America: The Cremator

Chapter 198 Su Long's New Form: A Human Stick! [Seeking Monthly Tickets at the End of the Month!]

A massive amount of apocalyptic fire and flame projectiles were forcibly crammed into that extremely unstable collapsing core. The energy was frantically squeezed within the tiny space, erupting with high-frequency explosions and noisy buzzing.

The sound struck Su Long directly, sending a shiver through his internal organs.

Baphomet's remaining consciousness finally sensed the anomaly. A violent and unassimilable flame had mixed into the energy it had originally controlled, making the entire core even more chaotic.

It let out a terrified roar: "You bastard! What have you done?!"

Su Long laughed: "Since you're already planning to self-destruct, I'll just add a little something extra!"

Ever since Baphomet escaped using such a shameless method of self-destructing his clones, Suron has been thinking about how to counter such tactics.

The self-destruction of high-ranking demons is essentially a way to abandon their locked bodies, compress their core soul and spirituality, and forcibly escape back to hell in order to avoid the continuous burning of the world-destroying fire.

Since the opponent is going to run away, then when it runs away, mix a massive amount of world-destroying fire into the self-destructing core. This way, we can bite into its original spirituality and directly use the energy of the demon's self-destruction to burn it completely from the inside!

As he pondered, the small white dot behind Su Long expanded to a critical value.

A blindingly bright light suddenly erupted, instantly illuminating the entire inner world.

The dark red light of the sky was dispelled, leaving only pure white as far as the eye could see.

Under extreme heat, everything on the ground, including the scorched earth at the very bottom, was carbonized by the intense sunlight, sending up plumes of grayish-white smoke.

Immediately afterwards, the strong winds caused by the explosion arrived.

The devastating, violent shockwave slammed directly onto Su Long's back, pinning him firmly to the ground.

Suron heard a series of rapid cracking sounds, the mournful cries of "Uriel".

Under the ravages of high temperature and impact, the armor plates began to crumble and fall off in large areas, revealing the red-hot metal connecting layer underneath.

Even with the dual protection of a high-level sacred artifact and the flames of destruction, Su Long could still feel a constant stinging pain in his back.

What's truly deadly is the lack of armor to protect the limbs.

Arms and calves exposed to this devastating energy storm, skin and muscles began to carbonize the moment they came into contact with the airflow, then melted like candles.

The blood evaporated into a plume of red smoke, exposing the pale arm and leg bones to the air. Then, even the hard bones began to melt in the sea of ​​fire, turning into ashes.

A full twenty seconds.

After those twenty seconds, which felt like an eternity, the sweeping aftershocks finally began to subside.

The bright light faded, the gale subsided, and a deathly silence fell all around.

Su Long lay at the bottom of a huge pit several meters deep, his body emitting charred black smoke. He then twisted his broken torso with difficulty, using his abdominal muscles to force himself to roll over and lie on his back on the scorching hot earth.

The buff from the [God of War] state remained, which made him unable to feel physical pain, and his mind remained clear.

Su Long glanced at his body.

The limbs had disappeared at the roots, and the wounds were completely sealed by the high temperature, showing a charred black color. The whole person looked like a charred stick.

He then turned his gaze to the distant epicenter of the explosion.

Baphomet's enormous demonic body, along with its self-destructing core, had completely vanished.

Instead, a huge rift stretched across the sky.

That was the wound left when the spatial barrier of the inner world was forcibly torn apart by that enormous energy, with dark spatial turbulence flickering at the edges of the crack.

On Su Long's retina, lines of text appeared rapidly.

[Burning the A-level eerie Baphomet.]

[Experience points gained: 100.]

[Baphomet's traces have completely vanished from the world. 4 Soul Crystals obtained.]

[Host curse status detected: Dance in Fire.]

The caster is dead; the curse "Dance in Fire" has been removed.

Looking at the last message, Su Long grinned, revealing his chapped lips.

It was totally worth it.

This battle was indeed thrilling; I almost lost my life there, but the rewards were equally outrageous.

A full one hundred experience points and four high-level soul crystals directly filled his resource pool.

More importantly, the cursed entry that hung on the panel was finally erased with Baphomet's death.

They made an incredible profit!

Disordered footsteps echoed from the distant ruins.

Elena and Byron stumbled over, stepping on the scorching hot pebbles.

We were just relieved that Su Long used sound waves to push the two of them out of the gravitational core's range.

Although they were also thrown dozens of meters by the shockwave and left covered in dust, fortunately they were far enough away from the epicenter to avoid the devastating damage.

