Bo Er turned around and whispered his orders.
The three Nightwatchers took the alchemical grenades from their waists and handed them all to the front row.
The two in the front held copper swords in one hand and three grenades each in the other, with the pins already hooked between their fingers.
Lu Yuan unscrewed the cap of the bottle of sandworm oil.
A pungent oily smell spread through the air.
He fished a match out of his pocket.
"Three."
The fingers in the front row tightened around the pull rings.
"Two."
Lu Yuan struck the match, and the flame flickered to life.
"One! Throw!"
Six alchemical grenades were thrown simultaneously.
They traced short arcs through the air before falling into the thick scavenger fungus layer ahead.
Boom! Boom! Boom boom boom boom!
A series of explosions carrying holy light erupted in the narrow alley, fueled by sacred attributes and specialized alchemical products.
The massive impact tore through the scavenger fungus in sheets, kicking up a storm of green debris and greyish-white dust.
Several scavenger ghouls were swept up by the blast wave, slammed against the walls, and smashed into piles of gore.
Even more scavenger ghouls were startled by the explosion and fled to either side.
A path, much narrower than before, had been blasted open.
The floor beneath the blasted scavenger fungus was revealed.
The bronze color had turned black.
It had been almost completely corroded through.
"Charge!"
Lu Yuan thrust the burning match into the mouth of the sandworm oil bottle.
The moment the sandworm oil ignited, a ball of moon-white light suddenly flared in his hand.
It was several times brighter than an electric lamp.
The surrounding scavenger ghouls squirmed away in all directions the moment they saw the light, as if encountering their natural enemy.
Lu Yuan threw the burning bottle of sandworm oil hard against the left wall.
The glass bottle shattered, oil splashed, and flames quickly spread along the wall.
The moon-white firelight illuminated the entire street.
The scavenger fungus emitted a sharp hissing sound under the searing heat of the flames, quickly curling and shattering.
The scavenger ghouls let out a chorus of shrill shrieks, desperately scrambling out of the light's reach.
The nine of them began to run at the same time.
Copper swords cleared the way in front, slashing any scavenger ghoul that failed to jump aside in time.
Firearms suppressed both sides.
The sensation beneath their feet was disgusting.
Although part of the scavenger fungus layer had been cleared by the explosion, residues remained on both sides, making a wet squelching sound as they stepped on it.
A faint sensation of heat came from their soles.
Even though the sandworm oil had dispelled the scavenger fungus to some extent, the remaining properties were still corrosive.
But as long as they were fast enough, it wouldn't have time to burn through their soles.
"Don't stop!" Lu Yuan shouted loudly.
The nine figures sprinted through the firelight of the sandworm oil.
The wall of fire on the left illuminated half the street.
In the darkness of the right side of the street, the silhouettes of scavenger ghouls continued to dash past, but the firelight suppressed them, and not a single one dared to approach.
They ran for about thirty seconds.
The sensation beneath their feet changed.
It went from slippery to dry.
The coverage of the scavenger fungus layer had thinned out considerably here, but the smell of blood in the air grew stronger.
The team slowed down.
Everyone was panting heavily.
Bo Er looked down at the soles of his shoes.
The leather surface had been corroded into a shallow groove, and in the thinner areas, the stitching inside was visible.
He looked up at Lu Yuan.
There was something more in his eyes now.
It wasn't fear.
It was solemnity.
A temporary captain he had known for less than an hour had made the correct judgment based solely on observation without any intelligence support.
He began to understand why Kraus had put this man in the captain's position.
Lu Yuan ignored Bo Er's gaze.
He was looking ahead.
The range of the firelight was limited, but it was enough to see the outlines in the distance.
About a hundred meters ahead.
The ground had completely collapsed.
A dark, gaping hole sat right in the middle of the street.
It was about ten meters in diameter.
The floor at the edges broke downward, revealing a pitch-black abyss below.
Scavenger fungus spread outward from the edge of the hole like pus seeping from a wound.
From deep within the hole, a constant rustling sound emerged.
It sounded like countless claws climbing up the rock walls.
The hole gaped open a hundred meters ahead.
Dark and hollow, it looked like a wound that had grown after the earth split open.
The scavenger fungus layer spread out from the edge of the hole, and the acidic, rotten smell was thick enough to choke someone.
The wall of fire from the sandworm oil was still burning behind them, its moon-white light illuminating most of the street and everything ahead.
Then Lu Yuan noticed a change.
The moment the firelight shone into the hole, the sounds inside changed.
What was originally a rustling crawling sound had now turned into roars.
Low, hoarse roars squeezed from the depths of throats erupted one after another.
It wasn't fear.
It was anger.
The light source had provoked them.
The first ghoul flipped out from the edge of the hole.
It was extremely fast, moving on all fours with its back arched like an enraged beast.
Then came the second.
The third.
The fourth.
They poured out of the hole like an ant colony whose nest had been poked, their numbers far exceeding any wave they had encountered along the way.
And these were different.
They weren't the emaciated vanguards.
They were larger, with fuller muscles, and thick veins could be seen pulsing beneath their grey-red flesh membranes.
Their mouths split from the lower jaw down to the chest, with three layers of interlocking teeth, and slime dripped from the gaps.
The main force had arrived.
Bo Er's face turned pale.
"At least twenty... no, they're still coming..."
His voice was half-drowned out by the roaring.
Lu Yuan did not hesitate.
He reached for his waist and took out the bottle of Eerie-Bane Potion Laurina had given him.
It was a small round bottle with no label, only a skull drawn in charcoal by Laurina.
Five-meter range, do not use against the wind.
Lu Yuan glanced up.
The wind was coming from the south, blowing toward the hole.
A tailwind.
The effective kill range of the Eerie-Bane Potion was five meters, but if it spread with the wind, the coverage area could be even larger.
However, the concentration would be diluted, and the lethality would drop significantly.
But it was enough.
He didn't need to kill them all; he just needed to clear an open space around the hole.
"Cover your mouths and noses!"
Lu Yuan gripped the round bottle tight, channeling all the strength in his body into his right arm.
He threw it.
The glass bottle traced a short arc through the air, flying straight toward the hole.
Smash.
The bottle shattered against the rubble at the edge of the hole.
A cloud of pink mist erupted from the fragments.
It wasn't smoke, but something with texture, like powder that had been liquefied and then instantly vaporized, carrying a faint, visible shimmer.
The night wind pushed it from behind, and the pink mist rapidly spread out with the hole as the center, covering the entire collapsed area within seconds.
It far exceeded five meters.
But Lu Yuan saw clearly that the pink mist had become very thin as it spread to the edges, its color fading from a deep pink to a light haze.
The concentration was no longer enough.
The effect was most violent at the very center of the hole.
The scavenger fungus layer there curled up in sheets, rapidly shrinking from the edges to the center like paper being scorched by fire, emitting a dense hissing sound as greyish-white froth bubbled on the surface before it shattered and turned to powder.
The reaction of the scavenger ghouls was even more intense.
The moment the pink mist touched their bodies, those formless grey lumps of meat began to convulse, and massive amounts of bubbles erupted from the slime on their surfaces, before their entire bodies collapsed and melted from the outside in, turning into a puddle of steaming, grey-brown liquid.
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