Combining the residual thermal radiation traces with the distress signal Cecilia had received, the three-person squad advanced at high speed.
Along the way, Ethereals occasionally tried to block their path, but Ignis smashed through them head-on without slowing down. After the thunder hammer rang out once, those enemies shattered into fragments scattered across the air, returning to the Hollow.
"The signal is getting closer."
Cecilia's voice did not change at all despite being carried at high speed. It remained as calm as ever. Clearly, Cerakos carrying her like this was not a first-time experience.
"Good. That means we're getting closer to the target as well. Are you sure it's a lost Bangboo?" The Salamander followed the thermal radiation trail, but since it was several days old, it was difficult to judge the exact distance.
He made a rough estimate. The run had lasted about five minutes before they turned into another construction site. Unlike the one they entered earlier; this site did not even have its main structure completed or capped. The formwork above was only half-installed. Perhaps due to corrosion, many aluminum panels had fallen off—some were even embedded upright in the ground.
Although these aluminum panels looked scattered in pieces, taken as a whole they resembled a deliberately planned path.
The thermal radiation traces they were tracking advanced precisely along this intentionally or unintentionally constructed passageway, which further convinced the Salamander that these objects were some kind of markers.
Following the traces to the corner of an unfinished building, they found themselves only two or three meters away from the construction site fence. Worse still, the corner was stacked with cement bags reaching the height of an entire floor. A forklift used for transport was jammed in the middle of the cement bags. It looked as if, when the Hollow disaster occurred, the driver panicked, floored the accelerator, and crashed straight into the pile.
"The thermal radiation trail ends here?" Ignis looked at the forklift in front of him. "Is there a Hollow rift nearby?"
"I'll check…" Cecilia jumped down from Cerakos's back and fiddled with her phone. "Yes. According to the calculated data, there should be a rift in this area. And it's active—likely appearing randomly around here."
"Then how are we supposed to track it? Can you pinpoint the rift's exact location?" Cerakos found this kind of situation especially troublesome. Tracking like this was completely outside his expertise.
"I'm calculating it now. There's detectable active ether nearby. It shouldn't be hard to determine the position." The girl input various parameters into the screen and waited for the results.
"Can the distress signal still be tracked?" Ignis asked immediately.
"Yes, and it's very close." As Cecilia spoke, her gaze shifted to the forklift. "Behind the wall."
Dragging away a forklift was not difficult in itself—but the construction materials stacked on top of it were another matter. Ignis roughly evaluated the load-bearing structure of the pile and realized that once the forklift was moved, the entire stack would collapse.
Although neither he nor Cerakos would be injured by something like this, Cecilia was another story.
The Salamander was just about to tell her to move farther away so he could get to work when the young lady had already crouched down in front of the forklift. "There's a gap here. I can barely squeeze through."
Cerakos immediately wrapped an arm around her waist and tucked her under his arm. "Don't mess around. This thing is obviously unstable. If anything happened to you, how would I face your grandfather—or my friend?"
"I didn't say I was really going to crawl through!" Cecilia protested, raising her small fists. "And that rift should be on the other side anyway. Just put me down already."
Interesting. There was actually a gap in this corner big enough for someone to squeeze through? Ignis looked at the opening. It was less than half a meter in diameter. To be honest, it would indeed be difficult for an adult man to crawl through.
Wait—an opening of this size…
"Ignis, brother." Cerakos's voice interrupted his thoughts. "I'll take her farther away. Can you dismantle this?"
"No problem." The Salamander nodded.
Watching the Lamenter move away, Ignis slotted the thunder hammer back at his waist. Dragging the forklift out would cause the stacked materials to collapse, but that had nothing to do with him. He had been out of civil engineering for many years now—and the world had already changed twice over. Surely no one was going to come looking for him to throw him back in jail.
Besides, anyone stacking construction materials here instead of leveling out a proper area for storage was probably not a legitimate construction company anyway.
