“Go to hell! You gutter-dwelling, potion-brewing rats!”

  The man roared like a beast and pulled the trigger.

  RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT—!!!

  Savage gunfire instantly tore through the muffling fog. A torrent of flame erupted from the massive barrel. A storm of metal, with a terrifying rate of fire, poured fanatically into a specific direction deep in the haze.

  Where it passed, the fog churned and ripped. Rampant plants blew apart into splinters, spraying sap and shredded leaves everywhere.

  Hitting flagstone or plants was one thing. But if those rounds found a mark… Even a Demon Hunter apprentice whose body had been hardened by the Corpse-Plague Acolyte’s path wouldn’t walk away clean. At that range, under that kind of high-velocity firestorm, a chunk of flesh or a whole limb could get shredded in a blink.

  The bullets swept forward like death’s own scythe, driving toward the enemies in front of the human gun nest. They pinned the other side down so hard they couldn’t lift their heads, forcing them to scramble for cover or tumble blindly through the thick mist.

  “Hahaha! See that?! See what I can do?! Can’t show your faces now, can ya?!”

  The machine gunner laughed, his voice twisted and crazed over the roar.

  On either side of him, several other figures held thick, metal-edged composite shields, covering his flanks tight. They were like loyal guards, using their shields to swat away incoming arrows, thrown weapons, or the occasional stray round slicing in from another angle.

  Other comrades, the sharpshooters, held modified rifles or sniper pieces. Their sharp eyes combed the fog for threats. Whenever a glass vial of lethal poison came arcing through the air toward the gun nest…

  Bang!

  A precise shot would ring out. Those fragile poison bottles, still in flight and not yet in range, would shatter in mid-air. Their weird-colored, sticky contents would burst like deadly fireworks, raining down with a sizzling, teeth-grating corrosive sound and putting out nasty white fumes.

  “Tryin’ to hit me?! In your dreams!”

  The gunner’s bellows mixed with the gunfire, the crack of precise shots, the hiss of eating poison, and the faint curses and screams from inside the fog. It all made a violent, efficient symphony of death.

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  Firearms were terrifying weapons, even the ordinary ones without special mods. They could kill low-rank superhumans dead. Especially first and second-rank apprentices. Their bodies were tougher, but not bulletproof. Sometimes even a third-ranker had to watch out for focused fire or a big round in the wrong spot.

  That’s why, in the resource-starved ruins, bullets were solid currency.

  And Echo Quarry, famous for its shooting training and hard-nosed combat style, didn’t just know how to use guns. As superhumans, they were good at mixing a gun’s raw power with the physical push their Corpse-Plague Acolyte path gave them.

  Like right now—using a body way past human limits to handle the crazy recoil of a sustained machine gun burst, something a normal person could never do. Holding down a spot like a human gun nest. That was the Acolyte path turned into something brutally practical.

  The only downside…

  Bullets were too precious.

  The stuff to make them—the metals, the powder, the primers—plus the workshops and the know-how to keep it all running, were all super scarce in the ruins now.

  So this flashy “human gun nest” play could only get pulled out for critical, resource-deciding fights. Not for everyday work.

  But even though the gun nest’s suppressing fire was fierce and worked, even pinning Ascension Road down for a minute…

  Ascension Road hadn’t held its ground in the ruins and rivaled Echo Quarry for years on a bluff. They had real strength.

  Deep in the fog, a figure hiding behind a half-fallen stone wall had a throat that showed a sickly, wrong color—a purplish-blue. You could see it through the skin, like the veins underneath carried poison, not blood.

  The man gritted his teeth. A flash of madness and resolve shot through his eyes.

  He pulled a thin glass vial from his robe. It was filled with a thick, murky ink-green liquid, its surface floating with fuzzy, flaky bits. Just looking at it made you feel queasy and uneasy.

  He popped the stopper and, without a second thought, tipped his head back and chugged the whole thing.

  Gulp…

  The swallowing sound was creepily clear in a lull between gun bursts.

  Then his body locked up hard. His face went ashen. His lips purpled instantly. His whole frame started to shake and twitch out of control, like he was fighting some unspeakable pain. A hhegh-hhegh sound, like a busted bellows, came from his throat.

  It lasted three or four seconds.

  Then—

  He bent forward sharp and opened his mouth.

  GAAACK—!

  A dense, concentrated cloud of dark green mist, stinking of cloying sweetness mixed with sour rot, got forced up from his guts and out his throat!

  But the second it hit the open air, the mist seemed to… wake up.

  It churned, coiled, and changed shape.

  In a couple of breaths, it had formed a blurred, wobbly outline of a human face. Its features sort of looked like the user’s own, but way more twisted, more venomous, more inhuman.

  Where the mist-face’s mouth should be, a hole opened and let out a “Keke-keh…” a weird, shrill laugh dripping with pure malice.

  The mist-face pivoted in the air, unnaturally nimble.

  Its hollow, fog-made “eyes” locked onto a second-rank apprentice in the Quarry group who was busy reloading his magazine.

  “Keke-keh…”

  It let out another strange chuckle.

  Then it shot forward—so fast it left only a dark-green streak in the air—like a poison snake zeroing in on its meal.