Chapter 556: Can’t Afford to Lose

"No need to thank me. I was just afraid the outside world would affect your performance," Nina Jacobs said, standing within the sand shield barrier.

When her opponent first leaped into the air and smashed down a stone ball, she had already deployed this sand shield that reached halfway into the sky. The shield completely isolated them from the outside noise. However, he had been so focused on defeating her that he hadn’t realized he was already a sitting duck.

"Oh man, I couldn’t even help if I wanted to." Chester Pearson leaned against the car door. The battle between the two just now had been truly spectacular.

"Tell me about it. We can’t even hear a sound. I wonder what Nina is saying to him." Shirley Lucas kept peering inside the barrier.

"Could it be that the guy only just realized he’s trapped inside?" someone nearby asked.

"Very likely. He looks dumbfounded," Levi Stone analyzed, solely basing his conclusion on the man’s movements.

Within the sand shield barrier, the man in black’s fists were trembling. He discovered that a massive, dense crowd was standing outside the shield. They were watching the battle. Meanwhile, he looked like an absolute joke. It was humiliating, utterly humiliating.

"You’re the one who abducted The Soul-Abyss Superpower User, aren’t you?" Nina asked. "I’m guessing you used Earth Escape at the time?"

However, she noticed that her current opponent seemed to be in no mood to answer her questions. He looked furious, his gaze looking as if he wanted to tear her to shreds.

He suddenly leaned forward and charged at her, shouting in a language Nina couldn’t understand. At the same time, hundreds of Rock Explosion Stone Balls hurtled toward her!

"Tsk, looks like I hit the nail on the head." Seeing that the man was probably so exasperated that he wanted to drag her down with him, Nina added, "What a sore loser."

Nina waved her hand, instantly reducing all the stone balls to gravel.

Seeing this scene unfold before him, the man in black’s face turned as pale as a sheet. This was his full-power strike, yet she had neutralized it so effortlessly.

COUGH.

He coughed up a mouthful of blood. Looking at her opponent collapsed on the ground, Nina stood in silence for a few seconds. The mental state of Veridians was truly concerning...

It wasn’t until the sand shield was deactivated that Nina finally heard the surrounding clamor.

"Nina, thanks a lot for just now. Thank you for venting our anger for all of us," Timothy Renner ran over and said. Over half a year had passed, and Nina still looked the same as before. Of course, he could tell that her strength was now on a completely different level.

"You’re welcome. I’m the one who asked to seal the gates anyway. You guarded it well, Renner," Nina replied with a smile, her tone like that of an old friend.

A few months ago, Renner was still a man entirely resigned to waiting for death in an abandoned building in City J. She never expected that he would now become such a highly responsible gatekeeper.

"Hahaha, you’re not bad yourself," Renner said, thoroughly delighted. He remembered when they first met Nina in City J; with just a few words, she had left the germaphobic Finn Hart and the others completely speechless with anger.

The man in black on the ground had already been taken away, though no one knew if he was dead or alive. Many of the base survivors who had gathered to watch the spectacle had also been evacuated. Not far away, the group of people captured by the members of Stella were cursing and muttering something.

"What are they saying? I can’t understand them at all," Leo Hale muttered, leaning in with a baffled expression.

"I don’t understand either." Nina shook her head.

"They’re swearing. Don’t bother listening," Adrian Paige said as he walked over alongside Myra Lawson, then instructed the people behind him. "Have their mouths gagged."

"You can understand them?" Nina asked, looking at the now-gagged captives.

Adrian nodded. "I can. I learned it during training in the past. They are Veridians, speaking the Veridian language."

Myra had also only just learned that none of these people were Drakonians.

"Nina, how on earth did you discover them?" Myra finally asked after inviting Nina into the vehicle. Inside the car were Justin Lawson and Daniel Hale.

It wasn’t that they were xenophobic against Xenorians, but rather that they had recently received a lot of related intelligence. This included the distribution map of Drakonia’s supply points that Nina had previously found on Veridians. All of this proved that the opposing faction was secretly plotting something within Drakonian borders, though they had yet to find concrete evidence. Now, having caught hidden Veridians within their own base who had stubbornly tried to force their way out, there was absolutely something suspicious going on.

"I only just found out they were Xenorians myself," Nina explained. "I went after them because they must be the ones who secretly harmed Soul Slayer."

"Nina, what exactly is going on here?" Daniel Hale asked. How did these people get tied up with Soul Slayer?

Justin Lawson also looked at Nina, completely out of the loop.

"Let me explain for Nina. This all starts with two Yellow Cards who stumbled upon an ’opportunity’," Ian Chandler said with a smile, turning around from the passenger seat. Even Evander Sullivan and Lucas Holden themselves had no idea just how crucial the item they had accidentally "picked up" truly was.

Over at the base’s Enforcement Bureau, another wave of people arrived. Only this time, no one dared to gossip, as the Base Commander had come in person.

"It was the first day of the sudden temperature drop..." Lucas Holden sat trembling before the crowd in the interrogation room as he explained. "At that time, Evander and I ran into two people asking for help. It was a man and a woman. Their car had frozen and broken down halfway, and several people inside were suffering from hypothermia."

He and Evander had also been separated from their team halfway through their journey. Afterward, they encountered a group whose car had broken down on the road. Because those people had no winter clothing to fend off the cold, most of them had already slipped into hypothermic comas, leaving only one man and one woman to beg for their help. They had pleaded to be taken to a nearby base and were willing to pay supplies as a reward.

"We saw that they had a lot of food in their car, and they had no idea where the base was, so we got some ideas," Lucas said.

One of the two was a Space Superpower User. He and Evander had taken the pair to a remote, deserted area and threatened them to hand over all the supplies in their space.

"...They refused and even threatened to kill us.

"So, we turned them into zombies. Evander is a Speed Element Superpower User, and freezing as badly as they were, the two of them couldn’t even react in time...

"But we didn’t expect the woman to have so many things in her space," Lucas continued, his expression growing increasingly agitated. He had never seen so much food and medicine before.

"Anyway, no one knew the two of us had struck it rich. So, Evander and I plotted to keep it a secret, leave our team, and enjoy a comfortable life in the base.

"However, we didn’t expect that some of those people in the car who were suffering from hypothermia hadn’t frozen to death and actually got rescued by someone." Lucas’s expression shifted to one of deep remorse. If only they had gone back and killed all those people back then.

"Later, Evander found out that those people weren’t simple. Plus, they would sooner or later track us down based on clues.

"Therefore, we wanted to find a scapegoat.

"We figured we’d let those people fight it out with them... That was the safest route." Lucas’s voice grew quieter and quieter.

"Is that why you sought out Cassia Quinnie in the relief area? Because she was willing to sacrifice everything for her younger brother?" Nina asked.

"Yeah. She was willing to do anything just to earn a bite to eat for Daniel Quinnie. Furthermore, she was prostituting herself every day and had already caught an incurable, filthy disease. She was going to die sooner or later anyway.

"Such willing sacrifice is truly magnificent. Our proposal was simply helping her fulfill her wishes." Lucas had genuinely believed their plan was absolutely perfect.