The Withered Claw twitched violently, suddenly seizing a strand of white shadow.
Ren Yi didn't even glance at it, silently piecing that sliver of white shadow back together.
The backlash of the Withered Claw was, naturally, ineffective against him.
At this moment, he was immersed in grief.
The pointer was currently directed toward an incredibly distant location.
The distance was impossible to judge on a normal scale; Ren Yi only knew it was vaguely to the north.
The Beacon was not among the pile of "mystery boxes" B-117 had dropped.
It was either with the City Lord or Dr. Cyril, having completed an ultra-long-distance jump in an instant along with that damned B-119 elevator.
In that moment, Ren Yi felt as if his mental sea of consciousness had completely blacked out.
What did it mean to have cursed luck?
Ten-pulls ruin lives, and single-pulls changing one's fate—it's all a lie!
This was the physical manifestation of "missing by a hair, losing by a thousand miles."
Of course, Ren Yi's grief did not last long.
Battlefields never leave time for the unlucky to wipe their tears.
"Vroom—"
As the City Lord completed his spatial shift via the B-119 elevator, the "anti-S-099 special annihilation zone" surrounding that high-and-mighty figure vanished the moment the elevator doors locked tight.
In an instant, the monster was liberated from its suppression.
The black tide, which had been forcibly leveled and pushed back by the Law of Annihilation, paused visibly the moment the zone disappeared.
Broken tentacles, gore, and the crests of the black waves trembled slightly in the void.
It seemed to realize that the only existence capable of threatening it had departed.
The flesh ground together, seemingly with a hint of resentment.
However, the expected instantaneous flood and filling did not occur.
These black-red viscous solid-liquid hybrid matters defied the laws of physics, hovering around the narrow void.
They did not scatter in flight as fluid mechanics would dictate; instead, they stood like walls of living, undulating flesh, sealing Ren Yi and staff member B-117 in the center.
The waves above had completely closed up.
The fleshy filaments hanging from the vents and ceiling cracks intertwined and bonded in a very short time, eventually enclosing the entire upper space of the control room like an abyssal dome of black and red.
The small space within was cold and deathly silent.
Only the floating Ren Yi, the collapsed B-117, and the scattered, useless metal cases remained.
S-099 did not move.
The moment the City Lord vanished, the massive sea of flesh had clearly flared with violent agitation.
It had raised waves several meters high countless times, slamming against the armor of the elevator shaft and even twisting the solid alloy shaft into a knot.
At this point, Ren Yi no longer needed to make any further guesses.
There was likely some kind of resonance between S-099 and that high-and-mighty figure from the City of the Sky Lake.
Its sudden awakening and its frantic riot might have been intended from the very beginning to welcome—or rather, to tear apart—that high-and-mighty figure.
But now, the figure was gone.
After a brief moment of fury, this behemoth quickly turned its attention back to the prey trapped in the hall.
"Squelch... squelch..."
The viscous waves crawled slowly, and Ren Yi inexplicably sensed a playful, leisurely mockery from its rhythmic movements.
This thing... isn't it a bit too human?
Just then, B-117, lying in the cold pool of blood, finally realized her situation completely.
The elevator that could have taken her out of hell had left; she had been abandoned here.
And her proud equipment and exoskeleton armor were as thin as tissue paper before the walls of flesh that could crush a heavy tank into scrap metal.
"No... don't come any closer... Lord City Lord! Doctor! Take me with you! Take me away!"
Extreme fear shattered all of the senior staff member's sanity in an instant.
Her face turned pale and distorted within a second, her delicate features scrunched together in despair.
She screamed, her slender fingers frantically clawing at the alloy floor, leaving bloody streaks behind.
In the next second, she went insane.
In a dead-end with no retreat, the human brain often produces absurd reactions that only accelerate death.
B-117 stared fixedly at the incomprehensible S-099, her cognition completely fractured.
She snapped her head around, her bloodshot eyes locking onto Ren Yi floating in the air.
"It's you, you monster! Die! Just die!"
She let out a roar that didn't sound human, pushing off the ground as her exoskeleton armor instantly overloaded.
With trembling hands, she drew her sidearm—a high-frequency energy gun—and pulled the trigger frantically at Ren Yi, ignoring any semblance of trajectory.
"Zing! Zing! Zing!"
Azure high-energy particle beams crisscrossed within the narrow black dome, tearing the air with sharp, explosive pops.
Facing this frantic barrage, Ren Yi didn't even blink.
He dodged like a phantom wisp of smoke, letting the energy bolts blast a few insignificant holes in the wall of meat behind him.
"Tsk," Ren Yi looked down at her from above.
"It seems... my appearance isn't as impactful as S-099's after all."
"If you had put this much effort into fighting S-099, I might have respected you... You can't handle the big one, so you decide to take it out on me?"
However, the audience had clearly grown tired of this farce performed by a lunatic.
Just as B-117 was about to empty her energy clips, the silent waves of flesh around them pulsed gently.
"Slap."
It was a small wave of black, not even half a meter high.
It slowly emerged from the base of the meat wall and slapped down with a casual speed.
The movement was incredibly flippant, like a massive cat lazily raising a paw before a feast.
It lightly toyed with the poor mouse already pinned under its paw, a mouse whose heart had long since been shattered by fear.
Unfortunately, S-099's movements were far more devastating than any feline's.
And B-117, the mouse, was far more fragile than it imagined.
The moment the wave fell, the gunfire ceased.
The screaming B-117 didn't even finish her last syllable before she was swallowed whole by that ink-like black-red torrent, like a speck of dust.
Along with her, the specialized metal cases filled with Safe-class anomalies scattered across the floor sank into the black tide's stomach amidst a chorus of slimy corrosion.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Inside the black void, only Ren Yi remained, floating in mid-air.
S-099 seemed to have finally finished this game of cat and mouse.
Ren Yi felt it "gaze" at him for a moment, and the hovering black walls began to press down faster, the space on all sides contracting.
S-099's mass converged on Ren Yi from all directions.
Facing the dead-end of a four-sided encirclement, Ren Yi did not try to penetrate the thick walls of flesh.
S-099's intentions had always been a bit strange.
For instance, the parts of Ren Yi's body it had "eaten" were still safely inside it; they just couldn't get out.
It seemed that, rarely, it didn't want to "consume," but to "capture."
But that didn't mean Ren Yi would go along with its wishes.
"Illusions require deceiving sight and sound, but does this thing even have proper eyes and ears..."
Ren Yi calculated calmly in his mind.
He felt the pressure closing in, the air itself being sucked dry by that briny tide.
Ren Yi took a deep breath and connected with another strand of perception.
There, at the very bottom of S-099's massive frame, was an extremely tiny but stubbornly flickering shadow.
Simultaneously, he invoked the 【Let the World Feel Pain Together】 Bead within him.
S-099 wanted to capture his main body from the outside.
In that case...
Ren Yi closed his eyes, a violent and manic curve slowly curling within the mist.
It's time to show it... true art!
Rate on N.U.