When Elena jumped down into the pit with her greatsword, she stopped abruptly when she saw Suron lying face up at the bottom.

She, who was usually calm, completely lost control of her expression, her eyes filled with horror.

Su Long looked absolutely pathetic; he had turned into a charred, black stick dressed in scrap metal.

"Suron!"

Elena immediately dropped her greatsword and knelt down beside Sulong with a thud, her hands dangling in mid-air, unsure of where to touch.

"How are you feeling now?"

Seeing Elena's anxious expression, Su Long reassured her, "It's alright, just a minor injury. You won't die. You'll recover quickly."

"You call this a minor injury?!"

Elena raised her voice, then ripped the "Raphael" from Sulong's waist, unscrewed the lid, and pointed the spout at the charred, broken ends of Sulong's limbs.

The liquor poured down, drenching the charred wounds.

Raphael's wine, combined with the restorative power of Surong's [God of War] state, produced a miraculous effect instantly.

Large patches of charred, dead skin began to peel off from the severed limbs of Su Long.

Immediately afterwards, pale bone fragments pierced out from the broken surface, extending outwards at a visible speed, quickly forming the framework of the arm and leg bones.

Then, bright red flesh buds gushed out from deep within the bones, rapidly climbing and intertwining along the skeleton.

Blood vessels, fascia, and muscle fibers layer upon layer cover the bone.

Large amounts of white, hot steam rose from the newly grown flesh and blood.

Under the watchful eyes of Elena and Byron, in less than a minute, Surong's arms and legs grew back completely intact.

He pushed himself up from the bottom of the pit with both hands, moved his newly grown fingers and ankles, and his joints made a few crisp popping sounds as his abundant strength returned to his body.

Although it wasn't the first time Elena had seen Sulong's outrageous self-healing ability, the visual impact of watching a stick grow limbs back in less than a minute was still astonishing.

She stared at Su Long's newly grown arm, and after a long pause, she managed to utter, "Are you... even human?"

Behind them, Byron had just slid down the embankment.

He watched as Su Long's severed limb regenerated, his face turning pale. He pulled a dusty silk handkerchief from his pocket, covered his mouth, and coughed violently twice.

"To be honest, Surong, this is the first time I've seen something like this, and it's really a bit disgusting to me."

Su Long dusted off the remaining dirt on his body, casually took the wine jug from Elena, and hung it back on his waist.

He was about to say something to Elena when his stomach suddenly rumbled loudly without warning.

The sound was deafening, particularly jarring on the deathly silent logging road, followed by a hunger that nearly tore apart Surong's reason.

He felt as if his stomach was on fire, and the once full muscles on his newly grown limbs suddenly became slightly shrunken, and his skin lost its color.

Su Long's face turned deathly pale. He clutched his stomach, bent over in pain, and large beads of cold sweat streamed down his forehead. His legs even began to tremble uncontrollably.

Elena was startled by his sudden action and quickly stepped forward to support Su Long, anxiously asking, "Su Long, what's wrong?"

Su Long gritted his teeth, his voice weak: "My energy is depleted."

After saying that, he gasped for breath, feeling as if the world before him was seeing stars.

"The injuries I just suffered, coupled with the intense regeneration of severed limbs in a short period of time, drained the energy stored in my body."

""

"I'm so hungry! Food, give me some food!"

Su Long grabbed the tactical backpack that had fallen to the ground during the fight, roughly tore open the zipper, and dumped out all its contents.

He picked up the few compressed biscuits and chocolate, bit open the packaging with his mouth, stuffed the hard biscuits directly into his mouth, and swallowed them awkwardly.

Elena, standing to the side, saw Su Long looking like a starving ghost and immediately realized what was happening. She quickly turned on the water and handed it to him.

Su Long took the water and gulped down a big mouthful, then tore open a piece of chocolate and devoured it in a few bites.

It wasn't until I had eaten two large pieces of compressed biscuits and a large bar of chocolate that the burning, cramping pain in my stomach finally subsided a little.

The abundant sugar and carbohydrates quickly converted into energy, filling the deficient body.

Su Long let out a long breath, his withered muscles regained their elasticity, and his complexion gradually became rosy. He then straightened up and wiped the corner of his mouth.

"Phew—I feel much better."

He had barely finished speaking when...

Without warning, several extremely terrifying fluctuations directly enveloped the open space where the three of them were.

Su Long suddenly raised his head, his gaze passing over the dilapidated logging road and landing on the dark red sky in the distance.

