The ghoul let out a scream of agony and rolled frantically on the ground.
The ghouls behind it tried to climb over their comrade's charred remains, only for their own hyphae to be ignited as well.
One after another, they caught fire.
The entire narrow passage entrance was transformed into a furnace.
The veteran missing a pinky stood to the side, giving Lu Yuan a short nod.
This side was holding firm; the slag's effects were surprisingly good, to say nothing of the copper powder.
On the main front, the greater ghouls finally made their move.
The first one squeezed into the passage entrance, its keratinous armor scraping against the walls with a piercing screech as it charged toward the military formation.
After everything that had happened, Heinrich was clearly seething with rage.
Seeing the approaching greater ghoul, he didn't retreat but stepped forward instead.
“Condense!”
Heinrich let out a furious roar.
The four men in the back row closed their eyes simultaneously.
The holy light inscriptions on their armor flared brilliantly, and all the light surged along the inscription chains toward a single point—Heinrich.
Golden energy gathered upon him, and dense patterns of light surfaced on his armor.
He drew an elongated longsword, the blade erupting with holy light.
He took a single step forward.
The longsword swept in a horizontal cleave.
The blade of gold-white light sliced through the greater ghoul's neck. Before the condensed holy light, the keratinous armor shattered like over-fired pottery, and the light blade cut clean through.
The head flew into the air.
The grey-red muscle at the cross-section was instantly carbonized by the holy light.
Black blood erupted.
The headless torso lunged forward two more steps before crashing to the ground.
A single strike.
The glow on the armor of the four in the back row dimmed slightly.
The second greater ghoul stopped in its tracks.
Something flickered in its pale white eyes; it had clearly learned a lesson from the first one's death.
It changed its route, flanking the battlefield by crawling along the wall of the catchment basin, heading straight for Bolen.
Wolf blocked its path.
He had already finished charging his full-body Forging.
Dark red patterns covered his entire body—his cheeks, the backs of his hands.
Something was burning beneath every inch of his skin.
The air he exhaled carried faint sparks, and every step he took left a charred footprint on the copper floor.
His shortsword was no longer dark red; it was a bright orange-red, like an iron billet fresh from the forge.
The greater ghoul lunged.
Its forelimb swiped down.
Wolf didn't even dodge; he 'smashed' the shortsword directly into its head.
The moment the shortsword pierced the creature, Pure Fire poured from the blade into the greater ghoul's body.
The ghoul's grey-red muscle fibers carbonized and burst within the flames, and the hyphae were incinerated through and through.
Starting from the wound, the greater ghoul's body began to carbonize from the inside out.
Cracks spread across the keratinous armor, and black carbonized powder poured from the fissures.
The entire body collapsed, crumbling into a heap of charred remains.
Wolf kicked the remaining corpse aside.
His eyes stared coldly into the distance.
Lu Yuan watched from the rear.
If the charging speed were faster... the Iron Guard would be even more terrifying.
The number of ghouls pouring in began to dwindle.
Without the greater ghouls to command them, the coordinated attacks of the vanguard-types quickly fell apart, leaving them to fight individually.
Heinrich directed the Holy Armored Army to clear them out in batches.
The Iron Guard followed up with finishing blows on the flanks—one kill every two strikes, clean and efficient.
The passage terrain was a natural meat grinder; the light curtain in the front suppressed and slowed them, while the furnace fire on the sides harvested them with precision.
With a limited number of enemies entering at once, the defenders held an absolute advantage.
The battle lasted for about twenty minutes.
The rhythm grew increasingly relaxed.
Bolen finished the engraving.
The blue-white shimmer turned from flickering to steady, from dim to bright.
The inscriptions lit up section by section on the surface of the copper frame, and dark gold lines extended from the frame, spreading along the copper structure to the walls of the passage entrance.
The sealing inscriptions were activated.
In the areas where the inscriptions lit up on the copper-lined walls, the hyphae shriveled, withered, and peeled away frantically.
The ghouls attempting to rush in seemed to hit an invisible wall; their skin began to smoke, and they retreated with panicked howls.
It was sealed.
Bolen pulled his hands away from the copper frame.
His entire body toppled backward, and Kail caught him.
The old man's face was as white as paper, but his eyes were bright.
“It's done.”
Lu Yuan walked to the copper frame and pressed his palm against it.
The residual heat of the dark gold inscriptions remained, and the copper surface felt slightly warm against his palm.
The flow of the inscription lines entered his perception through his palm.
【You have witnessed the Inscription Reverse-Engraving Method... This is a special technique where inscriptions hidden within an object are engraved on the outside, significantly enhancing their effect... however, they are extremely susceptible to damage...】
【Inscription (Basic): +0.3... 0.9/10】
【Forbidden Lore: Knowledge Seeker: +0.3... 17.5/100】
The battle was over.
They checked their status; no one had died.
Bolen was mentally exhausted, but Kail said he just needed to rest.
“The losses are smaller than expected.” Heinrich walked over, shearing his copper sword. “The passage terrain helped immensely.”
Wolf gave a nod.
“The furnace fire consumption was thirty percent lower than estimated. My men still have strength left.”
Lu Yuan didn't respond immediately.
He stood in the center of the catchment basin, his gaze sweeping over the surroundings.
The right passage entrance was sealed by the glowing inscriptions.
At the two small passages on the left, the slag was still burning slowly, but new hyphae were already poking out from the gaps at the edges.
Directly opposite, at the maintenance passage, the copper powder was gradually changing color under the corrosion of the hyphae.
“Bolen,” Lu Yuan said. “How long will your inscriptions hold?”
