Grayish-white text jumped out at this moment.
【Target Detected: Grey Covenant member 9 (mutation transcendent) (Out of Control)】
【Will humans who borrow His power come to a good end? ... Transcendent pathway severely skewed ... Target's body is being rewritten by an external force...】
【Environmental Perception: Detected ■■■ source of pollution... Extremely dangerous... Please stay away immediately!】
Lu Yuan’s pupils contracted sharply.
“Lake, watch out!”
Lu Yuan shouted a warning as best he could, but it wasn’t strictly necessary. Lake could also clearly sense the change in the man before him; a terrifyingly dangerous aura was awakening within him.
‘9’ stood up by sheer force from within the bug tide.
Through his blurred vision, Lu Yuan saw a blackish-yellow mass of color slowly rise from the grey sea of insects, reforming into a humanoid silhouette.
The surface of that silhouette was riddled with holes.
‘9’s body was covered in tiny punctures gnawed by the Swarming Worms, looking like a piece of rotten wood riddled by pests. Blackish-yellow body fluid seeped from every hole, mixing with the black power surging from the floor’s tubular veins.
A layer of flowing black film formed over the surface of his body.
His form began to distort. Bones shifted beneath the skin, joints bent at angles they never should, and muscles contracted in places they ought not to.
His entire form flickered between two states, the frequency of the shifts growing faster and faster.
Two powers were fighting for control within his body.
Pitch-black aura erupted from him, black mist pouring out of every insect hole, so thick it almost turned solid in the dim light of the hall.
Flesh continued to bulge across the surface of his perforated body; evidently, the Swarming Worms Lake controlled were not yet entirely dead.
But the black power was crushing every foreign object from within.
The aura of the berserk ‘9’ was more than a level stronger than before, but Lake also noticed a critical detail.
‘9’s state was extremely unstable.
His form distorted and flickered, and his power erupted intermittently. For a few seconds, the lethal aura around him was so strong that any insect that approached died instantly; then, it would suddenly drop back to its previous level.
The wounds gnawed by the Swarming Worms did not heal. The black power was keeping him alive, but it wasn’t repairing him.
He was burning.
He was using his own body as fuel.
Lake made his judgment.
The bug tide’s movements changed in an instant. It no longer tried to surround and devour him; instead, the entire mass took a step back, maintaining a flexible containment ring around ‘9’.
‘9’ lunged.
His distorted form, trailing billowing black mist, pounced toward the right wing of the bug tide. For those few seconds, he was so fast he was nothing but a blurred afterimage.
The insect wall retreated a step.
A layer of the wall seemed to be pulled away, steadily yielding space for ‘9’s charge and avoiding the core range of that lethal aura.
Then, in the interval when ‘9’s aura receded, the insect wall closed back up.
A war of attrition.
Lake intended to wear him down to death.
‘9’s berserk state couldn’t last too long. That intermittent power suggested his body wouldn’t hold out for much longer. As long as he was stalled, he would eventually burn himself out.
The bug tide steadily maintained its elastic containment, moving back and forth with a cold composure.
Just as the bug tide and the berserk ‘9’ were locked in a stalemate deep within the hall...
【Environmental Perception: Detected high-risk source of pollution...】
The moment the grayish-white text jumped...
Black liquid had already submerged the stone slabs.
By the time Lu Yuan looked down, the black liquid had already spread in all directions from beneath the soles of his shoes.
When the liquid touched the insects at the edge of the tide, they immediately began to dissolve. Grayish-white smoke rose from where the grey meat-worms met the liquid, and their bodies melted at a visible rate, turning into a mass of grey residue within the fluid.
Lu Yuan’s heart sank. It was another member of the Grey Covenant.
But before Lu Yuan could speak, a mass of black liquid coalesced into a humanoid form three meters behind him.
It was incredibly fast, the transition from liquid to humanoid taking less than half a second. The body moved before it had even fully solidified; a palm wrapped in black liquid was already striking out the moment it formed.
That hand was aimed precisely at Bolen.
At the man who had just released the power of the Bronze City.
Bolen was currently at the edge of the bug tide, his face as white as a corpse, without even the strength to lift a hand. If that palm connected, the old man would die on the spot.
Fortunately, Lake’s reaction saved Bolen’s life.
Although his eyes were fixed on the berserk ‘9’ from atop the bug tide, Lake knew something had arrived the moment his insects died in large numbers upon touching the liquid.
His dark red eyes snapped toward the rear.
In an instant, a massive insect tentacle was pulled back from the front against ‘9’ and whipped toward the rear with violent speed.
The tentacle swept across just before the figure’s palm reached Bolen, slamming into the side of the humanoid formed from black liquid.
Boom!
The humanoid was smashed apart by the tentacle.
