Transcendent Gene-Chapter 311: Savior [5]

Gio knew he was bound to be caught eventually.

His strategy was half-baked, and he was moving with the sole purpose of getting rid of the facility as fast as possible.

It wasn’t that he didn’t care about being caught, but he accepted it as something that would happen if he wanted to be as quick as he needed to be.

He didn’t know when it would happen, so he rushed as if it were only a second away. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

He walked through the facility’s chambers like he was meant to be there. He didn’t know if the security team usually made rounds, but he risked it anyway.

Nobody commented on his existence. None of the scientists noted him as an unfamiliar face, nor did the other personnel of the facility say anything.

If Gio’s guess was right, the other guards were the only ones who knew each other’s faces.

The group that had been put together to operate the facility came from all different places and backgrounds. They belonged to the same cult, but that was the end of their connection.

Perhaps that was why Gio was able to make it so far.

He went through the second and third rooms easily. The corridors between them were covered in hidden mines made of virtual energy.

Gio felt the constant toll on his body from keeping them active. He kept himself tethered to each and every explosive so they could be detonated at the same time.

However, he ignored the taxing nature of his strategy and continued onward into the next.

Just like before, he spread Hekat’s energy to disrupt any sensors around him and slowly filled the room with mines.

There were energy tanks in the other two rooms as well, but this was the real prize. The final room was the main energy source for the array, meaning it had almost a dozen tanks inside that were all pumping energy into it.

’If all of these don’t go down, they’ll be able to retain at least some functionality.’

He had to individually tag each and every tank.

That was where his problem stemmed from.

It took far too much effort and concentration to do so stealthily. He was bound to slip up.

"Kh!"

It came unexpectedly. A shock coursed through his arm as he tried to form yet another mine. He winced, a slight pain spreading through his head.

His energy sparked and fizzled out. Hekat’s energy disappeared for a moment as well.

’Shit!’

Gio knew clearly what was happening. His connection to one of the mines had been cut. The shock ran through his body and disrupted his energy flow for a moment.

He had to focus first on keeping hold of all the rest of the mines he’d placed, but it was impossible to do so quietly.

Hekat’s energy couldn’t cover the traces of virtual energy that materialized in the air for a brief second.

And even if Hekat could stop the sensors in a single room...

’It can’t stop all of them.’

Gio knew what was happening before the alarms went off. Instead of retreating, he rushed further into the room and continued placing mines as fast as he could.

’The facility is too big for me to hear a blast unless an energy tank exploded. I can only hope it was a mine near the shaft entrance.’

He had to set all of them and detonate them as soon as possible. If the Apocalypse Church were allowed to find and disperse his energy, everything would go wrong.

’Dammit!’

Gio cursed in his head as he reached the back of the room.

’There’s only four left, so...’

Their timing couldn’t be worse. The thought barely made its way across Gio’s mind before three men in mech suits appeared at the door.

"There!"

"Stop him."

They yelled out, pressing off the ground and blasting forward using the power of rockets.

They raised their arms in the air, lifting blasters out of the arms of their suits and firing them.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Gio was forced to dodge to the side and disperse the mine he was about to plant.

’Hekat!’

He called out to the snake, who warned him that his energy was low. Even then, it followed his orders without question.

Gio slammed forward with a burst of virtual energy at his feet. The white glow of Hekat’s energy shot out in front of him, crawling up the men’s suits and messing with their internal systems.

When Gio arrived before them, they all aimed their guns at him together and fired.

Great bursts of light filled the world for half a second, however...

"W-what...?!"

They dispersed on their own without firing.

Gio’s eyes narrowed. Two virtual blades manifested in his hands, and in the next instant, he turned into a blade storm.

Virtual energy cracked through the mechanical armor sets and ripped apart their wiring. It bloomed into explosive bursts that tore the chests and stomachs of those within wide open, filling the suits with blood and guts.

Three men coughed up blood one after another. Two of them died as such, while the last was lucky enough to be stabbed through the neck before he suffocated on his own blood.

Gio turned around without batting an eye and rushed towards the energy tanks he still needed to hit, but it was never going to be so easy.

BANG!

A spear impaled itself into the ground only a few inches from Gio.

The one who threw it made it clear that he could not be ignored.

Gio turned around with a frown on his face, bearing witness to something he very much didn’t want to see.

’It looks like the one Raymond had to fight.’

A real military-grade model. Did he have the strength to fight it?

’Even if I don’t, I also don’t have a choice. Hekat...’

Vrr!

Gio slowly circled his newest enemy, who stood still and allowed him to do so.

"You’re just a kid, huh?" The cultist said.

"I guess that place raises some real war slaves. Even a kid can do things like this."

He looked at the corpses on the ground and shook his head.

"This kind of violence is exactly why all of you need to be eliminated. Trust me, kid, it was never personal."

Rather than listening to the man’s words, Gio listened to Hekat.

’You can’t penetrate his armor like this?’

It was much tougher than the previous models. It was also wired completely differently.

’But you can do it if I have direct physical contact...’

With direct contact, Hekat could do anything Gio had the energy for. He believed its words.

’Okay.’

"...you’re not even listening to me, are you?"

Gio tuned in at the most ironic moment.

"Your kind never valued our words, anyway. I don’t know what I expected."

But he could not enjoy the irony of the situation.

He had to kill this man within the next two minutes and decimate the facility.

He had to maintain direct contact with the suit for enough time for Hekat to destroy its inner workings.

’The suit itself is one that even Raymond said he struggled against...’

...and he didn’t forget the mines he’d placed throughout the facility.

He could not access virtual energy in this fight. It had to be done through Hekat and Aether.

Gio gritted his teeth as everything settled in his mind.

He knew it was never going to be easy, but he had to get the job done regardless.