The swarm of human-drone hybrids was approaching too fast. There was no way anyone could outrun them on foot. Pei Ran quickly spotted a building across the street and dashed toward it.
The others snapped back to their senses and followed.
Thousands of human-drone hybrids were now nearly within reach.
A single drone wasn't all that loud, but with so many together, they sounded like a disturbed hornet's nest.
The ground floor door of the building across the street was wide open and appeared intact. Pei Ran rushed inside, grabbed the transparent door panel, and held it for the others.
In her mind, she asked W, "Is this the same reinforced kind of door they used at the main branch of the Walin Pharmacy?"
It was made of tinted glass—looked very familiar.
W replied, "Yes, exactly that kind."
Both she and W were momentarily dazed.
Just days ago, Pei Ran had torn open the side alley door of that very pharmacy in a show of raw force. It felt like a different lifetime. In only a few days, the entire world had turned upside down. Written language had vanished from existence. Humans had become mere skins, flying in the air with vacant expressions.
The entire façade of this building's ground floor—its walls and doors—was made from the same transparent, glass-like material. Pei Ran knew just how sturdy it was. Even with her mechanical hand, cracking it would take considerable effort.
The fastest among the group had already followed her across the street and into the building. Aisha was helping Jiang, the middle-aged couple was carrying their daughter, Tang Dao and a classmate were assisting the blind Jin Hejun, and even the elderly couple came stumbling in.
The swarm of human-drone hybrids reformed mid-air like programmed UAVs, shifting into a sharp, chisel-like formation, then dove toward the street.
Lagging behind were a young couple with shark clips on their mouths. They were fit and should've been fast, but upon seeing the swarm dive like lunatics, they froze in fear and hesitated just before crossing the street.
It was just a second or two, but that was enough—the drones were much closer now. Thin human skins flapped like wings in the wind. The couple panicked and, instead of running to the building where the others were, ducked into a different one nearby.
Pei Ran no longer had time for them. She slammed the door shut.
She immediately started searching for a way to lock it and asked, "W, how do we lock this kind of door?"
W responded instantly, "This type is usually controlled from the building's main systems. But with the power out, even if we find the control room, it might not work."
The human-drone hybrids had arrived. Pei Ran braced herself against the door.
Seeing this, the others rushed over to help. The door wasn't large, but there were enough people to form a dense crowd pressing against it.
The transparent outer wall clattered violently.
One by one, the drones smashed into the glass like enormous bats. Giant flattened human faces pressed against the door—mere inches from the people inside.
Faces pale, everyone leaned in harder. Some couldn't bear to look and just closed their eyes.
Aisha didn't join them at the door—she was off searching. Moments later, she came back and gestured for Tang Dao and the others to help.
They dragged over the massive reception desk from the lobby. It was absurdly heavy, and several people had to join forces to move it. With a chorus of groans and scraping, they finally got it into place against the entrance.
As soon as it was in position, Tang Dao climbed on top and sat down, using his own weight to fortify the barricade.
Sheng Mingxi followed, and soon others clambered up too. The desk was instantly swarmed like a troop of monkeys claiming their territory.
The human-drone hybrids weren't particularly strong; only the flying mechanisms had any real force. The skin-like bodies were soft and flimsy. With the heavy desk and so many people weighing it down, even repeated collisions couldn't budge the door.
After a few futile crashes, the drones gave up and returned to the sky.
Everyone let out a sigh of relief.
In the crowd, a young man in a purple coat—the same one whose label had caught fire on Night Sea No. 7 and had been doused by the elderly couple—suddenly turned his head sharply.
He was staring at the parrot on Inaya's shoulder.
Nuomi had just been singing, but the swarm hadn't actually been drawn in by its song.
Others also began turning to look at Inaya. She, sensing she might've endangered the group, was deeply apologetic. She pressed her hands together and bowed to everyone around her.
Sheng Mingxi pulled out a roll of duct tape—costing the equivalent of over 800 bowls of beef noodles—and tore off a piece. He handed it to her, and Inaya carefully taped the parrot's beak shut.
Pei Ran finally took a breath and looked through the glass wall across the street.
She thought to herself: two more down. Thirty-five people left. And one bird.
That couple wasn't going to survive.
The human-drone hybrids were hovering high in the air with a perfect view of everything. They had already seen the couple enter the opposite building and were now attacking it as well.
The building on the other side was a looted bakery, its front glass shattered.
Inside, the couple frantically searched for anything to block the entrance—tables, chairs, signage, even the cash register—all piled up at the door.
Once the barricade was stacked high, they ducked behind the counter, trembling.
The swarm split. One group dove down, launching an assault on the bakery.
BANG—
BANG—
BANG—
The sound echoed through the street. Hundreds of drones hurled themselves at the barricade, over and over again, crashing with their flattened bodies and flight units.
It didn't take long. With a crashing clatter, the pile collapsed. It was too light, stacked too high, with a shaky center of gravity. It stood no chance.
A gaping hole opened at the entrance.
The swarm quickly adjusted formation. Their limbs, once splayed wide, folded inward like wings. They elongated into strips and streamed into the bakery one after another, all heading toward the counter.
The couple panicked.
The drones had breached the line. Hiding was pointless now. The two bolted from behind the counter, trying to run straight out.
Pei Ran understood what they were thinking.
From this close, it was easy to observe: the human-drone hybrids, despite their terrifying appearance, didn't have talons or beaks like eagles. Their bodies were thin as sheets, the flight modules round and soft. Besides the chaotic battering, they didn't seem to have any real offensive capabilities.
The couple must've thought: there's nothing to fear. If they just mustered the courage to sprint outside, maybe they could escape.
But they underestimated the swarm.
They weren't facing humans, nor simple drones—but greenlight-infected, deranged abominations that defied logic.
