Chapter 165-4: Death Revived, Darkborn Trap (4) |
Meanwhile, inside the blood-soul barrier.
A humanoid figure slept within, its body enclosed in a crystal coffin condensed from vitality.
Ancient runes were carved all over the coffin’s surface, radiating a dark red glow. The Darkborn warrior inside was wrapped in a thick layer of blood-red energy like a mummy, lying quietly as if a statue frozen by time.
Each time the Wall of Blood Souls computed the vitality energy released by a dead player, the twisted runes on the blood-colored crystal coffin would jump and change, emitting a low hum.
As time went on, the jumping runes gradually disintegrated.
The dark red energy composing the crystal coffin flickered, and ripples spread across the dormant Darkborn warrior’s sea of consciousness that had been like dead water.
His body trembled slightly under the stimulus of rune energy, as if being awakened from a long dream.
His fingers moved first, with wisps of dark energy curling like smoke from the fingertips, then spreading to the entire hand.
Next, his chest began to rise and fall slowly, as if relearning the rhythm of breathing. With each breath, the surrounding air trembled. The energy composing the blood-vitality crystal coffin collapsed, turning into dark red energy and being inhaled into the Darkborn warrior’s body.
As energy kept pouring in, the Darkborn warrior suddenly opened his eyes. Blood-red light flickered in his pupils like two burning flames.
Crack. Crack.
Cracks multiplied across the blood-colored crystal coffin, ringing with crisp shattering sounds.
Like melting ice and snow, it was absorbed and taken in by the Darkborn warrior.
“Who… am I?”
At the first instant of consciousness awakening, a question surfaced in the Darkborn warrior’s mind.
The question was like a light piercing the darkness, and the sealed memory information surged back like a tide.
In the images of memory, the earth was torn into countless fragments. The former prosperity and vitality were already gone, and the embers of war continued to burn.
The sky was shrouded in eternal gloom. The blazing sun’s light could not penetrate the heavy haze, and the boundary between day and night grew blurred.
This was his homeworld.
A world utterly destroyed in the war against the Black Tide.
The land was covered with huge fissures, bottomless.
From the cracks, inky black Black Tide energy gushed out from time to time, generating endless Evil Entities that devoured all life around them.
The once lush forests now held only charred trunks, branches twisted like the arms of the dying, pointing toward the sky.
The sea had dried up, the seabed lay bare. A world once teeming with life had become the remains of war, likely to be swallowed in the next onslaught of the Black Tide.
The entire world was like a shattered archipelago, drifting through space as plate fragments.
Ruins of cities dotted the plate fragments, leaving only broken walls.
Resources were exhausted, Black Tide corrosion and pollution… the tentacles released by twisted corrosion cores danced across the land, hastening the world’s destruction.
Storms of annihilation, earthquakes, space collapses… all manner of natural catastrophes appeared frequently.
This was a world completely ravaged by the Black Tide, resources exhausted, vitality withered, leaving only endless despair.
The image was gradually swallowed by darkness. In memory he looked back and saw countless figures awaiting his arrival. Ahead was a twisted black hole leading to an unknown world, and the image froze there.
Tears slipped from the corner of the gradually awakening Darkborn warrior’s eyes.
He recalled the scene before the race’s migration.
Anger, unwillingness, despair… all kinds of emotions surged in his heart.
Memory pressed on.
He led the Darkborn to descend upon a super world known as the Monster World.
This world possessed resources beyond his imagination. In this world he saw hope for revenge.
To gain a foothold in this world as quickly as possible.
Shortly after descending, he launched a devouring war against a nearby race, swallowing that race and turning it into nourishment for his and his race’s growth.
There was no need for any reason. At that time the Darkborn urgently needed resources for development.
The most convenient growth model was plunder, obtaining other races’ accumulated heritage through war.
This war brought unimaginable growth to him and his people.
The resources stored in the plundered race’s homeland left him incredulous.
It was unimaginable that such a weak race could hide so much resource wealth.
At that moment, an absurd idea arose in him.
Perhaps this world’s tier was very high, but the living beings of this world seemed not to have specced into the war talent. Their feeble abilities could not withstand a single blow.
Similar situations had been recorded in the Darkborn’s histories.
The Darkborn had also once been a plundering force spanning multiple worlds.
But in cross world wars they encountered an even stronger plundering force they could not resist. In the end the Darkborn legions splintered, and they were descendants of one of the fleeing racial branches, starting over in a small world.
Thus the race recorded much information about great worlds.
One point was emphasized.
The greatest differences between great worlds and small worlds lie in resource reserves, resource gestation speed, and the strength of world rules.
But that does not mean a great world necessarily possesses stronger combat power.
The histories record that the Darkborn legions once plundered a great world whose living beings had never developed military force, consuming all resources on constructing the spiritual world.
In other words, that great world had never experienced war and thus had no idea how to fight.
That war the plunder and harvest was completed with extreme ease.
