Deafening explosions kept ringing in his ears, sending shards of concrete tumbling and swirling.

Wails and killing shouts ran together until the inside of the building became a slaughterhouse.

Hidden behind a stretch of shattered concrete on the second floor, in a blind spot of the murlocs’s line of sight, Su Mo gripped hard and pulled the trigger in a tight, measured rhythm, trading fire with the murlocs not far away. The assault rifle in his hands was almost warping in his grip.

Of course, that was not because his strength was too great.

Under continuous fire, even the Wolf Fang assault rifle’s excellent stats could not withstand the scorching heat building in the barrel. It was already on the verge of melting.

After emptying another magazine, Su Mo glanced down while he reloaded.

The right hand holding the gun had long since been scorched into a bloody blur of flesh, covered in charred marks.

His arms, too, were covered in broad scrapes from grazing stray rounds and tumbling rubble, swollen and bright red.

Worst of all, at some point a bullet had hit the outer side of his thigh, and a thin stream of blood was still seeping out.

“As expected, we invited the wolf into the house. Without me here, no one in the territory can keep these murlocs down.”

“They’ve grown arrogant enough to dare strike inside the Academy of Sciences. Damn them.”

That one delay for a reload let the murloc squad hiding behind the concrete quietly creep forward another five meters or so.

Having realized that close combat would only get them mowed down by gunfire, they had grown smarter and stopped rushing in.

Relying on their numbers, they pressed forward step by step under covering fire, trying to drive Su Mo into a dead corner.

So far, the tactic had worked extremely well.

At the cost of fewer than five men, they had already closed the distance to about thirty meters.

If nothing else went wrong, in at most three more magazines the murloc squad would push to within ten meters.

And by then, even if Su Mo had three heads and six arms, he would not escape dozens of rifles firing from every direction.

“Su Youzong, I am Yu Yangyu. We are regular soldiers of the Western Military Region. We bear you no ill will. We only want to know the true whereabouts of the human Divine Su.”

“Give us Divine Su’s true destination, or any related information, right now, and I guarantee we will withdraw at once and not harm a single hair on your head.”

In the lulls between exchanges of fire, a sturdier murloc opposite him would stand up from time to time and call for surrender, breaking the rhythm of the attack.

Before, Su Mo had ignored him and shot the moment the man showed his head, so as not to lose his rhythm.

This time, though, to buy time for the rifle to cool, Su Mo exposed half his body as bait and shouted, “Don’t be naive. You dare use the force the territory granted you this brazenly inside the Academy of Sciences? Even if I die here today, you’ll go down with me. Not one of you will escape. Rest easy.”

“And even if you learn where the human Divine Su is, do you really think you can still make it back to the Western Military Region alive?”

Those two stabbing lines landed, and a faint stir ran through the murloc ranks.

Yu Yangyu, who had spoken earlier, was also speechless. Who the hell would have thought an ordinary human could hold out this long against two hundred murlocs?

Besides, they were not the ones who had struck first. It was Su Mo’s bomb on the third floor that made them think an enemy ambush was waiting, and only then had they panicked and opened fire.

From start to finish their original intent had been to take him back to Murloc City, not to fight him to the death here.

“At this point, saying that is meaningless. Only if you tell us where the human Divine Su is will we have a chance to live. Otherwise...”

“You just want us dead.”

Yu Yangyu drew a deep breath and quickly calmed the turmoil in his heart.

The murlocs who had come into the Academy of Sciences today were basically elites drawn from the Western Military Region’s battlefields.

In pure fighting strength, they would still have a chance of winning even against twice their number of humans.

But this man might well be the strongest human enemy Yu Yangyu had ever met.

They had to cast everything else aside, focus every scrap of their spirit, and bring out a hundred and twenty percent of their combat power.

Only then could they take him alive and trade him for a chance to survive.

Otherwise, not only would they die. The Western Military Region behind them would likely meet with disaster as well.

“You think knowing where the human Divine Su is will let you live. How can you be sure the one who promised you will keep his word?” Seeing that he could still stall for time, Su Mo forced down the joy rising in him and went on.

The Wolf Fang assault rifle was worthy of a personal weapon the territory had spent eight years researching and releasing. Its performance was terrifyingly high.

In only twenty or thirty seconds, most of the heat on the gun body had already faded. It was merely warm to the touch.

The barrel that had been red-hot cooled quickly as well, turning blue-black with a faint red glow.

In a minute or two at most, the Wolf Fang assault rifle would be able to unleash its full power again.

“Heh. Su Youzong, you’re clever, but there’s no need to fish for words like that.”

“I can tell you plainly right now. The reason we murlocs can come here so openly, and can send out more than a thousand men to pin down the Tianpo Army, the Inspectorate, and the Northern Military Region outside, is the privilege Mayor Chen promised us murlocs, and the power our Deep Sea Commander granted us.”

“And you’re surely curious who sent me, aren’t you? I can tell you everything. The one who personally gave me this mission was the Murloc Clan’s eldest prince, Yu Chenghuang.”

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