His Power

Flesh spilled from the gaps between the branches.

Blood and fragments of internal organs trickled down the walls, flowing onto the vines on the floor, where they were rapidly absorbed by the roots.

The mouths that had been weakly whimpering finally fell silent, one by one becoming empty shells wrapped in tattered clothing. They hung from the vines on the walls, swaying a few times before becoming still.

They were all dead.

‘9’s body swayed slightly.

A gash appeared at his neck.

He had torn that opening himself.

Greyish-white fingers pried open skin and muscle from the inside, revealing the deep, greyish-white tissue beneath and several segments of blackish-yellow bone.

‘9’ thrust his right hand into the wound in his neck.

He was searching for something.

The Knowledge Worm was swimming rapidly inside him. The symbiotic link transmitted intermittent images through that thread as thin as spider silk; multicolored light moved through the blackish-yellow liquid, taking a bite out of every mass of knowledge sediment it passed before quickly moving on.

‘9’s fingers fumbled within the neck wound for two seconds, then suddenly lunged.

He just missed.

An instant before it was caught, the Knowledge Worm made a sharp turn, sliding from the outside of the cervical vertebrae to the inside of the collarbone.

‘9’s fingers pinched empty air.

His expression didn't change, but his movements grew faster.

He pulled his right hand from his neck and thrust his left hand directly into the left side of his chest. This time he didn't search; he simply tore away a large area of tissue, attempting to expose the region where the Knowledge Worm was hiding.

The Knowledge Worm sensed danger.

It gave up its feast, its form flashing as it swam rapidly toward the outside of the body along the neural network.

The blackish-yellow liquid surged along its path of retreat, and then the Knowledge Worm burrowed out from the surface of ‘9’s left shoulder.

A streak of multicolored light traced an arc through the air, crossing the three-meter distance and diving back into Lu Yuan’s left eye.

The symbiotic link became clear once more.

Greyish-white text began to flicker almost simultaneously.

【Forbidden Lore: Knowledge Seeker: +11... 66.8/100】

【Basic Medicine: +10... 23.8/20... Skill experience overflow...】

【Basic Medicine → Advanced Medicine: 3.8/50】

【Pharmacology: +7... 44/100】

【Sanity IV: +5... 21/140】

Dense lines of greyish-white text scrolled past.

Among them, the +5 to Sanity IV brought a faint but real surge of Sanity.

【Sanity: +5... 27/90】

Lu Yuan’s somewhat scattered consciousness was pulled back by this surge. Things were still blurred, but he could at least see objects within three meters clearly.

‘9’ stood in the center of the altar.

He glanced at his own open chest and neck wound.

The wounds were healing at a rate visible to the naked eye, new greyish-white skin covering them, but his face wore an expression Lu Yuan had never seen before.

The Knowledge Worm had only eaten for a few seconds; for a rank 4, it probably shouldn't have mattered much.

But ‘9’s expression showed that he cared.

He stared at Lu Yuan’s left eye.

His gaze was ice-cold.

Then his figure retreated deep into the vines.

The bug tide and the vines collided.

Lake was determined to keep ‘9’ here.

The Swarming Worms, with their strength fully unleashed, had already consumed nearly two-thirds of the hall's space.

Every surface that could be covered was blanketed by the grey insect bodies. The vines retreated constantly before the bug tide; branches were gnawed to pieces, dissolved, and hollowed out from the inside, shrinking back to the final ten-meter radius around the altar.

But ‘9’ activated the altar inscriptions.

The vines that had siphoned the nutrients from the “fertilizer” began to mutate in the eerie green light.

The branches doubled in thickness, a greyish-white hard shell precipitated on their surfaces, and their growth speed accelerated.

For every batch Lake’s bug tide gnawed through, a new batch emerged from the cracks in the floor.

‘9’ was using the entire nest's reserves to grind Lake down.

Just then.

The inscriptions on Bolen flared.

They were inscriptions Lu Yuan had never seen before.

“Lake, help me. Open a path.”

Bolen’s voice came from the gap in the vine wall.

Lu Yuan turned his head.

The old man stood at the edge of the bug tide, his cane planted in the ground, his entire body wrapped in layer upon layer of inscriptions.

They were ghostly blue.

Lu Yuan had never seen inscriptions of this color.

The light stacked layer upon layer, expanding outward from the surface of his skin, carrying an ancient and heavy aura.

Lu Yuan recognized that aura.

The Bronze City.

It was the same aura that emanated from the inscriptions on the walls of the entire Bronze City.

Bolen was borrowing the power of the Bronze City.

Lake sensed the dangerous aura emanating from Bolen.

The Swarming Worms surged.

Tens of thousands of meat-worms separated from the main bug tide, forcibly tearing open a two-meter diameter gap—a corridor between Bolen and the altar.

The insect bodies built living walls on both sides of the corridor, death-gripping the counter-attack of the vines.

The path was open.

Bolen gripped his cane with both hands.

A ghostly blue beam of light shot out along the corridor formed by the insect bodies.

Lu Yuan closed his eyes the moment the beam flared. The light was too bright, carrying a heavy, towering blue glow, as if the light from the walls of the entire Bronze City had been compressed into a single ray.

