Charging in to join Tāo, yumiel's daggers streak past him, flying toward the commander, who releases a slightly larger statue, growing and becoming almost gigantic, measuring over 4 meters tall.
The clay statue opens at the back, allowing the commander to enter inside. Yumiel's daggers slam into the clay statue the commander had just entered.
However, her daggers do not pierce the clay as they normally should. Yumiel was very surprised; clay cannot redistribute tension, so it should normally crack. But against all expectations, this was not the case with these clay statues, which were clearly very different.
She withdraws her daggers, opens her senses and her flask, and gathers her blood, creating a gigantic blade of more than 2.6 L that she slowly spins, letting Jack and Tāo handle the rest.
« Be careful guys, these statues are weird. »
Tāo did not understand a single word of what yumiel had just said. However, it was all the same to him, slashing at the statues without really doing anything to them.
Jack, on the other hand, bursts into the battle like a raging madman, slamming two of the ten statues he had knocked down to the ground, then climbing onto one of them and smashing it with his fists, cracking it little by little before taking an arrow to the abdomen from one of the statues.
Tāo saw Jack's violence; he also saw him get thrown backward by an arrow, growling before charging at the clay archer. Several statues move in front of him as if to defend the archer; one pushes him back with a shield and a spear, keeping him at bay.
Growling before roaring at the statue, preventing it from advancing. Drool dripping, suddenly Tāo's muscles tense, saliva splashing onto the ground, legs anchored firmly, he leaps forward over more than 1 meter in distance and 2 meters in height, landing on the shoulders of the clay statue before grabbing its head and yanking it upward, tearing it off.
Yumiel watches the scene, thinking: « If Jack is the monster, Tāo is the beast in its purest form. »
Raising the clay head into the air before taking an arrow in the back from the archer and getting sent flying by the fist of the giant statue, hurling him into the scenery.
Yumiel's blade spins frantically, soon ready to be launched. Jack knew it, straightening up and snapping the arrow stuck in his stomach, then swinging his fists into the fray, finishing off the statue he had started to break. Now only eight statues remained, plus the giant one in which the commander was sealed.
While Jack finishes the statue, he is surrounded by six statues, all armed with different melee weapons. The last two try to shoot him from afar; he dodges the arrows but not the flail strike embedding itself in his back.
Not feeling the pain, he turns around, violently striking the statue in the face, taking an arrow to his right flank, then a sword slash cutting his back deep enough to reveal his spine. Tāo emerges from the building into which he had just been thrown, blood flowing from his wounds but nothing serious.
Surrounded by enemies on all sides, Jack breaks the limits of one of his legs, forcing his way through and getting close to yumiel, then tells her: « Go on, send it. »
Yumiel's immense blade surges forward, sweeping everything in its path. The six statues ahead are reduced to rubble, slowing the blade's rotation. The archers shoot at it but it does nothing. The giant grabs the archers and throws them onto the blade to slow it down before placing his hands on it, crumbling them until they are destroyed. The blade then attacks his body.
Suddenly the back of the clay statue opens and the commander escapes, abandoning his giant statue. From yumiel and Jack's point of view, they could not see him, but Tāo did, and ran after him.
Yumiel's blade pierces the giant, finishing its course further away before yumiel stops it, turning it into a sphere of blood, pulling it back to her, refilling her flask, recreating her eight daggers, and deactivating her senses.
« You okay? »
« Yeah, I've had worse. But I think he got away. »
Seeing neither a body nor blood on the ground, the remark was relevant. Tāo had also disappeared, clearly having gone after him.
« Can you find them? »
« Obviously, who do you take me for? »
Opening her senses to the maximum, she begins sorting through all the parasitic blood signals, moving from war noises to gunfire and wolves howling, before hearing sounds and vibrations resembling footsteps. Checking the direction before deactivating her senses.
« They went that way. »
Jack switched legs while yumiel finished, pointing in a direction and starting to pick up the pace, passing soldiers' corpses along the way. Stopping from time to time as she opened her senses to check where he had gone.
« Why do we stop sometimes? Can't you just leave your senses open like in the cemetery? »
« I have limits. Opening my senses is what consumes the most fuel, let's say, and I prefer to save it, especially after what I just did and the potential battles ahead. »
Jack squints slightly, not really understanding.
« Yeah, sure, that's hard for you to understand, you never get exhausted. »
After about a minute of following Tāo's trail, yumiel begins to doubt. Tāo can run over 70 km/h; he shouldn't have any trouble catching an awakened. She understood the reason just a few seconds later, seeing Tāo get thrown in front of them by an immense clay statue measuring around ten meters.
« No but seriously, always more! »
Soldiers begin pouring out of the area where the statue stood. There was no longer any doubt; Tāo couldn't catch him because of the soldiers, giving him time to escape.
« Yumiel, I've still got the skinny guy's arms, let me handle the giant. You take care of Tāo and the soldiers. »
« Works for me. »
Running toward Tāo, lying on the ground trying to get up. She opens her senses, draws blood from her flask, and creates a dome to protect them while her daggers hunt the soldiers, not expecting them to use the same bluish energy as the woman in Harbin.
