manynovel Chapter 253
Chapter 253
Magnus Specter didn’t waste a breath. He vaulted over the huge dead hen sprawled on the ground, skipped Harper Quinn’s vehicle entirely, and sprinted out of the Ridgebreak Battalion gates, heading straight for the blast he’d just heard.
Ridgehaven City was quiet at night. Aside from the Ice Regiment teams digging for fallen Crystals, nothing ever stirred. That explosion tore the silence apart—so sudden, even the giant sparrows roosting in the surrounding buildings were jolted awake. They burst out the windows, flapping wildly to see what had happened.
Magnus raced toward the source of the noise. He passed several teams still digging up meteor fragments; they were shaken too. A few women spotted him running and tried to climb down to ask what was going on, but Magnus waved hard, urging them to stay put and keep at it.
By the time he reached the Zero-Kilometer Marker at the southern edge of Ridgehaven City, where the outskirts met the farmlands, he saw fire lighting up the sky. His chest tightened, and he pushed himself faster.
But after he’d sprinted just a few dozen more meters, a raw shout tore out of him—“What the—?!”
What was that? What in all the hells was that?!
Three sleeper buses lay flipped on their sides. The women who’d used Metal Crystals were screaming, scattering in all directions. Above them, giant bats swooped down again and again, each dive snatching up another team member. The women fired upward in panic, arrows streaking through the air, while Magnus—
Magnus dropped straight onto his backside, stunned by what he saw.
Right in front of him loomed a snake’s head, massive as an off-road wagon—just the head alone that size. And that monstrous head was swallowing an entire sleeper coach. The creature arched its neck back, half the bus already down its throat. Inside, the trapped women shrieked and clawed their way toward the door, tumbling one after another out of the frame and to the ground.
Those who’d used Metal Crystals hit the dirt and scrambled back up, running blindly. Those who hadn’t were shattered by the fall. Before they could even rise, the giant bats plunged again, biting deep into their necks and dragging them screaming into the sky.
On the ground, hordes of rat beasts swarmed forward like a rolling tide. A handful of women were knocked into the horde, bodies thrown into the air. The rats leapt up after them, teeth sinking in, and more beasts piled on, tearing savagely.
Even the women protected by Metal Crystals couldn’t help but wail in panic, begging for help.
Rats, bats—Magnus had seen plenty of them. None of that bothered him anymore. He’d fallen on his ass because of one thing only: that colossal snake head. Something he’d never even imagined could exist.
He had only seen the head—he hadn’t even found its body yet.
He bit hard on the tip of his tongue, forcing a sting through his skull, dragging himself back to clarity. Then he pushed up to his feet and shouted for the women to calm down. A quick scan showed two women empowered by Super Fire Crystals fighting their way through the rat beasts to rescue their teammates.
He didn’t know whether the giant serpent feared Super Fire Crystals. He clenched his teeth anyway and sprang forward. One leap put him onto the roof of a box truck. Bracing himself between two steel bars, he whipped out his strong lantern and shined it straight at the serpent’s head.
Earlier, the burning sleeper bus had lit only part of the monster. Now, with the harsh beam raking across its skull and down toward its body, Magnus sucked in a breath so sharp it stabbed his chest.
This wasn’t a python.
This was a snake. A true snake—one that had no business being this big.
The hairs on his back stood up. His scalp prickled, a cold numbness creeping across it. This was nothing like what he had pictured.
If it had been a python, he could’ve swallowed it—humans had seen massive ones before, even monstrous ones on old screens.
No matter how massive or how long it was, Magnus Specter could usually hold his ground. His mind wouldn’t blank out, nor would fear choke him so easily.
But the thing caught in his beam now... was a real spotted serpent. A flower-marked monster with a sharp triangular head, its body banded in stark white and black. The sight hit like a punch to the gut—so vicious it looked ripped straight out of some nightmare tale, a snake demon that had grown into something sentient and cruel.
He sucked in several rough breaths, chest tight, heart pounding hard enough to shake his ribs. Every instinct screamed at him to turn and sprint far, far away. Magnus forced that impulse down, teeth grinding, and summoned an automatic rifle from his storage. He aimed at the giant serpent’s eye and swept the muzzle in a fierce spray.
It was like venting the terror boiling in his blood—Magnus fired wildly, every shot slamming toward its massive head.
The bullets hit, but its hide rang like armored steel, sparks crackling and scattering in all directions.
The more he saw, the colder his scalp felt. He tossed the rifle aside, drew his handgun. His right hand trembled so badly he had to steady it with his left. He angled the barrel toward the serpent’s eye and fired three rapid shots.
One struck true.
The serpent shrieked, a sound that sliced through the firelit chaos. Magnus lifted his flashlight, its beam cutting across the churning scene. From the creature’s left eye, a thin but unmistakable jet of blood sprayed forth.
The serpent thrashed in pure rage. Its massive head swung violently—an entire sleeper bus was bitten clean in half. One half vanished into its maw, the other went flying through the air.
Its eyes were the weak point.
The realization slammed into Magnus like a hammer. He raised the handgun and kept firing at the blinded eye. One magazine emptied, he slammed in another. Seven bullets had already punched into that ruined socket. The giant serpent whipped its head in agony, smashing through two four‑story buildings, carving gaping wounds into their walls.
Magnus reloaded again, left hand holding the light steady, right hand squeezing the trigger in a relentless rhythm.
Maybe both its eyes had taken damage—because the beast had lost all sense of direction. It tore itself fully out from where it had been coiled, body rising like a massive coiled disc before it struck blindly at everything around.
It rammed into a residential building, shattering the side wall into rubble. Then it recoiled and lunged in another random direction—this time sinking its fangs into a sleeper bus packed with more than seventy terrified women from the Ice Regiment who hadn’t dared step out.
The serpent clamped down hard. Its jaws twisted, sinking into the driver’s and co‑driver’s doors. Those doors had no reinforcing bars, and the driver, the conductor standing at the co‑driver’s side, and a squad leader behind them were pierced in an instant—bodies skewered before they could even scream. Their skin blackened and life fled in a heartbeat.
Those two bus doors were the only spots without steel bars. Normally, when opened, the outer shell slid into the inner wall, and the reinforcing bars locked into place only when shut. But the driver’s door opened outward, so steel bars could be fixed there.
The serpent, blind and enraged, didn’t see those deadly metal spikes jutting from the driver’s side. One bite drove the bars straight up into its upper jaw.
And that—Magnus realized—was the one opening he could seize to bring this monster down.