“As long as the copper frame isn't physically destroyed, at least three months,” Bolen answered, leaning on Kail.
“However, since this one draws power from the Bronze City, it should theoretically last much longer.”
“And the other three entrances?”
Bolen shook his head at the sight.
“Those are mostly stone; there’s too little copper. More importantly, I’ve observed that those structures aren't connected to the Bronze City. My inscriptions there would be worn away within two days at most.”
“Then how do we solve this now?” Bo Er cut in.
“If that thing can find another way around, it’ll just go out through the other vertical shafts. Doesn't that make what we've done here useless?”
Lu Yuan looked at the pulsing cross-section of the main trunk vine.
“Bo Er is right. Furthermore, this is only a sub-core. The main body connected to this thing is even deeper. As long as the main core exists, new nodes will grow sooner or later.”
He turned to Wolf and Heinrich.
“Your men are in good condition. Now that this passage is sealed by inscriptions, no new ghouls will pour in from that direction. Our pressure is minimal.”
“I want to follow this thing deeper for a bit and see what's on the other end.”
Wolf glanced at the main trunk vine.
“How deep?”
“Confirm the direction of the main core, then come back. Half an hour at most.”
Heinrich thought for a moment.
“Very well. Bolen stays here. I'll leave two men to guard him, and the rest will follow.”
Wolf didn't object either.
“The full Iron Guard will follow.”
Lu Yuan nodded.
Just as he was about to give the order to set out—
Something was wrong.
Lu Yuan's thoughts were interrupted.
It wasn't a sound that stopped him, but a sensation.
One coming up through the soles of his feet.
A pulsing.
It was getting stronger.
Rapidly stronger.
Lu Yuan looked down.
The main trunk vine—it was swelling.
The vein-like patterns bulged at a visible rate, as if something were surging inside, pouring frantically from the depths toward this point.
On the other side of the sealed passage entrance, through the dark gold light curtain, something was glowing in the darkness.
A grey-green light.
Not just a single point.
But a massive area.
At the base of that vine, in the few minutes they had spent discussing their plan to go deeper, a new flower bud had been forcibly grown.
The bud appeared out of nowhere and swelled to over a man's height within seconds. Dense grey-green veins surfaced on its exterior, emitting an eerie fluorescence in the dark.
It heard us.
This thought struck Lu Yuan's mind like a bolt of lightning.
Can this thing fucking understand human speech?
The moment the vein patterns on the bud's surface swelled to their limit, they all lit up at once.
Grey-green fluorescence erupted from every vein, gathering into a visible ripple that expanded outward from the bud.
The moment the shockwave swept through the catchment basin, Lu Yuan felt as if a needle had been driven directly into his temple.
【Warning: Extremely strong Sanity pollution detected...】
【Sanity: -5... 110/120】
Lu Yuan took a step back, his head ringing.
But Lu Yuan was the only one still standing.
The others didn't possess such high Sanity.
Wolf's body stiffened for a moment, and the dark red patterns on him flickered violently. The heat that had been radiating from him vanished instantly.
The flickering firelight on his body gradually dissipated.
Wolf bent over, hands on his knees, gasping for air.
Three members of the Iron Guard were forced down to one knee.
Heinrich's formation fared even worse; the holy light of the four men in the back row dimmed by half almost simultaneously, the light trembling violently under the impact of the pollution.
It was clear that the Holy Armored Army was inferior to the Iron Guard when it came to resisting Sanity shocks.
Bolen lay motionless in Kail's arms.
Kail himself was pale-faced.
Bo Er leaned against the passage wall, his face white and his expression twisted.
Lu Yuan looked around.
Everyone.
Aside from him, everyone had been dazed to varying degrees.
It's afraid.
That was Lu Yuan's second thought.
It wasn't attacking.
It was trying to stop them from going deeper.
That bud had been quiet throughout their entire battle.
It had been quiet while they discussed the inscriptions, tallied their casualties, and organized their gear.
It only exploded the moment they decided to push deeper along the vine.
It was fear.
It's afraid—afraid we'll find the main core.
It should be at its weakest right now.
“Everyone, drink your Sanity potions! Now!” Lu Yuan shouted.
Wolf was the first to react, pulling a small vial from his coat and gulping it down.
The Iron Guard soldiers followed suit.
Heinrich took the Holy Armored Army's standard-issue potions from his waist pouch and distributed them to his men.
Bo Er also downed a bottle.
Lu Yuan didn't drink one himself.
At 110 points, he was perfectly fine.
About thirty seconds later, the effects of the potions began to show.
Wolf straightened his back. The dark red patterns stabilized, though they were a shade lighter than before.
The Holy Armored Army's formation restored its basic energy chain, but the light was noticeably weaker than before.
The dark red patterns on the shortswords of two Iron Guard soldiers had gone out completely; their furnace fire was exhausted.
Lu Yuan assessed everyone's condition.
This team couldn't do it anymore.
The plan to push deeper was impossible.
But he didn't intend to just leave.
At the edge of his vision, grey-white text flickered.
【Environmental Perception: Pollution concentration is dropping rapidly...】
Looking at the prompt, Lu Yuan suddenly realized something.
This green vine itself didn't seem particularly powerful.
When they first entered, the vines spreading out could be crushed with a single stomp.
Even the sub-core in the catchment basin could be easily pierced by a copper sword.
It only held out a bit longer when being burned by mithril.
So, if I can land a strike before it recovers... I don't need to kill the main core. I just need to wound it severely enough so it can't grow new nodes for several months...
Lu Yuan made his decision.
Rate on N.U.