Dodging her daggers or breaking them barehanded, forcing yumiel to concentrate harder to rebuild them while trying to keep them from approaching the dome.
« Thanks Jack for leaving out information. »
Shooting at her dome, they quickly realized it didn't do much and switched to close combat. Yumiel had to speed up her daggers, opening her senses to the maximum.
Eliminating a few soldiers, there were still about a dozen left, getting closer and closer, forcing her to focus on maintaining the dome while controlling her daggers, putting severe strain on her mind.
Tāo struggled back to his feet, starting to growl, a sign he was ready to continue. She lifts the dome and turns it into five additional daggers, slowly managing to eliminate the soldiers.
The immense clay statue towered in front of Jack. The statue strikes with its massive fist, smashing the ground and creating a crater about one meter wide. Jack easily dodges it; being big is fine, but it made it painfully slow, especially since the statues were already not very fast.
Jack now faced a problem: where was the commander inside this immense statue? He didn't think long, waiting for the statue to strike before slipping past it and punching its foot to make it fall.
He quickly realized it was useless. The clay was far too thick for him to do anything to it, so he climbed instead.
Moving to its back, Jack digs his fingers into the clay, climbing up toward the head. The statue tries to shake him off, then to reach behind its back. Reaching the nape, Jack tries to break its neck, giving up after a few blows.
At the nape, a hand tries to grab him. He throws himself sideways, falling into the void, but lands on the other hand, sliding down it. The statue tries to close its fist, but Jack was already gone, sliding along the forearm before jumping and clinging to its torso.
Climbing its torso with difficulty, the statue's two hands try to crush him like a mosquito. Jack breaks the limits of one of his legs and launches himself forward, dodging the clumsy grab.
At neck level, Jack breaks his limits again, this time in his right arm, striking the throat and generating a phenomenal impact that launches him backward, blasting him into the sky before he crashes back to the ground.
The statue sways from side to side before the cracks in its neck deepen and it finally loses its head, collapsing heavily to the ground. Limping on one leg, Jack goes to inspect the statue, climbing onto it and spotting an opening in the torso. Turning his head, he could see, through the distant smoke, a man running.
Jack hated cowards. Breaking the limits of his last leg, he catches up to him and makes him taste concrete for several meters, grinding his head against the ground.
Barely able to stand due to his shattered legs, he drags him along, limping, back to yumiel and Tāo. The commander's face was disfigured, chunks of skin torn away, his nose broken, teeth missing.
Yumiel and Tāo had finished clearing the area. Seeing Jack arrive in the distance, holding the commander by the hair and dragging him with his only functional arm while limping. By the time he arrived, yumiel ripped out hearts, squeezing them above herself to drink the blood before giving them to Tāo.
Arriving slowly but surely, he throws the body in front of yumiel. She was surprised he was still alive, looking at him with a questioning expression.
« I left him alive thinking you might want to interrogate him. »
Yumiel couldn't believe Jack's words, dropping the heart she had in her hand before applauding and saying: « Good job Jack, maybe instead of having two idiots to manage I only have one and a half. »
« I'll translate for you. »
Yumiel pats him on the shoulder.
« Hey, good work. Now, our turn. How many Seraphim were deployed? »
The commander, half-comatose but still hearing her, screamed as best he could in Chinese, or rather repeated the same word.
« He keeps saying kill me. »
She breaks one of his legs, then the second; he screams in pain but meets yumiel's gaze, repeating the same words in Chinese. She continues, moving to his left arm before trying the right, which he was hiding in his jacket. As she tries to grab it, he pulls out a statue that grows to human size.
The statue held a sword, but it wasn't used to attack; it was used to end his life. The statue brings its sword down on his head, killing him instantly. At the moment of his death, the statue destroys itself and disappears.
« Well, at least that's settled. Take his brain and see if you've got any information on Alan or the number of Seraphim or anything useful. »
She says this while ripping out his heart and squeezing it above herself, feeling that euphoric ecstasy once again, and feeling far stronger—enough to control about 3.4 L with her senses at maximum, and about 2 L normally. She refills her flask and creates ten daggers floating above her.
Then it was Tāo's turn, eating the heart. His face looked delighted, as if softened, ears dipping slightly and tail wagging.
« Anything new, Jack? »
Seated, chaining through brains to extract information while changing his limbs.
« Nothing concrete. I only know that about ten Seraphim were deployed; I've already killed one, this was the second. »
« And you didn't even keep his heart for me? Nice… I made one flee too; I would've preferred to kill her, but oh well. By the way, next time warn me that these soldiers have strange abilities with their bluish light, letting them increase their strength or move faster. »
« It's called Ch'i, and I told you about it when we came back with Alan. I also know how they transmit their ability like they did. »
« I'd love to know, but let's get moving again. We need to find Alan and get out of here. »