Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 375 Building Interior
Although the ruins of Baikal City are not covered by signal shielding facilities, these reinforced concrete structures themselves can be regarded as a kind of barrier. If you want to maintain smooth communication with the base in the rear, you must use drones in the air as signal relay stations - first transmit the communication signal to the drone, and then the drone will transmit the radio signal back to the front base at high altitude without any barriers.

In some extreme cases where radio cannot be used, drones can even use laser communications to ensure smooth signal transmission.

However, for the 19th Reconnaissance Team that lost its drone, both radio and laser communications became empty words.

"Maybe we can borrow the drone from the neighboring team?" the female team member suggested.

"No... there is no team close to us..." The captain shook his head. "Originally, the 20th Reconnaissance Team was following us, but half an hour ago, their captain Levi sent me a communication saying that their drone's electronic equipment had malfunctioned and they needed to return to the base for repairs... According to the deployment before departure, the team closest to us now should be the 16th Reconnaissance Team, six kilometers northeast, assuming that their advancement speed is consistent with the plan."

"Six kilometers? This is too far..." Maxim said somewhat dejectedly.

"By the way, Maxim, did you notice what was happening in that building just now? Did that shadow appear again?" asked the sixth person in the team, a medical soldier with a red cross armband on his arm.

"The captain just pushed me to the ground. How can I see? Should I use my asshole to see?" Maxim shouted.

"No." The sniper Glazkov answered the question for him. He still kept the same posture as before, and even a piece of rubble hitting his helmet did not make him move an inch. "I kept aiming at that window, but I didn't see anything. The thermal imaging also couldn't capture any other heat sources besides the wreckage of the drone."

"Maxim, did you just...see it wrong?" the machine gunner asked doubtfully.

"Believe it or not, I really saw it!" said Maxim.

“If we can retrieve the drone and repair it, maybe we can get in touch with the base, but…” The medic stopped talking halfway.

But everyone else knew the half of the sentence he didn't say.

The drone fell into the building and was buried under a pile of bricks and rubble. In order to retrieve it, it was necessary to enter this dark building... If Maxim had not seen it wrong just now, there was a high probability that an unknown monster was lurking in this building.

Too dangerous.

They originally sent out the drone to investigate because they discovered traces of strange creatures...but now in order to recover the drone, they have to face the threat of strange creatures head on. This can't help but make people feel like they are putting the cart before the horse.

The team leader felt a little regretful. If he had called for support from the headquarters immediately instead of taking the risk of using a drone to explore the interior of the building, he might not have fallen into such a dilemma.

Several soldiers looked at each other in bewilderment. Just as everyone was hesitating, the female soldier stood up and said, "I'll go! The collapsed area is too narrow. I'm the smallest, so it should be the easiest for me to get in!"

Just as she was about to take off her backpack, Maxim rushed out first: "How can a group of grown men stand back and let a woman take risks?! I can't afford to lose face! Besides, I'm a breakthrough player, this is my mission!"

He quickly took off his unnecessary equipment, folded the butt of his submachine gun and hung it under his neck, then stepped onto a pile of rubble in the corner, used the force to jump up, and grabbed the edge of the window sill which was about three and a half meters above the ground.

Maxim is thin and only one centimeter taller than the female soldiers in the same team, but he is extremely agile - in military competitions, he often uses this advantage to defeat opponents who are several weight classes heavier than him.

The anti-slip grooves on the soles of the military boots bit into the rough wall. Maxim exerted force from his core and instantly climbed up the wall like a gecko.

He thrust his upper body directly into the building, and with his freed hands he picked up the submachine gun. The tactical flashlight hanging under the muzzle of the gun instantly swept the entire room.

"No strange things were found." Maxim reported immediately.

His nervousness eased a little, and he suddenly thought, maybe... he really had seen it wrong just now?

After all, we were all in a state of high mental tension all the way here... I heard from the beautiful military doctor sister in the rear hospital that the more nervous a person is, the more likely they are to have hallucinations...

Could it be that the fleeting shadow I just saw was really an illusion caused by being too nervous?

"No matter what, it's always right to stay alert... Besides, the sudden shaking and landslide just now are too suspicious." Maxim said to himself, "Even if there is a weird thing in the building, it must not be a powerful one... Otherwise, it would have killed us long ago. Why hide?"

Maxim adjusted his posture, and stepped his feet directly on the slightly inclined windowsill. He shrank into the window frame, holding a submachine gun in one hand and taking out a spare tactical flashlight from his pocket with the other hand. Two high-brightness beams of light shot left and right, illuminating the interior of the building.

"Maxim, have you found anything?" the team leader asked anxiously outside.

"Very strange... Glazkov is right, these buildings are not only strange on the outside, but also on the inside," Maxim responded.

This window is three meters above the ground. Logically, it should be at least a window on the second floor... Of course, it can also be a window on the first floor. For example, in a lobby with a floor height of four or five meters, there will usually be some high windows at this height to enhance the indoor lighting...

But the problem is that this window is neither on the first floor nor on the second floor.

There is no obvious floor division inside this building.

It is like a one-to-one scale 3D printed model. From the outside, it looks like there are first, second, and third floors... but the interior of the building is hollow. Apart from the necessary support structures during printing, there is nothing inside!

