What Should I Do If My Ex-Girlfriend's Pheromones Smell Too Good? - Chapter 48

Chapter 48: Boarding

Chu Yimeng had lost most of her consciousness. Intense pain and vertigo left her with nothing but survival instincts and a bottomless rage. Even if she was going to die, she intended to take these disgusting insects down with her. The explosion from her mecha’s self-destruct sequence would be enough to shred every Zerg soldier nearby.

Her fingers twitched, reaching for a specific button in the cockpit, when a harsh, metallic screeching rang out. Her blood-blurred vision was suddenly flooded with bright white light. A panel in her cockpit had been pried loose, widening the hole previously eaten away by corrosion. She wiped her eyes, clearing away the sweat and blood, and hurried her search for the self-destruct trigger.

“BOOM!”

At that moment, the Zerg soldier prying at her cockpit was knocked sideways by a massive force from the rear. Immediately after, a high-temperature blade swept across, decapitating it. The hideous, twisted head bounced on the ground like a ball.

The force of the impact was so great that even Chu Yimeng’s severely damaged mecha swayed. She instinctively curled her body, using her last bit of strength to protect her head. Outside, the environment abruptly turned chaotic. The sounds of fighting reached her ears, and soon, she heard a familiar voice—a signal of life.

“Instructor Chu!”

Shu Qiong carefully avoided the puddles of highly corrosive slime and finished dismantling the cockpit cover. As the piercing white light poured in from above, Chu Yimeng forced her eyes open just a crack to confirm the situation. She looked horrific—covered in puncture wounds, with charred, corroded flesh lining the edges of the holes, which were steadily oozing blood.

“Get her on the vehicle first.”

Yan Xiangyu strode over. Her whip was slightly damaged and coated in an unknown liquid; behind her lay a headless Zerg corpse still twitching. “We’re making too much noise. We might get surrounded.”

She and Shu Qiong worked together to move the wreckage of the mecha—with Chu Yimeng still inside—onto the nearby spare transport vehicle. They didn’t dare touch the instructor directly for fear of worsening her injuries. Without keys or authorization, Shu Qiong spent a few moments violently smashing the door locks to gain entry.

The vehicle was empty. Yan Xiangyu laid the wounded instructor flat on the floor and climbed out of her mecha. Finding an emergency medical kit on the vehicle, she administered a hemostatic injection and a repair agent to Chu Yimeng, then began meticulously washing the corrosive fluid off her skin with a specialized cleaning solution.

“Quick, quick, quick!” Shu Qiong stood by the door, ushering her companions who had just finished off the remaining Zerg. “Everyone, get on!”

Within three minutes, everyone had scrambled onto the transport. Some carried the remains of fallen comrades on their mechas. Shu Qiong quickly shut the door; since the lock was broken, she chose to weld the door shut with scrap metal, planning to break it open again once they needed to exit.

“Who’s driving?” someone shouted anxiously.

“I’ll do it!” Jin Yan volunteered, jumping out of her cockpit and running toward the driver’s seat. “I have a license for all types of special vehicles. I can handle a large-scale hover transport like this.”

Fang Yingying had already forced the driver’s cabin door open. Jin Yan had worried about authorization, but the controls activated automatically the moment she entered.

Fang Yingying snorted. “Military vehicles of this type are designed this way—to handle emergencies where every second counts. Like right now.”

Jin Yan looked back into the main hold with a grim expression. Aside from a few people treating the wounded, most stayed inside their mechas, wary of the swarm. “This is my first time driving something this big,” she muttered, wiping her palms and sitting down.

Inside the transport, the ceiling lights flickered to life. The vehicle shuddered twice and then launched without warning. It maintained a massive acceleration that made the passengers stagger. With the pedal to the metal, the transport surged upward and streaked forward.

Shu Qiong, having just finished welding the door, nearly fell. She grabbed the door frame to steady herself, thankful she had welded it securely. “Who’s driving?” she asked, grabbing the nearest person.

It was Jiang Guo, who had nearly been flung from her seat. “I think… I think it’s that commander student, Jin,” she said, still shaken.

Shu Qiong felt a pang of dread. If she remembered correctly, Jin Yan’s “all-types” license was a freebie she got for passing her racing driver’s exam!

Fortunately, after the gut-wrenching start, the hover transport didn’t suffer too many violent jolts—it was just moving at an extraordinary speed and felt a bit “wild.”

Shu Qiong walked over to Yan Xiangyu. “How is she?”

