Chapter 623 - 600: The Expensive Armored Vehicle

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

An intense roar erupted. Ding Mao, who was in command, couldn’t help but glance outside. He immediately saw that the outermost defensive line had completely collapsed.

A small number of Abyssalal Corpse Ghosts were already charging into the stronghold through the opening they had deliberately left.

"Dammit, how did it happen so fast? It hasn’t even been three minutes and the outer line is already broken," Ding Mao grit his teeth.

Although they had left many landmines and hidden traps in the channel of the breach, given the abilities of these Abyssalal Creatures, he estimated they wouldn’t be able to hold out for much longer.

Suddenly, he felt his scalp tingle. He looked up into the distance, and his pupils constricted slightly as he quickly dodged to the side.

Instantly, a dense series of THWAPPING sounds rang out.

The window he had just been looking out of was now studded with strands of Petrifying Spider Silk, each as thick as a chopstick and about half a meter long.

The individual Attack Power of these silk strands might not be strong, perhaps not even comparable to an ordinary bullet, but they possessed a characteristic that bullets couldn’t match: this Petrifying Spider Silk was extremely sticky.

If it stuck to your skin and you tried to pull it off, you had to be prepared to rip off your skin along with it.

And if you didn’t pull it off, it would severely hinder your subsequent movements. It was, to put it mildly, extremely troublesome.

Also, it was worth mentioning that not all the silk strands possessed this strong stickiness. The Petrifying Spider could actively control this property while spitting the silk, choosing to eliminate the stickiness if it wished.

That was why the "Spider Silk Shields" held by those Abyssalal Corpse Ghosts weren’t sticky.

After glancing at the situation outside, Ding Mao assigned two soldiers to fill the gap in firepower here while he himself headed for the innermost room of the stronghold.

It was the room they were using as a temporary infirmary for the wounded.

Twenty men were already lying here, all of them severely wounded and out of the fight. In the next room, there were over a dozen more soldiers who had been killed in action.

This stronghold was originally assigned a standard hundred-man company. Now, only 65 combat-ready soldiers remained.

Ding Mao took a deep breath and walked to a corner of the room, approaching two young men.

These two young men seemed out of place compared to the other wounded soldiers. While the others were lying on the floor groaning in pain, these two were sitting to the side, furiously devouring canned meat.

If anyone observed them closely, they would discover that as they wolfed down the meat, their injuries were healing at a remarkably visible rate.

Furthermore, in inconspicuous places on their wrists, ankles, or the shells of their ears, one could see that their skin had undergone a certain degree of mutation. It looked somewhat like the keratinous layer of a Zombie, and there were even some faint corpse spots on this mutated skin.

"How’s it going? How’s your recovery? Can you move freely now?" Ding Mao asked them urgently.

"I’m almost there. In another two minutes, I should be able to go out and fight for another round," said the young man on the left.

"I’m even faster. One minute at most, and this leg wound will be healed. I can go right away. Captain Mao, what’s the situation outside?" the young man on the right asked as he spoke.

"As long as you can move, that’s good. In two minutes, you two will pilot the Mecha and break out. I’ll have people provide covering fire," Ding Mao said, his expression relaxing slightly upon hearing their condition was stable, and he quickly made arrangements.

"What?! You want us to retreat? No way! How can we abandon our brothers and run?" the young man on the left immediately protested.

"Wei Ganghao, this is no time for you to be driven by emotion! Don’t you understand what needs to be done and when?"

Ding Mao scolded him, then turned his gaze to the young man on the right. "Fei Yuan, you’re the calmer one. You’ll pilot the Mecha later. You must find a way to break out safely. Don’t be petty at a time like this."

Fei Yuan pursed his lips. "Is there really no other way?"

Ding Mao snapped in anger, "Didn’t you see how many Abyssalal Creatures are out there? There are a full 5,000 of them! And what’s even more terrifying is that there are Second Level ’Death Claws’ and ’Spitters’! Your concern shouldn’t be whether we can hold this place, but how you two can escape."

"Don’t forget, we can die fighting here, but you can’t. Your real battlefield is the Abyssal Plane. I don’t care if you want to die, but at the very least, you have to go to the Abyssal Plane and bring back intelligence of sufficient value before you earn that right."

"Think about the determination you had when you joined the ’Corpse-man Plan.’ Think about everything you’ve sacrificed to become a Corpse-man."

"Besides, to put it cold-bloodedly, people like us are replaceable at any time. But you, as Corpse-men with a heavy responsibility, are not. People who can match with the Zombie virus are already one in ten thousand. Even among those who successfully match, less than 10% survive the side effects. You can imagine just how low the probability was for the two of you to become Corpse-men."

Having said this, most of the anger in Ding Mao’s heart had been vented. He stepped forward, patted both of them on the shoulder, and said earnestly, "Alright, I don’t want to preach any more grand principles. I just hope you won’t let the sacrifices of people like us become meaningless."

The two young men clenched their teeth, but they didn’t argue back. A look of determination gradually filled their eyes.