Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 585 Bottom of the Pit
"Physical enhancement... I hope he can land alive," Chen Jing murmured.

……

Inside the pit.

Of the surviving hunters, about a quarter chose to shut down their buffer thrusters in advance, while the rest watched anxiously as the tunnel walls swayed precariously around them, constantly praying that the carbonized remains of the golems could hold on a little longer.

One hunter, wearing a cross necklace, closed his eyes and kept making the sign of the cross with his right hand, muttering incomprehensible phrases like "Hallelujah Minos," which added to the tense atmosphere in the passage.

Just then, a large hole suddenly burst open in the wall of the passage, and a giant hand made of countless severed limbs and remains reached out from the hole, grabbed the hunter who was making the sign of the cross, and then quickly retreated back into the hole.

The prayer abruptly ended, and after a half-second silence on the team's communication channel, several hunters began yelling, "Quick! Turn off those damned buffer thrusters!!"

Cheng Ming glanced at the crumbling tunnel wall in front of him, wondering whether he should turn off all his thrusters, when suddenly the mysterious girl's voice rang in his mind: "Call everyone over, and have them hold hands and form a circle."

"And then?" Cheng Ming asked, taken aback.

"Turn off the thrusters, plummet together, and then, one second before hitting the ground, everyone instantly activates the buffer thrusters, set to maximum output power, to counteract the downward momentum."

"Will this really work?" Cheng Ming asked.

“It should work!” Chen Jing’s voice rang out in the communication channel. “Although the exoskeleton will be subjected to extremely high compressive force the moment the thrusters are restarted, the core spine of the ‘Desperate Booster’ is made of a special alloy developed by the Tian Shu Tower. We have just conducted a computer simulation, and the probability of the spine breaking is only sixteen percent!”

"Huh?" Cheng Ming glanced at the control panel on the PAD in surprise. He clearly remembered that he had turned off the communication channel when he was talking to the mysterious girl, but now the communication channel was on. Not only that, several hunters around him were moving closer to him.

"We have no choice but to try your method! Let's give it a shot!" a hunter said to Cheng Ming.

Cheng Ming then realized that the mysterious girl might have just used him to tell the command center and other hunters about the method, but he was completely unaware of it.

"The only problem with this method is that the instantaneous power of the thrusters may not be large enough to completely offset the impact of the fall, but it is still better than free fall!" Chen Jing added, "In addition, the basic configuration of the 'Desperate Measures' also includes a fast-inflating cushioning pad, which can offset some of the impact force."

"Stop talking nonsense and get started!" one of the hunters urged.

The remaining hunters quickly formed a circle in the air, their powered exoskeletons connected to each other by auxiliary mechanical arms. Under the control of the command center, they shut down their thrusters and turned their vector nozzles upwards, firing at 15% power for half a second to make up for the time lost while speaking.

The hunters, who had formed a circle, immediately began to fall at an accelerated pace.

The thrusters shut off, the vector nozzles turned back downwards, and on the AR screens inside the helmets of all the hunters, including Cheng Ming, a rapidly shrinking number appeared in addition to the distance to the bottom of the pit.

When this number reaches zero, the thruster restarts.

Cheng Ming took a deep breath, and before he could exhale, the number had already reached zero.

Faintly, Cheng Ming seemed to hear a soft laugh from the mysterious girl.

All the hunters' thrusters restarted simultaneously, the scorching exhaust flames making Cheng Ming feel a burning sensation on his buttocks even through a layer of protective clothing and armor plates. Terrifying force squeezed in from both above and below, and the core spine of the powered exoskeleton began to groan under the unbearable pressure... But the most deadly were the hunters trapped inside the exoskeletons. The feeling of their internal organs being crushed was hard to describe clearly in words—and this was under the protection of the exoskeleton. If they didn't have the exoskeleton and had just carried the thrusters on their backs, these people would probably have been crushed into a pile of minced meat by now.

With a series of "thump" sounds, the inflatable cushioning pad inside the exoskeleton opened, and the hunters finally landed on the ground at the bottom of the pit.

For the first time, Cheng Ming felt that the feeling of being grounded was incredibly wonderful.

Meanwhile, inside the command center.

“Strange…” The technician stared at the data on the screen. “This is very strange…”

"What's strange about it?" Chen Jing asked.

"When the thrusters were restarted for the last time, the output efficiency of all the exoskeleton thrusters exceeded the rated threshold by nearly three times. It was for this reason that all the hunters survived... But theoretically, when the output power reaches 150% of the rated threshold, these thrusters are in a state of being on the verge of exploding at any time... All of them were at 300% but not a single one exploded... This is beyond the description of a low probability event."

“Perhaps some of them have the ability to influence this thruster,” Bai Lingqiu said. “In any case, it’s good that they survived.”

……

The hunters at the bottom of the pit took off their powered exoskeletons and protective suits. A few of them hadn't taken them off because they were seriously injured when they landed, with multiple fractures all over their bodies, and had completely lost the ability to move.

Their powered exoskeletons were completely destroyed upon landing, and apart from giving them a painkiller injection, they could no longer provide any assistance.

Cheng Ming had the still-mobile hunters drag the wounded man to a corner, and then began to observe the surrounding environment.

The bottom of the pit was much more spacious than they had imagined, and it didn't look like a mine that had collapsed more than once.

"It seems that the monster has already turned the bottom of the pit into its lair." Through the images transmitted back by the cameras on the hunters' bodies, Chen Jing and the others also saw the scene at the bottom of the pit, and Bai Lingqiu said this.

"This is a good thing, I suppose," Chen nodded. "At least they have enough room to maneuver."

Cheng Ming shone his flashlight on the ground. Not far away were several severely damaged exoskeletons and a mass of flesh mixed with the exoskeletons, no longer recognizable as human. These people had restarted their thrusters and cushioning pads when they landed, but it was no use. The weight of several hundred kilograms smashed through the cushioning pads and slammed the fragile flesh inside onto the ground.

Further away, Cheng Ming discovered the remains of two more exoskeletons, but no bodies were found inside the remains; only scattered bloodstains extended into the depths of the cave.

“It seems some people have survived…” Chen Jing frowned as he looked at the screen. “But why didn’t they wait for Cheng Ming and the others? That doesn’t make sense… The cavity area is safe for now. Even if the passage collapses, they won’t be affected since they’ve already landed… By the way, can we still contact those hunters?”

"We can't get in touch with them. The interference with the communication equipment is too strong. We can only make contact with the commando team by using a large signal amplifier mounted on the exoskeleton," the technician said.

The signal amplifier the technicians mentioned weighed a full twenty kilograms. Only six out of the twenty-eight exoskeletons had this device installed. Two of the people who had free-falled earlier had amplifiers, but they were both destroyed upon landing... Even if they weren't destroyed, no one would be willing to remove such a heavy device and carry it on their back...

(End of this chapter)