Chapter 427: The Last Counterattack

Chapter 427 The Final Counterattack
There were voices echoing in the depths of the corridor, but they were mixed and indistinct, indistinguishable.

There seemed to be the sound of cold wind, muffled murmurs and whispers, as well as intensely resounding footsteps, and gunshots.

Everything was mixed together, everything had lost its distinct boundaries, and the whole world seemed to be gradually kneaded into a ball, no longer having a front and back, no longer having yesterday and today – just like the fog-filled dim corridor in front of us, which seemed to be able to swallow up everything in a daze.

The old man with a stooped back took hobbling steps, walking slowly in the corridor, carrying a large wrench in his hand that occasionally touched the pipes on the nearby wall, emitting a low and strange sound of impact.

Who was he? Where was this place? Where are you going? Why are you going to that place?
The attack had begun …… At zero midnight was the time for the Queen’s Guard to launch their attack, but what exactly was to be attacked? And in which direction was the attack to be made?

From time to time, some messy and broken thoughts, some long-faded memories popped up in the old ghost’s groggy mind, but soon, they all dissolved into his muddled brain – he occasionally felt as if he was walking on two split paths, with chaotic perceptions and memories of his experiences entangled within this body, but sometimes he felt as if he had actually stayed where he was, waiting in place for fifty years for his orders.

The large wrench hit something with a clanging sound, and the old geezer sluggishly lowered his head to see that it was a helmet – black, narrow-rimmed, and bearing the markings of the Queen’s Guard, something that had been made fifty years ago, and was now unseen.

He stared blankly at the helmet, watched it fall to the ground and roll with a grunt into the drain aside, and something seemed to struggle up out of the drain, but soon merged with the darkness around it again and disappeared.

He let out a muffled grunt and continued to stride towards the darkness, as if he was drifting into the depths of a cohesive mass of pitch-black sludge, and then it was an indeterminate amount of time before he finally came to a halt at the end of this corridor.

Interlocking pipes, collapsing rubble, and smoke and black matter surging between the rubble – these things blocked the old man’s path, and here he paused, looking around in some confusion.

He didn t recognize this place, didn t even remember such a place in the Second Waterway, but this was where he stopped, because …… there was something waiting for him to accomplish here.

The old ghost lowered his head and looked at a patch of standing water next to the gravel, in which his eyes filled with confusion were reflected.

What did one have to come here to do?

Just then, there was a sudden, unfamiliar glimmer of light reflected in that pool of water –

The soldiers of the Queen’s Guard stepped through the endless monsters swarming in the corridor, and the guns and bayonets in their hands turned wave after wave of fake freaks into cold, dry mud, and wherever they passed, there was no longer any sludge seeping through the walls, and even the darkness of the corridor seemed to have receded quite a bit.

Everything was just as Lawrence suspected: the very existence of the Queen’s Guard was suppressing the “pollution” in this mirror city-state.

If what happened in this city-state was regarded as a confrontation between two forces, then those mud monsters and the Queen’s Guard were obviously the embodiment of these two opposing forces – and such confrontation and entanglement may have lasted for half a century.

The Land Warrior Squad led by Lawrence flew through the corridor, and along the path opened up by the Queen’s Guards, they ran through the distance that was difficult to break through for several hours before in ten minutes, and along the way, Lawrence had been constantly observing and thinking.

He was trying to figure out the nature of this Queen’s Guard, and even more so, he was trying to establish communication with these phantoms – but all his attempts failed.

The Queen’s Guard couldn’t see him, and didn’t even notice their uninvited guests at all, these soldiers were like a memory projected from a distant history, just mechanically repeating a battle that happened decades ago, they advanced, shot, fought, and fell …… And all of this was feared to have happened in the past few decades All this has been happening every day for the past few decades, I’m afraid.

Martha’s intelligence about the Queen’s Guard was right, but apparently not entirely.

There was no way he could establish cooperation with these “helpers”.

“Captain! They can’t see us, what should we do?” A sailor ran over and said loudly beside Lawrence, “It doesn’t seem like we can help much with just a dozen or so of us running along.”

Lawrence looked a bit complicated, subconsciously looking at the small mirror on his chest, but Martha’s voice came out from it first: “Don’t ask me, I don’t know what to do about this situation right now – I just know they exist, but I haven’t had any dealings with them… …”

As he spoke, another faint sound of gunfire came out of the mirror: it was obviously busy on Martha’s side, and the situation wasn’t much easier than on the sewer side.

“The Queen’s Guard have just been repeating this battle all these years?” Lawrence spoke up loudly, “And every battle ends the same way?!”

“Yes, the result is the same every time they appear at zero midnight and then subside at the next full hour, they can’t break through the barrier at the end every time!”

Unable to break through the end of the barrier?
Lawrence subconsciously looked up at the words and looked in the direction of the group of phantom soldiers charging.

They were rushing towards the deepest part of the corridor, and in that dark and chaotic space, the dense malice was like sludge with substance, churning in his perception.

