Hell's Handbook

Chapter 237: Doesn’t Make Sense

Su Jin continued moving forward until he came to the steel doors leading to the shelter. He was stunned by the sight before him. A huge number of bodies and bones were piled up high, and several worms were weaving in and out of the pile, consuming the flesh of these people in order to metamorphosize. The only thing that brought him comfort was the fact that the doors to the shelter were still shut.

He moved toward the pile with large strides, and the worms emerged from the pile immediately when they sensed a person coming toward them. They began to charge maniacally toward him.

Su Jin tied one knife to his wrist, and held one in his remaining palm before charging forward without hesitation. His blades sparkled brightly in the light, like white flowers in the midst of fresh blood. It was a mesmerizing sight to behold.

After fighting so many of them off, Su Jin understood a lot about these aliens. They were very good in attacking, healed pretty quickly, but very poor in defense. As long as they didn’t have a leader like Reginald to guide them, it wasn’t difficult to kill them.

The worms and bugs were quickly sliced to pieces by Su Jin. No matter how aggressive they were, they couldn’t even get close to Su Jin’s clothes. It was as though the two sides belonged to two different dimensions.

But halfway through, the aliens suddenly paused, abandoned Su Jin and made their way back to the steel doors to the shelter instead. They started attacking the doors fiercely and it looked like the doors were about to give way anytime.

“What in the… It’s Arkas!” Su Jin immediately thought of Arkas. Just like Reginald, Arkas had clearly retained his own personality, which was how he had managed to hide this change in himself so well and fooled everyone on board. If things hadn’t gone awry and exposed them as the aliens, everyone would still probably be in the dark. Thinking about what could have happened if they hadn’t discovered this early gave Su Jin the chills.

If someone as formidable as Reginald had remained hidden in the crowd and suddenly launched an attack, the result would have been nothing short of a tragedy. Perhaps his team members would not be able to deal with it either.

Su Jin knew that Arkas had to be nearby, so he too dashed toward the steel doors. He slammed the worms off the door just before they made it through and ran into the shelter first.

Immediately after he stepped into the shelter, a bright glint came toward his head. That was a sharp pole of sorts that had been sharpened by some other object and the person wielding it was pretty good at this. The pole had come at Su Jin at a very strange angle and he couldn’t dodge it at all.

“Gosh!” Su Jin exclaimed as he tensed up. The pole stabbed his arm, but only made it less than one centimeter in.

“Su Jin!” The person who had attacked Su Jin turned out to be Situ Jin. He thought that Su Jin was one of those aliens, but thankfully he realized it was Su Jin and reacted quickly. Otherwise, Su Jin wouldn’t get away with such a light injury even though his arm was pretty tough.

“Jin!” Kano Mai came running toward him but he pushed her aside.

“There are a lot of worms behind the door!” said Su Jin before turning around to execute a Triple Qi Thrust, causing all the worms outside the door to fly backwards.

“Put this on!” Su Jin passed two pieces of armor to Situ Jin and Kano Mai, then turned back to the steel door. If a worm appeared, he would slap it to pieces immediately.

.

However, the people inside the shelter became even more panicky. Before this, they were afraid of being attacked, but at least they felt that they were in a safe place. Now, the worms had managed to reach this place. The more timid ones among them were getting extremely frightened.

“Mai, take this. Shoot any worms that try to get in! Situ, take this.” Su Jin gave his laser gun to Kano Mai, then pulled the knife off his wrist and gave that to Situ Jin.

Out of everyone inside the shelter, the cries of the only two children onboard the Fearless were especially piercing. These were the children whom Jefferson called the “children of the universe.”

Su Jin saw that he had two more sets of armor left, so he held them out to the children and said gently, “I’ve read the instructions for this armor, it’s made from a special material that will adjust to whatever size the wearer is, so it’ll definitely fit you.”

“Thank you,” the little girl thanked Su Jin timidly. The carefree expressions they once had were gone and replaced with deep seated terror.

Su Jin sighed. This shelter was definitely not a good place to be in. Situ Jin had helped to transform it into a defense bunker of sorts, but they were basically just trapped here now.

“We’ve got to find a way out of here! If not, we’re more likely to be trapped here and die as a result. We need to get to the fighting area where there are sufficient weapons and ammunition, which will make defending ourselves a lot easier,” Su Jin addressed the crowd. But these were the people who had chosen to stay behind earlier on in the first place. And now that they had also witnessed what those worms were capable of, they were even more unwilling to budge.

