Chapter 1344: Going In
Translator: Sean88888 Editor: Elkassar1
Of course, the Protoss were still the ones who suffered the most serious loss in this wave of destruction. More than half of their forces were reduced to ashes in the explosion. To make matters worse, a small Zerg squad personally led by the Queen of Blades had pierced straight into the back of the remaining Protoss army, turning their formation into a complete mess!
During such a chaotic moment, Sheyan slammed the table in front of him hard, sending all the cutlery on the table jingling. A fork that was covered in grease even flew straight at Ronnie, who was sitting behind him.
Sheyan growled excitedly in a suppressed voice, “That horrifying sense of threat is gone! This is a great opportunity for us; we must charge into the damn base immediately!! …Why are you guys looking at me like that? Is there anything wrong with what I said? ”
Behind Sheyan, Ronnie suddenly said with tears streaking down his face, “Before we lift off, can you pull the fork out of my face first?”
***
A bright orange flame shot out from the rear of the Dropship. This was caused by the excessive concentration of fuel in the ship’s powerful engine. The sudden increase in the ship’s acceleration had caused the air supply to the engines to become insufficient, resulting in incomplete combustion of fuel.
The orange flame swiftly turned blue, providing a powerful thrust to propel the Dropship towards the Protoss city which had been frozen in time for aeons.
All the passengers on the Terran transport ship leaned back hard due to the sudden acceleration and could not help gripping the armrests beside them to steady themselves. Their bodies stuck closely to the metal wall of the Dropship due to the strong force, so they could feel the intense vibration of the transport ship. The ship was shaking so violently that it felt like it was about to disintegrate.
This sudden action by the humans immediately caused great concern and anger among the scuffling Protoss and Zerg! A small group instantly broke away from both forces to chase after the humans, as if by some tacit understanding.
The Zerg’s current air force was pitifully weak. They only had six Scourges (Zerg kamikaze air units), but following behind them were more than ten Overlords which must be transporting Zerg ground troops in them. On the other hand, the Protoss’ air force was still quite strong. Their hastily assembled pursuit team not only had a heroic Carrier, but also three Shuttles and two Phoenixes!
Although the humans had moved first, they had one great weakness, and that was speed!
Even an ordinary Protoss Shuttle could be upgraded with anti-gravity technology. If upgraded, they would be among the fastest units. The Zerg’s transportation of troops was done by the Overlords, so the Overlords had both reinforcement and anti-stealth functions. Although the human’s transport plane, the Dropship, focused on survivability, its speed was rather mediocre.
So despite moving first, the human’s lead did not last long. The pursuing enemies were simply too absurdly powerful.
The Zerg Scourges were small and fast. On the other side, the Protoss Carrier was actually a freaking heroic unit, so its flying speed was not inferior to that of a Shuttle that had the anti-gravity technology upgrade. Therefore, despite the best efforts of the escorting Wraiths to stop the enemies, they fell from the air one after another as black smoke poured out of them.
The Protoss showed no mercy. The fact that Sheyan had chosen to make a move in this place at this time meant that he must be prepared to be attacked by them….
The humans had just barely made it into the abandoned Protoss city when the heroic Carrier’s little Interceptor aircraft swarmed all over them like a horrifying swarm of black bees. Their pulse cannons made trails of fire on the Dropship.
(The Interceptor is a fighter launched from a Carrier. That’s how the Carriers attack.)
The Dropship was already shaking violently from running on overload. Now that the engines had been damaged too, the Dropship’s movement became as bumpy as a boat in the storm. Fortunately, all the loose objects inside had been tied to something or fixed in place, or Ronnie would be further injured!
Pontin came to the rescue. He once again had his SCV equipment on, complete with the mask and the welding torch, and went up and down the ship to repair the damages. Pontin was no longer the same SCV as before. As a heroic SCV, he was putting his amazing maintenance ability on full display. Under the intense attack, the speeding human Dropship constantly seemed like it would explode in the next second, but despite the black smoke spewing from it, it persevered for more than 5 minutes until it managed to fly into the inner area of the Protoss city.
