"A portal linking to another world!"
Hearing the beastly roars echoing from within the vortex, Reed Richards's eyes lit up as he reached this conclusion. Without hesitation, he stood up and was about to dive into the yellow-green swirl.
Reed Richards's actions caught the other four people present by surprise.
Susan Storm was closest to Reed. She instinctively reached out to grab him, but she was still a step too late. Reed Richards had already rushed up to the vortex and stuck his head inside.
"Lunella, what the hell is this thing?" Johnny asked the little girl, Lunella, in a low voice while watching Reed's body remain frozen in a posture with his arms spread out, gripping the edges of the vortex.
"Reed just said he might have found a way to open this device, so he gave it a try," Lunella replied.
Logically speaking, since Lunella had found the circular device, the right to handle it should have belonged to her.
But Reed Richards seemed extremely interested in this device that had instantly triggered the Baxter Building's highest alert.
So much so that over the past two hours, before the little girl Lunella even had a chance to seriously study this circular device, Reed Richards had already figured out how to open it.
"Are we sure this is some doorway to another world and not a magic trick or something?" Ben Grimm looked at the vortex that seemed to be projected by the device. "It looks like a projector of some sort."
"That's right, Reed called it an Omni-Wave Projector..."
Before little Lunella could finish her sentence, Reed Richards—who had shoved his head into the projected yellow-green vortex—suddenly let out a bloodcurdling scream!
Amidst the shocked and tense expressions of the others, Reed Richards flew out backward from the vortex, his body arched as if he had been kicked heavily by something. He hit the ground with a solid, heavy thud.
"Reed!" Susan Storm hurriedly rushed over. She straightened the shoulders of the fallen Reed, looked at his face, and asked, "What just happened to you?"
"F*K!" Johnny grabbed the coffee mug he had been drinking from while chatting with Ben Grimm moments ago, wielding it cautiously as he stared at the grass-green vortex.
Ben Grimm used to be a pilot and had received professional combat training. Seeing Reed sent flying by an unknown object, he swiftly reached out and slapped the lab bench next to him.
Clack!
Ben Grimm pulled out two handguns and tossed one to Johnny:
"Use this."
Johnny frantically put the mug down and caught the pistol.
Many of the walls inside the Baxter Building concealed fingerprint-activated weapons; this was a contingency Reed Richards had designed to prevent himself from ever being trapped somewhere in the building.
But other than Ben Grimm, the rest of them lacked professional training. Even when faced with a dangerous situation like this, their first reaction was to just grab whatever was nearby for defense, rather than reaching for firearms.
With guns in hand, both Johnny and Ben Grimm breathed a sigh of relief. They stepped closer to the vortex portal, one step at a time.
Thud! Thud!
As Johnny and Ben approached the vortex, muffled sounds actually began emanating from the swirl projected by the Omni-Wave Projector.
The sounds grew increasingly rapid, soon turning into a continuous, drum-like thumping.
"Guys, I think it's getting a little dangerous in here," Ben Grimm said to Susan Storm, keeping his gun trained on the vortex.
"Susan, you take Reed and get out of here first," Johnny added.
Susan nodded. She draped Reed Richards's arm over her shoulder and walked step by step toward the laboratory exit.
She had barely taken three steps before she felt that something wasn't quite right.
The muffled thumping noises coming from the vortex were growing more urgent, and they seemed to be getting closer.
To Susan, it felt as though some monster was madly charging right at them from inside the portal.
Just as this thought arose in her mind, she heard Johnny and Ben Grimm shouting from behind her:
"Freeze!"
"Stop!"
Their voices were laced with panic. They obviously weren't yelling at Susan—who was supporting Reed Richards toward the exit—but at whatever had just run out of the vortex.
"&% ¥ #@"
Besides Johnny and Ben Grimm's warning shouts, a string of strange, incomprehensible sounds rang out.
Susan turned her head. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw dozens of creatures covered in hair—primitive-looking ape-men with hands hanging past their knees—rushing out of the vortex.
A few of the primitives looked around and spotted the little girl, Lunella, standing next to the Omni-Wave Projector.
Almost without hesitation, those few primitives scrambled over, grabbed Lunella, hoisted her onto their backs, and darted right back into the vortex, vanishing from sight.
They moved so fast that Ben Grimm and Johnny, who were standing nearby, didn't even have time to react.
By the time Susan let out a scream and Ben Grimm and Johnny realized that little Lunella had been snatched away, another type of creature had already burst out of the vortex portal:
Dinosaurs!
Unlike the hairy primitive men, the moment these reptiles charged out of the vortex portal, they opened their maws and roared loudly, locking their ferocious gazes firmly onto Ben Grimm, Johnny, and Susan.
Their olive-green scaled armor and mouths full of razor-sharp teeth made these reptiles—each standing over four meters tall and stretching seven or eight meters long—look incredibly brutal.
One, two, three...
A total of five prehistoric behemoths charged out of the vortex and descended upon the Baxter Building's laboratory.
Ben Grimm had undergone professional training and possessed strong mental fortitude. Even when facing dinosaurs leaping out of the Omni-Wave Projector, he didn't panic or make any rash moves.
But Johnny didn't. Johnny, who not long ago had been trying to discuss the world's population with a teenage girl, now found himself confronted by these massive, primal beasts. His wrist trembling, he fired off a shot.
Bang!
The pistol bullet struck the dinosaur with the sound of colliding metal, only to ricochet right off, failing to even pierce the creature's scales.
Johnny raised the gun with trembling hands, forcing himself to muster up the courage to take another shot.
But this time, before he could pull the trigger, Ben Grimm reached out and pushed the gun down.
"Johnny, don't be impulsive."
As he spoke, Ben Grimm cautiously watched the dinosaur that had been hit by the bullet.
Whether it was because the bullet hadn't caused it an ounce of pain, or for some other reason, the dinosaur showed no sign of an impending attack—save for a huffing snort from its snout.
Ben Grimm secretly breathed a sigh of relief. Only then did he remember that, aside from the primitives who had taken little Lunella away, there were still five or six others who hadn't gone back into the vortex.
When he looked at the remaining primitives, they were staring back at him. One of them spoke:
" ¥ %#@"
The moment the primitive finished speaking, the five dinosaurs opened their jaws and lunged forward, snapping viciously at Ben Grimm, Johnny, Susan, and Reed.
--
Support me & read more advance & fast update chapter on my pa-treon:
pat reon .c-om/windkaze