Steampunk Era: Mad Abield
Chapter 718 - 497: Elegy of the bygone days (5)

Chapter 718: 497: Elegy of the bygone days (5)

Having passed through the circular corridor, Malin slowed his pace in front of the door at the end. He and the leader of the Punishers faced each other with their guns raised, watching the adjacent passages. After confirming with the purple flashlight that there was nothing abnormal, Malin and the leader turned around, pointing their guns down the corridor behind them to ensure no creatures lurked there. Then, Malin left the World Tree Sapling Fio and Blood Roar behind to establish a support point—so when they returned after grabbing the items, they wouldn’t need to worry about wandering zombies appearing here.

Since the circular corridor ahead was closed, Malin could only lead his people through the corridor to the Central District.

The circular corridor seemed to be the employee passage used for supermarket restocking. At the end of the passage, they found a closed door.

Malin sent the Sapling Lorrin under the crack of the door to slip in and confirm there were no zombies or anything else nearby. Malin then took out Melo’s battering hammer and, with the help of the Silent Barrier, broke open the door with one strike.

Because he controlled his strength well, the fragments did not scatter far. Malin put Melo down, who turned into a hound and went ahead.

"What’s this, something edible?" A half-human picked up a bag from the shelf and took a look, "Completely illegible writing."

"It’s not food, those are packs of 100 gaskets, used for insulating when repairing some machinery," Jason explained, while swiftly flying forward, "I’ve scanned the item already."

Malin followed him and soon saw the energy core covered in intricate patterns, something completely foreign to him. Regardless, now that they had found it, Malin picked up several and threw them straight into his Semi-Plane.

"If we had the time, I’d really like to clean out this place," Malin lamented his actions, feeling like he had entered a treasure mountain but left empty-handed.

"But we don’t have time, Malin," Jason said while turning towards the other side of the hall. His directional pulse scan helped them locate the zombies. It seemed they had heard something and were moving towards them but couldn’t lock onto a scent. The scent-masking agent also effectively blocked their senses to some extent, so they were moving very slowly.

Malin gestured towards the doorway. Lulu was the first to dive into the corridor, followed by two half-humans. As the Punishers of the Church of Justice were retreating, an accident occurred—a shell landed on the top of the hall, tearing off a large piece of the ceiling and letting sunlight flood into the entire hall.

With the aid of the light, the zombies caught sight of Malin and his team.

After the first zombie’s shriek, these previously sluggish different kinds started chasing on all fours, none of the staggering gait of the elderly group they had been before.

"I should’ve told our Aljom Chief to have his gunners stop shelling this area!" the Punishers’ leader of the Church of Justice waited until Malin had rushed through the door, dragged down the shelves, and then swiftly ran after Malin.

"I told him... I think his gunners got the parameters wrong, the deviation from their target point was off by several kilometers!" Malin estimated the distance as he turned to look towards the exit, only to see the zombies smash through the door and flood into the corridor.

Malin extended his hand, using Spiritual Energy to smash the wall near the engineering materials area, hoping the broken wall would block the pursuers.

Then he saw more zombies joining the chase down the corridor—tumbling and scrabbling along.

"Turn the fossils to mud!" A half-human Punisher unrolled a scroll, and indeed the mud from the transformed fossils stalled the zombies for a moment, but in the next second, they filled that small mud bog completely.

"I hate zombies! They’ve appeared in the corridor we came through too!" Lulu pointed to the other corridor and yelled a warning.

"Head to the end of the corridor! I’ll smash the walls with Spiritual Energy!" Malin shouted.

So Lulu grabbed a half-human who was still shooting at the oncoming corridor and pulled him away from his firing position. The next second, a Magician among the Punishers of the Church of Justice shot a Flame Burst Spell into the corridor.

If you know the smell, you can tell the taste of meat—this was essentially the situation now.

As the wall was shattered, Malin took a glance behind him—the zombies were getting closer. He was a step behind, raised his hand, and Spiritual Energy formed into a net of blades, pushed by its owner towards the enemies.

Then Malin reached out to steady a Church of Justice Punisher who had twisted his ankle and dragged him through the breach.

"We’re in the North now! Head north!" The leader of the Church of Justice Punishers said as he helped his comrade, "Please allow me."

"I’ll heal him!" Malin said as he slapped a Healing Spell on the young man’s injury—this was no longer a matter of whether it was proper or not. If they couldn’t run, this young man would soon have no need to worry about anything.

For he would be dead.

"There are still four half-humans! They are on the other side!" Lulu yelled.

Then Malin heard shouting, looked up, and saw half-humans running on a roof towards them.

"Jump down! I’ve got the Feather Fall Technique!" Malin called out.

The half-humans, completely trusting Malin, immediately chose to jump. Malin reached out, and the Feather Fall Technique helped them float down towards him. Malin pushed the dazed half-human leader, "Don’t just stand there, let’s go."

Behind them, the zombies had already charged out of the building.

"Sir Malin! Your launcher!" The half-human who had landed handed Malin his launcher and ammunition. Malin slung them onto his back and then pulled along the half-human prepared to cover the retreat, "Everyone run! I’ll hold them off!"

"We can’t outrun them!" a half-human cried out.

"No, we can outrun them!" With that, Malin reached out, and after the base of the nearby bell tower was hollowed out, it began to tilt. Malin and his group passed beneath it just before the tower collapsed.

