"Wednesday, look out!" Enid's scream cut through the air.
Almost simultaneously—BANG! Enid's pink Desert Eagle spat fire.
The bullet precisely severed a strange vine covered in sharp, poisonous thorns that had quietly drilled out of a crack in the ground and was attempting to coil around Wednesday's ankle.
"Be careful!" Goody's spirit spoke with a grave tone.
"Crackstone's staff can manipulate the memories of this land, unleashing various troublesome nature magics. Corrosive vines, earth spikes, mist... his specialty back then was using the environment to kill."
"This kind of critical intelligence—"
Wednesday sidestepped a few stone stalagmites that suddenly thrust up from the ground, her tone icy with critique.
"—you should have mentioned earlier."
On the other side, seeing Wednesday encounter resistance, Vic immediately moved to rush over and help.
But the moment he moved, several scorching laser beams—pew pew—grazed his symbiotic shell, leaving heated scorch marks on the ground.
"I think—"
The advanced robot controlled by Dr. 077 emitted a flat synthesized voice.
"—it would be better for you to focus. Your opponent is me."
Vic was forced to stop, the pitch-black symbiotic substance surging over his body.
He grinned, revealing sharp teeth.
"Fine. Looks like I have to knock you tin cans down first before I can help my honey."
"No, you are mistaken."
Dr. 077's voice seemed to carry a hint of amused mockery.
"Not 'you,' but 'you all'."
Vic's pupils constricted violently!
He looked around. In the shadows surrounding the quad, behind ruins, and even in the windows of damaged buildings, densely packed mechanical figures had appeared unnoticed!
Their eyes flashed with cold red light, and gun barrels transformed from their arms were all aimed at Vic in the center.
At a glance, there were at least three hundred of them! Like a silent tide of steel, they radiated a suffocating oppression.
"Tsk!" Vic couldn't help but curse, his tone filled with disbelief and a sort of "admiration" for being outdone by a peer.
"How much funding did you fucking embezzle to crank out this much cannon fodder?! You bastard, you deserve to be hung from a lamppost!"
Vic's gaze swept over the Super Terminator before him—whose performance far exceeded the one from the Meeting House—and the dense army of mechanical cannon fodder behind it, eyes glowing with cold red light.
The sheer mass of them was enough to make any normal person's scalp tingle.
The students and parents around them froze. This wasn't a number they could deal with using just a few weapons and tactics.
"Fine~"
Vic wiped his face, the Venom mask retracting to reveal his handsome face. His tone carried a helpless resignation, like smashing a cracked pot.
"You forced me to do this. I didn't want it to come to this either."
He took a deep breath, then suddenly turned toward Mavis, who was leisurely trimming her nails with nail clippers not far away. Without any psychological burden, he shouted:
"Mavis! Help me! Handle that cannon fodder!"
Mavis paused, looking up with feigned shock, a sly smile spreading across her face.
"What? Asking for help? Didn't someone just vow confidently, 'You protect the family, then just watch my performance'?"
She dragged out her tone like a cat toying with a mouse.
"Want Big Sis to help? You know what to do, little Vic~"
"Tsk."
Vic rolled his eyes secretly. But in the next second, his face instantly switched to an expression so sweet it was sickening, bordering on fawning. His voice became soft and drawn out:
"Oh~ My dearest, most beautiful, kindest Big Sister Mavis in the whole wide world~ Please~ Help your cute and pitiful little brother~ Pretty please~"
The voice... was sticky enough to spin silk.
In an instant, the entire noisy battlefield seemed to hit the mute button.
Wednesday's arm holding the Benelli M4 twitched imperceptibly. A chill shot up her spine to her scalp, goosebumps rising in a race.
Enid's hand slipped, nearly dropping her beloved pink Desert Eagle. Her face exploded red, her eyes filled with disbelief.
Even Dr. 077, observing through the robot, had a synthesized voice that sounded choked with speechlessness: "You... truly have no shame at all."
"Sorry~"
Mavis grinned like the cat that got the cream, her eyes curving into crescents.
"I just love seeing little Vic acting shameless like this! I really have to thank you; he rarely acts spoiled like this since growing up~"
Before her words faded, Mavis's eyes were covered in a faint, eerie blue glow. She waved her hand seemingly casually—
Dozens of mechanical soldiers standing ready in the distance were suddenly gripped by an invisible giant hand. With the tooth-aching sound of twisting metal, they were instantly squeezed and crushed into a massive ball of scrap iron, crashing to the ground with a loud BOOM.
Immediately after, Mavis put two fingers in her mouth and let out a sharp, long whistle.
A few seconds later, a dull tremor came from the ground, as if thousands of troops were galloping.
Everyone looked toward the sound. From behind the hill in the distance, a "black tide" was surging forward at an astonishing speed!
It was a torrent composed of countless wolf pups of varying sizes and dark fur colors. Their eyes flashed with wild light, and low growls rumbled from their throats. The momentum was terrifying.
"Holy sh—!"
Vic's eye twitched as he looked at Mavis.
"You brought all the Wayne family pups? That must have been tough."
Mavis's smile remained, but her eyes seemed to go blank for a second. Her tone was deliberately casual.
"Mrs. Wayne is close to giving birth and needs rest. Just babysitting for a few days."
She then raised her voice, shouting at the charging pack of pups:
"Children! Look over there! Uncle Vic has prepared moving, durable teething toys for you!"
She pointed at the hundreds of mechanical soldiers standing ready.
The wolf pack locked onto their targets instantly. Excited howls rose and fell as their charging speed skyrocketed!
Like a black tide, they instantly swallowed the area where the mechanical army stood.
"Hi Uncle Vic!" x N
"Thanks Uncle Vic!" x N
As the wolf pups passed Vic, they didn't forget to shout greetings and thanks in their childish voices before pouncing on the cold hunks of iron.
They began a brutal dismantling process with sharp teeth and claws.
The sounds of tearing metal, flying parts, and satisfied gnawing mixed together, creating a scene of extreme chaos and absurd harmony.
In just tens of seconds, the hundreds of imposing mechanical soldiers were completely submerged by this black wolf tide.
The Super Terminator controlled by Dr. 077 flashed its red eyes violently.
The synthesized voice stuttered rarely, finally squeezing out a single syllable full of human emotion:
"Fuck."
Vic grinned smugly, his teeth glinting coldly under the Venom mask.
"What's wrong? Did your precise algorithms fail to calculate this outcome?"
Dr. 077's synthesized voice returned to calm, but with a trace of confusion: "Indeed. Their files are in the database, but I could not establish an effective model."
"Because I cannot comprehend why these creatures, who share no blood relation with you, would travel thousands of miles from Transylvania for an inefficient social activity called 'Parents' Weekend,' just to... see you? This does not fit the logic of optimal resource allocation."
Vic was silent for a moment. Looking at this entity trapped in cold logic, his eyes showed undisguised pity for the first time:
"So, did you calculate the cost and benefit of all this? Did you calculate why Mavis came? Did you calculate why these wolf pups are willing to tear apart steel for me?"
"You will never calculate it. Because what drives them is an emotion that doesn't exist in your database. That is the most pathetic thing about you."
"You know? I used to be... almost as pathetic as you. Luckily, I have them."
His gaze swept over Mavis, Dennis, Winnie, Johnny, the pack of wolf pups happily destroying machines, and Wednesday and Enid.
"It's these family members, unrelated by blood, who kept me from turning into a monster like you."