Chapter 241 | Transmigrated with a Sanity Gauge

Lake stopped.

It was sudden.

The writhing grey humanoid mass in front of them froze, every tentacle stiffening at once.

The pipe network fell silent.

Kraus's hand was already resting on his waist.

Lake's voice emerged from his body of meat-worms, carrying a hint of gravity.

“Kraus.”

“I smell danger.”

All four of them stopped simultaneously.

Kraus didn't speak; he simply tilted his chin slightly, signaling Lake to continue.

Lake pointed a tentacle toward a junction ahead. All the "fingers" made of worms straightened at once, as if drawn by something.

“More than one.”

Lake's voice paused for a moment.

“At least three. They're all ahead.”

He tilted his head again.

“No, wait. There are two more behind us.”

Five.

Three in front, two behind. They were surrounded.

The tunnel was so quiet that the sound of liquid flowing deep within the copper walls was audible.

Then, a voice spoke from the darkness.

“It is an honor to meet you, Vice Director Kraus.”

The voice came from ahead.

It carried a distorted echo, sounding as if two people were speaking at once with a slight delay between them.

Three figures emerged from the darkness.

They were the same kind of entities that had attacked Lu Yuan before—their skin flickered, constantly blending with the environment, their silhouettes appearing and disappearing.

Lu Yuan's pupils constricted. It was indeed the same group.

But these three were not fully invisible.

They had revealed themselves intentionally.

The one in the middle was slightly taller, and the shifting colors on his body were denser and faster than those of the two flanking him.

He looked at Kraus.

“I need that stone in your possession.”

His tone was somewhat conversational, as if he were carefully choosing his words.

“Once we have it, we will leave the Bronze City immediately. I guarantee we will pose no threat to you.”

He paused.

“Furthermore, we will help you clear out those vermin you find inconvenient to deal with yourselves.”

Kraus looked at the three of them.

His hands hung at his sides, motionless.

But Lu Yuan noticed that the patterns on the bone-colored ring on his left ring finger were beginning to glow very slowly.

“So it really is you.”

Kraus's voice wasn't loud, but a cold glint flashed in his eyes.

“The Grey Covenant.”

He spoke the name with a trace of disdain.

“The Empire has been hunting you for so long, yet there are still some who slipped through the net.”

His gaze swept over the three of them.

“However, I am curious. How did you manage to bypass my arrangements and sneak into the Bronze City?”

“Let me guess. Who helped you? That fool von Klein? Or the Viscount behind him?”

The shifting colors on the leader's body began to move faster. Clearly, he realized that Kraus was not open to negotiation.

“Vice Director Kraus, that is not something I can say.”

“But if you give me the stone, I can reveal the names of those who have sided with us as an additional condition.”

He sounded as if he were conducting a business transaction.

“I imagine that would help you clear out another batch of vermin.”

Kraus gave a cold smile.

“It seems you are in a hurry.”

“Is this stone that important to you?”

His tone suddenly shifted.

“Since it's so important, why don't you stay and have a proper talk with me?”

As soon as the words left his mouth...

Kraus's aura exploded.

Greyish-white text danced frantically at the edge of Lu Yuan's vision.

【Target Detected: Kraus (Eerie Transcendent)】

【A human who has traveled so far into the eerie domain yet maintains such a level of purity. Truly rare. Perhaps he would have been more suited for the Believer Pathway.】

【Environmental Perception: High-risk eerie pollution source detected... Please use caution...】

The moment Lu Yuan saw the text, he instinctively took two steps back.

But he didn't look away from Kraus.

He wanted to see exactly what it looked like when a Rank 4 Eerie Transcendent fought.

Kraus did not transform.

He didn't explode from the inside out to reveal non-human parts like Lake.

He looked exactly the same.

The dark shirt, the rolled-up sleeves, the physique of a normal man.

Only a faint green glow surfaced in his eyes.

Every movement he made left a faint afterimage.

It looked as if there were two Krauses layered together, one moving a fraction of a second slower than the other.

This was Rank 4.

Before Lu Yuan could observe more...

Lake's body exploded at the exact same moment Kraus's aura surged.

This transformation was a disintegration.

His humanoid silhouette collapsed completely, and a torrent of countless grey meat-worms erupted from his position, sweeping forward along the walls, floor, and ceiling of the pipe network.

The three members of the Grey Covenant seemed to have anticipated this.

The moment Kraus moved, the three figures flickered simultaneously, blending into the environment and vanishing instantly.

Immediately after... from behind.

Behind Lu Yuan.

Dozens of black spheres shot out from the shadows.

A foul stench hit him.

They were identical to the ones that had attacked him before.

The black spheres weren't aimed at Lu Yuan.

They were all flying toward Kraus and Lake.

The two hiding in the rear had finally made their move.

Lu Yuan made a split-second judgment.

