Chapter 43: The Gamma Mutation

After the combat squad prepared by Lynn killed General Ross’s personal guards, those gamma monsters had already broken out. Under the influence of gamma radiation, the majority of those monsters had lost their human forms.

Only one of them still maintained a reasonable humanoid shape, while the rest resembled demented beasts with no trace of humanity remaining.

It seemed that all the super soldiers who had entered Samuel’s laboratory under General Ross’s orders had been transformed into gamma monsters.

The action team dispatched by Lynn crossed the chaotic streets, fighting their way through gunfire into Samuel’s laboratory. Following the devastation wrought by more than a dozen gamma monsters, no trace of any living person could be seen inside the entire facility.

This small laboratory had been completely destroyed, the floor caked with dried blood alongside all kinds of metal and glass debris.

Wielding firearms as they searched the laboratory, they finally discovered a living person groaning. Clad in a military uniform, only the upper half of his body remained, while his lower half was nowhere to be found. His mind was entirely blank, and it looked as though he would not last another minute.

Lynn’s tactical squad quickly completed an internal inspection, finding no other living people, only severed limbs and residue, but they did discover a path that had been manually cleared.

The size was just right for a humanoid creature to pass through.

"Doctor, do you want them to pursue?"

"Do not let him escape. With the surface so chaotic right now, coupled with the fact that the man must have mutated, pursue him through the sewers."

Lynn quickly deduced that Samuel Sterns must have undergone a gamma mutation, granting his once mediocre brain extraordinary cognitive abilities under the influence of the gamma radiation.

If Samuel Sterns before the mutation was an academic rogue obsessed with fame and money, then the mutated version of him was clearly an absolute academic madman.

Lynn had no intention of letting him escape.

Under Lynn’s instructions, his combat squad immediately followed the trail. Fortunately, this track had not been concealed; it led all the way out of the laboratory, and the displaced manhole cover across the street was visible at a glance.

He had indeed escaped through the sewers.

After Lynn dispatched the pursuit team, the surrounding situation clearly began to spiral out of control. A massive number of civilians began fleeing in panic, while General Ross’s troops were forced to start attacking those out-of-control, rampaging gamma monsters.

Lynn looked up at the helicopters circling in the sky. At that moment, something seemed to drop from above, appearing to be a humanoid creature.

"Kara, make your move. Have the combat squad go and retrieve those non-humanoid gamma monsters. They don't need to be alive. Remember to make it a swift victory, and have Jekutor support them.

Try to choose those targets where the military units have been completely wiped out."

"What if they engage in firefights with some military units?"

"Then annihilate them."

In accordance with Lynn’s orders, his troops immediately went into action, a large number of soldiers in black uniforms pushing into the chaotic zone ahead.

At that very moment, the chaotic crowd had already spread to this area—a chaotic torrent of people, terrified cries, fire, and gunsmoke,

along with flying flesh and blood.

A gamma monster had leaped right in front of Lynn. This gamma monster had completely lost its human form, its entire body exhibiting an unhealthy dark green hue, with only faint traces of humanoid features remaining.

Four arthropod-like or human-hand-like limbs clung to the ground, while its human body was covered in massive warts. Its bloated flesh was entirely twisted, and its original head had swollen countless times over, the lower jaw regrowing into something resembling the head of an arthropod.

Several pairs of frantically proliferating eyeballs formed a structure resembling the compound eyes of an insect.

Above the bridge of the nose, it had transformed into a rather lethal set of mouthparts proliferating with numerous sharp teeth, splitting into three lobes as it roared at Lynn, with fragments of clothing and torn flesh faintly visible deep within its oral cavity.

Clearly, this was a completely mindless gamma monster—a gamma beast born from General Ross’s super soldiers.

"You've come quite quickly. I'll handle this thing myself. Kara, go arrange for them to clear out the other gamma monsters. Once I'm done dealing with this thing, report back to me on the situation."

"I understand, Doctor."

With that, the surrounding combatants all ignored the monster that had already launched its attack. Kara retreated toward the rear, sitting inside a modified vehicle with her eyes closed, seemingly issuing commands to all the combatants.

Her abilities might not necessarily work on such a bizarre creature.

