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Luis's signature gesture, the "after you" of a Spanish gentleman, remained elegantly suspended in mid-air.
Between him and Ada, that ambiguous and dangerous tension born from narrow escapes and reunions rose along with the curling blue smoke.
Boom—
A low, sustained, and steadily amplifying roar echoed from the dungeon's only entrance, the end of that deep stone corridor.
The sound of many footsteps, mingled with the scraping of metal being dragged across the ground and the suppressed, beast-like growls from countless throats, merged into a wave of destructive sound!
The flamboyant, dashing smile on Luis's face instantly froze.
"Shit..." He even forgot to take a puff of the cigarette dangling from his mouth.
Ada's reaction was faster.
The moment the sound rang out, she had already snapped out of her languid posture.
She immediately pulled Luis and darted to the side into a slightly more spacious interrogation room.
"They're here," Ada said in a low voice.
"Sounds like more than just 'them'," Luis said, pressing his ear against the cold stone wall to discern the approaching movement.
"Did every damn lunatic in the parish show up for the farewell party?!"
Through the small observation window on the interrogation room door, they saw a sea of flickering, dark red lights at the dark end of the corridor.
Those were eyes glowing with an inhuman luster in the dark after being controlled by the Plaga parasite.
They were coming.
Holding torches, carrying lanterns, and wielding sickles and wooden shields, they came flooding frantically along the narrow corridor toward the depths of the dungeon.
The first few Followers had already begun to shake the heavy iron gate at the dungeon entrance frantically, making loud "Clang! Clang!" noises.
Luis glanced at the scene that looked like a scroll from Hell, then at the calm woman beside him.
"Well, beautiful lady. It seems our dance for two has to end early." He spread his hands, forcing a smile that looked worse than crying.
"Is there a Plan B? Like, do you know any magic tricks?"
Ada ignored his quip.
Her eyes quickly scanned the entire structure of the dungeon.
A frontal breakthrough was suicide.
Luis was unarmed; in a siege of this scale, he wouldn't last three seconds.
He was a liability.
But he was also the sole objective of this trip.
Her gaze finally fixed on an inconspicuous small ventilation window in the corner of the dungeon ceiling.
The window was high up, and outside was a sheer cliff face.
"There." She gestured toward the vent with her chin.
Luis followed her direction and immediately wore an incredulous expression.
"Are you joking? That place is taller than Salazar, and outside..."
"I prepared a rope." Ada interrupted him, unfastening a small metal device from her tactical leg pouch and throwing it upward with force.
The device trailed a very thin but extremely tough rope, and with a "snap," it fixed precisely onto the rock outside the vent.
"You go first." She was concise.
"What about you?" Luis was stunned.
"Go to the church and wait for me there," she repeated.
Luis was no fool.
He looked at the iron gate that had already begun to deform, then at the countless crazed Followers behind it, and then at the woman before him who was prepared to face all this alone.
He understood everything in an instant.
If he stayed, he would only be a hindrance.
He was the guide for the "Amber" that needed to be protected; he couldn't die here.
"¡Ten cuidado!" (Be careful!)
He no longer hesitated, tossing away the cigarette he had only taken one puff of, and nimbly climbed onto a nearby discarded torture rack to grab the cold rope.
He turned back and gave Ada one last look.
Under the firelight, she stood alone in the center of the dungeon, her slender silhouette facing an army.
Luis said no more and slid nimbly out of the vent along the rope, disappearing into the night outside the castle.
The very next second after Luis left.
"Rumble—!"
The dungeon's iron gate was completely smashed open by a massive force.
Countless fanatical Followers, like a floodgate opening, came roaring in!
However, an eerie scene occurred.
After rushing into the dungeon, these crazed Followers all stopped in unison and backed away to the sides, clearing a path.
A heavy sound of footsteps, like metal scraping against rock, slowly approached from behind the path the Followers had cleared.
Accompanying that sound was a nauseating, chitinous clicking.
A massive figure stepped out of the darkness, one step at a time.
It was too tall.
Standing nearly three meters tall, it almost touched the low dome of the dungeon.
Its body was a horrific combination of a human and a giant insect.
On its torso, covered in a dark brown carapace, remnants of decaying human skin tissue still clung.
Its arms were two massive, Sharp Weapon-like forelimbs resembling a mantis's, their edges glinting with a bloodthirsty light under the torches.
Its head had been completely dehumanized and was covered in dense compound eyes; at this moment, all those eyes were dead-locked onto Ada Wong.
Saddler's "Left Hand."
One of the most powerful biological weapons in the castle, specifically responsible for executing the most dangerous enemies.
"Skre—!"
The monster let out an inhuman screech, a sound that seemed to be issuing an order.
All the surrounding Followers were instantly reactivated; they raised their weapons and charged at Ada from all directions, howling.
At the same time, the giant monster moved too.
