Hell's Handbook

Chapter 236: Battle In The Corridor

Su Jin was not too pleased with the fire power of the laser gun. It could be pretty lethal, but its main strength was in boring holes through stuff. It was hard for it to do much damage to these evolving worms. The worm that Reginald had become earlier was only the size of a finger, so the laser gun had barely managed to make a hole in its body that was sufficient to kill it. If that worm had been bigger, Reginald might have had the chance to revive himself again.

He only walked away after he was certain that Reginald had been killed. As he continued on his way, he asked Fearless about how everyone else was doing.

“The crew has been moved to the area below the rest area, but a number of them have chosen to head for the fighting area instead and have run into the enemy,” replied Fearless.

Su Jin was stunned by this turn of events. “Connect me to Kano Mai and Situ Jin!”

A moment later, Fearless replied, “I’m sorry, but my communications system has been locked and I cannot connect you to anybody now.”

“Did Captain Reginald do that?” mumbled Su Jin to himself. Reginald was still very much sentient and was one of the spaceship’s captains. He had the authority to lock the ship’s systems, and it would make sense for him to do such a thing as well.

“Are you able to connect me to Captain Jefferson?” asked Su Jin.

“I’m sorry, but your level of access is too low. You are unable to unlock the communications system,” replied Fearless.

Su Jin frowned. Actually, the solution was simple. He just needed to have a sufficiently high level of access and this problem would go away. Fearless was an AI, but it was still a computer at the end of the day. Without the relevant programming, it was unable to decide when it needed to overwrite authority in order to prioritize urgent matters. Regardless of what Reginald had become, he remained someone with Level 1 access. There was nothing Su Jin could do about that, so he could only hope that Jefferson would notice that there was a problem with the communications systems and unlock it.

He followed the directions that Fearless gave and headed for the shelter. By this time, the inside of the shelter was already in chaos. There were people outside desperately begging the people inside the shelter to open up the steel doors, but because the communications system had been locked, they were unable to see for themselves what was going on outside and nobody dared to open the steel doors.

On the other side, Arkas was getting closer and closer to them. Fearless had already informed everyone about 15 minutes ago that Arkas was no longer containable, so everyone could only hope that Arkas wouldn’t find the shelter so quickly. But such thoughts were futile. The Fearless was a large ship, but it didn’t go on forever. Arkas would eventually find them.

“I wonder how Jin is doing.” Kano Mai was terribly worried. Su Jin had only contacted once after Wu Chen had died, so they had no idea if Su Jin was dead or alive.

Situ Jin consoled her, “Don’t worry! If even he can’t survive this damned Challenge, then even formidable characters like Xu Ran and Shen Wu wouldn’t have a good time either. In fact… I have more confidence in that team leader of ours.”

Kano Mai suddenly felt a boost in confidence after hearing these words. They were talking about Su Jin, the leader of Team Boning Knife after all!

Situ Jin scanned the people who remained in the shelter. There were about a hundred of them or so, but they were mostly the weak and elderly. He had faith in Su Jin, but he knew this wasn’t the time to just sit around and wait for Su Jin to save them. He had to find a way to make use of even the weak and elderly here to survive this ordeal.

“Everyone! Listen to me! We can’t just sit here and wait to die! Let’s get ready to fight our enemies!” yelled Situ Jin loudly. There was a good reason why he was the head of the Department of Supernatural Affairs, after all. He quickly began giving everyone instructions on how to set up the shelter for a battle ahead. He knew that everyone had to fend for themselves.

Inside a dim corridor, Arkas had one hand in his pants pocket as he strolled forward. The arm that had been broken off had turned into a giant worm made from flesh. The flesh worm had a terrifying mouth. It had teeth in a circle around its mouth, and if you looked carefully, you would see even more layers of teeth within that circle.

“Relax, relax! I’m looking forward to that flesh feast too!” Arkas had a chilling smile as he caressed the arm that had turned into a worm and spoke to it like he was chatting with a girlfriend. Behind him, a number of people followed him meekly like they were mere slaves.

The steel door standing in the way between himself and the rest of the ship had been fully corroded. But he frowned slightly when he got to the rest area because there wasn’t a single soul inside.

“Have they been shifted elsewhere?” Arkas snorted. “Fearless,” he asked, “where have the crew been shifted to?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Arkas, but Captain Jefferson has locked your current level of access and you will not be able to affect operations of the ship until the next change of duty,” responded Fearless’ emotionless voice.

Arkas made a face but he didn’t seem surprised by this answer. He suddenly opened his mouth and retched, then raised his head. A black thing the size of a palm was climbing out of his throat.

He finally managed to spit it out. It was something that resembled a ladybird. Once it had climbed out of Arkas’ throat, it landed on the floor and its wings kept trembling.