Lynn stood fearlessly before the monster.

"Now, let's see just how powerful an ordinary gamma monster is..."

***

The humanoid arthropod-like limbs lunged toward Lynn at an astonishing speed, upon which pincer-like appendages mutated from human fingers were faintly visible, and the numerous pupils across its entire head all cast their gazes upon Lynn.

The pincers stopped a hair's breadth away from Lynn, as a purple psionic barrier blocked the attack of this gamma monster, which resembled a certain type of humanoid spider.

The beast did not give up because of a failed initial attack; if anything, human thought perhaps no longer existed within its brain.

Its highly mutated mouthparts instantly began to writhe, after which a massive amount of dissolving liquid surged from within, spraying directly toward Lynn.

Lynn made no evasive movements. Those green corrosive liquids hovered suspended half an inch away from Lynn, as if coming just a fraction closer would dissolve him entirely, yet Lynn’s psionics directly froze the sprayed green mucus in mid-air.

"It doesn't seem to be anything special either—rather primitive and violent mutation with very little plasticity...

Well, in terms of controllability and versatility, using such crude methods to induce human mutation appears terribly inefficient."

Naturally, this monster was incapable of listening to Lynn enumerate its flaws right where it stood, and its remaining scraps of sanity did not afford it the luxury to do so.

Unbeknownst to it, its entire body had begun to emit a pale purple glow, signifying that Lynn’s psionics had already enveloped it.

Soon, the monster's body began an unnatural contortion, its entire torso undergoing a shifting process that completely violated its bodily structure. Skin impervious to ordinary bullets began to tear, and those proliferated eyeballs burst.

It was gradually twisted into a ball by Lynn, green blood continuously spraying from its entire physique.

It roared frantically while constantly twisting and struggling, but Lynn’s psionic execution of it was already a foregone conclusion; this battle had never held any suspense from the very beginning.

The monster was ultimately kneaded into a ball of flesh by Lynn, accompanied by a sizzle of sound as the internal destruction of its bodily structures caused the corrosive liquid it had previously used to begin eating away at its own anatomy.

"Go decompose it, and then withdraw immediately."

The combatants who received the order began carefully handling the dead gamma monster, and Kara also walked up after the battle concluded.

"Jekutor and Sangulus have already set out and are estimated to engage the first gamma creature shortly. At the same time, our combatants have tried their best to avoid fighting the military.

There were still a few small-scale firefights, but nothing was lost."

While Kara was reporting, several roars echoed from the epicenter of the chaos, the sound seemingly capable of carrying across the entire borough of Brooklyn.

Kara and Lynn simultaneously looked toward the center.

"Doctor, do they need to steer clear of the epicenter?"

"Salvage the gamma monster samples with limited priority, Kara. You take Sangulus into the sewers to pursue Samuel, while I will take a squad into the heart of this chaos."

"Do you require him alive?"

"..."

Lynn pondered slightly for a moment, appearing concerned about something, before issuing his command shortly after.

"He does not need to be alive, but if circumstances prove impossible, withdraw immediately."

"Understood, Doctor."

Kara walked away toward the deep shadows of an alleyway, accompanied by several other combatants, while Lynn closed in on the absolute center of the battle. Meanwhile, Lynn’s other subordinate troops went off to hunt down and scavenge the remaining gamma monsters.

Lynn set off walking. The evacuating residents around them clearly had no time to pay attention to Lynn’s troops, mistaking them for NYPD SWAT and focusing entirely on their own escape.

Thus, a black unit moved against the tide of fleeing refugees in the dark, yet no one paid them any mind.

***

The battle between Abomination and Hulk had by this time entered a white-hot phase. Their brawl lacked any superfluous combat techniques; Abomination had evidently acquired such immense power for the first time, compounded by the effects of the gamma mutation.

Clearly, he had lost his mind, and the combat techniques that originally belonged to a super soldier had vanished without a trace. Blonsky’s former mastery of high-level technique was entirely absent, leaving only the most primitive mutual pummeling occurring between two green giants.

"Hulk Smash!"

Hulk raised his arms high, his muscles bulging all over, and a heavy blow instantly struck Abomination in the head, driving Abomination directly into the concrete ground.