Suddenly, a Zerg Scourge appeared on the flank of the Dropship and rushed towards it. Fortunately, the pilot was agile enough to tilt the ship to the side, albeit in a very awkward way. The Scourge brushed past the ship and crashed into an unmanned Interceptor on the other side!
The Scourge exploded with a burst of strongly acidic body fluid, corroding holes in the Interceptor. The Interceptor instantly became a pile of scrap metal pieces that smelled terrible and crashed into the wall of a magnificent building of the ancient city. From afar, the building looked like a piece of art that had been stained with cow dung…
At the same time, an urgent alarm sounded on the Dropship. The captain’s panicked voice came through the speaker:
“Some of the Scourge’s acid has splashed onto us. Two of our engines have caught fire, so we only have three working engines left!”
“I can fix it! Give me one hundred seconds!” roared Pontin.
But the captain cried out in despair, “I can only give you forty seconds, sir! And only if Lady Luck is on our side!”
“Captain, do you see the building on the right?” Sheyan suddenly interjected. “The one that looks like a tower. Yes, that’s the one. My request for you is to charge straight at the protruding blade at the base of that tower! I guarantee you that the bottom of the tower is hollow. You just need to break through that thin protective layer, and you’ll have the time to make a safe landing.”
“But, sir! If the bottom of the tower turns out to be solid, the great impact will flatten us into pancakes, and the burning fuel will incinerate us to ashes! The whole process will take less than three seconds!”
“Okay, scratch that. This isn’t a request, it’s an order!” said Sheyan with a laugh.
‘The name of that building is “Barbera”. I saw its 3D layout in the Lost Temple. But of course, I won’t tell you that,’ added Sheyan in his mind.
The captain stopped talking, but when the transport plane flew towards the protruding blade amidst intense attacks from all around, a heart-wrenching scream came from the cockpit. However, the protruding blade did not turn out to be as hard as expected. Under the intense impact from the collision with the Dropship, it crisply broke into fragments. The captain’s scream abruptly stopped after that.
In the end, the Terran Dropship crashed into a large amount of soft objects while emitting thick black smoke. But because of the darkness, they could not see what the objects were.
The captain’s warning message immediately came. “Please leave the aircraft immediately. The hydraulic balance system and the oil pressure balance system are both out of control. The aircraft is estimated to explode in a minute and ten seconds!”
Sheyan immediately kicked out at the wall near him. This spot of the wall had been badly ravaged by acid and pulse cannon shots, so it was already in pretty bad shape. Sheyan’s kick instantly made a large hole about the size of an adult male on the wall.
When Sheyan carried Ronnie and stepped outside, he immediately fell into a large amount of unidentified soft objects. Under his lead, the group of humans hastily ran away from the transport plane that had already started burning. They quickly found somewhere they could take cover behind.
They soon heard the explosion. A hot wave assaulted their faces, and a strange smell filled the air. The Dropship which had gone through life and death with them thus completely disintegrated, saying goodbye to the world in this heroic way.
Thanks to the explosion illuminating the place, Sheyan could finally see what those soft objects were.
They were a kind of food called Hasok, something that the Protoss in ancient times liked very much.
The Protoss’s love for the food was just like the Chinese’s love for abalone and bird’s nest. These soft things looked like single-cell organisms with a hollow centre. It was hard to imagine that they were organs taken from a kind of gigantic interstellar beast. Even the smallest of these interstellar beasts were bigger than the entire solar system!
However, due to the excessive hunting of these beasts by the ancient Protoss, they slowly reduced in number until they went completely extinct.
Treading on the Hasoks that piled up like mountains, Sheyan walked forward, guided by his memory. He quickly reached the first underground floor of the building. The group looked around and quickly found a metal gate. Sheyan led them inside.
When the gate was closed again, Sheyan announced to the others, “Welcome to the Protoss town built 174 thousand years ago, the town of Kerdak. You may now rest up and treat your wounds. We leave in fifteen minutes.”