The couple covered their heads and ran blindly through the bakery filled with flying hybrids.
Just then, one drone dove near the counter. Still airborne, it suddenly changed form—its limbs unfurled, stretched wide, and its whole body expanded, glowing faintly green even in the blackout.
A soft green light flickered from the thin, nearly translucent wings—every vein visible. It stretched to twice its size.
Like a monstrous bat or a crepe sheet, it dove onto the male.
The attack was silent, over in a flash.
And then—the boy was gone.
His girlfriend stood frozen, dazed.
The winged hybrid unfurled again.
No one was there.
The young man had completely vanished.
Everyone across the street stared in stunned silence.
The girl snapped back to reality quickly. Something terrible had clearly happened. She turned to flee.
But she didn't get far. The bakery was packed with hybrids. One of them extended its limbs and wrapped her up as well.
Moments later, it too unfurled.
Empty.
Gone.
The crowd inside the building looked at each other, baffled.
The hybrids regrouped, the two that had attacked seamlessly rejoining the formation. Mission complete, they streamed back into the sky, leaving behind an eerie, absolute silence.
Pei Ran suddenly saw it.
When the human-drone hybrids burst out of the bakery and stretched themselves midair to join the ascending formation, she happened to catch a clear side view from across the street.
She noticed something.
The one carrying the boy—its thin layer of human skin had doubled. Instead of a single human sheet, there were now two, aligned one behind the other like wings lined up in sequence, strung along the flying device.
The one that had wrapped around the girl was the same.
Both hybrids had grown an extra layer of human film. They were no longer single-wing drones—now, they had become twin-winged.
At this rate, if each hybrid embraced a few more people, they might evolve into triple-winged, quadruple-winged, even five-winged monsters.
Others had noticed too. Horrified by the grotesque transformation and unable to speak, some simply pointed at the sky with wide, frightened eyes.
The twin-winged drone that had absorbed the male partner rose in tight formation with the others, flying with mechanical precision.
On the front layer of its human film, a pair of black eyeballs swirled wildly—still his, unmistakably.
His denim jacket, stretched and distorted with his reshaped body, was now fused with his skin, the familiar blue pattern barely visible through the grotesque fusion.
The girl flew in perfect sync next to him, on her own hybrid. They maintained a precise distance, their flight posture eerily identical—as if they were born to be aircraft.
Two living humans, now transformed into deranged fusion creatures.
With monsters like that blocking the outside, there was no way out.
Pei Ran silently summoned Greenlight One in her mind.
Greenlight One, well-rested and well-fed, responded instantly this time—appearing in her mental field of vision, trembling with excitement, ready to act at a moment's notice.
Pei Ran began estimating.
The human-drone hybrid swarm held tight formation, attacking in turns. Only a small portion would dive at any given moment. But even so, they hovered over such a vast area in the sky.
If she used the same energy output as when she tore through the alley last time, it wouldn't even come close to covering this wide an area.
Even last night at the Tangu Dam, when she ripped through that onion-like fortress wall, the vertical fissure had reached high—but still not as high as where this swarm floated now.
It was impossible to kill all of them at once.
Greenlight One had eaten a lot of pastries since then—maybe its power had increased. But there was no way to be sure without testing.
To deal with these deranged fusion bodies, the known method was to destroy the mutated hearts inside them. But fusion forms often had bizarre shapes; locating the heart precisely was extremely difficult.
Pei Ran thought aloud to W:
"I have an idea. If we aim at the human film part, we might not hit the heart. But if we go for the drone mechanism..."
W immediately understood.
"They're airborne because of the drone units attached to them. If we destroy the drones, even if we don't kill them, we can bring them down."
No flight, less threat.
That might actually work.
The only problem? There were way too many human-drone hybrids out there. A dense swarm, impossible to count.
W remained calm. "No way to know unless we try."
Pei Ran quickly ordered everyone to climb down from the service counter. They pushed it aside just enough to open a narrow slit in the door—wide enough to fit the metal sphere.
She grabbed the sphere and pushed it through the gap.
Everyone watched as the battered metal ball Pei Ran always carried suddenly opened fire.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Three quick shots.
Each bullet hit its mark. In the sky, three adjacent human-drone hybrids had their drone units blown apart in succession.
Metal debris scattered. The thin human film was shredded by the explosions, fluttering to the ground. The once-rolling black eyes froze.
The swarm reacted instantly, pivoting as one and diving toward the bakery.
Pei Ran yanked back the metal sphere in a flash, and everyone pushed the heavy counter back into place, sealing the door.
A successful test.
Pei Ran said, "I think they're dead?"
"I just checked the specs of that type of drone," W replied. "When aiming, I targeted the energy core. The explosion must've set off the internal power system."
The blast had occurred at the hybrids' abdominal section—right where the mutated hearts were embedded. It had clearly destroyed them.
So, shooting the drone units on the hybrids didn't just stop them from flying—it could also kill them.
But the problem remained: how to shoot.
Letting W's metal sphere roam freely outside, chipping away at the swarm, was too dangerous. If the hybrids could keep merging with humans, who's to say they couldn't merge with a metal ball too? Even if not, a hybrid could simply snatch it up, carry it into the sky, and drop it. Game over.
They could only proceed slowly and cautiously.
And there was also the matter of firepower.
Pei Ran asked, "Can your gun take out that many drones?"
W knew exactly what she was calculating.
"I just did a count," he said. "There are 3,028 drones out there. Based on my current energy reserve, I can't fire that many shots."
Pei Ran asked, "How many can you shoot, then?"
Maybe the rest could be handled by her and Aisha with their abilities.
W replied, "In natural language terms, I'd say... a little over a thousand."
Pei Ran: "That's only a third, Ball Bro."