"Sir, what’s with the intensity of your spiritual energy?" After passing under the still bell tower, the head of the Punishers from the Church of Justice looked at Malin with eyes one might use to behold a deity.

"You know, I’m Legendary." After saying that, Malin turned his head to see that the zombies had already crossed the outer wall of the bell tower: "They’re quite good at chasing."

"Everyone says that in the Great Wilderness, zombies make the best hounds," remarked the Dwarf Punisher from the Church of Justice, tossing what appeared to be a pressure-activated landmine behind him as he spoke: "I should have brought more."

"Then you’ll have to find a balance between running and carrying weight," said the Elf Punisher, before turning and firing a burst shot, then running off down another road: "Sir! There are too many! I’ll draw some away!"

Malin didn’t have time to stop the Elf and could only do his best to offer a blessing for speed: "Meet at the starting point in the North! Pointy ears!"

"Don’t worry!" The Elf called out, already sprinting away so fast it was nearly out of sight, leaving many zombies in pursuit. Malin turned to look at the leader who was still assisting the young man: "Keep running, I’ll hold them off for a bit. We’ll meet at the starting point."

"No! You can’t take that risk!"

"No, trust me." Having said this, Malin turned around, and at the moment when his hands were free, he raised them, and the zombies within his field of vision were lifted by supernatural forces. As Malin ascended, thousands of zombies were simultaneously raised even higher.

"My God." Seeing all this, an audible scream came from a half-human.

"Is this what Legendary psychics are like?" The head of the Church of Justice’s Punishers asked his counterpart from the Church of the Goddess of Harvest, who looked astonished: "You call this Legendary? Don’t insult the word deity, okay?"

Meanwhile, with a downward push of Malin’s hands, the zombies were smashed towards the ground at high speed and became a mushy mess upon intimate contact with the ground.

After disrupting the zombies’ pursuit, Malin turned and, as he descended in midair, branches made from World Tree Saplings, flung by Malin, hooked onto the top of a distant building. The saplings then pulled Malin to safety on the rooftop.

Malin looked back at the group that had run off into the distance, then turned again to look at the zombies pursuing him.

So vengeful, folks, huh?

Malin grinned with satisfaction – holding a grudge was a good thing in his view.

Since teleportation was disrupted in this area and unusable, Malin had no choice but to run across the rooftop. The triangular wings formed by the branches of World Tree Saplings aided his takeoff. Steering them, he flew over a vast expanse of ruins. The out-of-control Machine Souls below had just spotted Malin when their attention was drawn by the vastly more numerous zombies – compared to the tiny intruder in the sky, the swarming zombies were obviously a bigger target. Taking the opportunity while both sides were engaged in combat, Malin flew over the ruined landscape, catching up with the Punishers and landing successfully ahead of them.

"Looks like our rendezvous has come early," Malin said with a smile, wiping the corner of his mouth. Overuse of spiritual energy had taken a toll on him, but as he had the bloodline of a Frost Giant, such backlash wasn’t much of an issue.

After casting a Healing Spell on himself, Malin felt much better. He glanced back to see the pursuing zombies gradually giving up the chase. Hearing the screams of their companions, they began to turn towards the new battlefield.

Without further pursuit, the group made their way leisurely to the starting point. Malin jumped onto a track vehicle, settled Lulu into another, and then drove into the city. After about four hundred meters, he saw the panting Elf and the zombies chasing him.

The track vehicle skidded, and the Elf hopped into the rear seat. Malin twisted the throttle, and with a roar, the vehicle sped off, leaving the zombies behind – creatures on two legs might not run faster than those on four, but those on four would never outrun a machine.

After all, industrial machinery completely suppressed flesh and blood.

Upon seeing Malin arrive with the Elf Punisher, the slowly moving track vehicles swerved around in a half-circle and followed Malin’s.

"This is the most dramatic operation I’ve ever been part of, Sir," the head of the Church of Justice’s Punishers said, maneuvering his track vehicle alongside Malin’s.

"Then I hope we’ll have fewer dramatic ones in the future," Malin responded with a laugh: "Too much excitement isn’t good for the health."

The head of the Church of Justice’s Punishers laughed and nodded, then addressed the Elf: "Clover, well done, but don’t do this again. Without Sir Malin here, we all would have died today, and your sacrifice would have been in vain."

"...Sorry, I just wanted to help everyone," the Elf said somewhat sheepishly.

"I understand how you feel, so let’s not have a next time, good brother."

"Got it, good brother."

As the conversation among the Punishers concluded, Malin had already confirmed the exact coordinates for the refuge, twenty kilometers to the north, just five kilometers south of the newest frontline, at the bottom of a mountain recess.

"Why did the people of the Old World always like to build their refuges in such hidden places? There was no Chaos in the beginning, so who were they actually guarding against?" Malin complained somewhat helplessly – but also relieved. If it were like the Fallout, with the entrance built in a subway, they’d be in trouble. Considering the current situation, the underground layers of the city ruins were probably teeming with zombies and all sorts of monsters. With just this handful of people, Malin couldn’t possibly lead them into battle there.

That wouldn’t be an adventure, but suicide.

Jason had already set up the navigation for Malin. Leading the convoy, Malin veered left – if they continued straight, they would plunge into another set of ruins within five minutes.

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