Li Qingyu waited on the first floor for about three minutes. Making sure the monster really was stuck, he began climbing, shotgun at the ready.
He moved carefully, one step at a time. Reaching the fifth floor, he cautiously peeked around the stairwell corner.
The Chempig's head and upper torso had gone into the gap. Now it couldn't push forward or back out. A miserable situation.
Li Qingyu checked the shotgun, ran up, and pressed the barrels into the monster's unarmored left knee pit. Blast!
With a thunderous crack, flesh on the Chempig's leg exploded into shreds. The beast let out a soul-rending shriek and began thrashing wildly.
Li Qingyu hurriedly fired the second shell into the same spot, completely shattering the knee. White bone jutted out.
The Chempig thrashed even harder, desperately trying to yank its head free. The metal around it creaked and groaned under the strain.
Li Qingyu snapped the breech open, reloaded, and fired the third and fourth shells into the same left knee.
35 mm buckshot had monstrous stopping power—especially point-blank. Those four shots effectively amputated the Chempig's left lower leg.
"A-a-a-a-a!!"
The savage pain forced the monster to roar. It jerked with such force that, with a horrific screech of metal, it finally tore its head out of the trap!
Li Qingyu retreated fast, reloading on the move.
Even missing a leg, the Chempig still crawled after him—and quite quickly, at the pace of a fast-walking man.
Backing up, Li Qingyu kept firing, but the armor on the brute was too thick. Buckshot without armor-piercing properties didn't deal serious damage.
After burning through more than a dozen double-shots and seeing how useless it was, Li Qingyu stopped firing. He decided to simply stall, hoping the one-legged monster would bleed out.
He led the Chempig in circles, but after a couple of loops he noticed almost no blood was flowing from the stump. If there was bleeding, it was very slight.
Looks like some coagulants were circulating in the beast's system, preventing it from dying of blood loss.
Scratching the back of his head, Li Qingyu pulled out three detonators, tied them into a bundle with an empty ammo pouch, judged the fuse length and the crawling brute's speed. He lit it, tossed it onto the floor, and ran.
The Chempig roared, deciding the prey was escaping, and doubled its effort, writhing its fat body forward. It completely ignored the bundle of dynamite in its path and crawled right onto it.
That was when the detonators went off.
The blast thundered. The monster's supporting arms were torn off; its belly and chest were ripped open. Guts and organs spilled out in a bloody mass.
Coughing in the dust kicked up by the explosion, Li Qingyu approached. The Chempig was dead beyond dead.
"Map cleared!"
Declaring it loudly, he hummed a cheerful tune and started collecting trophies.
First—the Chempig. It had no clothes and no pockets, but Li Qingyu needed proof for the black trader.
This was a Chempig, a huge bulk! You couldn't turn it in like an ordinary gang member for 200 tokens. Killing something like this had to be worth at least 2000!
After examining the carcass, he decided to cut off the helmet together with the metal strip running along the spine.
It was a single unified assembly: the helmet and the "spine," studded with many needles that injected "Rage Serum" directly into the nervous system. A horrific piece of Warhammer 40,000 grimdark tech.
Studying the trophy, Li Qingyu noticed seven small protrusions that looked like hatch covers.
He pressed them, and seven cylindrical glass ampoules the size of a thumb popped out.
Two were empty, but five sloshed with an unknown red liquid.
Li Qingyu picked up the ampoules and, checking the internal database, exclaimed happily: jackpot!
Name: Rage Drug.
Value: 800 tokens.
Description: A drug that grants immunity to pain and sustains a state of intense rage. Also contains blood-clotting components.
Note: You can use Rage Drug in the Hideout Medbay to create advanced medicines or injectors.
Rage Drug was an improved version of the Toxic Needle. It could be used to craft high-level drugs. Which ones exactly would become clear after the medical station was built.
Li Qingyu packed the "Spine of Wrath" and the ampoules, then went down to the first floor and cut all the tattoos off the Chempse corpses.
After finishing that, he began a total sweep of the location. There had once been chemical production here, and valuable things might have been left behind.
On the first floor, he searched every box and found a set of test tubes and flasks worth 200 tokens. More importantly, it was a component for upgrading the Medbay. Taking it!
On the second floor, a real treasure awaited him: a "Chemical Purification Unit." About the size of half a suitcase, worth 25,000 tokens! His most expensive find yet.
And it was also a module for upgrading the Medbay, allowing substances to be purified for making medicines.
He hit the jackpot! Overjoyed, Li Qingyu did a "Thomas spin" on the spot, offered praise to the Emperor, and carefully stowed the find in his rucksack.
The third floor had nothing but trash.
On the fourth floor, he found three unused biofilters in one of the boxes. They were good for purifying water of microbes and viruses—perfect for upgrading the Hideout water purifier.
On the fifth floor, he found an impact drill. Heavy, powerful; when connected to power, it could punch through most hive construction materials. Value: 3200 tokens, almost the price of a PDF automatic rifle.
With the loot gathered, Li Qingyu prepared to leave. He opened the map: the extraction point was on the fifth floor, by a ventilation pipe.
But he got curious about where the breach in the wall that the Chempig had made led, so he lingered.
Leaving the rucksack and the drill on the fifth floor, he ran down to the first and found the punched-through hole.
The moment he approached the breach, a green timer floated above his vision.
Transition to map: Chem Gang Base. 10, 9, 8...
Li Qingyu whistled silently to himself. So from here you could go straight into the enemy's den. He quickly backed away, and the timer vanished.
Remembering this route, he returned to the fifth floor, grabbed his things, and stood by the ventilation. The countdown finished. A brilliant operation! Extracted loot worth 32,500 tokens.