Chapter 1035: Escape and Agreement

The T-1000, which was currently tangled up with the Chinese parasol tree Ent, suddenly broke free with a burst of power, and smashed a fierce punch into the Ent’s core!

Between the splaterring of broken bark pieces, the fist which had pierced into the Ent had transformed into a hammer and mercilessly broken apart most of the Ent’s body with loud cracking noises. Cracks appeared on the Ent, and even the beating heart of the Ent was exposed. So long as the T-1000 striked once more, the Chinese parasol tree Ent would be killed for sure.

At this time, however, a spiral-shaped mark, which looked somewhat like a radar antenna, appeared on the T-1000’s head. It seemed to pause for a second. After that, snake-like strands of electricity appeared on the surface of its body and assembled into a glowing, transparent shield!

This transparent, crystal-like substance covered the entire surface of the T-1000’s body. The moment the transparent shield appeared, those evil spirits sent by Mr. Darkness screamed and turned into dust. The part of the Ent’s body that was in contact with the T-1000 went up in flames due to high temperature, as if the T-1000 had suddenly turned into a red-hot chunk of metal.

Then, T-1000 gave a deep look to Sheyan, as if it was trying to engrave Sheyan’s appearance in the bottom of his heart, then jumped into the woods nearby at an amazing speed. The trees it touched immediately burned.

Sheyan’s pupils contracted. He immediately followed after the Terminator. Along the way, he could see a humanoid-shaped passage burned through the woods. The trail of deep red embers and tongues of flames were clearly seen, but the Terminator’s figure was no longer visible.

When Sheyan came out of the woods, what he saw was a public square connected to streets. A large number of civilians were gathering and whispering in shock. Seeing this scene, Sheyan immediately knew today’s hunt had ended in a failure. The T-1000 could shapeshift into any human form at will, so to look for it in the crowd was akin to searching for a needle in a haystack.

Suddenly, the party communication channel was switched on and Reef’s urgent voice could be heard.

“Boss, are you all right? We’ve taken care of those steel monsters; we’ll come and help now.”

Sheyan immediately understood the reason why the T-1000 had fled. It had probably received some kind of signal from its subordinates and knew that they were about to be destroyed, so it quickly retreated. It’s judgement of the battle situation was truly astonishing.

Sheyan pondered for a moment and quickly recovered from his initial disappointment from the failure of the hunt.

He spoke into the party channel, “It’s okay, you don’t have to rush over. Tidy up the battlefield carefully and don’t miss anything. When you guys destroyed all the conventional Terminators, the T-1000 had probably received news about that, so it ran away.”

The rest of Party Ace was shocked to hear that, but when they thought about it carefully, they found that its action made sense. The T-1000’s AI was really cunning; even the intelligence of the average human may not necessarily be as smart. Strictly speaking, with the T-1000’s AI, it would have been strange if the Terminator did not run away in the face of a disadvantage; it may very well have decided to self-explode if it did that.

Sheyan did not even need to bandage his wounds thanks to the treatment of Melody’s ‘Rejuvenation’ spell .The wounds healed at a speed visible to the naked eye. After waiting for less than three minutes, the rest of Party Ace arrived. Mogensha and Reef were of course already quite familiar with Melody, so they greeted each other as soon as they met. Mogensha also took the opportunity to introduce Melody to Zi….

Sheyan’s expression and situation at this time was of course extremely awkward. Fortunately, he was good at diverting attention, so he immediately introduced Mr. Darkness to the other members of the party, then explained Mr. Darkness’ proposal.

It should be noted that Mr. Darkness had immediately disappeared when he saw the other members of Party Ace arrive. He was evidently wary of Party Ace suddenly ganging up on him. The one that appeared in front of them at the moment was just an illusion which Mr. Darkness created from burning a dead bat.

Reef was more familiar with this kind of negotiation for help. When he was a party leader, he had also received various such requests from others. After a battle of words, Reef and Mogensha clearly pointed out the essence of the matter — if the negotiation failed, Mr. Darkness’ party, called the Five Wheels, would lose the opportunity for two contestants to advance to powerful Awakeners, while Party Ace would only risk failing a mission!