At the edge of the sky, those enormous silhouettes with bizarre and fantastical shapes were originally slowly wandering in the wilderness of this other world.

But at this moment, they all stopped moving.

Whether it was the mountain of flesh pieced together from countless tentacles, or the deformed creature with hundreds or thousands of glowing eyes on its head, they all turned around and focused their attention on the location where the violent explosion had just occurred.

Countless gazes, filled with confusion and malice, swept across the dried-up lakebed and the desolate plain, locking onto Su Long and his companions.

"Buzz!"

A very low and muffled sound exploded in the ears of the three people.

The space, the air, the earth, and even their own senses in this area all became incredibly heavy at this moment.

The air became as viscous as mercury, and inhaling it into the lungs was a form of torture.

The thick layer of ash on the ground was flattened by this force, and the hard, scorched earth surface cracked open with countless tiny fissures.

The few remaining dead trees nearby turned into dust under the immense pressure.

Byron gripped his pistol tightly, his face ashen, his chest heaving violently.

As a member of an exorcist family, he knew all too well what this level of spiritual pressure meant. Despite the pressure, he forced out a few words through gritted teeth: "Not good—Suron, we must evacuate immediately!"

After saying that, he looked up at the still silhouettes on the horizon, his tone filled with fear: "The commotion caused by Baphomet's self-destruction was too great. The energy fluctuations attracted the attention of all those ancient beings deep in the inner world."

"If we're targeted by something of this level and they track us down to our coordinates, we're completely doomed!"

Byron hadn't finished speaking.

The focused gazes in the sky converged once more.

This invisible pressure unexpectedly triggered a second surge.

"Well!"

All three of them simultaneously let out a muffled groan of pain.

Elena and Byron could no longer maintain their standing posture and were forced to kneel down by the terrifying power of the rules.

Elena gripped the greatsword tightly with both hands, the blade carving a deep trench in the hard ground as she tried to prop herself up, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't move at all.

Su Long's condition wasn't much better. His legs suddenly sank down, his calf muscles bulged high, and the blood vessels under his skin protruded like twisted earthworms, almost bursting open.

The next moment, a glaring red warning light appeared on my retina.

[Warning: Extremely lethal mental pollution detected!]

[WARNING: Target level too high; full exemption not possible!]

Along with the warning, the [Innocent Heart] entry in Su Long's mind started working frantically.

That mental barrier creaked and groaned under the relentless onslaught of this massive pollution.

Countless chaotic sounds of eating, screaming, and eerie insect chirping tried to burrow into his brain, attempting to shatter his sanity completely.

We can't stop here.

Once they are completely crushed, only death awaits them.

Su Long clenched his teeth, pouring all his spiritual energy into his limbs and bones, maintaining a childlike heart.

At the same time, they squeezed out their physical potential and entered a state of burning their flesh and blood.

His violent heartbeat echoed in his chest like a war drum, and the capillaries on his skin burst. Su Long looked as if he had been pulled out of a pool of blood, radiating a terrifyingly high temperature.

"stand up!"

He let out a low growl that sounded inhuman, and straightened his bent back despite the immense pressure that could crush steel into thin sheets.

Then he suddenly reached out his left hand and grabbed the strap of Elena's tactical vest, while his right hand gripped Byron's arm tightly.

A burst of violent power erupted from his arms, and Sulong forcefully pulled the two of them up from the scorched earth.

"Walk!"

Su Long dragged the two of them along, enduring the malicious stares from all around, and took difficult steps.

Just a dozen meters ahead was the massive spatial rift torn open by Baphomet's self-destruction.

That was the only way out.

With each step Su Long took, large areas of the scorched earth beneath his feet would collapse. The muscles in his legs would break under the immense pressure, only to rapidly regenerate thanks to his powerful regenerative abilities.

Blood dripped down his trouser leg and onto the ground, leaving a trail of bloody footprints.

ten meters.

five meters.

three meters.

The crack was very close.

Twenty minutes ago, in the present world, unstable spatial turbulence flickered at the edge of the rift surrounding Rattlesnake Lake.

Behind the reality stabilizer, three fully armed teams had completely sealed off the entire shoreline of Rattlesnake Lake.

The innermost layer is the exorcist squad of the Weird Support Bureau.

Two B-rank exorcists led the team, while five C-rank exorcists were scattered on both sides, holding various sacred objects and firearms engraved with runes, forming the first line of extraordinary defense.

The outer perimeter is supported by the Federal Disaster Response Force (FDRF) and heavy firepower support units from the Washington State National Guard.

