The force was not strong, but combined with the familiar voice, Hitzfeld immediately determined that it was Xia who was trying to wake him up.
What's wrong with me?
She was a little confused and couldn't understand the situation for a moment.
We were at the camp...yes...then Smail's people found the salamander's nest and they cleaned it out...then Smail asked me to use the white whale to detect the location of the underground fire.
Then there was an alarm from above, saying there were creepers... the cloaked figure forced us to leave immediately...
A bloody mouth full of sharp teeth suddenly emerged from the darkness, scaring her so much that she opened her eyes instantly, and saw Xia Yibing and Dai Lunt's faces blocking her way.
"Thank God you finally woke up." Darent breathed a sigh of relief, "If you don't wake up, someone will go crazy, including but not limited to stabbing themselves... Oh! Oh! I'm kidding!"
Waving a pistol to drive away the wooden man, Xia Yibing pulled the girl up from the ground.
Taking advantage of this empty space, Hitzfeld quickly glanced around.
She confirmed one thing: they still couldn't escape from the island.
The smoke and dust was even more severe than before she fainted. To put it in a worse-case scenario, that thing had probably launched several more attacks.
There were not many horses left. Except for some that were completely frightened and lay there trembling, and some that were simply frightened to faint or die, most of the horses had disappeared.
I don't know whether it ran away or was swept away and eaten.
Many halos of light could be seen in the smoke. Most of them were torches, and some were lanterns. She could hear Smail and Frick shouting orders, and not far away, several caravan members were huddled together, chanting the name of the goddess.
This feeling was very strange, as if the images she saw, the images in her brain and the images that actually happened in reality were disconnected from each other - they were not even synchronized in time. This gave her a very awkward illusion that no matter whether it was others or herself, their actions and speech rhythms were too slow.
This confused feeling was forcibly stopped after another vibration. She saw a layer of sharp shell rolling and passing diagonally above her head, followed by a burst of scolding and screaming from the other side of the smoke.
This completely woke her up. She quickly grabbed the woman's wrist and asked her, "Where's Smail?!"
"In front!" Xia Yibing didn't know why she asked this, but she quickly pointed her in a direction: "He is trying to resist that thing... What do you want to do?"
She was horrified because the next moment Hitzfeld let go of her and rushed to that location.
"Smail! Smail—"
Hitzfeld staggered a little as he jogged along the stone wall, calling out the knight's name as he ran.
Gradually, the halo in front of her became stronger.
When the smoke and dust dispersed, she saw the white-haired knight wearing heavy power armor. In one hand he held a crusher hammer that was obviously modified and more ferocious than the ordinary model, and in the other hand he held a bright lantern, using light as a weapon to fight the giant insect.
Whenever the giant insect opened its sharp teeth and wanted to swallow someone, he would quickly move in that direction and hold the lantern high in his hand.
At this time, the giant insect would retreat - it seemed to be very uncomfortable with the light from the lamp, and kept curling up, hissing, and trying to twist its body to find other angles to attack again.
"Smail!" Hitzfeld quickly pounced on the knight and saw at a glance that Frick and the young golden boy named Hart were also wearing armor.
"Hurry up and speak!" Half of Smail's face and armor were stained with blood. All his attention was on guarding against the giant insect, and he didn't even have the energy to glance at her.
"What's burning in this lamp?" At first, Hitzfeld thought they were all about to die. He never expected that he could turn the situation around with just a lamp.
Oh...it's not a breakthrough, it's just a stalemate, because the thing burning in the lamp will definitely burn out, and they are still in an unfavorable situation.
"That's the powder of golden flint!" Frick shouted while panting, and then his eyes suddenly widened: "What are you doing here? Do you want to die!???"
Whether from a commitment perspective or purely out of some spiritual reason, he could not accept seeing the person who should be protected the most come to the forefront of the battle.
Does she know what she is doing? Is she crazy?
"Do you have any way to kill it?" Hitzfeld also panted and spoke as loudly as possible.
"You're kidding me!"
Another strong vibration came, and the place where Smail was standing began to collapse. He had to quickly jump to the side and turn around anxiously, using a lantern to disperse the smoke behind him.
"Such a big... thing! We don't have any siege guns! How are we going to deal with it? By imagining things?"
"So you can survive by staying here?"
"Then tell me what to do now?"
Smail was really annoyed.
In most cases he doesn't like to get angry, because he has always believed that anger will burn out people's rationality, and the angrier he is, the less likely he is to solve the problem.
But now... sacrifice, panic, and the enormous pressure that was pressing on him were about to overwhelm him. He finally couldn't control his extreme emotions and yelled at the girl.
"What I mean is--" Hitzfeld kept looking around and adjusted his position according to the environment.
“Why should we fight it on the ground?”
"You...no, are you stupid?"
For the first time ever, Smail turned around and glared at her.
"You want us to go down there? In that cave? Underground with the world's best burrower?"
Not only him, but everyone... including Xia Yibing and Dai Lunte who caught up with her from behind, thought she was talking nonsense.
"You're the idiot!"
Hitzfeld finally became famous.
"Lava Springs—did you forget that?"
"I don't care if this thing is a monarch insect or a mythical insect. As long as it is still an insect, it must be afraid of something!"
"If we can find the lava spring and chisel it open—"
“——!!!” Smail’s movements suddenly stopped.
Actively chiseling a lava spring is definitely a crazy idea.
It was true that the monarch worms would avoid the gushing lava, but did she know that this might cause the entire camp to collapse?
At that time, they themselves will be the first to be swallowed by the magma!