Then he raised both hands once more, striking Abomination's body blow by blow with hammer-fists. The menacing Abomination appeared completely incapable of fighting back.

Just as Hulk prepared to follow up with his next attack, Abomination’s massive hand suddenly grabbed him. Abomination’s entire body violently rebounded, flying up into the air while carrying Hulk with him.

Abomination’s distorted visage revealed a ferocious grin, speaking in a nearly manic tone.

"Green Goliath, let's take this to round two!"

With those words, he and Hulk crashed back down to the earth, kicking up a shock wave. The dense smoke and dust obscured the figures of the two, and sonic booms immediately echoed from within the dust cloud following the impact.

It sounded as though massive heavy objects were hammering away at something.

As the dust and smoke dissipated, Abomination was revealed relentlessly bombarding Hulk with a barrage of punches.

Looking down at everything on the ground from the helicopter, Betty asked her father in shock:

"Is this what you wanted? Huh? Right now, innocent people all over Brooklyn are paying the price for your ambition! Look at those 'super soldiers' you created, Dad.

Didn't you ever wonder why Banner quit your gamma bomb project? Why he was hiding from you?"

Yet Betty's questioning clearly yielded no results. Thaddeus E. Ross, that iron-faced and ruthless man, showed no remorse whatsoever. Instead, as he watched Blonsky mercilessly hammering Hulk on the ground alongside the out-of-control gamma monsters,

an entirely different expression surfaced in his eyes.

Perhaps using gamma energy to build a bomb wasn't the best choice after all; his perspective had been far too narrow previously.

"You may be right, Betty. The gamma bomb was a rather foolish project."

General Ross gazed at everything below, while Betty stared at him, wondering if her father had finally recognized his own faults.

However, Betty clearly did not understand her ambitious father; his gaze was not fixed upon those civilians.

Walking toward the pilot while picking up the radio, General Ross spoke:

"Notify the ground troops to contract their defenses, rallying around the 55th and 124th platoons as the core. Give priority to clearing out outlying scattered mutated individuals, and simultaneously initiate Emergency Protocol Level C. In the event of an officer's demise..."

General Ross promptly began arranging for the army—which had been thrown into utter disarray by the gamma monster attacks—to regroup and establish a defensive line.

Under their successive orders, those army soldiers who had previously been battered like headless flies by the gamma monsters rapidly executed a strategic redeployment, concentrating their effective forces.

Watching her father from the aircraft, Betty finally experienced a slight shift deep within her heart, thinking perhaps her father wasn't so terrifying after all that he would completely ignore the commands to protect New York's citizens.

However, as General Ross issued command after command, Betty gradually perceived that something was amiss.

Because General Ross’s troops were contracting their defenses, several gamma monsters were left without targets, causing them to flee outward instead.

The unarmed civilians bore the brunt of this. No matter how fast they ran, they could not outpace the gamma monsters, and two or three gamma monsters that had lost their targets had already broken out of the engagement zone.

"Dad, what are you doing?"

"I am saving civilians, Betty. My troops need to regroup their posture; there's no way they can handle monsters scattered about like this!

The only way is to contract the defense and handle them one by one."

"What about those people running away?"

"This is a necessary sacrifice under emergency conditions, or would you have me go block them? Or perhaps have your mutated boyfriend block them? He's struggling just to deal with one of them right now.

Contract the defenses, defeat them in detail—that is the optimal solution, Betty. Do not question my judgment; reinforcements are on the way."

Indeed, this proved to be the case. General Ross’s arrangements quickly yielded results. Once his elite forces had massed together, those Stark Industries weapons finally found their proper application.

After the light infantry pinned down the pace of the gamma monsters, massive sonic shockwaves quickly immobilized them in place.

Following that, specially tailored Stark Industries titanium-alloy capture nets firmly pinned the gamma monsters to the ground. A torrential volume of firepower was immediately unleashed, and violent explosions ignited raging infernos. The mutations of these gamma monsters clearly fell short of Hulk’s standard.

Under this firepower calibrated against Hulk's benchmark, one of them was quickly killed by General Ross’s elite forces. Its body shattered, exposing damaged internal organs, barely retaining an intact frame of flesh amidst the explosions.