447 Chapter 447: Infiltration again (1/2)
As expected, both Adrian and Melina recoiled at the gruesome sight, but credit to them, they held their nausea or horror back with typical stoicism.
”Did everyone die?” Adrian asked, his voice clearly shaken despite him putting on a brave front. I shrugged.
”We'll find out.”
Deeper into the facility, we came across survivors. The Dark Church members had pulled together and slaughtered the Barbaric Baboons that had escaped, gathering in tight knots and covering each other. There were very few Barbaric Baboons left, but they continued to recklessly hurl themselves at the solid lines of the Dark Church, gaining more casualties with each wave. At first I was surprised by their suicidal charge, but then I realized it was only a diversion. There was another group of Barbaric Baboons that were flanking the humans from the side, climbing along the walls unseen.
I didn't bother to warn the Dark Church. These were the zealous idiots who thought it was a good idea to murder the entire human race in exchange for monsters. Well, let them deal with the monsters they so dearly loved then.
”Don't cast any magic,” Melina reminded me when I tensed as a Barbaric Baboon passed by in front of us. She must have noticed my hand tightening on the hilt of one of my swords. ”The moment you cast a spell, or make physical contact with a target, the stealth field will automatically switch off, or you will be visible to the target.”
That made sense. Given how you needed to emanate as little mana as possible, and that you might disrupt the stealth field if you began gathering mana to start casting a spell (but not fully cast it), it made sense that the stealth field would deactivate when you coalesced such a huge amount of mana and manifest it in a spell. Also, the stealth field would end up encompassing the target if you touched it, so it was pointless to try and do stealth kills. Even if you successfully kill the target, its comrades were likely to notice one of their brethren disappearing right beside them. Even if they didn't notice, it was still too big of a risk to take for so little gain. So what if I kill one dude? That wasn't the goal here.
The goal was still to locate Ling Dan and confirm whether he had been taken hostage by the Dark Church or not. Or joined them.
Taking a deep breath, I scanned the tightly knotted group of Dark Church members, all of whom were wearing black robes. My glasses allowed me to zoom into their faces and identify them visually, or at least confirm that they didn't resemble the photograph of Ling Dan that Doctor Dorden gave me earlier. After sweeping through the entire group, I confirmed that Ling Dan was not among them, and turned to nod at the kids.
”Let's go. He's not there.”
”All right.”
”Where are we going?”
Melina acknowledged my order, but Adrian raised a legitimate question. I honestly had no idea, but fortunately the base was pretty straightforward. There was very few directions in which we could proceed.
”Forward. Deeper into the base.”
We advanced deeper into the base, and when there was the occasional Black Church member hurrying about to respond to the assault, I had Adrian and Melina flatten against the wall to ensure we didn't physically bump into the guy or vice versa. A few Barbaric Baboons would climb overhead, only to be shot down by defensive turrets spewing mana bullets, but the automatic guns' sensors didn't track us thanks to the hi-tech stealth field that Melina's device generated.
How on earth did her family get their hands on such an insane device? Oh, right. One of the ten great families. Of course.
”Don't worry, they can't sense us,” I assured the kids as I stepped in front of the turrets. Not directly in front – even I wasn't reckless or stupid enough to take such a huge risk. ”Let's hurry and get behind them.”
As it turned out, there were even more turrets behind those turrets, but these were manning the cages. I could see a row of turrets that had been badly mauled, a row that had been watching over a series of empty cages before their demise. A good number of monster corpses lay strewn in front of the turrets, evidence of how the pack of Barbaric Baboons had lost a significant portion of their forces before they eventually overwhelmed the guns.
Yet there were many monsters housed within the reinforced cages, remaining under the cautious sensors of whirring sentry guns that swept their barrels in a 180 degree arc. I still thought the Dark Church was stupid for even trying to capture monsters. That never ended well.
Then again, I highly doubted anyone gullible enough to join such an insane organization would have watched sci-fi movies. Honestly, religion was fine. Even in the 31st century, religions still remained to provide spiritual aid and a community of belonging for the majority of the population. It was only fanatic extremists like these who resorted to terrorism and abused the good name of religion for their own benefit. Hell, I doubted the higher-ups who ran the Dark Church were actually all that religious. Most likely the majority of them were atheist edgelords who held a childish grudge against the world or humanity, and wanted to massacre people because…I don't know, they got rejected by society or something. And not because they truly believed monsters as their saviors.
Then they preyed on the mentally or spiritually weak, or those discarded and callously abandoned by society, and persuaded them to join their cause, to unleash monsters on the very society that had ostracized them, while pretending it was for a religious cause.
We got past the monster cages and deeper into the facility, and from a damaged blueprint, I could make out the direction of the laboratories.
”Let's get to the labs,” I suggested. If there was any place where Ling Dan might reside in, it was definitely the laboratories. I wondered what the Dark Church was researching on. First, a vast cargo of herbs and medicinal flowers, and then a bunch of monsters trapped inside cages. Given what I had seen of them so far, I had no doubt that they were researching on ways to up the lethality and killing power of monsters, particularly after what Dad and I found in the mountains all those months ago.
The passageway to the labs was surprisingly empty and unguarded. Most of the personnel had been running around, dealing with the escaped Barbaric Baboons, and so they left the corridor to the labs bare. That was good for us, but I refused to take any chances and had Melina and Adrian continue activating their stealth devices.
It wasn't over until it was over.
”Where's everybody?” Adrian asked when we strode past, looking into the labs. Several of them had clearly been broken in, but the monsters that had smashed their way in looked dead. I caught sight of several scientists in white lab coats lying beside the monsters, the once pristine fabric of their signature coats now stained crimson with blood.
”Dead,” I muttered.
”All of them?” Adrian asked, his complexion ashen. I shrugged.