bullets, then stuffed a string of activated grenades deep into the monster's main body.
After placing the grenades, Jessica stepped on the fissure walls, zigzagging diagonally left and right, quickly jumping back to the rooftop in just a few moves.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Violent chain explosions occurred within the giant limb monster's body. Those black limbs shook violently like convulsions, lashing out wildly in all directions.
The black limbs continued lashing for a full half-minute before gradually losing strength, finally dropping powerlessly to the ground.
"Cough...cough..."
Lin Ye leaned weakly against the wall while propped up by his sniper rifle. The spinning force had torn apart more than half the bones in his body. His body was covered everywhere with tearing wounds, with almost no intact areas remaining.
This was the price of spinning. He only had one chance to spin because once he stopped, he could never move again.
"How are you doing?"
Jessica was almost completely uninjured. After all, she was a mid-level spiritual energy user, and even without being able to use spiritual energy, her physical condition was much stronger than an ordinary person's.
"Cough...cough... I need to rest for a while... Go find Caroline, don't worry about me."
Lin Ye barely maintained his leaning position. This body was already beyond saving, and Jessica couldn't help him either.
"...I understand."
Jessica knew this wasn't the time for meaningless words, and the other party didn't need her concern. But she still walked up to Lin Ye.
Then she stabbed a knife through Lin Ye's heart.
She didn't need to do this because if left alone, Lin Ye would die on his own anyway.
So Lin Ye struggled to lift his head, looking at Jessica with confusion. He couldn't understand the meaning behind her action - it couldn't possibly be to grant him release, could he?
He saw the stiff smile on Jessica's face, and the black, somewhat limb-like, constantly squirming flesh thread on top of her head.
Lin Ye also revealed a stiff smile and, using his already broken right hand, pulled out the short knife from his waist, forcefully stabbing toward Jessica's heart.
But at the last moment, Lin Ye's right hand trembled, and the short knife only pierced through Jessica's side ribs, turning a fatal strike into a minor injury.