“I see!” Lawrence suddenly exclaimed.

Martha’s voice came from the mirror, “You understand what?!”

However, Lawrence could no longer care about answering the man in the mirror’s question, and after vaguely realizing what he should do, he immediately took his men with him and accelerated his speed to run forward.

At the same time, the battle in the corridor was also getting white hot, the Queen’s Guard was launching a final charge – countless phantom cohesive warriors roared, using the weapons in their hands to destroy the monsters that stood in their way, there were constantly warriors who fell and turned into bubbles that dissipated in the air, and there were also constantly monsters that fell and were turned into the mud that flowed into the drainage ditches at the two sides, and with this fierce battle, Lawrence could not care about answering the man in the mirror. As this fierce battle continued, the whole charging team finally gradually reached the end of this corridor.

Lawrence finally saw the end of this vicious battle, saw the obstacle that had held back the Queen’s Guard for half a century–the

It was a big door, a big door covered with countless thorns and dirty black mud, its appearance is palpitating fear.

On the surface of the gate, crisscrossing thorns were like a crown of dried tree branches, and dim points of light wandered erratically in the depths of the thorn bushes, as if there were countless eyes hidden in the depths of the thorn bushes, so that an ordinary person would be clutched in fear and madness just by glancing in that direction.

Even Lawrence, who had already transformed into a carrier of spirit fire, couldn’t help but feel a tremor in his heart and mind when he saw the door blocked by the thorn bushes.

And that was the target of the Queen’s Guard’s onslaught.

In front of the gate, uncountable amounts of black mud were converging, and countless monsters were appearing in the mud – they were poor imitations of human beings, ranging from military men in city-state guard uniforms and naval uniforms, to pirates and armed citizens with a wide variety of equipment, and even… …there are archaic-looking artillery pieces and skeletons piled high in the form of demonic monsters.

These monsters defended the Gate of Thorns from the rudimentary fortifications in the hall, as if they were berserkers guarding their Lord.

The final battle had begun.

The Queen’s Guards were pouring all their firepower into the monsters across the corridor, and the latter’s counterattacks rocked the entire Second Waterway, with both sides of the fierce battle losing more than half of their combat strength in almost the blink of an eye, while Lawrence and the district of a dozen or so sailors he had brought with him could only struggle to find cover at the edge of the devastatingly gruesome battlefield.

In such a density of firepower, even Lawrence, who was protected by the fire of his spiritual body, didn’t dare to bet on whether he wouldn’t really die.

But he wasn’t just hiding – he was watching.

He was observing just how far the Queen’s Guard had gotten in this battle.

And as the battle continued, as the belligerents continued to attrition, the defenses in front of the gates finally weakened – the deadly artillery and demonic creatures were torn to shreds, and gaps began to appear in the defenses in front of the Thorn.

“Demolition team! On!”

Lawrence, hiding next to the Queen’s Guard position, suddenly heard a voice, the voice of one of the Guard’s commanders.

In the next second, the remaining light from the corner of his eye spotted the prostrate figures at the edge of the battlefield.

A small team broke away from the main position and entered the drainage channel at the edge of the hall in the blind spot of those monsters’ vision, moving a little bit along the ditch towards the hidden place on the side of that thorny door.

And at the same time, the firepower from the frontal position was also steeply intensified, with dense bullets pouring over in an effort to suppress and attract the attention of those monsters in front of the gate.

Lawrence suddenly unconsciously held his breath – even though he knew that this was probably just a phantom scene that would not be affected by the outside world, he still subconsciously did so.

But what he feared happened as expected.

The demolition team that was approaching the Thorn Gate along the edge of the battlefield was discovered.

A series of bullets hit the drainage channel, and several soldiers carrying blasters fell in the ditch in an instant.

But almost at the same time, another demolition team entered the trench culvert on the other side of the hall and continued to crawl toward the thorn-covered door.

They too were discovered – the second demolition team fell only a dozen meters from the thorn-covered door.

Just then, a sailor’s low cry suddenly reached Lawrence’s ears, “They’re almost gone!”

Lawrence immediately raised his head, and the scene in the corridor was reflected in his eyes – the The Queen’s Guard was disappearing.

After the failure of the second demolition team’s operation, all the soldiers of the guard suddenly stood still for a moment, and immediately after that, every one of their figures began to fade and dissipate, and a third of them, in the blink of an eye, were already like translucent phantoms!
The words that Martha had said suddenly surfaced in Lawrence’s mind:

“…… They can’t break through the obstacles at the end every time ……”

Lawrence suddenly understood the meaning of these words, understood the end of this battle every time – the Queen’s Guard had failed, despite the constant fighting, despite the persistent repetition, the irrevocable fact was that in this “last counterattack” at zero midnight They had failed.

The operation failed fifty years ago.

Every repetition since then has been a repetition of that failure.

Lawrence was a little dazed for a moment, but just then, out of the corner of his eye, he suddenly saw another figure appear on the battlefield.

