Chapter 1481: Dogfight
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Irritated by Hao Ren’s pompousness, Hessiana had no way to vent her antipathy. But she had to admit that Hao Ren was right: only he could pull off such a crazy plan.
The problem of taking to the air did not lie with the technology but the phantoms gathering in the sky. Hessiana had thought of breaking into the palace through the air from the very beginning, but the thousands of phantoms in the air were too high a hurdle to cross. Even Ha.s.se could not say for sure if he could do it.
Riding a missile over Tartarus sounded like a cool idea, but no one on the scene, except Hao Ren had ever thought about it.
He possessed the highest level of defense—his Steel Membrane s.h.i.+eld—and the toughest resistance to negative energy. It may not be apparent from the outside, but the guy’s position as a pope was real. Since the day Hao Ren signed the labor contract with Raven 12345, he had acquired a very high resistance to all supernatural negative energies and was particularly resistant to pure energy creatures like phantoms.
So no one could imitate Hao Ren’s way of breaking through enemy lines.
“All right, I know you are awesome.” Hessiana watched as Hao Ren dusted his body. She might not be willing to admit it, but this guy had truly amazed her. “This time you won. But further forward it the copper palace. G.o.d knows what lies ahead. You had better recover faster.”
Hao Ren looked at his dimming Steel Membrane s.h.i.+eld; other than the light, there was a faint milky light on the s.h.i.+eld, which was the reason for his ability to break through the blockade of the phantoms. This power came from Raven 12345, which Hao Ren acquired through his faith in the G.o.ddess. He had asked himself many times and realized that he built his confidence based on ‘it is free after all.’ As such, Hao Ren was amazed at how he could still use divine spells. He certainly could not count on the sacred s.h.i.+eld to recover in a short time.
“My defense capability may have reduced, but the attack capability is not affected,” Hao Ren said. “But I do not think there will be any major threats in the copper palace. When the demon hunters overran this place previously, they might have used a liberal amount of holy water.”
Ha.s.se nodded. “Rest a.s.sured, there will be no more than two-digit number of undead that could resurrect in the copper palace.”
As the group crossed the first layer of the city wall, the palace of Hades stood in front of their eyes while the ma.s.sive black tower connecting Olympus and the Underworld sat at the highest point of the castle. Complex layers of mechanical parts and sheet metal plates hummed inside the tower.
Battle marks were everywhere in the copper palace.
Buildings and grounds, melted by sacred flames, had cooled and solidified, forming a distorted and strange scene of wreckage and ruin. Bodies parts of the once powerful guards who were once stationed in the palace were all over the place between the three-layer walls. Sacred flames were still burning quietly on the bodies of some more powerful undead creatures. Broken swords of the demon hunters were strewn around.
The demon hunters had paid a heavy price to break through the fort’s defense.
But the fellow demon hunters had carried away the bodies of their comrades. Only the corpses of the losers were lying here.
Just as Ha.s.se said, the demon hunters had used powerful sacred weapons and spells to take down the palace, the corpses here did not resurrect like those on the outside despite the more powerful forces of death in the copper palace.
The group pa.s.sed directly through the hole, crossing all three layers of the wall and the inner court before coming to the foot of the ever-rotating black metal tower.
There were only sporadic encounters with the monsters wandering along the way, and those monsters did not pose a significant threat.
The metal tower was located on a cylindrical platform, surrounded by a thick wall. The wall was constructed with an unknown material, which could be metal or stone. Its color was so dark that it absorbed the surrounding light and distorted the air near the wall, forming a circle of slightly curved lens effect. There were blurry, dark stripes, which looked as if they were moving, in the lower half of the wall. People would get dizzy by just glancing at them.
Hao Ren saw a giant nailed on the wall.
At four meters tall, wearing a black robe and a crown of thorns on his head, white and dry hair hanging down. Buried under his long hair was a horrifically deformed face eroded by dark forces. His head lowered with several silver swords piercing through his chest and nailing him on the wall. There were still Sacred Flames burning on the hilt of one of the swords.
A broken black giant sword lay on the ground not far away. As the dark energy had dissipated, the giant sword rapidly transpired into smoke.
“This is Hades,” Ha.s.se said as he pointed to the giant. “Behind him is the Sighing Wall.”
“Do we have to scale the wall?” Hessiana glanced at the seemingly solid wall and the skysc.r.a.ping metal tower behind the wall. “It looks like boring through this wall is not an easy task.”
“That won’t be necessary. The Sighing Wall is broken,” Ha.s.se said, pointing at one side of the wall. “We can enter through the breach there.”
Hao Ren’s brows knitted together as he looked. “There seems to be something over there.”
Ha.s.se nodded. “It is the guard of the Sighing Wall.”
Everyone came before the gap in the wall. Ten meters from the wall, an unusually large corpse lay on the ground.
