……
【(T_T) I can barely breathe…】
【My heart hurts… it really hurts… I feel awful, ugh ugh ugh ugh (p_q)】
【Oh, Cabbage…】
【What do we do now? Feels like they’re about to fail again—the elevator’s gone, so what?】
【Nothing left to say. Donating 100 points—consider it burning paper offerings for Squad Unbelievably OP.】
【Is another team wipe coming?! @Customer Service, give me a refund.】
【Can you guys just give them a quick death?! Every time it goes like this my heart literally can’t take it!】
【(?′ω`?) I can’t decide between flipping to fan or flipping back to hater…】
【All this back and forth, I’m nearly losing my mind…】
【Feelings mixed, woof.】
【You’re so chill, front-row commenter~】
……
Shen Mo and Yuri were reloading their weapons, bracing for another fight.
Bai Youwei watched them, then looked at the door still rattling in its frame, and offered, “What if… we hide in that little room again?”
She meant the janitors’ supply closet—behind a hidden door near the bathroom.
“It’s too small,” Natasha said, frowning. “Four people at most. And being packed inside doesn’t change anything—we’d still be completely stuck.”
A-Da leveled his gun barrel at the metal door and curled his lip. “Let’s just do it. When the bullets run out, we switch to knives. I refuse to believe we can’t cut through all of them.”
“But killing them that way would take so long…” Bai Youwei sighed. “By the time you’ve finished off this wave, the eggs will have all hatched—hundreds more little mutants, fresh out of their shells. Would your stamina even hold up?”
A-Da: “……”
“Can we get up through the ventilation shaft on the bathroom side?” Bai Youwei pointed toward the ceiling. “Blast the vent open with a grenade, crawl up—then circle around to the other side where the Queen has the path blocked. Oh—Yuri, your build might make that a little tricky. In that case, you could stay in the supply closet.”
Everyone exchanged glances.
Suddenly, it sounded plausible.
CRASH!!!
Another savage impact from the mutants—the two solid metal doors buckled and warped under the force, a palm-width gap forced open between them, mutants’ long, slender forelimbs shoving through in a frenzy, clawing desperately outward.
“Let’s go, let’s go~” Bai Youwei urged them. “To the ventilation shaft!”
And before she’d finished speaking, she was already running toward the bathroom.
“Ugh!” A-Da, deeply annoyed, raised his short blade and sliced off several of the reaching claws in rapid succession before dashing after Bai Youwei.
The bathroom’s ventilation shaft was coated in a layer of dark, greenish-black slime. They searched for a while before locating it. Shen Mo climbed up, pried a corner open with his combat knife, and pushed a grenade inside—
A blast. The ventilation shaft was blown open, revealing the narrow duct within.
“Me first, me first!” Bai Youwei pushed eagerly to the front, her justification perfectly thought out: “I’m the smallest—if I go first, I won’t block the air circulation for everyone else~”
Shen Mo: “……”
Even though he had nothing to say to that, he steadied her with one hand, braced her shoulder with the other, and helped boost her up into the ventilation shaft.
From outside: more crashing. The mutants’ screams grew louder.
Bai Youwei: “Hurry, hurry! They’re about to break through!”
Shen Mo leapt upward, caught the edge of the vent opening with one hand, braced—and slid into the shaft with fluid ease.
Then A-Da.
Finally Natasha.
Yuri, built thick with heavy muscle, would only be trapped if he tried to force himself in. So, as Bai Youwei had suggested, he went to the supply closet.
The metal fire door at the stairwell entrance finally gave way under the relentless hammering—with a few final savage crashes, the mutants came flooding out like a tide, spreading rapidly into every corner.
They searched for the intruders everywhere. They noticed the blown-out ventilation shaft too, and rushed to squeeze inside—but their skulls and frames were far too wide. Several forced their way in before becoming utterly wedged, unable to move.
Natasha, at the rear of the line, saw the mutants weren’t following and let out a quiet breath of relief.
“Ah…” Bai Youwei murmured softly from up ahead. “They’ve hatched.”
“What?!” Natasha’s voice went sharp. “How many?!”
Bai Youwei made a quiet sound of consideration, then replied, “A few hundred, probably…”
—