Party Ace had a strong foundation, so they could afford to gamble and lose, while the weakness of the Five Wheels was in the grasp of the enemy!

Under such an unfavourable condition, all negotiation experts and negotiating skills were useless. Under Mogensha’s constant threat to break up the negotiation and “launch an all-out war with each other”, and Reef’s mediations in a timely manner, Mr. Darkness could only sigh after the initial phase of stubborn resistance. He had no choice but to agree to a string of unreasonable and unfair conditions in return for Party Ace’s promise of their help.

These unfair and humiliating conditions included ones such as that the Five Wheels party would not seek vengeance or compensation in any form for the previous “misunderstanding”, the Five Wheels party must pay 120,000 utility points to Party Ace as remuneration, the the Five Wheels party must help Sheyan complete his mission free of charge, the two parties could not attack each other during the cooperation period, and so on and so forth….

This agreement was notarised by the nightmare imprint. After reaching an agreement between them, Mr. Darkness went back to his party to make preparations. From that point on, every time Zi’s gaze fell on Sheyan or Melody, Sheyan would break out in cold sweat.

The group returned to the hiding place which served as their temporary base. In order to break the ice over the atmosphere that was getting increasingly awkward, Reef sighed in an exaggerated manner and said, “The problem has gotten really troublesome. Now that the T-1000 has escaped, it’s trail won’t be that easy to track. And Mr. John Connor, the mission target of the T-1000, is traveling around the world in his mother’s belly, so even we can’t find him. That means the only bait we have is out of our control.”

Zi stepped forward and said nonchalantly, “The T-1000 is not necessarily impossible to track. From the behaviour pattern of the invading Terminators this time, we can deduce that Skynet had probably injected into them a hatred for human beings. The T-1000 will surely kill people everywhere it goes. If the T-1000 hides in a crowded place, there should be a series of vicious murder around it! We just need to follow this trail.”

Mogensha’s eyes lit up when he heard that.

“Remember, the powers of the Five Wheels party members are really mysterious. Those two members of theirs supposedly broke into Cyberdyne to communicate with and collect vengeful spirits. Since we’ve reached a cooperative agreement with them, maybe we can get their help to talk to the ghosts killed by the T-1000 in order to get more information on it.”

Sheyan nodded approvingly.

“You’re right. We can use all that as an effective supplementary method in our pursuit of the T-1000. But remember, the T-1000 is nothing more than a robot programmed by Skynet. We can naturally make it walk into our trap if we target its ultimate purpose in coming to this era.”

“You mean we should work around John Connor, boss? But we don’t know the whereabouts of his mother,” questioned Mogensha in doubt.

Sheyan smiled. “Fortunately, neither does the T-1000! The T-1000’s information sources are probably limited to the Internet, the phone and the news. But even so, it’ll tirelessly search for the whereabouts of Ms. Adess’ family. The tenacity and perseverance of a Terminator is not to be underestimated.”

“That’s why…we should spread a large amount of false information about Ms. Adess in the sources that the T-1000 may come into contact with. Not only can we cover up their real tracks by doing this, and we can also mix our own trap into these false information! When the T-1000 verify each of them, it’ll unluckily step into our trap again!”

“But don’t forget about those Terminators that are lurking among the humans. They may be enlisted by the T-1000 for help, so our trap could end up ensnaring one of them instead. If that happens, we’ll scare our real prey away,” said Sanzi with a frown.

“Even if the T-1000 knows it’s a trap, as long as there’s a shred of possibility of finding John Connor, the T-1000 will willingly jump into it without any hesitation,” said Sheyan assertively, “Although the T-1000 possesses some human emotions, its behavioral patterns are ultimately still governed by the robotic programs Skynet implanted in it.”

Dr. Dolittle walked in at that moment. He had just collected an abundance of battle data on the T-1000 through the devices and camera on Sheyan. He seemed to have obtained some results from his study.

“I have good news and bad news. Which would you like to hear first?”

“The bad news,” replied Sheyan decisively.

“The bad news is that the two hidden abilities used by the T-1000 in the last fight were likely newly installed by Skynet. The next time you encounter it, the abilities will still be available.”

“And the good news?” asked Sheyan with this brows furrowed.

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