With night vision, Noid could see the state of the house clearly without light. After searching for a bit, he found the secret passage to the basement.
He took a deep breath, then stepped down.
The strongholds of doom cult followers were usually set up as corridors. One room was for worship, and another room was disguised as a shelter.
Suddenly, a light from below shone directly on him. Along with the alarm from the guard, Noid was surprised. He had clearly knocked out the guy outside without making a sound, yet he was still discovered.
In reality, he had indeed sneaked in without a sound. But ever since so many of the cult's strongholds were destroyed, the followers had become more cautious and set up more preventative measures. There would be two guards below the stairs leading to the basement, and at certain intervals, they would shine a light up the stairs to check. Because the staircase was narrow and only one person could go down at a time, there was no place to hide.
This was also a testament to Noid's lack of experience. The doom cult was able to hide from the police for so long not just by luck. It was just that in the past few days, he had been hitting them so hard that they couldn't react in time, but once they did, a few simple methods were enough to expose Noid.
"Damn it!"
He cursed under his breath, his pace quickening as he rushed down. The two guards didn't even have time to fire before they were hit by paralyzing bullets and fell.
Noid rummaged through one of their pockets to get a phone and reported the location to the police. Before he could put the phone away, it had a hole shot through it. From the end of the corridor, a large number of followers appeared, some with guns, some with melee weapons, all sorts of them. The only thing they had in common was their furious expressions.
Noid had little street fighting experience, but the followers were just a disorganized mob. He first rushed at the ones with guns, gritting his teeth and enduring the followers' weapon attacks, and knocked down one of the gunmen. A bullet flew and hit Noid's shoulder, making him pause for a moment. Immediately, the followers took the opportunity to surround him.
Noid was knocked to the ground, and attacks rained down on him. He used one hand to cover his head, and his robotic hand swept the paralysis staff across the legs of the surrounding followers. A circle of people was taken down. This was followed by the rapid-fire sound of the paralysis gun. All more than ten people, including the gunmen, fell.
Noid struggled to get up. The A.T.A Armor resisted physical damage below 1.0 and reduced it up to 1.5. But that was just the armor itself; his body still had to bear the impact, even if it was greatly reduced.
Dozens of bullets and countless slashes and blows from melee weapons hit him. Even though he wasn't seriously injured, a bruised body was inevitable.
He opened the door to the worship room. A fat follower, who seemed to be the leader of this stronghold, turned to face him.
"Are you done... Who the hell are you?!"
The fat follower didn't have time to do anything before a strike from the staff broke his nose. Noid didn't pay any more attention to the cult members but rushed to where a doom was chained up to rescue someone.
From a pool of blood, Noid pulled out a young man about his age. The young man was so terrified he was frozen, covered in foul-smelling blood that would make a normal person run away.
"Hey, you, run!!!"
He threw the young man away from the doom. The pain brought the young man back to his senses. Although he was still a little dazed, he knew he had been saved.
He wanted to run out of the worship room, but he had no strength. His legs buckled. A nearby follower rushed over to stab him but was hit on the head by the butt of Noid's gun.
"Can you still get up?"
"Revered Doom Lord, please execute the despicable lowlife in front of you!!!"
The shout of a follower interrupted the conversation. He had unlocked the chains holding the doom. Whether it was out of anger or something else, he had forgotten that no matter how much they worshipped the dooms, to them, humans were just humans.
And of course, the fate of that unfortunate follower was to have his head chewed off by the very thing he worshipped every day. After taking care of the follower, the doom rushed to tear apart the others in the room.
"Aaaaa!!!!"
The horrifying screams were quickly silenced by the piles of flesh from the cult members. Even the leader, who was lying on the ground paralyzed, couldn't escape the fate of becoming a pile of minced meat.
In just a few seconds, the only survivors left were Noid and the young man who was trying to get out of there. But a few short seconds were too little time to escape. There wasn't even enough time to get to the door.
"Run, go find help."
Noid stopped abruptly. The young man was terrified, his voice trembling intensely.
"You... don't do anything stupid!! Do you know what that thing... that monster is?!!"
"Go now!!!"
Noid shouted loudly, startling the young man into running away. He turned back, his torn windbreaker fluttering, his two green eyes from the mask radiating a chilling aura as he stared at the doom. Compared to being just a member of the giant doom army on the battlefield, the image of the doom standing in the ghostly light, surrounded by scattered corpses, its mouth still dripping with un-dried blood, was even more terrifying.
Some people might call him stupid, but Noid didn't care. He had faced his past; he had been reborn. But that didn't mean he had forgotten his pain. The scene of Jack being gnawed on by doom larvae and dying in his arms would forever be a sore spot in Noid's heart.
None of the strongholds he had dismantled had the presence of dooms until today. At this stronghold, he encountered a doom once again. How many people did these damned things feed to the doom larvae to make it grow this big?
Rage, like molten lava, flowed through every vein. Noid took out a syringe and injected himself. It was the Potent Elixir - Berserk.
The description was long, but the action was fast. From the moment he turned around to injecting the elixir took less than two seconds. The doom and the man clashed.
With the power directly buffed to 1.2 by the elixir, he charged straight at the doom without dodging. A fully grown doom could reach a value of 1.4 or even 1.5, but this doom hadn't fully matured, so their strength could be considered equal.
The doom's four-part mouth was pierced in the middle by the paralysis staff. It screamed. Its two bony legs stabbed toward Noid, but because its speed was slowed, he was able to dodge them.
A full-strength punch landed in the middle of the doom's body, along with continuous shots from the paralysis gun. The doom's speed visibly slowed down. Its body staggered as if it was about to fall.
Noid seized the opportunity, one hand holding the paralysis staff still stuck in its throat to hold it back, and the other hand furiously raining punches on the doom's head. Its resistance weakened until it finally died. But his punches didn't stop.
Only when the doom's head became a pulpy mess did he pull out the paralysis staff. His torn windbreaker, now in tatters, was left behind. It revealed the black armor underneath. He staggered to his feet, and before leaving, he looked at the doom's corpse, his voice soft, and with a sense of release.
"You guys... can rest in peace now."
He limped away, leaving a lonely figure in the darkness of the night.
Not long after Noid left, the police arrived, along with the young man. The young man explained the whole situation to the police, including that someone had stayed behind to hold off the doom and begged the police to come and rescue him. From that, the police could infer that the person who had notified them earlier was the same person the young man was talking about.
They were no less anxious than the young man and had rushed to the rescue at their fastest speed. But when they arrived, all that remained was a doom's corpse with a mangled head and a piece of torn fabric.