Novel Full Chapter 139: The Swarm Below
Chapter 139: Chapter 139: The Swarm Below
Jaxon pushed himself upright, the M16 appearing seamlessly in his hands. Moving toward the jagged hole punched through the side of the building, he scanned his surroundings.
One Variant had been thrown onto the street below. Its skin was charred black, limbs twisted and crushed, but it twitched intermittently. Jaxon didn’t hesitate, he raised his gun and fired. The headshot was clean, and the notification confirmed the kill.
He scanned the area again and noticed a gaping hole in a nearby building. ’It must have been thrown there by the blast,’ he thought, calculating its trajectory.
He readied himself to finish off the other Variant when a faint thumping echoed from the street below.
Jaxon’s gaze sharpened, something was moving down there. He focused on the street below, watching shadows shift unnaturally. Thump… thump… thump… The sound grew louder, echoing off the nearby buildings, reverberating in his chest.
Suddenly, the asphalt split with a violent explosion. Dirt, concrete, and black flesh burst into the air as a massive hole ripped open the street. Multiple guttural roars erupted from the depths, and an instinctive chill ran down through his spine. Danger, massive danger.
A pale, bald figure crawled out first. It resembled the bald infected, but something was off. Its legs were thicker, more muscular, almost bestial, forcing it into a low, four-legged gait.
Jaxon didn’t hesitate. He fired, bullets ripping into its head before it even registered his presence.
(10 EXP, 10 coins, 0.10 Speed gained)
The experience points flashed in his vision. Five times that of a normal bald infected. But there was no time to dwell, dozens more began crawling out of the hole, some springing upward like horrifying black rockets.
He continued firing, suppressing them as best he could, but they kept coming. One of the larger ones spotted him perched in a building hole and let out a piercing roar. Bullets hit it instantly, but others had already noticed him.
Then they moved, not running, but launching themselves with unnatural force. Their legs pumping with terrifying power, leaping from building to building like grotesque grasshoppers, closing the distance in seconds.
Jaxon’s eyes widened as every instinct in his body screamed at him to run.
(140 coins spent. Frag Grenade x2 successfully purchased.)
Two grenades appeared in his hands as he spun and hurled both of them straight into the gaping hole in the street.
Then he turned and sprinted away. He charged up the stairwell, vaulting steps two at a time, pushing himself higher and higher toward the rooftop.
A few seconds later… BOOOOM!
The explosion thundered through the street below. The building shook as dozens of notifications rang rapidly inside his head. But the sound that followed was far worse.
A deep, guttural roar erupted from below. It echoed like a massive bell tolling across the city, reverberating through the streets and buildings as if something enormous had just been awakened.
Jaxon shuddered when he heard it, his legs did not stop moving. He kept running up the stairs until he finally burst onto the rooftop. Cold air hit his face as he rushed toward the edge and glanced down at the street below.
The hole had grown even larger now, collapsing inward like a massive sinkhole, and this time, he could clearly see what lay beneath. It looked like a gigantic root system made of dark, pulsating flesh buried under the city.
His grenades had torn a massive chunk out of it. Dark blood seeped across the exposed tissue, and a large portion of the grotesque mass had been blown apart.
But that wasn’t the worst part. The infected from earlier were still coming, and now there were far more of them.
They crawled out of the hole in endless numbers, like thousands of ants pouring out from a nest. Their bodies climbed over each other as they rushed toward the surface.
It looked as if an entire underground hive had been hiding beneath the city. And now it was flooding the streets like a rising black tide.
(140 coins spent. Frag Grenade x2 successfully purchased.)
Without slowing down, he pulled the pins and dropped them straight into the sinkhole below.
Jaxon didn’t wait to see the result. Turning on his heel, he sprinted and leapt toward the next building.
BOOOM! Another explosion thundered through the street, followed by a chorus of dying shrieks.
Normally, killing dozens in one strike would have filled him with excitement. Instead, the alarm in his head screamed louder.
It felt as if he had kicked a hornet’s nest. If he stayed even a moment longer, he would be swallowed by it. So he kept running.
Down on the streets, some of the infected caught sight of him moving across the rooftops. Their shrieks echoed as they immediately gave chase.
Jaxon reached the edge of a building and dropped down to a lower rooftop. His boots slammed onto the surface, but he rolled the instant he landed, letting the momentum carry him forward before springing back onto his feet.
Behind him, the shrieks grew louder. Dozens of the grasshopper-like infected were already leaping across the rooftops. They crashed onto walls, railings, and rooftops as they chased after him.
Jaxon sprinted fast, and a broken air-conditioning unit blocked his path. But he planted both hands on it and vaulted over in one fluid motion, landing smoothly and continuing his run without breaking stride.
THUD. One of the creatures had closed the distance in a single leap, its claws scraping against the rooftop only a few meters away.
Jaxon twisted his body mid-run. The M16 appeared in his hands as if summoned from thin air and fired a short burst.
The nearest infected’s head snapped back as bullets tore through its skull, its body tumbling lifelessly across the rooftop, but the others were still coming.
The rifle vanished as quickly as it had appeared, slipping back into his storage space as Jaxon faced forward again.
Ahead of him, a thick cable stretched between two buildings, sagging slightly over the street below.