It was a three-headed black hound of four meters tall. Its hair was as hard as steel, and every head had hideous steel-panel inlaid and spikes. There were apparent signs of a fierce battle in the surroundings. A large number of silver weapons fragments spoke volumes of how powerful this monster was.
But it was dead. The more powerful demon hunters had cut off the trachea in two of the three heads and punctured another skull in the middle with a long sword.
Lily was struck dumb seeing the large fierce creature. “Wow! It is terrifying!”
Hessiana shot the husky maiden a look. “It must be terrifying to see your own kind lying dead in front of you.”
Lily glared at Little Bat. “This three-headed creature is my own kind? Heck! My hair looks much better, okay? I mean the thing is terrifyingly ugly.”
“This is Cerberus, Hades’s most successful creation. It took our commandos some time to kill this thing.” Ha.s.se said solemnly. “There is nothing to see about this guy. Let’s keep going and stay away from this cursed body.”
Hao Ren had the same thought too. He cautiously went around the vast body of Cerberus to enter the tower of the Underworld.
Just as the group walked past Cerberus, the dead synthetic monster suddenly moved accompanied by a horrifying roar. One of the heads of Cerberus raised and was about to eat Little Hessiana walking behind Hao Ren.
“b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l!” Hao Ren reacted instantly as he turned and saw Cerberus came to life. In a split second, he pushed the little girl, who was rooted to the spot, out of the way. Almost at the same time, Hao Ren propped up his Steel Membrane s.h.i.+eld and blocked the mouth of Cerberus with both hands.
“Is this thing not dead?” Hao Ren cried as he held off Cerberus. “How could this happen?”
“d.a.m.n it! The commandos must have overlooked!” Ha.s.se had come up at once with his sword and slashed the other head of Cerberus. “This thing is not a pure undead creature, it has a robotic skeleton!”
With a shrill of the metal, Ha.s.se had slashed off a piece of Cerberus’s cranial bone. The skull piece of metal and flesh came off, exposing the pulsating tissue and a bunch of sparkling metal wires beneath. There were even gears that were still ticking and tubes that flowing with green fluid.
Hao Ren’s eyes were on stalks. “What kind of technology is this on Mount Olympus?”
After a failed attempt and more injuries, Cerberus immediately its bite. This monster, a product of undead magic, alchemy, and G.o.d-know-what technology, suddenly bounced to its feet and ran amok.
This monster was disoriented because tissue necrosis had spread to part of his body.
The violent three-headed hound of the Underworld was so agile and powerful that almost no one could keep up with its speed. At this time, only one person dared to lunge out at the monstrous hound.
A white shadow flashed across as Lily climbed onto the back of Cerberus. She crept on hall four up to the head in the middle and began a brutal beast fight.
Fangs and claws and double swords had swung into action.
“Just die!”
“Stop frightening people with your ugly faces!”
“What is so special by having three heads, eh? Three heads are even no match for Peking University grad!”
“A disgrace to canine species! Your ugly hair has brought shame to the canine family!”
“Starbuster Slas.h.!.+”
The earth shook as Lily rode on the head of Cerberus unleas.h.i.+ng her wrath. Cerberus had been dead once, its resurrected body of magic and machine was no longer working as good as before. Combat strength had reduced considerably, especially the head in the middle. The demon hunters had punctured its skull, which became Cerberus’ biggest weakness.
The ma.s.sive three-headed hound of the Underworld was unable to fight back as Lily focused on attacking its weakness.
At first, Hessiana wanted to help. But she thought the better of it and now even began to mock the husky maiden. “Oh, well, well. Here it goes, the dogfight has begun.”
Hao Ren could not form the words to respond. He smiled embarra.s.sedly. Just then Cerberus roared in horror as if Lily had snapped something in its head.
The monster was utterly lost control. Its flesh cracked open as hot steam burst out of its body. After another round of roar, the beast suddenly rushed away like a runway battle tank at full speed toward the inner court of the copper palace.
Lily’s reaction was swift. She jumped down from Cerberus and scurried behind Hao Ren at once just when the hound went utterly insane. “Mr. Landlord, I… I think I have driven it crazy—”
Before Lily could finish, an explosion rose in the direction where Cerberus had gone.
It could be that the three-headed hound of the Underworld had exploded. Or Cerberus had hit something in the copper palace and triggered a chain of explosions.
The earth under the feet began to tremble.
Hessiana immediately realized something was wrong. “A three-headed h.e.l.l dog cannot possibly make such a noise.”
The vague roar was heard deep inside Tartarus. It was as if the air was carrying anger, everyone found it hard to even breathe.
Ha.s.se finally realized what it was.
“G.o.d d.a.m.n it! Cerberus has opened the prison of the abyss. Cronus has been released!”