At this moment, both teams have completed their highest level of tactical deployment.

Two Abrams main battle tanks, each weighing sixty tons, stood like two fortresses, steadily positioned in the center of the scree beach, their robust 120mm gun barrels hanging low, pointing directly at the spatial rift in mid-air.

-

On either side of the tank, five Bradley infantry fighting vehicles were arranged in a fan shape, their 25mm chain guns already fully loaded with ammunition belts.

Between them, a dozen armed Humvees equipped with M2 heavy machine guns filled all the gaps in firepower.

On the high ground behind the defensive line, three 120mm heavy mortar teams were already in position.

The artillerymen unloaded heavy shells from their ammunition boxes, ready to fire at any moment.

Two small bird reconnaissance aircraft circled in the airspace, with their thermal imaging and intelligence detection radars operating at full power beneath their fuselages.

At a slightly lower altitude, two Apache attack helicopters hovered in the night.

The 30mm cannon under the nose rotates with the pilot's helmet sight, while the safety on the Hellfire missiles is disengaged.

Further out in the airspace, a flight formation is on standby.

An A-10 Warthog attack aircraft and three F-15 fighter jets are ready to enter the battlefield at any time.

Behind the central defense line, inside a black command vehicle equipped with a large phased array radar, indicator lights on various electronic instruments were flashing wildly.

An officer in camouflage stood in front of a holographic tactical console, his hands on the table, his eyes fixed on the huge red spot on the screen that represented the crack.

"Sir, all units have been deployed and live ammunition loading is complete," the communications officer reported, removing his headset.

The officer pressed the full-frequency broadcast button on the communications channel, and the sound rang out on the channels of all combat units.

"Listen, lads."

"A strike team of three B-rank exorcists has already ventured deep into that hellish place. Their mission is to find the anchor point and close this constant rift from the inside."

"We don't know how long it will take them, or what kind of monsters are lurking inside."

"But our mission is very clear: hold this place until this crack closes!"

"Now, guys, put the safety on your weapons! Whatever crawls out of that hole, blast it to pieces!"

"Remember our mission: We absolutely cannot allow any of these monsters to cross our lines and set foot in downtown Seattle!"

"Understood!" A unified response echoed through the channel.

Suddenly, the spiritual alarm inside the command vehicle emitted a series of extremely piercing beeps.

On the radar screen, dense energy ripples erupted from the center of the red patch representing the crack.

"Sir! There's a violent fluctuation in the rift! Something's coming out!" the radar operator shouted.

Without hesitation, the officer grabbed the microphone.

"Mortar crew! Fire!"

The high ground behind.

Upon receiving the order, the artillerymen grabbed specially made mortar shells, aimed them at the gun barrel, and slid them inside.

The soldier withdrew his hand, covered his ears, and turned his back.

tom!tom!tom!

The dull firing sounds came one after another.

More than ten 120mm mortar shells burst from the barrel, crashing into the night sky with a sharp whistling sound.

At the same time, at the gap in the spatial rift, a thick mass of black mud rolled outwards.

Several hunched ghouls were the first to squeeze out of the rift. As soon as they crossed the spatial barrier, the vitality of the living people gathered in the mortal world and the sweet smell in the air drove them into extreme frenzy.

These ghouls greedily twitched their noses, which had no bridge, and tilted their heads back, just about to let out an excited howl.

The mournful whistling sound of mortar shells falling from the sky had already arrived.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

More than a dozen huge fireballs exploded on the gravel beach directly below the crevice.

The moment the specially made ammunition exploded, tens of thousands of pure silver steel balls and shrapnel mixed with high-level exorcism powder swept in all directions without any blind spots.

The ghouls, still caught up in their excitement, didn't even have time to react before being riddled with holes by a barrage of silver shrapnel.

The exorcising properties of pure silver were wreaking havoc within them.

The moment the ghoul's body came into contact with the silver powder, large chunks of flesh began to rot and melt, turning into several puddles of black water emitting foul-smelling blue smoke within seconds.

When these ghouls die, the black mud deep within the rift begins to churn violently, and the edges of the rift are forcibly stretched open by some force.

Countless dark shadows began to pour out of the crack.

"Fire at will!" the officer roared over the channel.

The M2 heavy machine guns on more than a dozen Humvees roared at the same time.

12.7mm heavy machine gun bullets left hundreds of bright tracer trails in the night sky, forming an impenetrable net of fire.

This time, what emerged were hordes of skinners.

