Chapter 566 - Rescue and the Creature with the Cat-Faced Helmet

Everything pointed to an unknown danger lurking in the underground ruins.

Also, there was probably more than one of them.

“Load your weapon, Stafford. Stay alert,” Luke reminded him in a low voice as he drew out his pistol.

Pistols were small and convenient and could be easily abandoned. They were more suitable for the emergency. Stafford held his HK416 and made an OK gesture.

Weyland didn’t open his mouth, which meant that he had no objections.

They pressed forward.

Walking through the dark tunnel for a few more minutes, concentrated gunfire suddenly rang out not far away.

“That should be our men,” Stafford said quickly in a low voice.

As the head of security, he had prepared the equipment and weapons for the whole team. He could tell what weapons were being fired from the sound.

Luke didn’t say anything, but simply gave him two tactical signals to stay alert.

Silently, Luke took out a mirror from his chest and stretched it out into the tunnel.

Outside the tunnel was a broad passage that was about eight meters tall and seven meters wide. Statues stood on both sides of the passage.

A dozen members of the exploration team had their guns raised as they shot randomly at the area above the statues. One member’s head was already drooping as he leaned against the wall on the side.

He didn’t fall to the ground, because a weird metal spear had pierced his chest and impaled him to the stone wall. Luke narrowed his eyes. He didn’t look at the team members, but aimed his mirror at one particular dark corner in the passage.

But he then promptly aimed the mirror at another location, and saw an old statue.

Curling his lip, Luke quickly put Weyland down and gestured at Stafford behind him.

Seeing Luke’s hand signal, Stafford instantly tensed.

He patted Weyland on the shoulder gently and slowly pulled his boss back from the tunnel entrance. He then watched Luke slip out of the tunnel and hide behind a statue on the side.

The next moment, Stafford’s eyes twitched.

From his perspective, he could see the thick metal spear in the hand of the statue which Luke was hiding behind being slowly pulled back into the darkness.

Swoosh!

Slicing through the air with a dull sound, the metal spear, which was originally an ornament, turned into a shadow and instantly shot ten meters through the air toward a dark upper corner of the passage.

At the same time, Luke’s gun opened fire.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! But he shot in a completely different direction, at the other side of the passage.

In a shower of sparks and minute flashes of blue electric light, a tall figure could be vaguely seen above a statue in the passage.

The figure had a human form, but it was almost 2.5 meters tall.

The exploration team members in the passage hadn’t noticed the figure until that moment. But before they could switch targets with their guns, a weird, mournful cry rang out, and they paused.

Weyland and Stafford, who had been observing Luke, were the only ones who realized that the strange cry came from the corner which Luke had thrown the spear at.

So, apart from the tall creature, there was another enemy hiding in the corner of the passage? Both Weyland and Stafford felt cold.

If Luke hadn’t taken action, they wouldn’t have sensed the two enemies at all. In other words, if they had entered the passage, they would’ve been as ignorant of the situation as the exploration team.

Luke suddenly said, “Stafford, tell your men to retreat.”

Stafford hurriedly opened his mouth. “Everybody, fall back. He’s our new team member.”

Suddenly hearing Stafford’s voice, the panic-stricken team members saw hope, and they promptly followed his instruction.

Amidst flickers of blue light, the tall creature didn’t stop the team’s movements, but turned its head to look at Luke.

Luke slowly walked out of the darkness and aimed his gun at the creature.

The team members confirmed Luke’s identity with a quick look, because his equipment had the Weyland Corporation logo on it and was in the same style as their own.

But their gazes only swept over Luke and they didn’t stop moving at all.

The attack they suffered had thrown them into confusion and they had almost collapsed.

Stafford continued to give orders. “Don’t panic. Hold your positions as you retreat.” These members were pretty well-trained. Even though they had panicked just now, they maintained a basic defensive formation, which prevented them from being wiped out.

Now, with their leader Stafford in command, everybody started to calm down as they quickly retreated into the tunnel which Luke had come from.

“Withdraw slowly. I’ll catch up with you after I take care of this guy. Pay attention to dark corners and above your head; there’s more than one type of monster here,” Luke said without looking back. Stafford hesitated and looked at Weyland.

In the end, Weyland was a bigshot who had experienced a lot. He only pondered for a bit before he nodded and accepted this proposal.

Based on Luke’s capability and temperament, he wasn’t a headstrong young man.

Vividly recalling the moment Luke took action and rescued this team just now, Weyland chose to trust Luke.

Even now, he recalled how Takagi, that extremely cautious fox, described Luke as a professional who was an expert at dealing with violent incidents.

On the other side, the ten or so survivors, led by Stafford, carefully retreated the way they came.

In the passage, Luke and the tall creature faced each other quietly.

Now that he was closer, Luke was able to see the tall creature’s appearance more clearly in the light of the glow sticks which the exploration team had tossed out earlier.The creature was wearing an odd circular helmet.

The helmet looked like it had gray lenses for eyes, and there were three symmetrical grooves on both cheeks, which made the helmet look like a cat face.

There were also two rows of tubes on the sides of the helmet, which probably supplied breathable gas, and there were what looked like dreadlocks on the back of the helmet.

But Luke knew that it wasn’t hair, because it didn’t smell right.

The creature was wearing armor on its upper torso, arms and calves. There was a dark metal sheen on the armor. Also, there was an obvious technological style to the armor, which suggested that it wasn’t ancient armor that was purely for protection purposes. With Luke’s eyesight and Stark’s tech abilities, he also inferred that several holes on the armor were probably an interface for other equipment to be plugged in.

Thus, this guy wasn’t some wild beast, but an unknown creature from some technological civilization.

Staring at Luke for a moment, the creature with the cat-faced helmet suddenly jumped down.

Luke didn’t shoot, as the creature wasn’t pouncing at him, but simply jumping down to the ground.