These supporting structures filled the interior of the building like layers of messy spider webs, making Maxim have an illusion: this place did not look like the interior of a human building, but rather like the lair of some monster.

Previously, Maxim thought that the shadow he saw should be wandering on the second floor of the building, but now it seems that the situation is completely different from what he imagined.

Assuming it wasn't an illusion, the shadow seemed to be moving on these supporting structures, just like a spider crawling along a spider thread.

When he thought of this, Maxim couldn't help but shudder, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

He hated spiders, especially the hairy looking ones.

Because when he was a kid, the class bully once threw a spider like this into his collar.

But after he grew up, he never mentioned this incident to anyone - he didn't want people to know that a grown man like him was afraid of creatures like spiders, nor did he want people to know that he had been bullied in his childhood.

"Damn it... this is damned." Maxim kept looking around the interior of the building. The thinnest part of these supporting structures was only as thick as a finger. He didn't know how strong it was. Would it break if he stepped on it...

Many of the bricks and rubble that collapsed from the top of the building fell through the gaps in the supporting structure, and only a small part accumulated on top of the supporting structure.

The wreckage of the drone that was hit was on a relatively large "platform".

This "platform" is where more than a dozen supporting structures converge. It covers an area of ​​about one square meter. It is located about one meter below the windowsill and about two meters from the ground. The red indicator light of the drone can be vaguely seen flashing among the rubble.

"I found the drone and am going to recover it," said Maxim.

He tried to stretch out his hands, but the one-meter downward distance was still very difficult for the human body. Maxim had to change his posture again - he hooked the edge of the windowsill with the insteps of his feet and tried to hang himself upside down.

But he gave up on this difficult move after just trying it once - he was about 1.67 meters tall, and when hanging upside down, there would be more than half a meter of redundancy, which made it impossible for him to hook his feet on the edge of the windowsill. He could only support himself on both sides of the window frame and rely on the squeezing force to support his body weight.

This movement not only requires very high leg strength, but also requires Maxim to maintain balance at all times. Once one side of the body exerts too much force, his entire body will fall directly onto the platform.

"No, this position is too tricky. I can't do the suspended work." Maxim finally shrank back to the windowsill and turned to the five people waiting outside.

"I have ropes and hooks here. Can I hook the drone and lift it up?" asked the machine gunner.

"It's difficult. There are many broken bricks and rubble on the drone. Let's not talk about whether I can find a place to fix the hook... Even if I can hook it, what if the drone disintegrates when I pull it up? Wouldn't all my efforts be wasted?" Maxim rejected it outright.

"So what are you going to do?" asked the captain.

"Throw me the rope and hook!" Maxim said again.

"Didn't you say there's no way to hook it?" The machine gunner said so, but he still took out the rope and hook and threw them to Maxim.

"I didn't say it was used to hook the drone...the thing to be hooked is me!" Maxim hooked the safety buckle on his belt with the hook, and then threw the other end of the rope back.

"The drone fell on a platform. I plan to go down to the platform and dig out the drone with my hands. But I'm not sure if this platform can bear my weight. So, once I step on the platform, you have to find a way to pull me up. Do you understand?" Maxim said loudly.

"Okay, then you better be careful!" After fixing the end of the rope on an iron nail driven into the ground, the captain, the medical soldier and the machine gunner pulled the rope together, and the originally slack rope suddenly became straight.

"Okay, I'll go down." Feeling the power coming from his waist, Maxim took a deep breath, stepped on the inner wall of the building, and walked down carefully.

He tried his best to keep a synchronized rhythm with his comrades - every time the three people outside let out a piece of rope, he took a step down, one step after another. It took him nearly half a minute to cross the short distance of one meter.

Maxim breathed a sigh of relief when his feet slowly landed on the platform.

He reached out and touched a supporting structure that was close at hand. It felt rough and hard, similar to cement concrete mixed with gravel... He just didn't know if there were any steel bars wrapped inside. If so, even if there were twenty of him, he probably wouldn't be able to collapse the platform.

Maxim stepped on the platform under his feet with a little force, but there was no shaking or breaking sound, which immediately made him feel relieved.

"Tsk, the platform was fine despite the violent vibration just now. It seems that this thing is much stronger than I thought... I am really... what's the Chinese word for this? Yes, I am just worrying too much!"

Maxim bent down and began to pick up the rubble that buried the drone, and then threw the debris directly over the edge of the platform.

The rustling sound of debris and gravel rubbing against each other and the sound of them hitting the ground were endless, and Maxim's movements began to gradually speed up.

The buried drone soon revealed most of its body. Maxim took a closer look and found that although there were several cracks on the outer shell of the drone, the internal electronic components did not seem to be seriously damaged, so the probability of repair should be very high.

"Good luck... eh?"

Maxim's expression suddenly froze, and he realized a problem - he had stopped digging up the rubble, so why didn't the rustling sound stop?
That sound... seemed like something was crawling at high speed along the supporting structure inside the building!

"A weird thing! It's a weird thing!! There really is a weird thing in the building!!!" Maxim's heart suddenly started beating wildly!
Maxim immediately pulled the wreckage of the drone out of the rubble and held it in his arms. But just as he was about to look up and call for his teammates to pull him up, he was shocked to find that the window he had just entered through had disappeared at some point!

The rope was embedded directly into the wall!
(End of this chapter)