It was a figure rushing out from the corner of the hall, a vision that had not yet begun to dissipate.

Lawrence and all the sailors’ eyes were instantly drawn to that figure.

He was not a soldier, but a young man who looked like an engineer with the army, dressed in a dark blue, coarse workman’s uniform, with a slouching fedora on his head, which had been in vogue half a century ago, while on his belt, besides a pistol with a pouch of cartridges, hung a large wrench.

He rushed toward the ditch, toward the explosive device left behind by the second demolition team, and then, clutching the wooden crate full of dynamite, climbed quickly toward the thorny gate.

For a moment Lawrence almost thought he was going to make it.

However, a bullet flew in, and it was as if that young man had been slammed in the shoulder by a hammer; half of his body shook violently, and he collapsed in the last few meters from the thorn gate.

The entire hall seemed to instantly fall silent.

The final counterattack was over.

All of the Queen’s Guard soldiers began to dissipate at an accelerated rate, and this scene, which had been repeated for fifty years, returned to its original state.

Perhaps it was also the last time it would be repeated.

Lawrence stared blankly at the young man who had fallen at the end.

“The last of the Queen’s Guard”, the last of the fallen, his fall seemed to be some kind of “focal point” of this ever-repeating battle.

Suddenly, however, Lawrence snapped out of his daze.

He jumped out of his hiding place, and, amidst the stares and shouts of the sailors, the old captain ran like a gust of wind to the place where the last man had fallen.

The silence that had fallen upon the hall was “disturbed” by his sudden “intervention,” and those monsters that had not yet dispersed reacted almost instantly with a confused and noisy hissing and the roar of weapons fire!

The sailor’s cry came from behind: “Cover the captain!”

Yet it was as if Lawrence could no longer hear these voices; he simply slammed forward with his head down, and what seemed like a few shots to himself were of no consequence to him, as he rushed halfway across the hall, jumped into that ditch, and lunged at the last of the explosive devices, stretching out his hand toward it-

Then his fingers passed through the box of explosives.

Lawrence dropped somewhat lugubriously into the ditch, staring in some disbelief at the scene before him.

Like the Queen’s Guard around him, the crate of explosives, too, was a phantom to him.

The explosive device that had not been detonated fifty years ago could not be detonated today by him, the “latecomer”.

Bullets whizzed into the ground nearby, hissing from afar, and some of the mud monsters were already rushing into the ditch to tear themselves to pieces.

Lawrence, however, still stared blankly at the crate of explosives, feeling only great absurdity and ridicule.

Just then, however, something suddenly moved out of the corner of his eye.

This old captain looked up in dismay and saw that the sudden movement was none other than the young man who had just collapsed.

This young man with a large wrench hanging from his waist trembled, slowly raised his head and gazed fixedly at the person in front of him who was covered in strange green flames and dressed as a captain.

Lawrence froze for a moment before snapping to attention, “You can see me?!”

The young man, however, acted as if he hadn’t heard the question, only opening and closing his lips as if he were repeating some words rapidly, and he repeated them several times before Lawrence could barely hear what he was saying –

“…… Seen it before, by the way, this flame I have seen …… I have seen it before ……”

“Seen it before? The flame? What are you talking about?”

Lawrence stared in dismay and couldn’t help but ask.

That young man, however, did not answer, he just kept repeating it over and over and over again, and just between these repetitions, he actually crawled up a little bit, covered in blood, but slowly crawled up!

Under Lawrence’s incredulous gaze, the blood-soaked young man picked up the last of the blasting devices, grunted again as he climbed up the retaining wall beside the ramp, and trudged toward the thorny gate while chanting something over and over again.

Lawrence heard the other man chanting something, but it was all beyond his comprehension, what sounded like a series of names-

“Nemo …… General Tirion …… Raven ……”

The blood-soaked figure just hobbled and grunted.

But he didn’t even get a few steps out.

Just as he climbed onto the flat ground, a few shots rang out from across the street, and the blood-soaked figure fell.

But almost the instant he fell, another pale and stooped figure abruptly stood up from where he had fallen.

Lawrence looked at the scene incredulously, and he saw where the old man had been when he appeared – he had risen from a pool of blood.

He was the reflection of the young man’s blood as he died in battle.

“Ah, I’ve finally arrived ……”

The stooped old man bent down and picked up that last crate of explosives, and then some sort of incomprehensible, brilliant-to-the-point-of-explosion smile suddenly bloomed on his face.

“I’ve arrived!”

He exclaimed, laughing aloud as he picked up the crate of dynamite, cheerfully pulling its fuse, and then almost gleefully rushing toward the thorny gate with it in his arms.

“I’ve arrived!

“Engineer Wilson reporting for duty!
“Engineer Wilson requests to return to the line!
“I have arrived!”

“Boom!!!”

The shocking explosion shook the entire hall, and every corridor connected to it, with a roar.

(End of chapter)