"Coming," Mo Xuan said, leaping towards the pile driver. He grabbed the chassis with both hands and pulled himself up, landing steadily beside Koleda.
"You're pretty skilled. And you say you don't know martial arts?" Koleda asked, looking at Mo Xuan with suspicion. Seeing his agility, she felt he could take on ten Ethereals by himself.
"I was born with great strength," Mo Xuan said naturally.
"What a coincidence, I was born with great strength too. We should mix concrete together sometime," Ben came over to Mo Xuan, grabbing his arm and shaking it. Mo Xuan felt at a loss for words. It seemed that in New Eridu, being born with great strength really did destine you for a life of mixing concrete. There were just too many powerful and strange individuals around.
"Next... next time for sure."
Amidst the banter between Mo Xuan and Ben, the construction machines sped towards the memorial plaza. They encountered a few waves of Ethereals along the way, but they were no match for them. That is, until they ran into a classic Dullahan.
A Notorious-class Dullahan and its minions blocked their path. The way it pointed its blade at the construction machine in front of them showed it was the type that would fight to the death. Koleda couldn't bear to see her precious machines get damaged, so she jumped off the pile driver, ready for a fair fight with the Dullahan.
"Aaargh!"
Before Koleda could even make a move, she heard a beastly roar that made her scalp tingle. She had a bad feeling. The Dullahan wasn't the only enemy. She was about to face a much stronger Ethereal.
Under Koleda's tense gaze, a giant red head crashed through a three-story building on the side of the road. A red Tyrannosaurus, over ten meters tall, emerged with a swagger that denied all kinship and approached the Dullahan. Before the Dullahan could react, the T-Rex lifted its massive hind leg, which was as thick as a pillar, and stomped down.
The Dullahan was immediately pinned under the X-Rex's foot. Then, it lowered its head, opened its massive jaws, and tore into the Dullahan. The Dullahan's upper and lower body were separated. The upper half was chewed and swallowed by the X-Rex, while the lower half still twitched.
The X-Rex took another bite, and the Dullahan's lower half also entered its mouth. It chewed on it like a snack, its fierce gaze now fixed on the three iron giants before it.
"Hmph." The X-Rex snorted a puff of black debris from its nostrils and then turned and left, leaving the four members of the Belobog Heavy Industries team stunned and bewildered.
"Was that... a new type of Ethereal?" Koleda stared, dumbfounded, at the retreating X-Rex. For a moment, her heart had stopped. She could fight Ethereals, but when faced with a prehistoric creature like that, she had no idea where to even begin.
"No, compared to an Ethereal, it's more like a living creature. Its colors are rich, and it doesn't have a core," Grace said, shaking her head. She desperately wanted to take the X-Rex apart and study it, but they had a job to do. Her eyes were filled with regret.
"Did it just look down on us? It seemed to think the iron giants didn't taste good," Ben said, scratching his head. As a large creature himself, he felt he could understand what the T-Rex was thinking.
"Where there's smoke, there's fire. Let's proceed with caution," Koleda couldn't smile anymore. Encountering a T-Rex in a Hollow was a sign that their trip would not be peaceful.
"What do you think, brother?" Anton asked Mo Xuan.
"I'm wondering if eating Ethereals will give it a stomach ache," Mo Xuan said, stroking his chin. He had let the X-Rex out for a walk, not for an all-you-can-eat buffet. But besides Ethereals, there wasn't much else to eat in the Hollow. He'd just have to trust the T-Rex's digestive system.
"So that's what you were thinking. That's a good question," Anton nodded and joined Mo Xuan in pondering the issue. They had heard of Ethereals eating people, but they had never heard of anything eating Ethereals. It was a real eye-opener.
As the three construction machines started up again, the group traveled a little further. They didn't see the T-Rex again, but Koleda and her team saw a UFO flying in the sky. The strange disk with two smaller disks was tossing several Ethereals around in mid-air. Each time an Ethereal was thrown, the disk would emit a blue light and pull it back to be thrown again.
"Where are we? Is this even a Hollow anymore?!" Koleda couldn't help but exclaim. If she wasn't in constant communication with Ling, she would have suspected she had been transported to another world. A T-Rex and a UFO, it was like a dream.
"Chairman, we're here," Anton said, pointing to the memorial plaza not far away. Koleda's attention shifted from wondering if she was in another world to the plaza itself.
As they approached the plaza, they could all see a white, excavator-like construction machine standing in the center. It was the prototype that Koleda and Grace had been so eager to find.
"We found it! But what's that thing next to it?" Koleda shouted excitedly, but her excitement quickly turned to confusion. She saw that the prototype's bucket was pressed against a spike-like component, like an arm. Next to this component was a large, blue spire, about twenty to thirty meters tall.
"It looks like an unfinished monument. It was supposed to be a spire," Ben said. He knew the most about the memorial plaza because he was already an old employee of Belobog Heavy Industries when they took on the project.
"Why is the prototype holding that strange pose? That can't be some kind of seal, can it?" Koleda's confusion deepened. It was clear that the prototype had some kind of mission here, but with so little information, they had no idea where to start.
"Let's be careful and go take a look," Grace suggested.
Koleda nodded, and the group went to check the prototype's condition. The cockpit was empty, with only a few old documents inside. The prototype had definitely been driven here by someone, but the driver was nowhere to be found.
They also checked the spire component that the prototype was holding. There was nothing inside. The place where it was being held was also a blank area, with nothing hidden.
"Strange, there's nothing here. Let's tow it away," Koleda said after looking again and again and finding nothing that could be called a seal. This made her think that the so-called seal might be something inside the prototype itself. So, she decided to take it back to Belobog Heavy Industries for further inspection. The Hollow was already a dangerous place, and now with a T-Rex and an alien, who would dare to stay any longer?
Two construction machines locked onto the prototype's two legs with thick, sturdy ropes. With their engines at full power, they easily dragged it away. The spire component that the prototype had been holding was picked up by a grappling machine, examined for a while, and then placed on the ground.
....
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