Chapter 13
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Chapter 13: Beast Tide
The disaster that marked the transition from the Old Era to the New Era completely sealed off humanity’s routes, whether on land, sea, or in the sky.
For decades, Hope City has been struggling to survive, and while it appears to be expanding, the efforts and rewards have not been proportional.
Anti-aircraft guns can only ensure that the city is not attacked by extraordinary beasts flying in the sky, and the city walls can only prevent direct assaults. However, Hope City’s resources are extremely limited.
To ensure a stable energy supply, Hope City was built in a geothermal location, but one of the negative impacts of this arrangement is the lack of mineral resources.
In other words, every bullet fired by the soldiers on the city wall and every gram of explosives used is a scarce resource. If they cannot be effectively recycled or new mines found, it becomes almost a waste of reserves.
This is why the three major organizations in Hope City place such great emphasis on superpowered individuals, especially those with rare and powerful abilities—
Those fireballs and other strange phenomena appear to be conjured out of thin air, with no consumption aside from food; in other words, they are free!
Even if there is some consumption, it is merely the energy within those individuals’ bodies. From this perspective, superpowered individuals can be seen as a black box that transforms a certain amount of energy into specific results. Cultivating and fully researching them is of great significance to humanity’s survival.
At this moment, without overthinking it, Wang Xiao rationally noticed something was wrong—
He could hear the voices of the extraordinary beasts again, which indicated that the firepower on the city wall was no longer as intense as it had been at the beginning.
But the beast tide was closing in on the city wall; it didn’t make sense to fire heavily when they were far and lightly when they were near, unless…
The ammunition reserves were not as abundant as imagined.
The city defense team’s ammunition was typically allocated based on need, with observers assessing the beast tide several times before distribution.
Something must have gone wrong!
"Ow! Ow!"
Another strange alarm sounded from the city wall. Wang Xiao recalled his training and identified the meaning of the alarm—
Monsters are starting to climb the wall!
The soldiers at the front began to change formation, stepping back slightly to allow themselves enough reaction time.
Wang Xiao’s heart jolted. He used his enhanced senses to distinguish the chaotic sounds and suddenly pointed at a soldier off to the side, shouting loudly without regard for discipline:
“There! Be careful!”
As Wang Xiao spoke, a long, slender hard claw appeared at the edge of the wall, piercing firmly into the concrete before the soldier.
He quickly turned his submachine gun to try to blast that limb off with a flurry of bullets.
But the hard exoskeleton and smooth surface of that limb thwarted his attempts; a second and third claw kept appearing on the city wall, and a spider-like monster, about two people tall, began to pull itself up using its powerful claws.
Wang Xiao’s pupils dilated in shock as he saw that on the monster’s two back legs, each claw was gripping another extraordinary beast that resembled a feline!
“Ah! Die!”
The soldier shouted as he pulled the trigger, managing to shoot off one claw, but another claw pierced through his chest at the same time.
Wang Xiao suddenly lunged forward, wanting to rescue the soldier who might already be dead according to training protocols, but he witnessed the spider-like monster fling the soldier off the wall to the ground below.
He halted in his tracks, beginning to observe the situation around him. He saw numerous soldiers pointing their guns at the monster that had first climbed the wall, which left the defenses in front of them open.
In fact, many soldiers did not know whether there were monsters climbing the wall before them, because during such moments, sticking their heads out to see was extremely easy for those beasts to ambush. This was a lesson that every soldier stationed on the walls would remember.
Meanwhile, in the small command room behind where Wang Xiao was, the middle-aged officer who had personally recruited him was gripping the collar of a young soldier sitting in front of a screen, angrily demanding,
“Why didn’t you see it? Didn’t the first three rounds of observation say there were no spider-type extraordinary beasts?”
“Sir, I don’t know!”
The young man was clearly an inexperienced observer, nearly in tears, he could only respond to his superior in this manner.
He knew that if this section of the wall fell today, even if he survived, he wouldn’t escape the subsequent trial.
In Hope City, where the military, policing, and judicial systems are almost entirely under military control, these trials happen quickly, often leading to immediate execution after verdicts.
The young man didn’t want to die, but even more, he didn’t want to die without understanding; he could promise that every action he took was strictly in accordance with the training manual.
He could only grit his teeth and say,
“I will send today’s video to the command center…”
However, the commander had already lost interest in him and was shouting from the doorway,
“Call for backup from the headquarters’ superpower team and come help me out!”
—
The defense line on the city wall collapsed.
Wang Xiao never expected that his first time on the battlefield would encounter such misfortune. Under normal circumstances, a collapse of the wall would only happen once every year or two. Even though his father had recently died fighting on the wall, that battle hadn’t descended into the chaos seen today.
As everyone retreated, Wang Xiao heard some soldiers shouting things like, “The types of monsters and observation results do not match; we don’t have enough corresponding weapons…” but he didn’t quite understand.
Wang Xiao had already dragged back three lightly injured soldiers. The term “lightly injured” actually meant not being able to fight but still essentially able to be rescued.
For such human resources, Hope City had always made arrangements to use them efficiently, with many limbless injured soldiers later assigned to the factories’ weapon production lines.
Although these individuals might not be very nimble, their deep-seated hatred for the extraordinary beasts ensured that the weapons they produced were still of good quality.
As Wang Xiao was dragging the fourth injured soldier, he grasped a specific part of the man’s combat suit while the injured soldier continued to shoot backward in a semi-reclined position.
Suddenly, Wang Xiao felt his body yanked backward abruptly, accompanied by the desperate scream of the wounded man.
Wang Xiao turned his head with wide eyes, discovering an extraordinary beast resembling a cheetah with two deformed heads had bitten onto the soldier’s calf, seemingly about to tear it off.
Wang Xiao suddenly became dazed. Was his father feeling this same despair that day?
Or, as he lay gravely injured, watching his comrades retreat in panic, was he even more desperate than the soldier now?
He suddenly felt a surge of hot blood rushing to his brain. He drew the submachine gun specially assigned to Medical Soldiers from his waist with one hand and, with the other, injected a painkiller into the soldier’s neck with steady aim.
Then he stepped forward, unleashing an entire magazine of bullets onto the beast that was biting the soldier’s leg.