“She needs a med-pod. We don’t have one here,” Yan Xiangyu replied concisely, her forehead beaded with sweat. She and a few others were dealing with the purple slime on Chu Yimeng’s body. It was incredibly tricky; a single slip-up would result in the cotton swabs being corroded away. Luckily, the areas hit weren’t fatal, though Chu Yimeng was lethargic from blood loss and fell asleep after the medication.

The situation remained grim. Ordinary hemostatics had limited effects. Without professional medical treatment, Chu Yimeng would still die.

As Shu Qiong’s brow furrowed, she heard a faint tap-tap. She looked down and saw the instructor had woken up, her face pale and her lips moving. Chu Yimeng feebly tapped the floor with a finger. Shu Qiong knelt beside her to listen.

“Don’t go… to the main control room…” Chu Yimeng whispered breathlessly. “Go to the dorms… the underground air-raid shelter… use the south side small gate…”

Shu Qiong wasn’t surprised. This was a military site; having an emergency shelter was standard. She nodded solemnly and headed to the cockpit. Chu Yimeng relaxed and drifted back into sleep.

In the cockpit, Shu Qiong passed the instructions to the racing driver-turned-pilot. Jin Yan tapped the digital map and adjusted their course. “Thirty minutes, tops.”

“Does this thing have a cloak?” Shu Qiong asked.

“Yes, but it’s limited,” Jin Yan explained. “The vehicle is too big to hide easily. I can’t fly high; I have to stay at a low altitude.”

As if to prove her point, a loud clunk echoed from outside. “Oh, come on…” Jin Yan hissed, opening the external cameras.

Shu Qiong and Fang Yingying saw a large splash of green liquid smeared across the lower front of the vehicle. A lucky break—it wasn’t the corrosive purple slime. However, nearby, a Zerg let out a high-pitched, piercing alarm shriek. This immediately drew the attention of the main swarm. The black mass above began to spread toward them with crushing pressure.

Several Zerg soldiers closed in. Over the next few dozen meters, the transport slammed into three more. They charged without fear, and the speeding vehicle had no room to dodge.

“This won’t work,” Shu Qiong said, terrified. “If we hit one with corrosive blood that gets sucked into the engines, we’re done.”

“Damn it! There’s more and more of them!” Jin Yan cursed. A massive smear of green-black filth covered the primary viewport.

“Does this vehicle have weapons?” Shu Qiong asked.

“No,” Fang Yingying answered. She knew these vehicles well. “These are for logistics. Heavy weapons would lower the cargo capacity.”

Shu Qiong frowned. “Can we open a port? I’ll shoot them down.”

Fang Yingying thought for a moment, walked to the side, and manipulated a panel, popping off a metal plate the size of a palm. Instantly, a violent wind whipped into the cabin. Shu Qiong observed the hole, then ran back to her mecha and dismantled one of the laser cannons.

It was too heavy for a human to carry easily. Before she had gone two steps, the weight lightened.

“I’ll help,” Yan Xiangyu said. She placed the cannon on a small trolley she was pushing. The trolley contained a bin of medical waste that smelled strongly of blood. Shu Qiong didn’t refuse. They returned to the cockpit and propped the muzzle against the hole, which had a threaded rim designed to lock a barrel into place.

Fang Yingying gave a voice command to the ship’s AI: “Activate auxiliary fire-control mode.”

A small screen popped up above the port, showing the exterior. It felt like playing a rail shooter. With the sights calibrated and the recoil absorbed by the vehicle’s frame, shooting became easy. Shu Qiong fired silver-white beams, puncturing the abdomens of the Zerg blocking their path, sending them spiraling down.

As they drew closer to the base, the Zerg became denser. Shu Qiong focused on the ones with distended abdomens that spat purple acid. Fang Yingying left the cockpit and gathered a few others to defend ports at the front, back, and sides.

Shu Qiong handed her post to Chang Xichun and went back to her specialty: mecha repair. With limited time and materials, she could only perform essential patches on her Xinghai and the mechas of her close friends.

With her companions clearing the way, Jin Yan pushed the throttle to its limit. She stopped dodging and flew in a straight line, racing toward the south gate of the base.

Twenty-five minutes later, the transport arrived at the base. Shattered stone and metal wreckage were everywhere. Half of the tallest buildings had collapsed, and fires burned where equipment had exploded. It was a scene of total devastation.

The transport glided into the base in a near-suicidal descent, skidding toward the half-collapsed dormitory building. Sparks showered from the undercarriage. The moment it stopped, the welded door was pried open from the inside.

The students emerged, weapons ready. Multiple cannons extended to clear the immediate area as the Zerg swarm, having waited for this moment, shrieked and surged toward them in waves.