Chapter 347
For a moment, they were both silent. Skullface looked away from Kato, deep in thought. He knew he needed a plan to stop the morphus, but nothing came to mind. He seemed to have tried every possible approach to kill the creature. What else could he do?
At the main base, several guards wearing mech suits kept watch over captured survivors who toiled in the mines, extracting mana consumables. A thought occurred to him: dispatch the mechs to hunt down the morphus.
But he didn’t really want to do that, knowing the rebels would exploit the absence of the mechs as soon as they realized they were gone. Still, he would’ve been willing to take the risk of leaving the base vulnerable if it meant ensuring the morphus’ certain death.
The problem was that he wasn’t sure if deploying several mechs to attack the morphus would make any difference. The creature had no trouble dealing with a single mech, so having multiple mechs after it would probably only slow it down a little, if at all.
Given that the morphus, Jake, now commanded an army of his own monsters, they would likely simply overwhelm the mechs without the morphus even needing to lift a finger to assist in the fight.
What other options did he have? Should he craft more power suits? The last team had vanished without a trace, clearly failing in their mission, so repeating that approach seemed pointless. Particularly since he lacked the resources to create additional power suits at the moment.
Rather than falling back on past methods that had failed to stop the morphus, he needed to come up with something new.
An idea began to form in his mind. Had this thought occurred to him before all those unsuccessful attempts, he would have considered it infallible. Yet, after so many failures, he couldn’t shake the doubt that this new approach might not fare any better.
Despite his doubts, he realized he had to give this idea a chance and put forth his utmost effort, as it was his final option. If it didn’t succeed, it would mean certain death for him and his organization.
“We should’ve left the freak alone a long time ago,” Kato suddenly reiterated, snapping Skullface back to reality.
“What?” Skullface shot back, irritated at being pulled from his thoughts and at the implication that he’d made a mistake by engaging with the morphus.
Kato wasn’t intimidated by Skullface’s glare, though.
“Do you remember when the freak sent us a message through one of the goons he let escape?” Kato said. “We should have listened to him. If we had, the morphus would probably have been staying out of our way and minding his own business.”
Instead of barking at his friend like the other gang members would have expected from him, Skullface replied in a strained but otherwise composed tone, “I doubt it. Sure, we might have been able to coexist for a little while. However, once he began building his own army, our organization and his hive would have eventually clashed. There’s just no way around it. We don’t even know exactly how he creates his minions. Perhaps he’s capturing our own people and turning them into those abominations, kind of what we do here, you know.”
“Yeah, you might be right, bro,” Kato replied. “So what’s our next move? How do we stop the freak? He’ll eventually come for us here, and if we’re not ready, we’ll be done for.”
“Actually, I was mulling over an idea until your foolish remarks pulled me away from it,” Skullface grumbled.
It piqued Kato’s interest. “Really? What are you thinking, bro?”
Skullface didn’t reply right away. Instead, he turned his attention to a bank of monitors showing feeds from various cameras set up in the mines. The screens displayed captives laboring away with pickaxes, chipping at the rocky walls of the underground tunnels.
He focused on one of the monitors displaying a vast, dimly lit chamber where several more survivors were hard at work. The flickering light cast long shadows that danced eerily around them. Skullface switched on the sound, and the dull clang of metal striking stone echoed in the tight confines, coming through the speakers.
For a brief moment, Skullface observed the monotonous scene displayed on the monitor. The captives labored tirelessly, every swing of their pickaxes echoing with a clang as they struck the rocky walls. The expressions on the survivors’ faces were a mixture of fear and despair.
However, he could see that a few of them showed signs of hope and a hint of defiance in their expressions whenever they glanced around. Some likely believed that the resistance would eventually come for them and set them free, while others might be dreaming of escaping on their own.
However, several guards in mech suits stood at the center of the room, watching the captives to ensure none did anything foolish. Each guard was armed with powerful weapons, pointed at the backs of the captives. Although a few dared to shoot defiant glances at the mechs, none were naive enough to actually try to break free.
Skullface leaned closer to the screen, studying their faces. Dirt and sweat mingled with tears, revealing the toll this ordeal had taken on them. At that exact moment, one of the survivors paused, looking directly into the camera, as if sensing his gaze.
The man’s eyes were filled with a fierce resolve. For a moment, it seemed like the survivor was about to do something reckless. However, in the next moment, one of the mech pilots barked at him, causing the survivor to shift his gaze from the camera and return to work.
The screen listed the names of all the captives, and Skullface quickly located the name of the man he had just locked eyes with: Ryan.
Growing impatient, Kato prompted him again, “You mentioned you have some kind of plan, right?”
A wicked grin crept across Skullface’s lips.
“Yes, I do,” he replied, keeping his gaze on Ryan, who continued to work tirelessly on the screen.