Even with his eyes closed, the light burrowed through the cracks of his eyelids, leaving a searing afterimage in his vision.

In the instant the beam surged forth, the sound arrived first.

The sound of the vines carbonizing was like a sizzling frying pan; dense crackling sounds exploded from one end of the corridor to the other, and a high-pitched hissing sound rose as the spores evaporated.

Then came a dull impact.

The beam hit something.

By the time Lu Yuan opened his eyes, the beam was already dissipating, the ghostly blue residual light drifting slowly within the corridor like extremely fine ash.

The corridor had been burned clean.

From one end to the other, all the vines, roots, and spores had been completely carbonized, leaving only charred stone walls and a straight, clean corridor that didn't look like it belonged in an underground space.

The destination of the beam was the altar.

Lu Yuan could barely make out a few color blocks in the direction of the altar. At 27 Sanity points, his vision had degraded to the point where he could only see things within three meters; anything further was just blurred outlines and color blocks.

But the Seeker’s perception filled in some of the gaps.

Greyish-white text flickered intermittently at the edge of his vision, translating the distant scene into information fragments he could understand.

‘9’ was not dead.

The greyish-white text told him so.

【Target Detected: Grey Covenant member 9 (mutation transcendent) (Heavily Injured)】

The beam had hit ‘9’, but an instant before it arrived, ‘9’ had done two things.

First, he had used the root network to fling the rank 3 puppet—the one with the vine through its skull—into the path of the beam. The body and the branches were instantly carbonized and disintegrated in the ghostly blue light, turning into fine ash that scattered in the corridor.

Then, he had grabbed the rank 3 subordinate who had been hiding among the wooden men and yanked him in front of himself.

That rank 3 had held out for less than a second before the beam carbonized and disintegrated him into specks of ash.

Both rank 3s were dead.

After penetrating the remains, the beam's momentum had weakened by more than half, but it had still struck ‘9’.

Yet he was still alive.

The eerie green light on the altar had largely been extinguished after the beam passed through.

Lu Yuan could feel it; even at this distance, his Environmental Perception captured the sudden drop in transcendent aura from the altar. At least two-thirds of the eerie green power flowing through the runic grooves had been severed by the beam.

Bolen could no longer hold on and collapsed.

When Lu Yuan turned, Bolen was already unable to stand. All the ghostly blue inscriptions on the old man's cane went dark at once, and his body slumped to the side. If the edge of the bug tide hadn't happened to catch him, he would have fallen directly onto the stone floor.

His face was white to the point of being blue, his lips were bloodless, and his breathing was rapid, his chest heaving like a man about to drown.

The price of borrowing the power of the entire Bronze City was far greater than Lu Yuan had imagined.

Then Lu Yuan felt it.

The layer of close-fitting protective inscriptions on Bolen had also gone out. Those pale gold patterns that had been faintly glowing on the surface of his clothes were now all dark.

The air he breathed changed.

A sweet, metallic taste rose in his throat.

The spores were back.

The cloying scent that had been filtered out by Bolen’s inscriptions surged back, thicker than before. The sudden loss of filtration was exceptionally pungent.

The grey at the edge of Lu Yuan’s vision expanded once more.

【Sanity: -1... 26/90】

The greyish-white text jumped.

But this discomfort came fast and faded fast.

The altar had been destroyed, and the vines were retreating on a large scale. The greyish-green roots that had been growing frantically began to wither the moment the inscriptions were broken. Withering meant they no longer produced new spores.

The residual spores in the air began to thin out within seconds. The sweet sensation in his throat faded, and the physical discomfort gradually receded.

Lake gave ‘9’ no time to catch his breath.

The moment the altar inscriptions were extinguished, the Swarming Worms advanced in full force.

What Lu Yuan saw was a grey wave surging forward. The boundary of the bug tide was like a grey line constantly pushing forward in his blurred vision, swallowing the front half of the hall from left to right.

The mutated branches that ‘9’ had reinforced earlier began to wither after losing the altar's power. Their hard shells cracked, and the greyish-green tissue inside turned black and shriveled like branches that had been drained of moisture.

The bug tide was no longer in a stalemate with the vines.

The vine wall was rapidly gnawed through and dissolved, with insect bodies pouring into every breach.

The vine defensive line, which had been advancing step by step before, turned into a pile of fragile dead branches once it lost its power supply.

The Swarming Worms hollowed out the branches from the inside and crushed the hard shells from the outside, tearing the final vine defense around the altar into fragments.

Lake’s insect form emerged from above the bug tide.

Two dark red light points hung at the very top of that grey mass, like two dark red gems embedded in the insect body.

Those were Lake’s eyes.

They were staring at the half-ruined ‘9’.

Lu Yuan watched all this from the edge of the bug tide.

He no longer had the ability to participate in a battle of this level. With 22 Sanity points and his inscription protection gone, all he could do was watch.

In Lu Yuan’s eyes, there were only color blocks. The grey bug tide and the blackish-yellow ‘9’ tumbled and collided in the depths of the hall, like two globs of paint being stirred into the same bucket of water. He couldn't see details or moves.