From this, the Darkborn legions concluded that the strength or weakness of races’ war capability across different worlds does not have an absolute relationship with the level of the world they inhabit.
A great world merely offers a better environment for developing combat strength, but it does not mean the world’s combat level is necessarily strong.
At this moment, discovering that a race storing vast resources was so weak, he thought he had encountered a high level world with weak combat power.
This delighted him immensely.
He felt perhaps this world could be used as a springboard. The Darkborn would grow to a strength sufficient to oppose the Black Tide, then on that day descend upon the homeworld and complete their revenge.
But he soon realized he was wrong.
Memory fragments continued to piece together.
A war banner stood tall in the image, and countless terrifying figures descended from a space tunnel.
A brutal war erupted.
Only then did he realize this was a race under the protection of a super powerful race.
Those they slaughtered were merely a service-type race under that super force.
This war showed him the terror of a super world.
Warriors blessed by mysterious power formed battle arrays, and the vitality energy they released became a monstrous wave, sweeping across the Darkborn he led with unstoppable force.
The leading figure possessed a physique vast as a mountain, pushing the front line aside with a raise of the hand, displaying invincibility.
Only then did he realize this world was far from as simple as he had imagined.
He could even feel this group of warriors growing stronger during the war.
A weak warrior’s aura climbed at a speed visible to the naked eye as the front advanced. With each step forward, he grew by a fraction.
The Darkborn warriors he led were reduced to ashes under the iron hooves of these warriors who could grow through war.
The barrier built by the Darkborn power he and his people were so proud of was shredded like gauze before these terrifying war machines, offering no resistance.
In the memory image he even saw with his own eyes a race elder who had once faced the Black Tide commander’s power, reduced to nothingness by a single strike from the leading warrior of the war legion.
In that moment, fear surged in his heart.
It was as if memory had returned to the time of the Black Tide’s descent, filled with helplessness and despair.
In the end, aided by his racial members, he tore space and fled.
He saw the end of the rapidly narrowing space tunnel as his racial members fell in swathes, advancing one after another to buy him a chance to escape.
These memory images lingered in his mind like a nightmare, bringing endless terror.
The memory fragments in his sea of consciousness continued piecing together. He descended upon an unknown area, lying on the ground barely clinging to life.
Before his consciousness blurred, he took out the Blood Barrier kept in his mouth, linked it to himself, and formed a trap scene.
Thereafter he fell into a long dormancy.
“I am… Anshui… I will have my revenge.”
With memory returning, Anshui gradually awakened from sleep.
A conception from before dormancy rapidly sketched itself in his mind.
His racial members were dead. He no longer had any scruples.
What he had to do was to make himself grow as much as possible, to devour and grow through Darkborn power.
Until he destroyed everything in this world, stood at the summit of this world, and then once more challenged the Black Tide.
To become a god in solitude. That was the goal left in his mind before dormancy.
Revival, devouring, destruction, slaughter… countless thoughts surged in his mind, and boundless ambition forced him to awaken completely from sleep.
But the intense weakness that followed shocked him.
This feeling left Anshui extremely puzzled, unable to understand why he was so weak.
Since it was the moment of revival, it proved that the Wall of Blood Souls had already absorbed enough vitality energy. That energy should have been enough to restore him to a state close to his peak.
Crack.
Just then, a crisp breaking sound rang out, and the dark red structure encasing his body shattered on its own.
The Darkborn opened his eyes from the dark.
Lowering his head to look at his body, he was astonished to find he had actually become a child of four or five years old.
“How is this possible?!”
At that moment, the sound of shattering rang out again.
The outer, thin blood-red crystal coffin was violently broken. A big hand magnified before his eyes, pinched his neck, and yanked him up.
Blinding light from outside assaulted him, and Anshui instinctively squinted.
When the blur before his eyes faded, he looked around and was shocked to find countless greedy eyes fixed on him nearby.
Sensing through vitality fluctuations, he could tell this group of beings were very weak.
“Hey, where is the Darkborn’s wealth? Hurry and take the brothers to find it.”
A head leaned in at this moment, speaking to him in a threatening tone.
While finding it unbelievable, a towering rage surged in Anshui’s heart.
“Ants, courting death.”
He was about to drive his power to kill all nearby beings, but the intense weakness struck again.
He found that he simply could not control the original power within his body.
A thought that he found unbelievable surfaced in his mind.
He had not recovered to his peak at all. This was also why only a childlike form remained after revival.
The revival plan had failed.
“Well now, with a hunt level of only 32 you still dare talk that tough, huh. Someone who didn’t know would think you were a big shot with a hunt level over 100.”
The speaker was first startled, then raised his right hand. His index finger bent slightly like a taut bow, aimed at Anshui’s lower body.
His eyes half-closed, the finger paused in the air for a moment, as if aiming at a target.
Snap.
With a crisp sound, pain struck, and Anshui’s eyes instantly went vacant.
“Careful or you’ll break that thing of yours. Speak honestly. Where did you hide the Darkborn’s secret treasury?”
