Chapter 161: A Sentinel?!!

Cyrus halted beside a dry, cracked creek bed. Half-submerged among a pile of jagged river stones, a tracking beacon smeared with scraps of fresh flesh blinked a persistent, rhythmic red signal.

His brows pulled down into a dark scowl. The creature had deliberately carved the tracking device straight out of its own tissue.

Following a sporadic trail of dripping blood, they pressed deeper until they reached the entrance of a natural subterranean karst cave.

The cavern entrance was narrow and bottlenecked, opening up into a sprawling expanse within. The deeper they advanced, the more the labyrinth of branching tunnels dazzled and confused the senses, entirely sealed off from outside light. They were forced to rely strictly on chemical glow-sticks and tactical night-vision optics to navigate the gloom.

Inverted stalactites overhead dripped moisture at sluggish intervals, casting faint, shimmering ripples of phosphorescent light across the wet stone walls.

Aberrations naturally gravitated toward damp, low-temperature environments for brooding; extreme caution was mandatory.

Upon descending past the thirty-meter mark, a scattering of dry, rustling whispers broke the heavy silence. All hands on high alert.

Hiss—hiss—hiss...!

Aberrations lurking in the blind spots of the darkness struck without warning.

The searing hiss of plasma blades scorching alien flesh crackled sharply through the air, accompanied by Bunny placing accurate, calculated suppression fire downrange under the green-tinted glow of her night-vision optics.

This initial wave of Aberrations numbered sparsely—fewer than several dozen—and the squad systematically swept them away with practiced efficiency.

They pushed deeper into the subterranean network.

Subsequent ambushes followed an identical pattern: brief, hit-and-run harassment strikes designed to test defenses before retreating into the shadows. It felt less like a feral assault and more like a calculated guerrilla campaign.

Cyrus tapped his comms headset, halting the advance. He had already caught onto the subtle, unsettling anomaly.

The Aberrations’ tactical behavior carried the undeniable signature of deliberate, centralized coordination.

What was the entity’s ultimate objective? Was it trying to drain their combat stamina, or lure them deliberately into a specific trap?

"Arden, you and San hold the entrance corridor. Everyone else continues the descent. Report any movement immediately."

"Copy!"

Cyrus glanced down toward Bunny, issuing a rare, directive order: "Stick close to me."

Truthfully, he had harbored zero desire to drag Bunny into this excursion; this particular entity proved far more lethal and cunning than any Aberration he had encountered to date. Yet leaving her behind at the base meant enduring another round of stubborn tantrums from a certain perpetually displeased crybaby.

Bunny despised being locked away inside the confines of the Sentinel Tower.

The further they delved, the more ambient light vanished entirely, until the silence grew so absolute she could hear nothing save the echo of her own breath.

Unbidden, a scene from a horror film she had watched back in college flashed through her mind—The Descent. She had watched it with her dorm roommates and nearly scared herself half to death.

Just as they traversed a steep, loose gravel slope, the unexpected struck.

The unstable rock fault directly overhead suddenly burst open as countless ambushing Aberrations rained down like a squalling tide. Foul, rancid mucus splattered onto the cold stone floor, igniting a chaotic, blood-soaked melee in an instant.

Bunny immediately unspooled her spiritual threads, linking straight into the Sentinels’ mental seas. As the Guide’s soothing power flooded into their neural pathways, their combat precision and reaction speeds surged exponentially.

Yet the sheer volume of enemies was overwhelming—swarming like a squirming sea of maggots, their deafening shrieks echoing violently off the cavern walls.

Just as she concentrated fully on expanding a reinforced mental barrier, a small, nimble Aberration lunged straight onto her helmet.

Rain flashed forward, his blade slicing the creature cleanly in half with a crisp arc. But the very next second, a violent structural tremor shuddered through the cavern. Caught off guard by the collapsing floor, the two of them lost their footing and plunged headlong down the steep, crumbling chute.

A Guide’s physical senses were nowhere near as resilient as a Sentinel’s. Bunny clutched tightly onto Rain as their bodies bounced violently down the rugged rock shaft, until they crashed heavily into a completely sealed, pitch-black subterranean chamber.

It hurt... agonizingly so...

Bunny squeezed her eyes shut in pain before slowly forcing them open. She was locked securely inside Rain’s protective embrace; the man had shielded her from the impact, but a jagged stone protrusion had pierced straight through his waist, blood steadily soaking through his tactical gear.

She paled in sheer horror. "Rain!"

The man let out a harsh cough, though a wound of this severity was far from lethal for an elite Sentinel.

Rolling over, he quickly checked Bunny from head to toe to ensure she hadn’t sustained any serious injuries. Reaching out, he patted her head softly, his voice low and comforting:

"Don’t be afraid, my little bear."

Rain attempted to patch through to the rest of the squad via his comms system, but the signal was completely jammed by dense mineral deposits and localized interference.

At that moment, an unsettling sound echoed from the deep shadows of the chamber—resembling the wet, horrific crunching of bones being forcefully rearticulated.

A shape—or rather, a towering humanoid silhouette—crawled slowly out from the abyss.

He was clad in tattered, decayed rags, a mane of stark white hair falling over his face, revealing only his pale greenish skin and elongated, ink-black fingernails.

"Hehehe..."

A bone-chilling, raspy laugh leaked from his throat as he slowly tipped his head up, uncovering pupils that were entirely pitch-black, devoid of any sclera.

His gaze locked squarely onto Bunny, a frenzy of predatory excitement igniting in his obsidian eyes.

He just so happened to be missing one final piece... a doll with raven-black hair.

Rain immediately pushed Bunny behind his back. The moment the monster lunged forward, a crushing wave of spiritual pressure erupted from his frame. The faces of both Rain and Bunny turned pale in unison.

He was a Sentinel?!!

Bunny and Rain flanked him from left and right, engaging the creature in a desperate, high-speed brawl.

Yet the instant Rain landed a heavy, bone-breaking punch to his sternum, he was brutally hurled across the chamber. Bunny leapt onto the creature’s back, reversing her trench knife to slit his carotid artery, only to be violently bucked off into the stone wall.

His limbs bent and flexed with terrifying, uncanny flexibility, possessing colossal physical strength and lightning-fast reflexes that left zero tactical openings.

As SSSS-tier experimental subjects, the two of them were simply no match for him.

The physical and mental trauma wrought by absolute tier suppression was nothing short of catastrophic.