Chapter 99: Meomi
"Come out! Come out, little giraffe. I know where you are hiding~!" Meomi crackled her whip in the middle of the apartment building. She could smell where Jing Ru was, and even hear her breathing. This was more fun than pointing her out directly for she could taste the fear in Jing Ru's scent with every step she took.
"Do yourself a favour and surrender to me. Perhaps I will give you a quick death rather than torturing you." Meomi catwalk slowly towards the room in which Jing Ru was hiding. It was a four room flat that Jing Ru was hiding in and there was nothing special to that particular apartment.
That was what Jing Ru wanted Meomi to think, at least. Although her sack of items was left in the higher floors of the apartment building, she still had two storage rings with her that were equipped with various items. Jing Ru then purposely chose three levels lower after she found that the Cat was not chasing after her and decided to hold her position in a vacated apartment. Meomi got a little irritated that the Giraffe decided to hide instead of running down to the first floor like what a normal scared human would have done so.
This misjudgement was what Jing Ru needed to prep the apartment to her advantage as much as she could. Anything in the apartment that she felt was useful, she placed in strategic places whilst also hiding them in plain sight. Even though she knew this was just a dungeon instance, she still felt somewhat guilty towards the house owners if they knew what was going to happen next.
"Giraffeeeee~!" Meomi knew Jing Ru was scared of her but not stupid enough to not have a few tricks to counter her. If she was hiding in the room, she would definitely have barricaded it sufficiently to block a frontal attack.
However, who said that cats liked to bash through the front door? They preferred the windows!
On that thought, Meomi jumped out of the window of the living room, trailing around the apartment walls and finally found the room where Jing Ru's scent was the densest.
"Found you~!" Meomi thought to herself as she peeked through the window and observed the room barricaded with a cupboard. Jing Ru was behind a table facing the door while hiding under a piece of blanket. There were a bunch of clothes lying on the table untidily and Meomi felt that it was an attempt to distract her senses and smell.
"Good try, giraffe but I have other stuff to do. I can only afford this much time with you." Meomi rolled her whip around her hands and prepared to use that to strangle Jing Ru, effectively only using one swift strike.
The moment Meomi saw some movement under the blankets, she broke the glass and pounced right at them. Her swift paws wrapped the whip around Jing Ru's head but instead of strangling, it seemed that Meomi had used too much force and Jing Ru was decapitated.
"BANG!" The rifle sound was piercing loud but Meomi could not understand where it came from until she saw blood oozing through her chest.
"BANG!" The angle of the shot was readjusted and Jing Ru once again squeezed the trigger. The only difference was that this time, the bullet flew through the head of the stunned werecat.
With whatever remaining consciousness Meomi still had, she realised that the decapitated head was a dummy and Jing Ru was hiding in a corner of the room beside a number of stuffed toys. She purposely placed her clothes at random locations in the room to distract Meomi's detection, just as Meomi had predicted.
However, Jing Ru did not give the werecat any chances and kept shooting at her. She remembered the previous cat lady had her wounds healed and skin regenerated at a tremendous pace.
With shots littered into the seemingly dead body of the cat, Jing Ru removed the cupboard slightly, giving herself enough space to leave the room. But before Jing Ru left, she tied a raffia string to the pin of the grenade and pulled it when she left the room. She hastily dashed out of the apartment and was safe from the imminent explosion
"That was easier than I thought. I did not expect her to die that quickly. I guess she really dropped her guard the moment she took my 'head' off". Jing Ru returned to the apartment and collected the weapons she had hidden all around the apartment before she left the building and search for another vantage point, preferably one without werecats ready to kill her.
The panda police heard the commotion and started to cordon off the area. They initially wanted to arrest Jing Ru as she was unwilling to turn over her weapons but Captain Bai was coincidentally around, and he let Jing Ru continue with the mission.
Separately, Xue Ping had a rather easy time handling the wyrm ants. A few punches were all that was needed to pacify the ants. True, the fire and ice projectiles were a shocker at first but Xue Ping had her fair share of troubles in her line of work. Once the ants were pummelled into the ground as ant juice, she decided to proceed to the top floor.
However, there was something in the ants that caught her attention. There was a metal casing that survived Xue Ping's punches in ice wyrm ant's abdomen. She fished it out of the ant's stomach and went to a nearby toilet to wash the metal casing.
There were no dents nor cuts on the metal casing, which indicated that the metal casing could not have been bitten by the wyrm ants. She remembered how the ant's mouth was strong enough to leave a scratch on her power fist.
She assumed someone implanted it into the ant. Unfortunately, it was locked so she kept it in her storage ring as she continued to the top floor. Perhaps, she might return later to check on the other ant since Xue Ping suddenly had a bad premonition.
Meanwhile, on the top floor, Yue Wen and the remainder of Foxtrot B saw a well-groomed human with bright gold hair standing unrestrained near the windows of the CEO office. There was no one else other than him in the office and his attire showed that he was just a normal businessman.
"Welcome, ladies to the final stage." Gold licked his lollipop and pointed it at them. "I hope you are as sweet as this lollipop."