He reached out, grabbed the main structure of the forklift, and began pulling it outward. For ordinary people, moving a forklift pinned under heavy weight would be extremely difficult. But for a Space Marine equipped with muscle-fiber coils and electromagnetic muscle bundles, this kind of labor was child's play.
He raised his shield arm over his head to avoid being struck by falling debris. While these things probably wouldn't hurt him, extra caution was never wrong. Who knew if there might be some strange flammable or explosive material mixed in?
As his arms exerted force, the forklift began to tremble slightly before being dragged outward by tremendous strength. The moment the tires left drag marks on the ground, the bags above started to tip, collapsing toward Ignis.
Listening to the metallic impacts ringing against his shield and seeing scaffolding clamps and chunks of cement falling through the rising dust around him, he felt reassured that raising the shield to protect his head had been the right call. Good grief—this pile was full of genuine heavy-duty materials. If he had taken a solid hit, it wouldn't have killed him, but a concussion would have been unavoidable.
"Are you okay? Are you hurt?" Cecilia's shout rang out.
The young lady saw cement fragments flying and metal discs bouncing around. Even though she knew their armor was incredibly sturdy, the crashing debris and thick dust still made her worry.
"I'm fine," Ignis replied, dragging the forklift—now badly deformed by falling weight—completely out.
"We'll have to wait for the dust to settle before it's safe to go over." The Salamander patted off the thick layer of cement dust covering him. Fortunately, his power armor had air filtration. Otherwise, his nose would be filled with that damn cement smell by now.
It was absolutely his least favorite smell.
"You're definitely going to need to clean your power armor properly when you get back." Cerakos shook his head as he looked at Ignis, who was completely gray with dust, with metal shavings and cement debris lodged in the armor's seams.
"Definitely. I hate construction sites." The Salamander sighed and slapped his shoulders, shaking off large amounts of debris.
Ignis still remembered the first time he went to a construction site, dressed neatly and stylishly. His master had shaken his head and found him a camouflage uniform to wear over his clothes. Back then, young and hot-blooded, Ignis was full of resentment, thinking his master just couldn't stand seeing him dressed properly.
Then he went to the site and came back. His white shirt was stained with multiple colors. He scrubbed it for ages without removing a single stain. In the end, all the colors blended together and it was completely uncleanable. His brand-name sneakers were also utterly ruined, caked in mud beyond saving. Worst of all, they were mesh shoes—the mud seeped inside and could never be washed out.
From that day on, Ignis only wore cheap camouflage uniforms and labor shoes at construction sites. If they got dirty and couldn't be cleaned, he would just throw them away. Good clothes were only worn during inspections, purely for appearances.
Once the dust finally dispersed and visibility returned, Ignis lowered his shield. Behind the opening he had created was the collapsed main structure of another building.
No wonder a wall had been sealed here. There had been an accident behind it.
"The distress signal is nearby." Cecilia looked at her phone screen. "It should be very close."
But with construction debris scattered everywhere, where were they supposed to find a Bangboo? Cerakos felt a headache coming on. It really wasn't easy to locate something like that.
Ignis, however, had his own method. A Bangboo that could continuously emit a distress signal had to still be active. As long as it was active, it would generate heat. He immediately switched to Fire-Sight. In the cold, dark color palette, he quickly spotted the jarringly warm hue.
The poor little thing was half-buried beneath a slab of collapsed wall debris, with only its two big eyes exposed. Its bodily functions seemed to have stopped, its small hands lying limp on the ground.
"Eh… ne…" Its voice module seemed to be malfunctioning, the sound extremely faint.
"It's here!" Ignis immediately reached out to lift the debris. Cerakos rushed over to help, while Cecilia lay flat on the ground, ready to pull the Bangboo out the moment it was free.
"Is it the one we're looking for?"
The two Space Marines exerted force together, lifting the slab of wall debris.
"Not sure. Get it out first!" Seeing the gap open, Cecilia quickly reached in and grabbed the Bangboo by its long ears.
