Grand Voyage : Surviving on a Ghost Ship-Chapter 276 - Breakout

Bang!

The shrill crack of gunfire drowned out everything else.

A mass of pellets burst from the muzzle of the flintlock, spraying straight ahead.

It was shotgun mode, ideal for dealing with tightly packed enemies, exactly like the rat thralls crouching there, rising as they formed ranks.

Eight of them dropped on the spot, riddled with hits and stripped of any ability to move.

Of the remaining four, two had thrown themselves flat and avoided disaster; the others were wounded.

They were just about to return fire when Yang Yi appeared right in front of them, his movement uncanny.

One hand was held behind his back, the other gripping the Flame Serpent’s Fang as he thrust. His motions were elegant, like a gentleman’s, yet ruthless and seasoned.

Four rapid thrusts in succession. He dodged the bullets and ended their lives, leaving a single charred hole in the massive rat heads on their chests.

Once they were dead, Yang Yi immediately ran back to inspect the two damaged robots.

Xiao San was badly damaged and completely immobilized. Xiao Yi could barely move; its balance module had malfunctioned, leaving it unable to walk or aim accurately.

“Xiao Yi, grab what I hand you.”

Yang Yi hauled over the fused rat nest along with several rat thralls that seemed not quite dead yet, letting Xiao Yi clamp onto them with its mechanical arm.

Then he grabbed that arm himself and dragged the whole pile forward at a run.

He ignored the rats along the way, they couldn’t penetrate his defenses anyway.

But he hadn’t gone far when gunfire erupted again behind him.

One shot even struck Yang Yi in the back. The tremendous impact sent him stumbling forward, nearly pitching him onto the ground.

The bullet almost pierced the Penitent Armour, warping it badly and injuring Yang Yi in the process.

He turned his head. Another rat thrall tactical squad was charging in, twelve of them again.

They had once been players, likely elite guards from the Shelter, with excellent tactical discipline.

One of them was wielding an anti-materiel sniper rifle, the shot that had nearly crippled him.

They also carried heavy weapons. One rat thrall hoisted a tube resembling an RPG and was lining up a shot.

Another hurled a grenade straight at him.

Yang Yi’s gaze sharpened. He drew his flintlock to respond, switching to roar mode.

A huge projectile burst from the muzzle, swelling larger and larger as it flew. It smashed into the grenade first, then into the rocket, but its momentum didn’t falter.

In the end, the projectile expanded into a sphere large enough to clog the passageway entirely. It crushed the tactical squad, ruptured the corridor, and shoved walls and debris forward for nearly a hundred metres before finally dissipating.

That route was completely destroyed.

Twisted metal piled and compacted together, impassable even for rats.

Yang Yi didn’t spare the rear a glance. Using the recoil to accelerate further, he dragged his massive load through the harbour gate and out onto the dock.

Rats were everywhere, stacked two or three layers deep across the ground.

The Nightmare Star lay not far from the pier, and vast sheets of flame raged across the dock.

Yet the rats charged without fear of death, rolling forward in waves. The fire inflicted heavy casualties, but they never retreated.

Worse still, they were coming from all directions. Every ventilation duct and entrance in the open harbour was spewing rats.

Even the underwater pipelines, countless rats were swimming in from below, their numbers impossible to estimate.

Onboard the Nightmare Star, ancient skeletal arms and writhing vines were locked in combat with the rat swarm. Xiao Er was clearing out the stragglers that made it onto the deck. Working together, they barely managed to keep the rats suppressed below deck, but the situation was extremely tense.

Suna was pouring oil into the sea, preparing to set the surface ablaze as well, hoping to slow the rats’ advance.

Yang Yi’s appearance caught her attention.

A swift figure wrapped in black armour and shrouded in dark mist was charging toward them, dragging an enormous mass behind him.

“Prepare to set sail!” Yang Yi shouted, warning her.

She stopped at once and ran towards the bow.

Yang Yi plunged straight through the sea of fire, moving at incredible speed. In moments he reached the Nightmare Star, only four or five metres away.

“Xiao Yi, hold on tight!” Yang Yi commanded.

He seized Xiao Yi’s body, spun twice, and hurled it straight onto the deck.

Helpers were already waiting above. More than a dozen vines crossed and wove together into a net, catching the entire bundle and smothering the remaining flames.

“Don’t eat them. I need them alive!”

Yang Yi called out a warning, to keep the vines from draining the rat thralls dry. Then he gathered his strength and leapt, vaulting straight onto the deck and finally breaking free of the rat swarm.

“Suna, get us moving, now! These rats have firearms and heavy weapons. They’re extremely dangerous!”

He urged her to cast off at once and break out of the harbour. At the same time, he lit a grease-soaked torch and threw it onto the sea, igniting the oil slick to drive the rats back.

Only after the Nightmare Star had left the shelter and sailed two or three hundred metres did the rats aboard the ship finally get driven off or wiped out.

Even so, the deliberately captured rat corpses had piled up in the ship’s central courtyard into a small hill, two or three thousand of them, by the look of it.

Yang Yi went to the bow and relieved Suna at the helm, continuing onwards until they were five nautical miles out before stopping.

With Suna’s help, he had already removed the Penitent Armour and given his wounds emergency treatment.

“These rats are fairly intelligent,” he said.

“They probably noticed our movements and set up an ambush.”

He told Suna what had happened inside.

“These rat thralls retain the skills they had in life. They can use weapons, and not just light ones. Anti-materiel sniper rifles, rocket launchers, beam guns, grenades.”

He took out an old laser pistol from his ring.

“This was probably seized from the rat thralls by those natives. They just got overrun later and ended up parasitized themselves.

Our decision to retreat back then was the right one. If we’d run into rat thralls with heavy firepower like this, we’d have been injured for sure.”

Suna nodded. She understood why Yang Yi had brought the ship this far out, to avoid sniper fire.

She went to the central courtyard, where several rat thralls lay scattered. There were four in total. One of them was huge, limbless, and bore three heads, a grotesque fused rat nest.

After everything Yang Yi had put them through, dragging and burning, only one rat thrall and the fused rat nest were still alive.

Their lives seemed bound to the giant rat embedded in their chests. The deaths of the smaller rats didn’t cause them any real harm.

The fused rat nest and the surviving rat thrall were soon stuffed by Suna into the Bag of Holding and sent directly to the witch’s laboratory. Judging by the look of it, they were destined to become raw materials for rat-killing concoctions.

“Can these robots be fixed?” Yang Yi asked, dragging Xiao Yi and Xiao San over as well.

“It’ll be difficult, but I’ll try,” Suna replied after checking their condition.

She was skilled at treating people, but this was her first time repairing robots. She would need to study and work through the materials Wei Qian had left behind if she wanted any chance of fixing them.

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