“Should we move in?”
Hank kept his voice low, his eyes never leaving the battlefield ahead.
Lu Yuan didn't hesitate.
“Go.”
His gaze swept across the entire street.
Two rank 2s from the Ascension Society were entangled with the mutant on the left. Their vibrating short-blades hacked into the branches, but the gashes healed in the blink of an eye.
The mutant on the right was still flailing its branches aimlessly in place; for the moment, no one was dealing with it.
Decisions had to be quick.
“Hank, take Frank and surround the mutant on the right.”
Lu Yuan nodded toward the Nightwatcher standing on the perimeter.
“Milo, stay on the outside and be ready to react. If anything else pops up, shout immediately.”
“Understood.” Milo gave a sharp nod and retreated two steps toward the edge of the area, his hand already resting on his waist.
“The Ascension Society and I will keep an eye on the one on the left.”
Bolen was already moving, leaning on his cane. Without waiting for Lu Yuan to finish, the old man slowly shuffled toward the mutant on the right.
Kail glanced at Lu Yuan, then at Bolen, and finally broke into a trot to keep up with the old man.
“Stay close to me,” Bolen said without looking back. “Don't make any sudden moves.”
“Okay,” Kail replied, his voice tinged with a complex mix of emotions.
This was clearly his first time truly facing an eerie entity.
Lu Yuan retracted his gaze, his thumb resting on the hammer of his gun.
Ahead, the two Ascension Society members were still in combat, their chain-blades swinging in a wild frenzy.
“We can't hold it back!” one of them roared, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
“The joints!” the other shouted back.
The two switched positions with practiced coordination. One drew its attention from the front while the other circled to the side and rear. By now, the mutant's upper body had lost almost all semblance of human form, so the Ascension Society members focused their attention on the knees of the lower body, which still retained some human shape.
A gear short-blade sliced into the gap of a wooden joint. The wound split open, revealing the fibers inside.
In the next heartbeat, the fibers rewove themselves, and the gap closed.
It was almost useless. They clearly didn't have a good way to deal with this thing.
Just then, the area on the right mutant's chest where the branches were erupting suddenly burst. Black-red blood mixed with a pungent liquid sprayed out wildly as the branches thrashed.
In an instant, a massive spray of liquid almost engulfed the entire alley, especially on Hank's side.
By the time Hank saw it, he hadn't even finished adjusting his stance, and the two Nightwatchers behind him were in an even worse position.
Realizing there was no time to dodge, Hank made a split-second decision. With a loud roar, a layer of pitch-black patterns spread from his flesh, and his entire frame suddenly expanded.
He intended to shield his companions from the entire spray.
Clang.
A low note rang out from Haimeng's lute.
The liquid flying toward Hank and Lu Yuan's group seemed to hit an invisible resistance in mid-air. In the next moment, every drop deviated at an impossible angle.
The shift wasn't large.
Each drop veered just enough to miss, splashing onto the stone slabs at the feet of Hank's group. The liquid hissed and smoked, corroding shallow pits into the stone.
Not a single drop touched a person.
Seeing this, Hank didn't pause to offer thanks. He kept moving, drawing the axe he carried. The pitch-black patterns now almost completely covered him.
He looked like a giant rotting corpse.
Lu Yuan glanced at Haimeng from the corner of his eye.
Haimeng remained in the same posture, his fingers poised over the strings, his eyes fixed on the mutant before them.
As Lu Yuan retracted his gaze, Bolen reached his position.
The old man stopped a few paces away from the mutant on the right and went no further.
He pointed the tip of his cane downward, touching the stone slabs.
In the next moment, a ghostly blue light flared up along the ground where Bolen had walked. Then, as if coming to life, the light began to swim, starting from a single line and gradually spreading.
Finally, it formed a circle, completely surrounding the mutant.
Dark gold inscriptions rose from every spot the cane had touched, connecting into a perfect ring.
The air inside the ring began to shimmer with heat, and visible heat waves rose from the stone slabs.
The right mutant's feet were pinned to the stones.
It struggled to step forward, but its feet wouldn't budge. Its body swayed violently, nearly toppling over.
Thick branches continued to wave, thrashing toward Bolen and Kail, but because the body was immobilized, the angles were awkward and the force was dissipated.
The temperature inside the inscription circle continued to rise.
The right mutant's feet began to smoke, then its calves. It began to char, inch by inch, from the bottom up.
Bolen didn't look at it. He turned and shouted to Hank.
“Watch your feet! Don't enter the circle!”
“Got it!” Hank replied, circling to the side of the mutant.
He swung his hand axe.
Hank didn't hack at the wooden surface; he had already tried that once and saw it heal instantly. He aimed for the mutant's chest cavity.
The axe blade slammed in from the side.
The mutant was immobile now, unable even to dodge.
The blade bit deep into the connection between the waist and abdomen, carving a massive rent. The wooden fibers were forcibly torn apart.
Dark green liquid surged out, but before it could spread, it was vaporized by the high temperature of the inscription circle.
The Ascension Society member who hadn't been involved in the fight on the left circled to the back of the right mutant.
