Chapter 475: Semi-Transformation After Semi-Transformation

Since this zerg knew about where his mecha was, he must’ve known about Lilianna, too. He must’ve been there at some point.

Grayson asked, "Are you the one who took Lilianna?"

The clicking stopped. Keres realized that he must have said a lot more than he intended.

It was a small thing, but Grayson knew he had struck something.

Keres seemed to know that Grayson must’ve noticed. He kept his voice level and almost lazily said, "Seriously, she’s a grown woman. Can’t she get out of the basement on her own?"

"I’ve never said she was in a basement." Grayson simply said.

Keres’s mandibles twitched, clicking. "Let’s say that’s true. What benefit could I get from taking that woman out of there?"

"How long have you been pretending to be Helena?" Grayson asked, stepping an inch closer, spreading his pheromones. He laced it with spiritual power, regardless of the consequences.

Threatened, Keres instinctively tightened his limbs around Catalina. This time, he didn’t reply, no matter how long Grayson stared at him.

Grayson took Keres’ silence into account and cursed inside.

Regardless of how long he had been inside Helena, it was clear that it had been for a while. Helena had been in the military for a long time. She had only been here for a short break.

If she had been for much longer, if this whole situation didn’t have, if they didn’t somehow manage to extract him from Helena’s body, god knows how many losses they would incur in the front lines.

Grayson felt the familiar headache wreaking havoc in his head. He was already retired; the border was not his problem anymore. But the border didn’t seem to want to let him go.

You have one job, Hunter. One job.

Grayson coldly thought.

And yet here I am, doing it for you, while your reinforcements take their sweet time. If I come out alive after all of these, I’ll make sure you’ll be living in a hell of papers for the foreseeable future.

Grayson stopped and focused.

Ciel quickly realized the change in the atmosphere. He realized that Keres’s attention was fully on Grayson now.

The barbed limb around Catalina’s throat had loosened by a degree. But it was enough to rescue Catalina if he went very fast, which he was fully capable of doing.

Ciel’s muscles coiled.

Now—

And that was the exact moment Grayson felt something.

Another pressure, similar to that of the zerg in front of him. It was moving fast, approaching them fast. But it was also changing the movements in the air. It was making his pheromones laced with spiritual power slightly useless against Keres.

Keres felt that he could finally breathe and looked at the back of Grayson.

Grayson turned.

Salia came screaming across the lawn on tattered wings, one forewing scorched and streaming smoke.

Her face—her face—was the face of Lilianna Gringer, now white-haired, fine-boned.

It was the face of his friend, once a comrade on the battlefield.

Grayson felt a surge of irritation and frustration all at the same time. For a second, it overwhelmed even his worry for Neville.

It wasn’t enough that they had used Helena, now they used Lilianna. Not just mere usage, but her whole identity at that.

Grayson thought that he could still save his friend, that she would be tried as a human. But looking at her now, it was impossible. He pursed his lips and began to worry about Catalina.

Grayson glanced at Catalina and her expression, her tears that incessantly fell down her cheeks, already said that she had seen it.

She knew it too; her daughter couldn’t be saved anymore.

Grayson’s gaze moved sideways, where a lean figure crouched with a long rifle, Julius. He was lying down, covering fire from range.

Then he looked at the clearly high-ranking zerg, Salia, approaching them and knew that this strategy wouldn’t work.

Grayson quickly gave Julius a look: Get in the air. It was not an order, but it might as well be one.

Julius understood it too and cursed, low and feeling annoyed. He really did not want to semi-transform if it could be helped.

He, semi-transforming, meant losing his hands. A sharpshooter like him who worked his way around guns could not do without their hands.

But in this situation where their enemy clearly had wings and could fly away at any time, someone needed to cover the sky for them.

Chronos beat him to it and quickly semi-transformed into a black panther and quickly leaped. Between the leap and the apex his shoulders, it split open into something sleek and black.

It was a panther’s musculature stretched and lengthened until it caught the air. Then, in the next second, he looked like he was flying.

"Show-off," Julius growled, and gave up.

His own change came over him in a shudder of red. Arms first, then the bones lengthened. The flesh unspooling into broad crimson pinions, primaries fanning out where his fingers used to be.

A great red eagle’s wings bloomed from his shoulders, and his face sharpened. The overall transformation turned out to be less like a noble raptor but more like a harpy out of fantasy fiction novels.

Julius had the man’s torso, a hunter’s wings, eyes gone gold and furious. Which left him with the eagle’s eternal problem.

A harpy was a magnificent thing to look at in the air. But it was a frustrating thing to transform. Because, as a gunner, what, exactly, could he fight with?

Julius hovered in the air, thinking hard gloomily.

First option, he could clamp a plasma blade between his foreclaws like an animal and hope to slash on the pass.

Second, he could carry a satchel of bombs and turn himself into a bomber.

Neither option made him happy.

"Seaton!" Bryan’s voice rang out from below.

Julius looked at Bryan in askance. But Bryan didn’t care and just stood in the open with that long black case popped open at his feet. He seemed to have thrown something up into the dark with no care for the receiver.