These monsters had no skin; their scarlet muscle fibers were directly exposed to the air. They were incredibly fast, running wildly on all fours across the gravel beach, trying to break through the barrage of fire by using their numbers.

But these bizarre bodies cannot withstand the firepower of modern warfare.

Heavy machine gun bullets struck them, tearing apart their powerful muscles. Each bullet took away large chunks of flesh. The skinners, their limbs severed, rolled on the ground, only to be completely shredded by the subsequent hail of bullets before they could even get up.

Subsequently, the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle's 25mm chain gun joined the battle.

The chain gun emitted a dull "thump-thump" sound as high-explosive incendiary bombs exploded among the skinners.

Severed limbs and black blood flew wildly through the air.

The Apache helicopter in the sky lowered its nose, and its 30mm cannon spat out long tongues of fire, pinning the strange creature that was trying to retreat from the flank directly to the ground.

Just then, a very deep roar came from the crevice.

A five-meter-tall, tragic corpse forced its way out of the crack.

It was stitched together from countless human corpses, its body flowing with yellowish-green bodily fluids, and the ground would tremble violently with every step it took.

The bullets from the heavy machine gun struck its massive body, only causing bursts of foul blood to erupt, doing nothing to stop its advance.

The gruesome corpse raised its thick arm, made up of a dozen thighs pieced together, ready to smash a Hummer next to it.

"Tank, aim! Take out that big guy!"

Upon receiving the command, the main battle tank's turret rotated slightly, and the rangefinder instantly locked onto the target.

boom!

A huge orange-red fireball burst from the muzzle of the 120mm smoothbore cannon.

An armor-piercing discarding sabot round was ejected from the barrel at an extremely high initial velocity.

The corpse had just raised its arm when an armor-piercing bullet struck its chest squarely, tearing its thick body apart before exploding with a deafening roar.

The massive, five-meter-tall body was severed in two, its upper body blasted to pieces, and countless mangled organs and rotting flesh were scattered like a torrential downpour across the wilderness dozens of meters away.

The ground offensive was being relentlessly suppressed by the barrage of fire, but the strange creatures emerging from the rifts clearly had no intention of giving up.

The high-frequency flapping sound of the shovels' wings came from mid-air.

Dozens of death moths, each the size of a small fighter jet, burst out from the top of the spatial rift.

Their wings were covered with pale human face patterns, and with each flap of their wings, they would scatter large amounts of phosphorus powder containing highly corrosive and hallucinogenic toxins.

These moths immediately rise to a higher altitude upon appearance, attempting to evade ground-based anti-aircraft fire and launch a surprise attack from high altitude on artillery positions behind the defensive line.

"Aerial target spotted, calling for air support!"

The F-15 fighter jets circling high in the sky immediately responded.

Three F-15s entered the battlefield, and radar instantly locked onto the giant moths that were climbing.

"Falcon Shovel, launch!"

Sparks flashed beneath the wings of the fighter jet.

Several strange, specially supplied missiles from the Support Bureau detached from their racks, leaving long contrails as they hurtled toward their targets.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Several huge and dazzling silver-white fireworks burst into the sky.

The Whirlwind missile detonated precisely within a swarm of Death Moths.

The high temperature of several thousand degrees, mixed with fragments of pure silver, instantly ignited the toxins and phosphorus powder of those monsters.

The mournful chirping of insects pierced the night sky, and dozens of dead moths transformed into huge, billowing flames, trailing trails of black smoke as they plummeted toward the distant serpent.

As more bizarre phenomena emerged from the rift, the A-10 Warthog attack aircraft, which had been circling in higher airspace, finally swooped down like the Grim Reaper.

The GAU-8 30mm seven-barreled Gatling gun at the nose of the aircraft emitted its signature terrifying roar, like tearing through the Yabu.

"Buzz buzz buzz one"

The depleted uranium armor-piercing projectiles, mixed with the high-explosive shells of the Ertrat, transformed into thick, metallic fire whips, pulverizing the strange creatures that had just crawled out of the cracks into countless flying fragments.

"Well done! Keep the pressure on the rats!"

The strange creatures that kept emerging from the depths of the rift continued to pour out, but they were unable to break through the defense line built of steel and gunpowder.

Several massive, monstrous mutant zombies attempted to stomp on the remains of their companions from the flank, but the chain guns of the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle immediately turned their guns around.

Before these objects could run more than a few steps, they were completely blasted to pieces by a dense hail of bullets.

The eerie support bureau's exorcist team was also busy. The exorcists held high their rune-engraved magical artifacts, constructing an invisible exorcism barrier in front of the defensive line.