A gear short-blade spun as it embedded itself into the neck.
The blade whirred inside the wooden fibers, shredding the internal structure.
With a sharp crack, the connection between the mutant's head and torso was severed.
Frank used a hooked short spear to snag one of the main branches. Using the strength of his waist, he yanked it outward. The branch was torn from the main body, causing the entire form to lose its balance.
Under the combined force of the three parties, the mutant on the right didn't last long.
Its base was burned away, its torso was split, its neck was shredded, and its branches were torn off.
When it finally collapsed, its body had been broken into several pieces, which lay smoking on the stone slabs.
Bolen lifted the tip of his cane from the ground.
The inscription circle dimmed, leaving a faint ring of scorched marks on the surface of the stones, like the remnants of some seal.
The old man panted heavily.
He retreated two steps, leaning on his cane. His face was paler than usual.
But he was unharmed.
Kail stood half a step behind Bolen, his eyes wide and his mouth slightly agape.
This was the first time in his life he had seen a rank 3 Inscriptionist take action at close range, and he hadn't yet recovered from the shock.
Bolen glanced at him.
“Have you seen enough?”
“Oh!” Kail snapped out of it. “Sir, your... your hands are shaking...”
“Obviously,” Bolen said, tapping his cane on the ground. “Look at how old I am.”
The old man said no more and looked toward Lu Yuan.
Lu Yuan hadn't moved yet because he was currently asking the Knowledge Worm if it wanted to eat.
The Knowledge Worm merely wriggled a few times, signaling its clear distaste for the thing.
‘Guess it’s a picky eater.’
Lu Yuan silently moved a few steps along the base of the wall.
The two rank 2s from the Ascension Society continued to keep the mutant on the left occupied. Its attention was entirely focused on them.
Lu Yuan only needed two more steps to reach its side and rear—a blind spot with no one attacking.
At that moment, he caught something odd in his peripheral vision.
It was in the remains of the mutant on the right.
Amidst the pile of charred, smoking fragments, an extremely thin, deep green vine burrowed out from the center of the largest piece.
It moved with the speed of a living creature.
As soon as the vine emerged, it crawled along the stone floor, heading straight for the ankle of the mutant on the left.
The moment he saw it, a line of grey-white text appeared.
【Target Detected: Forest Seed (Incomplete)】
【This entity seems to possess the ability to attach to its own kind and perform a fusion.】
【Weakness: Core.】
Lu Yuan's gaze traced back to the base of the vine.
Right beneath the largest charred wooden fragment was a pulsing, dark green mass. Half-buried in the debris, it was trying to burrow into a deeper crevice.
It was the core.
The mutant on the right wasn't fully dead.
He cursed silently.
Bolen had dismantled its body into eight pieces, yet the core was still pulsing.
It was hiding in a fragment, trying to find a new host.
“Stop that thing!”
Even as Lu Yuan shouted, Flame had already fired.
Bang.
A copper-cased incendiary round spat from the muzzle, its orange-red flare trailing a short streak under the streetlamps as it slammed toward the dark green mass in the debris.
But the small core shied away the instant the bullet arrived.
As it dove into a deeper crevice, it knocked over several charred fragments in front of it.
The bullet struck the edge of a fragment, exploding into orange-red flames that burned across the surface of the debris, but it missed the core.
A clean miss.
Lu Yuan's brow furrowed, and his footsteps faltered.
This time, he stopped completely.
He held the gun steady in his left hand, his thumb cocking the hammer.
The vine was already halfway there.
Haimeng reacted the fastest.
A string of short, high-pitched notes cascaded from the lute in a rapid tempo.
The growth rhythm of the vine missed a beat.
The tip of the vine wavered as it extended, its speed slowing down. The entire vine swayed in the air for half a second, as if it had momentarily forgotten its purpose.
But only for half a second.
Then it remembered.
The vine accelerated once more.
Bang.
The second copper-cased incendiary round was fired.
This one hit.
The blue-white alchemical flames exploded directly on the surface of the small core, spreading across the dark green mass.
The core's pulse thrashed violently. A layer of its outer shell was stripped away, revealing an even deeper, more brilliant dark green within.
But the core didn't shatter.
That outer layer had been a prepared protection. One layer was stripped, but another remained beneath.
Lu Yuan's hand holding the gun paused.
“It's shielding its core.”
In that instant, the vine connected with the left mutant's ankle.
The two bodies were yanked together by an invisible rope.
“Damn it.”
He knew what was about to happen.
The fragments of the right mutant were hauled up from the stones.
Charred wooden debris, half-burnt flesh and organ fragments, and broken branches all floated off the ground, dragged toward the mutant on the left.
The deep green vine in the middle acted as the rope, and the fragments of the right mutant were the cargo being towed.
The left mutant's ankle was wrapped in the vine, and its own body was being pulled toward the fragments. Both sides were exerting force.
The two forms collided in the middle of the street.
Crunch.
The sound of wood being twisted and snapped.
Squish.
The sound of flesh being crushed.
An explosion of deep green networks spread across the contact point of the two bodies, as if they were both taking root in each other at once.
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