Getting caught in a battle of this level was a death sentence.

He threw Bolen over his shoulder.

Bolen was about to say something...

“Don't speak!”

His consciousness dove into his chest.

He triggered it.

【Timekeeper · Acceleration (Activated)】

【Sanity: -1... -1... 48/120】

The world slowed down.

Carrying Bolen, Lu Yuan ran back the way they came at full speed.

The pipe network tunnels receded rapidly in his accelerated vision.

The sounds behind him were stretched and distorted.

The dull thuds of the black spheres impacting, the hissing of the worm tide, the sharp screech of metal clashing—everything blurred together.

Lu Yuan glanced back while running.

The scene in his accelerated vision looked like a frozen frame.

Kraus had already caught someone.

He didn't see how Kraus had closed the distance, only the result: Kraus's hand, shimmering with afterimages and green light, had grabbed one of the three by the head and slammed him into the copper wall.

BOOM!

The copper wall shattered, fragments slowly scattering in his accelerated vision.

Then Kraus's hand suddenly tightened.

The head deformed within his palm.

Black liquid splashed from between his fingers, stretching into long threads in the air.

It burst.

Kraus had crushed the man's head outright.

There was no hesitation, no holding back.

His next move followed immediately as his other hand lunged directly into the chest cavity of the headless corpse.

Lu Yuan retracted his gaze and stopped looking.

He kept running.

The acceleration lasted for about fifteen seconds.

His Sanity was being drained bit by bit. That familiar sensation of something in his brain being eaten away returned.

【Timekeeper · Acceleration (Deactivated)】

【Sanity: 40/120】

Lu Yuan set Bolen down.

The old man's face was pale. He leaned on his cane and bent over, gasping for breath.

“You... you run too fast...”

Lu Yuan didn't respond.

He turned to look back the way they had come.

Hundreds of meters away.

The pipe network tunnel had changed.

Lake's sea of worms filled the entire passage.

From floor to ceiling, from the left wall to the right, countless grey meat-worms were piled together, forming a living wall.

He could see nothing else.

The battlefield was completely sealed off.

Lu Yuan had just begun to breathe a sigh of relief.

Then, the sound reached them.

It wasn't the sound of fighting.

It was a kind of low murmuring.

The worms clearly weren't making any noise, yet he could feel it.

The moment the hive filled the tunnel, an indescribable tremor rippled out from ahead.

It bypassed the ears and slammed directly into the brain.

【Sanity: -5... 35/120】

Lu Yuan's vision blurred.

The tunnel in front of him distorted briefly, and the inscriptions on the copper walls seemed to writhe.

He knew these were hallucinations caused by low Sanity.

Bolen was in even worse shape.

The old man stumbled two steps and hit the wall. His eyes were unfocused, and he looked like he was drunk, muttering something Lu Yuan couldn't make out.

“Cover your ears!”

Lu Yuan grabbed Bolen by the shoulder and shouted.

Bolen's reaction was delayed by several beats before he slowly raised his hands to cover his ears.

Lu Yuan bent down and hoisted Bolen onto his shoulder again.

He didn't use acceleration this time because his Sanity was too low.

But he didn't stop.

He ran back along their path, following the numbered arrows he had carved earlier.

The murmuring weakened as the distance increased.

After running about two hundred meters, the tremor acting directly on his brain finally faded.

Bolen's condition slowly began to recover, and his eyes regained some focus.

But Lu Yuan didn't stop.

He didn't know how long the battle behind them would last, nor did he know if any members of the Grey Covenant would slip through to chase them.

The only thing he could do was run.

He had to run until they were far enough away, ideally under the light of the march lamps, to prevent other things in the pipe network from attacking them.

Far behind them.

Within the hive.

The four flickering members of the Grey Covenant looked grim.

They had just watched their companion's head get crushed in Kraus's hand. Then, Kraus had punched through the headless corpse's chest. Afterimages and green light spread from the wound, and in a single instant, the entire corpse had turned into a green crystal, frozen in place.

And they hadn't even been able to stop him.

The leader's black liquid was intercepted by Lake's tide of worms. The two forces clashed—corrosion versus consumption—neither side gaining the upper hand for the moment.

But the battlefield was sealed.

The sea of worms blocked both ends.

There was nowhere to run.

The leader finally realized that there had never been a negotiation to begin with.

Kraus was suspended above the tunnel, held aloft by the worm tide.

A faint green light radiated from him, illuminating the entire enclosed space.

On the ground, countless meat-worms swarmed toward the four members of the Grey Covenant like a tide crashing against rocks.

Kraus looked down at them.

The green light in his eyes had overflowed completely.

The ring on his left ring finger began to transform.

The bone-colored material expanded and twisted, changing from a ring into a man-sized bone sword.

The blade flickered constantly, and green light spread along the spine of the sword, covering every inch of the bone surface.