But the greyish-white text that occasionally surfaced translated the battle into words intermittently.

Even heavily injured, ‘9’ remained extremely dangerous. Although his speed had dropped significantly due to the damage to the left side of his body, it still exceeded the limits of a normal person.

The residual vines made a final struggle under his will, branches stabbing out from cracks in the floor in an attempt to entangle the insect bodies, but the scale could no longer be compared to before.

Lake’s bug tide surrounded ‘9’ from three sides.

The sounds of intense combat drifted over, massive impacts mixed with the sound of insect bodies bursting.

As the Swarming Worms advanced, the sound changed. A denser, more fine-grained sound came from deep within the bug tide, like countless mouths chewing simultaneously.

Lake was playing for keeps.

Several lines of greyish-white text jumped in quick succession.

【Target Detected: Lake (eerie transcendent) (Overload)】

【The human who embraces the Swarming Worms seems to have released the vast majority of his own power. Welcome the power of the swarm.】

The grey bug tide closed in from the ceiling, the floor, and the walls simultaneously, crushing the final residual defenses around ‘9’ with absolute mass and swallowing ‘9’ whole into the sea of insects.

‘9’ disappeared into the grey.

Lake’s dark red eyes flared deep within the bug tide.

Then the execution began.

Lu Yuan couldn't see what was happening deep inside the bug tide; his vision held only a constantly churning mass of grey.

But he could hear.

Sound didn't require eyes.

The sounds coming from the depths of the bug tide were extremely clear.

‘9’ did not scream.

But the crunching of a carapace being gnawed to pieces could be heard, dense like someone stepping on a floor covered in glass shards.

Then came the wet, sticky sound of flesh being torn from bone. That sound carried a sickening quality, like prying a membrane tightly attached to a bone.

The essential ability of the Swarming Worms was to devour and to strip.

Every single insect bit off a small piece of flesh, and that flesh was transformed inside the insect's body, directly becoming a new insect.

Stripping, breeding.

A cycle. This was precisely the horror of the Swarming Worms.

Fragments of greyish-white skin drifted out from the depths of the bug tide, mixed with blackish-yellow body fluid. They were the remains of ‘9’s chitinous skin after being gnawed to pieces, like dry scales scattered by the wind.

From the surface to the interior, ‘9’s body was being dismantled layer by layer.

The total mass of the swarm actually surged in a short period. Every piece of flesh stripped from ‘9’ was converted into new insect bodies within a second or two. Lake was using ‘9’s own body to feed his army.

The crunching grew denser.

The wet, sticky sounds grew more frequent.

A rank 4 mutation transcendent was being dismantled piece by piece before the execution of the Swarming Worms.

Just as ‘9’ was about to be completely hollowed out.

Lu Yuan first felt the stone slabs beneath his feet vibrate.

It was very light. If he hadn't been pressed against the edge of the bug tide, he wouldn't have noticed it at all—an extremely faint but rhythmic pulse throbbing from deep underground, as if something were beating beneath the stone slabs.

Then, an ancient, heavy aura seeped out from beneath the ground.

In his blurred vision, Lu Yuan barely identified the source.

The red threads he had noticed earlier.

The extremely fine threads extending downward from ‘9’s body and piercing into the cracks between the stone slabs were undergoing a violent change.

Before, those threads had been as quiet as if they didn't exist, as thin as hair, running down from ‘9’s legs and disappearing into the floor cracks.

Now they were throbbing.

Lu Yuan could see those threads contracting and expanding in the floor cracks like an extremely fine heart making a final struggle.

The threads were thickening, swelling from the width of a hair to the width of a chopstick, then to the width of a finger, all in less than three or four seconds.

The overall color was also changing rapidly, deepening from dark red until it turned black, taking on a texture like congealed ink.

The red threads were no longer red.

They had become black tubular veins.

The tubular veins throbbed, and every pulse was accompanied by a clear ripple of aura. Something was surging into ‘9’s body from beneath the ground through these tubular veins.

An anomaly appeared within the bug tide.

The crunching changed. The previously dense chewing sounds began to grow sparse, and in some areas, they stopped altogether.

Lake’s insect bodies began to slow down in a certain region.

Those Swarming Worms that were stripping ‘9’s flesh and breeding new insects were suddenly suppressed by a force surging from within.

An unsettling image appeared in Lu Yuan’s vision.

Even blurred, he could identify lumps bulging under ‘9’s skin.

It was the Swarming Worms breeding inside the body, attempting to burst out.

But after every lump rose, it was pressed back down from within by a black power.

The lumps on the skin rose and fell, rose and fell.

The Swarming Worms could no longer breed within ‘9’.

Those black tubular veins were still throbbing, beat after beat, pumping a power Lu Yuan could not comprehend from beneath the ground into ‘9’s broken body.

‘9’s aura changed completely, and the bug tide in the area near ‘9’ suddenly exploded outward.

The insect bodies died directly upon approaching that area, as if their life force had been drained by some power. Every insect turned from a living organism into a shriveled, empty shell in an instant.

The grey empty shells fell away from the surface of the swarm one after another, like a grey snow.

END