“Mr. Su, a lot of people ran out from here earlier. How are they now?” someone asked Su Jin.

Su Jin frowned and shook his head. “A large majority have died, and the rest have all gone toward the fighting area.”

“Won’t we end up dead if we leave this place now?”

“I knew it! We can’t escape! We’re all going to die!”

“What should we do? What should we do? Have our actions offended the gods? Is this our retribution?”

The people trapped in the shelter had suffered from a lot of emotional turmoil and seemed to have lost all hope. All of them seemed to be on the verge of a mental breakdown, so Su Jin felt that it was almost impossible to take any of them with him.

“Forget it! If none of you want to leave, we won’t force you to. Good luck, guys!” Su Jin knew this wasn’t the time to slowly counsel these people and help them overcome their fears.

Just then, a loud sound came from the ceiling. Everyone looked up and watched as someone fell from the ceiling.

Immediately after that person landed, his body was completely twisted and looked like a pile of clay. After that, several others landed inside the shelter as well. These were all people whose bodies were now under the control of worms. Judging from their clothing, these were actually the biologists and the Level 1 access crew who were with Arkas.

“Run! Run now! Don’t stay here anymore!” Su Jin knew exactly who the first one who landed was now.

“Run, run, run! HA! None of you will be able to get away, so just stay here!” Arkas cackled as his body reverted to human form again.

“Jin, they don’t have any bones, so how do they move about?” asked Kano Mai curiously.

Su Jin replied, “They move by air. The worms keep exhaling huge amounts of air inside their bodies, which is why the worms shoot out from the inside whenever they attack others.” He had understood this very well when he fought Reginald.

Arkas seemed very impressed by Su Jin’s level of observation and gave him a pleased nod. “Not bad, young man. Your observation skills are very commendable. Since you’re so outstanding, I will help you to evolve to become someone like myself.”

Su Jin snorted and said, “That’s not necessary. There was another guy who was just as excited about doing that as you, and now… he’s been completely destroyed!”

“Are you talking about Captain Reginald?” Arkas chuckled and nodded. “That fellow is pretty good at fighting. If I had to fight him one on one, I would be no match for him. But now that I have become an evolved human, fighting someone one on one is a joke. We ought to be commanders!”

Immediately after he finished speaking, the steel doors came down and all the worms outside rushed into the shelter. But they did not begin a massacre immediately. Instead, they gathered behind Arkas like a bunch of obedient guard dogs.

“Damn it, this system can be used by everyone!” cursed Su Jin. The worms left behind by Reginald had become Arkas’ inheritance.

“Let the feast begin!” Arkas raised his arm and all of them charged toward the humans like rabid dogs.

Su Jin held a long knife in his hands and allowed the two children to cling on to him. He quickly retreated to meet with Kano Mai and Situ Jin. The number of bugs here weren’t too high, so Su Jin figured that he would be able to kill them off without much problem. The problem was actually the surviving humans behind him. Each of them was equivalent to a reserve soldier. Once killed by an alien, they would become one themselves.

“Jin, what’s the plan?” asked Kano Mai in a low voice.

“Very simple. Make a run for it!” Su Jin passed the two children to Kano Mai and Situ Jin, then gave a low shout before dashing out of the shelter. He didn’t intend to save anybody else. Trying to save others at this juncture was a dumb thing to do. It was more important to keep the few of them alive first.

He helped to part the way while Kano Mai and Situ Jin followed closely behind him. Su Jin was like a tank bulldozing through everything, smashing a path right through the worms. Anything in his way turned into nothing but mush.

Arkas clearly had not expected that such a formidable character was on board the Fearless. He immediately shot several tiny worms out from the worm that had replaced his arm.

The moment those tiny worms hit any of the surviving crew, they would freeze, then start to transform to resemble Reginald before running out to chase after Su Jin and his companions.

“What is going on?” Su Jin was shocked by the rate at which these people had transformed. It was impossible to explain what just happened. These people transformed immediately after they were just touched by those little bugs, which meant that they had to make sure they never came into contact with those bugs, or they were doomed!

The crew left inside the shelter had all transformed into aliens within a few minutes. Thankfully, Su Jin and his friends had already made it out of the shelter. But the crew turned aliens were hot on their heels, and there was no time to even catch their breath.

“Something’s not quite right! There’s no way out of this. How could something like that happen? That doesn’t make sense,” thought Su Jin. He could sense that something was amiss, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. The only thing he could do was to get to the fighting area first. At least he would be able to gather a proper group of people to fight back once he got there.