Chapter 5: A Mere Hundred Mecha—Worthy of Stopping Me?
In that one second when Ryan was distracted.
Jack, who had been lifted into the air by Ryan's single hand choking his neck, felt the terrifying force on his throat loosen just a bit.
Like a slippery venomous snake, he used every ounce of strength to twist violently, forcing himself free from Ryan's grip.
Jack crashed heavily onto the floor covered in metal debris.
Ignoring the sharp pain throughout his body, he scrambled on all fours toward a hidden private elevator deep in the secret passage.
The elevator doors instantly opened, and Jack dove inside, frantically hammering the close button.
Watching the elevator doors about to shut, Jack's eyes flashed with extreme hatred and madness.
Through the narrowing gap, he stared fixedly at Ryan's back, cold sweat dripping from his chin as he silently mouthed: "You're dead."
"Ding." The elevator doors closed completely and began racing upward at high speed.
Ryan's peripheral vision caught Jack's escape, but he didn't even consider turning to chase him.
In his eyes, that piece of trash's life wasn't worth a single hair on his daughter's head.
"Ella's organs are failing rapidly. She needs the best medical equipment immediately!" Ryan made an instant decision.
At that moment, the alarm system in the upper level of the underground lab went completely haywire. The piercing buzzing grew sharper and sharper, and all the lights turned blood red—the color of maximum crisis.
The entire space trembled slightly. The red glow cast on Ryan's cold mask and broken sword created an incredibly oppressive atmosphere.
"Sophia, stay close to me!" Ryan pulled Sophia to his side. With one arm, he held Ella tightly—she had fallen into a deep coma—while his other hand gripped the black broken sword. He strode toward the facility's main exit passage.
Passing through corridors filled with corpses and blood, the three finally reached the wide exit passage.
Just as Ryan was about to step out of the underground facility, something suddenly changed!
With a violent sound of grinding metal, the flat metal floor of the exit passage suddenly split open on both sides, revealing a massive elevator platform that seemed bottomless.
Heavy metallic collision sounds echoed one after another.
A hundred tall, imposing figures slowly rose from the darkness below, completely blocking the only way out for Ryan's family of three!
They were a hundred heavy mechanized guard mechs, each standing 10 feet tall!
Their bodies were covered in silver-gray special armor. Each one's arms were equipped with thick weapon barrels, and on their backs were energy cores glowing with blue light.
The cold metal shells reflected suffocating light under the red alarm lights.
This was the Spencer family's most prized trump card, and their latest killing weapon!
Not only did they possess strength beyond normal limits, their armor thickness could withstand direct hits from small missiles.
"Beep—Target locked!"
The heads of all hundred mechs lit up with blinding red light simultaneously.
A hundred red targeting beams crisscrossed densely on Ryan's black armor at the same instant.
With just one command, this place would be completely buried under a torrent of firepower.
Just then, Jack's twisted and arrogant laughter came through the massive speakers above the passage.
"Hahaha! You fool! Did you really think you could come and go as you please on the Spencer family's turf?" Jack's voice echoed continuously through the speakers in the empty passage.
"See those metal hunks in front of you? These are the ultimate weapons our family spent hundreds of billions of dollars creating! Those armor-piercing rounds earlier couldn't penetrate your tin can, but what about now?"
"Every single one of these mechs is equipped with high-frequency particle beam weapons that can instantly vaporize an armored vehicle! No matter how strong you are, can you fight a hundred of these monsters?!"
Jack's laughter grew more grating: "Despair! Today, all three of you are going to be turned into mush. I'm going to feed your remains to the mutant dogs!"
A countdown beeping came through the speakers as Jack coldly announced: "Mech swarm annihilation program, activate! Die!"
The atmosphere in the passage instantly became oppressive to the extreme. All hundred mechs simultaneously raised their right arms, and destructive blue light began flickering inside their dark gun barrels.
High-frequency energy was gathering frantically. The air even began to twist and distort from the extreme heat.
Facing this terrifying lineup capable of leveling a small military base, Ryan's face showed not even the slightest trace of fear.
His gaze was as calm as the dark sea before a storm.
He ignored Jack's ranting through the speakers and turned to look at Sophia beside him.
"Sophia." Ryan's voice was low and steady.
He carefully handed Ella, now completely drained of color, into Sophia's trembling arms.
Ryan pointed to an inconspicuous metal door on the left wall—a maintenance passage that hadn't been blocked by the mechs.
"Take Ella and go straight up through that passage. Don't look back. There are people outside to meet you. They'll use the best equipment to save our daughter." Ryan spoke quickly, but his tone carried unquestionable authority.
Sophia held their cold daughter tightly, tears falling like broken beads.
She looked up at this mountain-like man before her, glanced at the hundred bone-chilling killing machines ahead, then looked down at their dying daughter in her arms.
Extreme worry for her husband's safety and desperate hope for their daughter's life tore at her heart.
She knew that staying would only be a burden.
"You have to come out alive... We finally reunited as a family..." Sophia bit through her lip, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth.
She looked deeply at Ryan, as if to carve this man's image into her very soul.
Then Sophia suddenly turned around, clutched Ella tightly, and stumbled into the narrow maintenance passage.
After confirming his wife and daughter had safely evacuated, Ryan finally turned back around.
At that moment, all the tenderness and restraint in his eyes completely vanished. In their place was an extreme fury capable of crushing everything.
"Think you can run? None of you can escape! Even if that woman went into the maintenance passage, after I turn you to ash, I'll immediately send people to drag them back and keep draining their blood!" Jack ranted madly through the speakers.
Ryan slowly raised both hands and gripped the hilt of the black broken sword firmly.
He took steady steps forward, alone, walking to the center of the wide passage.
His black armor appeared even more profound under the red alarm lights.
Facing a hundred steel behemoths alone, his presence completely dominated all the mechs!
The weapons of the hundred mechs had reached maximum charge. The blinding blue light completely illuminated the entire passage, destructive energy ready to burst forth.
"Fire!" Jack's roar tore through the air.
Ryan slowly raised his head, a terrifying cold gleam flashing in his deep eyes.
Endless black energy began to swirl madly around his sword.