She had expected it to be difficult. Even an old-model Bangboo weighed over ten kilograms. If it was caught on something, pulling it out would be hard for a small girl like her.
But the process was unexpectedly smooth. The Bangboo felt very light—only a couple of kilograms at most.
Before she had time to think further, it was pulled free.
However, this thing only had a head. Or rather, it consisted of just the Bangboo's two big eyes and a pair of ears. The two hands were not connected—they had been severed.
The decapitated appearance terrified Cecilia into screaming, especially as the half-head continued emitting weak distress sounds.
She flung the Bangboo head from her hands. It hit the ground with a clatter, and a recorder fell out from inside. The distress call was coming from that device.
"What the hell is this? Just a head?" Ignis was completely confused.
"Are you okay?!" Cerakos was more concerned about Cecilia and quickly helped her up.
"I'm just startled. Is there a lower half under there?" the young lady urged the Salamander to check for the rest.
But beneath the rubble there was nothing—only a vertical shaft, not very deep. On the side of the shaft was a tunnel opening, pitch-black, with nothing visible inside.
"No. Just this half." Ignis replied. "Wait—something's there!"
The Salamander reached out and grabbed a shadow that was cautiously probing out from the dark opening, yanking it into the light.
"Eh-ne!" It made a sound only a Bangboo would make.
Ignis stared at the thing in his hand, stunned. This person had half a Bangboo head stuck on top of his own, wearing a flattering smile, but was hiding a high-voltage stun device in his hand, quietly trying to jab it into the Salamander's grip.
The Salamander flicked his arm and threw him away. The man cried out in pain as he hit the ground.
That was already holding back. If the Salamander had used real force, the man would have ended up with shattered bones. Even so, the grotesque appearance made Cecilia scream again as Cerakos stepped forward and planted a boot on the man's back.
"Who are you?"
A power sword was placed against his neck.
"Mercy, hero!" The man immediately threw away the device in his hand.
"Talk. What are you doing? Did you make that Bangboo distress signal? Have you seen a Bangboo with a damaged right hand?" Cecilia quickly pulled up a photo on her phone. "Have you seen this Bangboo?"
The barrage of questions left the man—already dazed from the fall—unable to react. But the weapons in the hands of those two hulking men were unmistakably real.
"Me? I'm Bingbong from the Bangboo Boo-Nappers…"
That string of "bangs" left the two Space Marines speechless. Was this guy insane? Wearing a Bangboo carcass on his head and thinking he was one? A lunatic?
"You'd better speak properly, or I'll crack open your skull and extract your memories directly from your brain." Cerakos threatened immediately, then turned to Ignis. "You don't mind, do you?"
"I mind." The Salamander answered honestly. He still couldn't accept such physically invasive bone-cracking methods, effective though they were.
"Alright then…" The Son of Sanguinius wavered, preparing to use some other means to make the man under his boot speak properly.
"But I can turn around and not watch."
With that, The Salamander turned his back to them.
"Go ahead."
"Don't do it!" The man panicked. He didn't understand what "extracting memories from the brain" meant, but it definitely didn't sound good.
"I'll talk! I'm Bing—"
Cerakos finally snapped. Grabbing the man by the collar, he hoisted him up, the edge of the power sword pressing directly against his neck.
"Say 'bang' one more time. Speak like a human."
"I'm Bingbong—don't kill me! I'm a Boo-Napper—ek! Of Bangboo—ee!"
Hearing the exchange finally move in the direction of coherent speech, Ignis turned back around. Several new cuts had appeared on the man's neck. They weren't deep, but the bleeding was still alarming.
"I think he's trying to say they're a gang that kidnaps Bangboo…" Cecilia quietly stepped back a couple of paces as she looked at the man who had been frightened into wetting himself.
"Then talk. What exactly do you do?" Ignis drew his combat knife from his waist and handed it to Cerakos. "Put the sword away. Using that to kill him would dirty the blade. Use this instead."
The Boo-Napper's heart, which had just barely settled, immediately leapt back into his throat.
===BREAK===
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