Chapter 139 Tactical Retreat

Actually, the moment he threw the data terminal, Hao Ren regretted it a little: What if that woman really took it and ran? He might not be able to get a new one from Raven 12345 so easily...

But as it turned out, not everyone was as unhinged as the bunch of jokers around Hao Ren. When the scarred woman saw a hexagonal metal plate flashing blue light flying towards her, her first reaction was that it was a hidden weapon. Seeing the eerie blue glow, she didn't dare block it casually, fearing it might explode. So, she used a spatial blink to teleport twenty meters away. As soon as she reappeared, she raised the heavy crossbow in her hand, and with a "thump," the bolt flew!

But this time, Hao Ren was prepared, and his body was already in fighting mode. The instant the silver crossbow bolt flew towards him, he decisively rolled to the side... and was shot in the knee.

The scarred woman found this scene hard to understand. The strange man in front of her had decent fighting postures, his dodging and weaving looked quite convincing, but every time he dodged, he still got hit... As a professional, she didn't quite understand what Hao Ren was doing. Hao Ren himself was also quite depressed. The human body's reaction speed couldn't keep up with a heavy crossbow at twenty meters. As he dodged, he heard several crisp "ding ding" sounds from behind, not knowing which demon hunter was taking potshots at him.

After dodging a few times, he finally realized one thing: those bullet-dodging experts in the movies were all liars. This was an era of tanking with shields. Since he had a rigid shield, he might as well be a tank and fight the enemy head-on.

With that thought, he stopped dodging and pushed his speed to the limit, pouncing towards the nearest demon hunter!

The demon hunters' spatial blink couldn't be used continuously. There was a two- or three-second buffer between blinks. Hao Ren had accidentally discovered this during the previous battle. This mere two or three seconds of cooldown was almost shameless, but it was the only chance to catch them. Hao Ren firmly believed that as long as he was fast enough, he could knock down a few unlucky guys who were too slow to react—but only if the rigid shield could hold out until then.

"Ding ding ding," the crisp sound of metal impacts rang out continuously. Each impact meant a crossbow bolt shattered on his body, and it also meant another demon hunter lost valuable enchanted ammunition. Hao Ren unintentionally discovered that he actually had a way to counter those infinite ammo hand crossbows: let the enemy fire at him!

Thinking of this, he felt a burst of encouragement. He simply tore off his tattered coat and threw it away, standing in the center of the open space and taunting, "Grandchildren! Fire at me!"

The demon hunters exchanged glances. They had long noticed that this man with the strange shield was an unkillable freak. Hitting him was just a waste of ammunition. Looking at the few remaining silver crossbow bolts in their hands, the demon hunters tacitly excluded Hao Ren from their list of targets and began to focus on dealing with the others.

"What the heck!" Hao Ren realized that the situation had changed in an instant. He could jump around the field, but no one wanted to bother him. He immediately felt a sense of frustration at being ignored. So, he focused on the scarred woman who had attacked him earlier and charged up, "Talking to you! Come and hit me, come and hit me!"

The scarred woman jumped aside with a look of astonishment, dodging Hao Ren's sneak attack. She held up the heavy crossbow, unsure whether to shoot or not. After hesitating for a long time, she could only ask the people next to her for help, "Roan! You deal with this lunatic!"

"Why don't you go! I'm almost out of bolts!"

"J, you go!"

"Get out of here, do you think your holy silver is free?"

Taking advantage of the fact that no one was paying attention (or rather, these demon hunters really didn't want to stare at him), Hao Ren suddenly pounced on a tall man closest to him, "Then I'm going to hit you!"

With a bang, he finally took down the first one.

The battle became even more chaotic.

Vivian was still entangled with the demon hunter leader. Relying on her ability to transform into bats at any time, she was temporarily not afraid of the opponent's attacks. But the demon hunter leader didn't only have crossbow bolts at his disposal. He had all kinds of strange magic items, and his talismans and spells were exceptionally tricky. Vivian couldn't do anything to him for the time being. In addition, she had consumed a lot of stamina fighting the two werewolves earlier, so her situation was not optimistic. The situation of the two Aiben family werewolves was even worse: probably because their mighty appearance attracted too much aggro, the two werewolves were the focus of the surrounding demon hunters. Several black figures in long coats constantly flashed around them. Each time a figure flashed, several crossbow bolts would attack. Kasa Aiben already had several wounds flashing with eerie silver light on his body. These silver lights slowly spread across his body like living things, weakening the werewolf's combat power every minute and every second. Yuun Aiben was temporarily unscathed due to his slightly superior speed, but his stamina would probably be exhausted before Kasa's.