Black liquid splashed everywhere. It emitted corrosive white smoke where it hit the stone slabs, and insects dissolved instantly upon contact.
But at that same moment, the figure’s hand had already crossed most of the distance.
A dozen drops of black liquid splashed from the palm, landing on the insects near Bolen and instantly turning them to ash. Two drops splashed onto Bolen’s cane; white smoke rose from the copper surface, leaving behind two corrosive pits the size of fingernails.
Bolen hadn’t been hit directly.
He had missed by less than half a meter.
The scattered black liquid reconvened on the ground, reforming into a humanoid shape with extreme speed.
This time it solidified more completely. Black liquid constantly seeped out and was reabsorbed by the skin’s surface, like a layer of living armor.
He looked at Lake.
He didn't speak.
It was obvious who the newcomer was.
It was ‘Q’, the Grey Covenant member who had escaped from Kraus.
‘Q’s position happened to be right between Lu Yuan, Bolen, and the stone staircase they had come from.
He had blocked the only entrance and path of retreat.
Two rank 4s were now on the field.
Although one was berserk, ‘Q’ might have recovered after hiding for a while.
To save Bolen just now, Lake had diverted half of the bug tide away from ‘9’.
The pressure on ‘9’ plummeted. Taking advantage of the opening, the berserk ‘9’ steadied himself. Black aura billowed around him, and his distorted limbs thrashed through the air. The face that was half-human and half-vertical-pupil wore an expression that transcended human emotion.
With ‘Q’ behind them, the grayish-white figure stood at the entrance. Black liquid constantly seeped and retracted across his skin. He was as silent as a statue, seemingly having no intention of attacking immediately.
The bug tide had already lost a vast number of insects in the continuous fighting; its total mass had shrunk by at least thirty percent compared to when they first entered the underground area.
Most importantly, the communication crystal was dark.
Only when Lake checked within the bug tide did he discover that the communication crystal embedded in his tentacles was covered by an extremely thin, nearly invisible black film. That film completely blocked the signal.
His signal might have been cut off from the moment they stepped into the underground hall.
No wonder Kraus hadn't arrived despite his repeated calls.
Lake’s heart gradually sank at the thought.
Furthermore, judging by this setup, ‘Q’ had clearly been here all along.
He had blocked the communication crystal and waited for ‘9’ and Lake to exhaust each other to a certain point before striking, appearing at the entrance to cut off their retreat.
This was a trap. No, if it were a trap, the primary target from the start wouldn't have been Bolen, but himself.
But now, the stone staircase path was blocked by ‘Q’.
However, there was another passage deep in the hall. Lake had sensed an airflow leading to the surface in that direction during the battle.
Now that the altar’s power supply was destroyed, the vines throughout the nest were receding. The residual branches in the passage deep within had stopped growing and no longer posed an obstacle.
Lake made his judgment.
He wouldn't be a match for them.
Even if ‘9’ couldn’t stay berserk for long, and even if ‘Q’ was still testing the waters, with two rank 4s present and two people to protect, there would only be one outcome if they continued to fight.
He, Lu Yuan, and Bolen would all die here together with the members of the Grey Covenant.
Lake had already made up his mind.
His dark red eyes took one last look at the berserk ‘9’. Lake knew he wouldn't be able to kill him.
It was a pity his strength wasn't as great as Kraus’s.
Lake no longer hesitated.
The Swarming Worms’ movements changed in an instant.
The bug tide stopped attacking and suppressing. All the insects began to draw inward, like a massive net tightening.
Lake’s insect body completely enveloped Lu Yuan and Bolen within.
The moment he was wrapped by the insects, a heavy sense of pressure encased Lu Yuan. Tens of thousands of insects pressed tightly against his body, layer upon layer, forming a layer of living armor half a meter thick.
The insects’ body temperature was slightly higher than a human’s, feeling warm against his skin.
External sounds were cut off. ‘9’s shrieks and the thunderous collisions of the bug tide all became extremely distant, like muffled thuds coming through a thick wall.
Even the air changed. The layers of insects filtered out the spores from outside, and Lu Yuan’s breath no longer carried that sweet, metallic stench.
The mass of insects was moving.
Lake carried the two of them, retreating at maximum speed toward the passage deep within the hall.
In the darkness within the insect mass, Lu Yuan sensed one final detail.
A faint tremor came through the symbiotic link.
The Knowledge Worm had curled into a ball deep within his left eye.
Lu Yuan could feel it bristling, as if it had encountered some kind of natural predator.
It was afraid of ‘Q’.
Or rather, it was afraid of a certain aura ‘Q’ carried.
Lu Yuan committed this information to memory. Then, his consciousness began to drift; his Sanity was too low.
The warmth and pressure of the insect cocoon urged him to close his eyes, and exhaustion washed over his limbs like a tide.
Rate on N.U.