Several burrowing ghouls attempting to burrow underground to bypass the barrage of firepower turned into a shovelful of black water the moment their shovels touched the edge of the barrier.

The saturation firepower covered the ugly feet for more than ten minutes.

Directly below the crevice, the shattered, bizarre remains had piled up into a massive mountain of flesh, and foul-smelling black blood had gathered on the gravel beach into a viscous stream.

Inside the command vehicle.

The officer braced his hands on the holographic tactical platform, staring intently at the huge red spot on the screen that represented the spatial rift.

Just then, something unexpected happened.

"Sir! Something's happened!" The radar operator's voice betrayed his undisguised panic.

The officer immediately looked up and saw on the radar screen that the previously relatively stable fissure red spot was now violently distorted.

Immediately afterwards, the spiritual shockwave from the shovel-shaped channel spread out from the center of the crack, sweeping across the entire area.

The instrument panel inside the command vehicle went berserk instantly.

All the indicators representing spiritual fluctuations were at full speed, the glaring red warning lights were flashing wildly, and the urgent buzzing sound echoed shrilly in the cramped carriage.

A fine sheen of cold sweat trickled down the officer's forehead. This exaggerated burst of spiritual energy made him subconsciously believe that some high-level anomaly from the inner world was about to force its way out of the passage and descend into the mortal realm.

However, the anticipated arrival of the enormous creature did not occur.

Instead of expanding outward, the spatial rift in mid-air was pulled inward by an extremely violent gravitational force, causing it to contract rapidly.

The air in the world began to churn wildly, forming a huge cyclone visible to the naked eye.

The bizarre mountain of flesh piled up below the fissure, along with the rubble and black mud on the ground, were all pulled into the air by this terrifying suction force and swallowed into the ever-shrinking dark crack.

Immediately afterwards, a blinding white light shot out from the inner world through the remaining cracks in the shovel.

The light instantly blinded everyone present, and then the spatial rift closed completely within the white light.

The moment the passage between the present world and the underworld was welded shut, the immense energy accumulated at the intersection of the two worlds found an outlet, transforming into a shovel-shaped circular shockwave that swept outwards from the original rift coordinates.

The violent shockwave slammed into the frontline armored defenses.

The first few armed Humvees to be hit, along with the machine gunners clinging to the heavy machine guns on their roofs, were lifted up by the force and sent flying into the air.

The tank's massive body trembled violently under the impact of the shockwave, and it was moved several meters before finally coming to a stop.

The little bird scout plane, like a banana leaf caught in a gale, instantly lost its balance and spun as it plummeted towards the dark lake below.

The pilot gritted his teeth and pulled hard on the control stick, barely managing to level the fuselage at a height of less than ten meters above the water, which startled the cold-weather gear.

The massive Apache attack helicopter was pushed off course by the blast wave, and the alarm system in the cockpit was shattered into pieces.

The black command vehicle shook violently under the impact of the shockwave, and the officer was thrown out and crashed into the sidewall of the vehicle.

The carriage was a mess of debris, sparks flickered from the overloaded electronic system, and fragments of various instruments were scattered on the ground.

Two thousand seconds later, the devastating storm finally subsided.

The officer scrambled to his feet, grabbing the radar operator next to him, who was also dazed and confused from the fall, with the handle of his shovel.

"Report the situation!"

The radar soldier spat.

"Sir—the spatial reading is zero, the rift—the rift has completely disappeared!"

Upon hearing this, the officer let out a long sigh of relief, his face filled with the joy of surviving a disaster.

"And they really did it! They successfully sealed that damned hole from the inside!"

The adjutant helped the boy to his feet, turned to the officer, and said with concern, "Sir, the rift has closed; the passage has been cut off."

"Then how will they—return to the mortal world?"

The officer's smile froze. He suddenly realized that cutting off the anchor point meant that the real world and the underworld were completely isolated. The squad was still trapped in that ghostly place full of high-level monsters.

With the passage gone, the coordinates of the present world are also lost.

Without the slightest hesitation, the officer picked up the microphone again, his voice becoming urgent.

"Armored units, disperse immediately! Push the defensive line outwards, covering an area of ​​five kilometers around the Khan!"

"All helicopters shall maintain high-altitude alert, with thermal imaging and intelligent radar operating at full power, and conduct high-intensity patrols!"

"Upon detecting any spatial fluctuations from temporary rifts, immediately prepare for the highest level of search and rescue and fire support!"

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