Its speed was completely disproportionate to its massive size; almost the instant the command was given, it turned into a black afterimage, and the massive bone blade on its right arm swept across with a whistle that tore through the air!
Facing the enemies swarming from all directions, Ada's body was like a red butterfly dancing in a gale.
With a graceful backflip, she landed precisely on the shoulders of a charging Follower, used the momentum to leap again, twisted her body in mid-air, and her black handgun let out two crisp cracks in that instant.
Puff! Puff!
Two Followers flanking her from the left and right had blood blossoms burst from their foreheads and collapsed to the ground.
She landed lightly and ducked, perfectly avoiding the monster's bone blade sweep that could have sliced a person in two.
The bone blade slammed into the stone wall, sending stone fragments flying.
Ada didn't even look back at the horrific result; she slid forward, closing in on a Follower holding a pitchfork, grabbed his wrist with her Left Hand to guide it, and let the lethal pitchfork pierce into the chest of another companion nearby.
At the same time, the handgun in her right hand was pressed against this Follower's jaw.
Bang!
Having done all this, she tapped the wall with her toe and, as if weightless, sprang backward, once again putting distance between herself and the massive monster.
The Followers were like zombies who didn't fear death, coming wave after wave.
The monster known as the "Left Hand" had her locked down even more firmly, every attack filled with destructive power.
The dungeon space was too narrow, completely restricting her mobility.
If she continued to fight here, her stamina would eventually be depleted.
She had to leave!
Ada made a decision in her mind instantly.
She stopped lingering in the fight and began a tactical retreat toward the dungeon entrance while firing.
The monster's intelligence was not low; it seemed to see through Ada's intention and let out a roar, its massive body directly knocking aside the Followers in its way, charging straight at Ada like an out-of-control tank!
Ada did not retreat; she advanced.
Just before she was about to be hit, she rolled violently to the side, picked up a rusty machete dropped by a Follower, and then threw it with all her might toward the monster's leg joint, which was exposed due to the exertion of its charge!
Clang!
Sparks flew.
The machete snapped upon contact with the monster's carapace.
But this brief obstruction and pain were enough.
The monster's charging momentum came to a sudden halt.
Ada pulled a circular metal object from her waist, pulled the pin, and threw it toward the densest concentration of the monster and Followers.
A blinding light, enough to instantly blind a normal person, accompanied by a piercing screech, exploded!
"Aaah—!"
All the Followers, under the impact of the bright light and high-frequency noise, painfully covered their eyes and ears, their formation falling into chaos.
The giant monster also let out a painful howl, its numerous compound eyes severely irritated by the intense light, causing its movements to fall into a temporary state of paralysis.
Ada did not waste this precious opportunity.
She rushed out of the dungeon, her grapple gun already aimed at the corridor on the second floor of the main hall above.
Whoosh!
The steel cable shot out, firmly gripping the railing.
Her body was pulled upward by a massive force, instantly leaving the ground and escaping that scene of chaos and madness.
When the monster recovered from the blindness, it could only see that the red figure had already disappeared into the darkness of the second floor.
It let out a roar of frustration and fury, its massive body beginning to try and climb the walls, but its heavy frame made it difficult to move on the vertical surfaces.
Ada did not stop for a moment.
Like a ghost in the night, using the convenience of the grapple gun, she moved quickly through the castle's intricate structure, leaping and bound.
From the second-floor corridor to the chandelier on the third floor.
From the chandelier to the dome skylight of the chapel.
Finally, she smashed through the skylight glass and arrived on the castle's cold roof.
The cold wind howled, blowing her short black hair.
She looked back down at the castle crouching like a giant beast and the faint roars of monsters coming from within.
Turning to leave... her body traced a graceful arc in the air, finally landing silently on the solid rock.
Finally, she had escaped.
Leaning against the cold rock, she took out a magazine and replaced the one in her small black handgun with a new, full one.
Just then.
Bang!
A dull and powerful roar, belonging to a shotgun, came from the village below.
Following that were the rapid, rhythmic sounds of handgun fire.
A battle?
Ada walked to the edge of the cliff and took a sophisticated monocular telescope, looking like a lipstick case, out of her tactical bag.
She raised the telescope to her eye and looked in the direction the gunshots were coming from.
The lens moved quickly through the dark village and soon locked onto the roof of a house.
Then she saw two men on the roof, standing back-to-back, fending off Villager climbing ladders from all directions.
One, blond, in a tactical vest, his shotgun turning a climbing Villager into a mist of blood with every roar.
And the other... with short black hair and a black tactical suit, had no gun in his hand.
He just held a most ordinary wood-cutting axe taken from an enemy.
That axe, in his hands, had become the most terrifying Sharp Weapon for harvesting.
They were having a "friendly" exchange with a group of infected Villager.
And these two men didn't seem to like this way of communicating very much...
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