"You're late, I've already initiated the self-destruct sequence," Scarecrow said to Renault, feeling her decrepit body shudder as Renault landed nearby.
However, her condition obviously didn't match her tone. Just lifting her head took a lot of effort, and even if she didn't self-destruct, she'd probably crash completely in a few minutes.
"It's not my fault. I was keeping track of time. There's still a full fifteen minutes until the two-hour mark. I can't believe you couldn't even last two hours."
"You..." Hearing Renault's mocking tone, Scarecrow was infuriated, wanting to rise and hammer Renault's skull. Unfortunately, she found it difficult to even lift her head, let alone stand up.
"How many seconds until you explode?" Renault asked, watching Scarecrow's eyes turn red, as he reached under his coat.
"Seven..."
"Six..."
Hearing this, Scarecrow smirked and began counting down.
"She's about to blow! Everyone, retreat! Quickly!"
While Renault remained calm, Helian shouted, waving at the Griffin dolls nearby.
"Yeah yeah, got it. No need to remind me. Why don't you take a nap?" Renault said leisurely, already pulling out a weapon resembling a stun gun from under his coat.
"Five..."
As Renault calmly counted down, he disengaged the safety on the stun gun, contrasting sharply with the Griffin dolls hurriedly retreating.
"Four..."
Crack!
Sizzle!
Just as Scarecrow's countdown reached four, Renault pulled the trigger, and a dart-like projectile struck Scarecrow, causing her to lose consciousness with her eyes rolling back.
In addition to losing consciousness, Scarecrow's entire electronic system had crashed, including the ongoing self-destruct program.
However, to ensure nothing went wrong, Renault crouched down and pulled out Scarecrow's neural core from her body.
"Huh!?" Standing not far away, the group of dolls watched Renault's brutal and ruthless actions, covering their neural cores in fear, afraid Renault might come after them next!
With the neural core in hand, Renault glanced down at Scarecrow's body, raised an eyebrow, and then grabbed Scarecrow's ankle, throwing it to an empty place far away!
Boom!
Scarecrow's body, thrown out, exploded into pieces in mid-air!
Unexpectedly, the self-destruct mechanism of Sangvis was separate from the neural core, and not even electromagnetic interference could stop it.
Fortunately, Renault acted quickly; otherwise, things might have turned out differently.
Holding the fist-sized neural core, Renault retrieved a device from his waist pouch to temporarily power it up, connecting it to Scarecrow's neural core.
Although he had forgotten most of the plot, Renault vaguely remembered Scarecrow's self-destruct scene, so he brought this device before coming, and now it came in handy.
Watching Renault casually stash Scarecrow's neural core into his waist pouch, Helian's face darkened instantly.
'You! Couldn't you have informed me before doing such a thing!? How am I supposed to help you conceal it now, with everyone watching!?'
Seeing Renault's series of actions, Helian knew exactly what he was up to—just retrieving the neural core of Scarecrow.
This guy had done such things many times before. He had extorted and deceived many tactical dolls from the Griffin side!
Now, in the end, he didn't even spare the Sangvis-made dolls!
But as she thought about it, Helian's resentment grew. She felt that Renault had never paid much attention to her before than dolls.
Could it be that this man... has some special fondness for dolls?
"Who are you exactly! Leave the core of the Sangvis Doll!"
While Helian was staging an afternoon tv drama internally, on the other side, the dolls who had never seen Renault had already raised their guns, pointing them at Renault and shouted loudly.
Their task was to capture and apprehend this Sangvis Doll and extract more information about Sangvis's movements from its neural core.
But now, they found themselves with a strange man shoving something into their pouches... Is this acceptable? Of course not!
Even without the reminder from their commander, these dolls quickly surrounded Renault, fearing he might escape.
On the other side, Papasha and others under Gentiane's command looked at Renault in confusion, unsure whether to aim their weapons at him.
Helian also regained her senses under the shouts and actions of those dolls, but in the current situation, she couldn't bring herself to say anything.
After all, in the eyes of the other Griffin commanders, Renault was just an unidentified person sticking his nose where it didn't belong.
Helian and Gentiane hesitated on this side, but the other commander on the other side didn't hesitate at all.
Seeing Renault without any weapons in hand at the moment, they directly commanded their dolls.
"Capture him!"
With clear orders, several gun-wielding dolls no longer hesitated, joining their companions and a large number of puppet dolls, closing in on Renault.
Meanwhile, in the tactical command room, seeing those dolls closing in on Renault, Gentiane couldn't help but shake her head in dismay.
"Commander, aren't we going to let Papasha and the others help?"
Kalina who stood beside Gentiane asked in confusion, seeing Gentiane seemingly hesitant to give orders.
Although Renault had come to deliver a batch of supplies to them before, the current situation seemed unavoidable. After all, Renault had just snatched Scarecrow's neural core from under the noses of a group of dolls and Helianthus.
Moreover, it was just a capture operation, so there shouldn't be any problem, right?
"Help? Forget it. I don't want Papasha and the others to come back for major repairs. Don't forget how Renault just appeared," Gentiane told her, pointing to the tiltrotor hovering above Renault and others which had now slowed down.
"He just... jumped down from... from the helicopter...? Is he still human!? Even a Doll would have turned into scrap metal doing that, right!?"
As the words came out, Kalina realized something.
The tiltrotor had just sped past Papasha and the others!
And Renault had fallen from high altitude in that situation...