She really dared to say it——
But why did he admire her so much...
Yes, that's right, it's too crazy to do this, there is more than an 80% chance that they will be burned to death by the gushing magma.
But doing so at least leaves a glimmer of hope, while the possibility of survival if one stays here and continues to fight the monarch insect is zero!
"I'm not here to ask for your opinion!" Hitzfeld said quickly, "I'm just here to inform you - you'd better get everyone ready to jump into the pit within three minutes!"
After saying this, she turned around and was the first to slide down the collapsed slope.
"Aisun!"
Xia Yibing stretched out her hand but found nothing, so she jumped down in a hurry.
"..." The corner of Darent's mouth twitched. He turned around, walked to the abandoned carriage despite the vibration, got in, and took out two bulging backpacks from it.
Faster—
Faster—
Sliding all the way to the bottom of the cave, Hitzfeld could barely feel his hands and feet.
Every step she took seemed like she was walking on cotton, so light and airy that her limbs felt cold.
It turned out that this state was not suitable for fast running. She started again and took only two meters before she tripped over a piece of gravel and fell forward rapidly.
But she didn't fall.
A hand suddenly grabbed her waist and lifted her up.
She smelled a familiar scent of hair, turned her head, and saw the woman grinning at her.
"Tell me your judgment."
"I'll take care of the rest."
“There is no such thing as doing something for someone else or not doing it for someone else.”
Feeling the wind blowing past his ears, Hitzfeld pulled the White Whale from the holster under his armpit.
The body of the White Whale's gun was slightly cold.
But as they went deeper and deeper into the cave, and as Xia Yibing kept changing the direction according to her verbal instructions, finally, it seemed to warm up slightly.
"I need some time to recharge..."
Hitzfeld said softly.
"Get ready, Xia."
"The chance for us to escape should only be a moment."
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There will be three more updates tomorrow!
Chapter 45: Trapped in the Cave
The forging material of the White Whale came from the fragments of the mysterious broken sword. Hitzfeld didn't know how the craftsmen did it, but it was obvious that it reacted to any heat energy similar to sunlight.
It’s just that other types of thermal energy reactions are not too strong.
If Wayne's sunlight is counted as having a 100% charging rate, then in the Red Soil Plain, the charging rate of sunlight should be close to 300%. After excluding the option of sunlight stimulation, the charging effect of any heat energy stimulation, including flames, battery light, etc., cannot exceed 50%.
Fortunately, one thing remains unchanged: it accepts all. Even if the charging effect is much slower, as long as it does not stop, it can eventually accumulate enough heat energy - until the controller pulls the trigger.
Hitzfeld and Xia Yibing quickly confirmed the approximate location of the lava spring. It was in the center of a cluster of cracked open spaces. The terrain was slightly sunken and looked like a dry riverbed.
She jumped down from the woman's arms and, following the guidance of the metal of the gun, reached out her left hand to touch the ground.
Have it.
The ground where her palm touched was emitting warmth. Looking closely, she could see a faint layer of white smoke rising in the darkness. She put her face close to the ground and looked carefully, and finally found the "spring" at the intersection of some cracks.
In fact, it is far from worthy of such a name. Judging from the fact that the heat it provides is only enough for a salamander to absorb, it is at best a downward crack.
"Let's begin." Hitzfeld blocked the white whale above the gap, feeling the heat coming from the gun again. "It will be slow...it may take a minute or two."
"Tell me what I should do." Xia Yibing squatted beside her, her tone steady, without a trace of fear in her voice.
Even if she had been told a month in advance while she was still in Wayne that this trip would involve such danger, she would not have regretted her decision to follow the girl.
Optimistically speaking, the real Xia Yibing died on the night when Chang Xia Dao awakened. It was a young detective named Aisuen Hitzfeld who gradually awakened her soul. From then on, she began to live every day as a new life, and regarded this kind of life as a gift from God.
So what else is she dissatisfied with?
The only thing she cared about was the person reflected in her eyes, not to mention that she had long ago sworn to her faith that she must keep her alive even at the cost of herself.
"The plan is to shoot through the rock barrier once the white whale has finished charging," Hitzfeld said in a emotionless voice.
That tone wrapped in indifference seemed to have some kind of magic in the woman's heart.
She felt more at ease.
"I won't just fire one shot." Hitzfeld looked up at Xia Yibing, "I don't know the thickness of the rock layer, so I can't calculate how much force is needed to penetrate it. It would be too risky to limit the condition to 'within one shot', so you don't have to make that expression."
This is easy to understand.
If it were possible to penetrate the underground rock with one shot, the power of the shot would inevitably be uncontrollable.
The uncontrollable power means that the degree of damage to the underground rock formations is also uncontrollable. If they are lucky, they will have time to escape from the cave, but if they are unlucky, the entire cave will collapse after this shot.
And the charging time is too slow.
But firing in several bursts can alleviate the problem to a certain extent.
The first is naturally to save time. Just like facing a wall whose thickness you don’t know, from a mathematical point of view, the time it takes to make a drill that is strong enough to drill through it will definitely be longer than starting to drill directly.
The second is precision control.
In short...she needed to chisel "this wall" to a critical point, so that it was about to erupt but had not erupted immediately, so that they would have time to escape from here.
"boom!"
As soon as she finished speaking, she fired the first shot tentatively.
The huge recoil force pushed her body backwards, and Xia Yibing immediately hugged her and held her in her arms.
The crack was embedded and exploded by the exploding bullet, revealing a small hole nearly ten centimeters deep.
"boom!"
Then came the second shot.