“My good child, find out for me where those lowlifes have gone,” whispered Arkas after squatting down.

The strange bug’s wings trembled more and more rapidly, then suddenly flew up from the floor and toward Arkas’ mouth. Arkas did not try to dodge it and allowed the bug to fly back into his mouth. He swallowed it with a pleased look on his face.

“So, they’re downstairs, huh.” Arkas had a weird grin on his face. The sticky liquid in his mouth looked especially gross.

Meanwhile, Su Jin was still moving rapidly along the corridor. But he suddenly seemed to sense something and came to an abrupt stop. He narrowed his eyes slightly, then cupped his ears to listen carefully.

“They’re here!” Su Jin’s narrowed eyes opened again. He grabbed a laser gun and aimed it at the corner. Cries and howls slowly resounded from behind.

Several people dashed out and Su Jin’s eyes were like an eagle’s as he observed them. He didn’t care about these people. He was waiting for the hunters behind these people.

“Hurry up and run! Behind us are nothing but monsters!” The first ones to dash out were the three surviving members of Team Volcano Mountain. When they saw that Su Jin was just standing there and not moving, their first instinct was to warn him.

But Su Jin ignored their warning, so the three of them didn’t bother pulling him away with them. After they ran past him, a number of physically fit crew followed closely behind them. But the ones after the crew were a bunch of monsters without any heads. If you looked carefully, these monsters were actually the crew that had been attacked and had their heads explode. The place where a head should have been were now fat and strong worms.

It looked as though these worms had been planted into these crews’ necks. Their faces had a screw for a mouth and a pair of black compound eyes.

“Help!! Save us! Save us!”

“Don’t come any closer! Don’t come any closer!”

“We’re going to die!”

“I don’t want to die here! I want to return to Earth!”

The cries echoing down the hallway sounded like they were in hell itself. The worms implanted into the dead crew would spit out corrosive liquids, which would corrode the flesh of anybody it hit. At the same time, a bunch of other bugs that looked like cockroaches were also running after the other crew members.

Su Jin felt that these weird worms and bugs were moving very strangely. They seemed to have gone completely insane, and the way they killed the people was very chaotic, unlike the worms that Reginald controlled earlier. Those worms knew the exact timing to attack him.

“Is it because I killed Captain Reginald, so now there’s nobody to control their movement?” Su Jin made a face, then suddenly yelled out, “You guys! You’re going to end up dead if you continue running like this. I’ve got some weapons here, so let’s work together to kill off these worms!”

The three members of Team Volcano Mountain couldn’t help but stop when they heard these words. There was a look of hesitation in their eyes. Staying here meant that they had to face these crazed, mutant worms head on. That didn’t sound like a great idea either.

“I’m sorry, but we don’t intend to wait to die here,” said the team leader before running off. The middle aged woman followed behind him immediately, but the man in gold rimmed glasses paused to think for a while more before joining Su Jin instead.

Su Jin looked at the bespectacled man with some surprise, then threw one set of armor and a laser gun to him. The man was clearly very afraid and kept looking toward where his team leader and the other woman had run off to.

After the team leader realized that one of his members hadn’t followed behind him, he did not stop or even hesitate. He just continued running, because he was no longer thinking about getting weapons to fight back. He was now trying to think of a way to simply stay alive.

“If you’re scared, you can always leave!” said Su Jin with a smile as he started shooting at the worms like crazy with the laser gun in his hands. These worms were unable to revive themselves like Reginald, so the laser gun worked pretty well on them.

The man with gold rimmed glasses had clearly gone through shooting practice himself as every shot he fired hit a worm accurately. He said through gritted teeth, “So what if I’m scared? This Challenge requires us to get rid of all the aliens. Retreating again and again is definitely going to get us killed instead.”

Su Jin was surprised to hear him say something like that and gave him a look of approval. “What’s your name?”

“Lv Ming!” He was still extremely nervous and his forehead was covered in cold sweat.

Su Jin nodded slightly and they continued to shoot at the aliens. When it came to shooting skills, almost every owner was an expert. The two of them shot and retreated at the same time, while gathering all the crew that were still alive. Su Jin gave the few weapons he had left to any crew member who was good at shooting, but continued to carry the remaining armor on his back and refused to let anybody use them.

Thankfully, even though they were high in number, these worms were not as big of a threat anymore now that Reginald was no longer around to command them. After killing a certain percentage of them, they were no longer a problem. Su Jin protected all the crew and the numbers didn’t decrease anymore.

When the battle finally ended, the bodies of dead aliens and crew had pretty much blocked the entire corridor. Su Jin had no choice but to use his hands to push them aside to get through. He said to Lv Ming, “Go to the fighting area and arm yourself! Once armed, don’t come back here! Just guard the fighting area!” He then dashed off without waiting for a response from Lv Ming.