But the demon hunters were not without losses either. After Hao Ren annoyed... I mean, defeated the first demon hunter through tactics (let's call it tactics), Vivian also took advantage of the enemy's attention being on the two werewolves to send out a small group of bats to launch a sneak attack. A demon hunter was attacked by a swarm of venomous vampire bats and instantly fell to the ground, covered in black blood and his life unknown. Kasa Aiben used a tactic of trading injuries for injuries to forcibly knock down an enemy, but the demon hunter's close combat ability was extraordinarily strong. Before falling, his holy silver dagger pierced Kasa Aiben's shoulder, and the strange power on the dagger turned the latter's entire arm into a solid state like a silver block. Kasa was equivalent to losing his combat power.

"Bastard!" A roar from Yuun Aiben suddenly came from the side. After consuming a lot of stamina, he finally made a mistake once. A large crossbow bolt flashing with silver light penetrated his lower abdomen, directly nailing his entire body to the outer wall of a factory building!

A burst of electricity erupted from the crossbow bolt. Before Yuun could resist, he lost consciousness. Seeing this scene, Kasa was furious, but he had no way to support him. He could only watch helplessly as the demon hunter who launched the attack took out a small light yellow vial to collect Yuun's blood—this was the demon hunters' habit. They would collect samples of the enemy's body, just like harvesting materials after hunting. The blood flowing from a werewolf within a minute of being stunned had strong power and was the raw material for many of the demon hunters' strange potions.

The two werewolves had lost their combat power, the vampire was entangled by her leader, and that man with the strange shield was being dealt with by others. The demon hunter who went to collect "raw materials" obviously thought that the battle was over and began to collect the spoils in advance.

But everyone ignored a variable, that is, Lily, who had been dizzy from the beginning and seemed only capable of acting cute: after running around with her head in her hands, this idiot finally reacted. She found that no one was attacking her for the time being, so she seized the time to enter combat mode and summoned her pair of ice-fire claws, the principle of which was unknown. Only Hao Ren noticed this scene.

"Get out of here!" Lily waved her two pairs of claw blades and rushed to save people. The demon hunter who was about to take blood only felt two gusts of air, like an ice and fire double heaven, rapidly approaching from behind. Before he could react, he was fanned out a dozen meters away by Lily's claw, and he was already frozen into a large ice lump when he landed.

Hopefully, he can survive after thawing—I heard that demon hunters have strong vitality.

Lily conveniently picked Yuun off the wall and threw him to Kasa, but she forgot to put away her claw blades when picking him up. Kasa looked at his companion, half of his body charred and half of his body ice-cold, with a large hole in his stomach and barely hanging on to half his life. He could only look at Lily with a strange expression, "Thanks..."

The words were as insincere as they could be.

With a "fluttering" sound of wings, Vivian landed behind everyone. There were several burn marks on her body from the talismans, but she didn't seem to be badly hurt.

The demon hunter leader on the roof was still standing in place. His left arm hung limply by his side, and the purplish-blue blood vessels on his face were bulging, but he seemed to ignore these injuries. The demon hunter leader was still holding up his hand crossbow and pointing it at Vivian, while biting a small metal vial in his mouth, which should be used to counteract blood toxins.

The two sides fought evenly, and the demon hunters' losses seemed to be slightly greater, but the situation could not be dragged on any longer: the demon hunters already had the upper hand in number. Even if someone fell, they still outnumbered Hao Ren's side. The two Aiben werewolves on Hao Ren's side had completely lost their combat power, and only Vivian and Lily were left to fight, and Lily was still a half-baked rookie who didn't know if she would screw up. As for Hao Ren himself, he was a qualified MT—but unfortunately, the demon hunters had learned their lesson and didn't take the taunt.

Hao Ren himself could see the situation clearly, and the demon hunters on the opposite side could see it even more clearly. They silently adjusted the encirclement slightly and replaced all of their weapons with large mechanical crossbows, ready to deliver the final blow. Vivian muttered in a low voice, "Find a chance to retreat."

"We'll have to let these guys give us a chance first," Kasa Aiben forcefully pulled out the holy silver dagger from his shoulder, seizing the time to recover for a second, "I should have brought a few pounds of smoke bombs... I didn't think we'd need to run away at the time."

"Smoke bombs?" Lily's ears perked up immediately, "Oh, right, I have a way!"