Chapter 247-2: It’s Over, Completely Over (2) |
Newly risen Thrones and old Thrones were essentially different in their thinking.
The older generation had experienced despair and witnessed the twists in the Etherbreath race’s growth.
In their eyes, as long as the Etherbreath race’s fireseed was preserved, then there was hope for the future.
The new generation of Thrones thought entirely differently. They grew up within the system of war and plunder, warriors who rose to the Throne through war.
Many among them had not experienced the hardest years; most of what they faced were wars won in unstoppable fashion.
For this generation, the glory of war outweighed everything.
This was also the ideological brand the older generation of Thrones imprinted on the next in order to implement the war-growth system.
Yet it became the obsession that shackled their thinking.
“Let’s vote. Blood King is absent; his vote will not be counted in this decision.” Bone King said as the deadlock dragged on.
The final decision was to keep the spatial rift, leaving the Etherbreath race a potential line of retreat.
After the meeting, the seven Thrones moved into action.
Two Super Beast Legions led by Fungus King and Bone King advanced toward the players’ landing area.
The other Thrones split their legion strength, garrisoning different cities to protect them from destruction by the roaming invading small groups.
Second, hunting teams specialized against small groups of players were rapidly formed.
Each team was led by a war priest.
The initial contact made the Etherbreath race realize that even elite warriors could hardly contend with the powerful individuals within the invading force.
Only war priests had the strength to suppress the invading small groups.
A network covering the Etherbreath World spread out. Life spores drifting in the air became eyes, providing coordinate information on the invaders to the hunting squads.
A mighty counter-invasion war began.
Compared to the Etherbreath race’s tension, the players’ side seemed utterly relaxed.
With the first round of cross-boundary war over, God King quickly organized new war strength, preparing to airdrop into the small world again and launch another cross-boundary war.
Regrettably, during this round of teleportation God King too was swallowed by a spatial countercurrent and returned on the spot as a soul to Emperor’s Mound Village.
The process of entering the small world instance was tantamount to staking your life on a draw.
If your luck was bad and you drew the anti-addiction lot, you were forcibly thrown into the little dark room for an hour.
The problem was, the probability of hitting anti-addiction was higher than the probability of entering the instance.
Alan was just as troubled.
Over 1.2 million sacrificial power had already been consumed by more than half.
As the initiator of the cross-boundary war, he was responsible for powering the spatial rift.
The cost of maintaining spatial teleportation was enormous.
The spatial teleportation array he built was a simplified version; even if the teleportation scale was reduced, energy loss remained severe.
To keep the war going, he could only scrape funds from everywhere.
Fortunately, refund money kept coming in, barely sustaining operation of the spatial rift.
In this round of cross-boundary war, players who successfully entered the small world instance made a fortune, but the seed capital for their Lunar Eclipse race’s development was close to being squeezed dry.
—
At the Blood Pool Legion’s station.
Viscous blood slurry churned within a massive flesh cocoon, each throb accompanied by the ear-scraping sound of tearing flesh.
Beside the flesh cocoon, the End Behemoth’s ruined body was soaking in a boiling blood pool.
Golden blood kept seeping from the wounds, then was absorbed by tendrils docked to the End Behemoth and sent back into its body.
This should have been a workable healing cycle, but whenever the flesh tried to mend, sinister purple patterns surfaced deep within the wounds, suppressing recovery like a curse.
Hiss!
A broken bone spur was squeezed out from the End Behemoth’s shoulder blade, its corrosive black blood splashing onto the nearby cocoon wall and instantly eating out honeycomb holes.
The injuries left by the invading force led the war priests hovering at the blood pool’s edge to choose amputation as the means of treatment.
Aside from this, they had found no other way.
At this time, Blood King was still in a coma.
The body wrapped in the flesh cocoon was collapsing.
His bodily linkage to the End Behemoth allowed the Wither trait to spread into Blood King’s body.
Just like the End Behemoth, Blood King’s injuries could not heal; they could only forcibly extend his life by infusing life force.
Once the infusion stopped, Blood King’s life would reach its end.
“Still not working.” The leading priest under Soul King shook his head regretfully.
They had tried many methods to treat Blood King.
But not a single method could effectively dispel the cursed power within him.
Just now, they had connected hair-like tendrils to the cocoon’s neural pathways, attempting to analyze the composition of Blood King’s purple cursed energy.
They hoped thereby to find a way to lift the curse.
But the purple cursed energy could not be analyzed for any information at all; it was a kind of energy they had never seen.
At this trend, this old King would soon die under the curse’s erosion.
Just as the war priests under Soul King were at their wits’ end, a figure appeared beside the blood pool.
Upon seeing this figure, the war priests hovering in the air all landed by the blood pool, kneeling on one knee in respect:
“Soul King.”
The figure called Soul King stood nearly three meters tall. His body was not entirely composed of flesh and blood matter, but somewhere between half flesh and half spirit.
A constantly flowing dark-silver fog-like substance grudgingly outlined a humanoid silhouette.
Countless tiny neural light points drifted over the surface of the mist that formed his body, dispersing and recombining with Soul King’s breathing, leaving a hazy trail of mist when he moved.
Where facial features should have been was only a vortex of spiritual eddies slowly rotating.
This was a trophy the Soul Pool Legion had gained in a cross-boundary war, and it was the vessel Soul King now used.
“How is it going?”
In response to Soul King’s inquiry, the leading war priest reported Blood King’s condition truthfully.
Learning that Blood King’s injuries still could not be healed, vague facial features surfaced over Soul King’s vortex-like face.
“Have you analyzed the cursed substance?”
“We tried. No useful information can be extracted.”
“Can the memory sac be removed and replaced into a new body?”
“No. The memory sac has also been invaded by the curse.”
Upon hearing this, Soul King fell briefly silent. Then a vial of red potion appeared in his hand, which he tossed to the leading war priest.
“Try this.”
“This is?” The war priest who received the red potion looked quite puzzled.
“Something taken from the invaders, likely with restorative effects. It might work on Blood King.”
Hearing that it was something taken from the invaders, the war priest immediately cut open the cap and extended a tendril toward the liquid in the vial.
But the tendril stopped before touching the liquid.
He realized that analyzing the potion’s components now was meaningless.
Aside from this potion, they had no other means to treat Blood King.
Even if it was a potion that worsened the curse, it would merely hasten Blood King’s death, not change the predetermined outcome.
Having thought this through, the war priest moved above the flesh cocoon.
The liquid in the clear vial poured down. The instant it touched the cocoon’s surface, it quickly seeped into the writhing bio-membrane.
The cocoon quivered slightly, and countless tiny vascular patterns surfaced on its surface, greedily sucking the energy within the potion.
An unexpected scene unfolded.
After the potion reached Blood King, the bones that had become brittle and extensively fractured due to the curse gave crisp sounds of rejoining. Torn fascia rewove, and even those corroded organs began to recover at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The cursed power was also rapidly neutralized under this washing force.
Amid the war priests’ incredulous expressions, Blood King’s muscle fibers writhed and interlaced like living things, then fully healed.
The purple patterns on his surface had not yet completely dissipated, but the restorative power brought by the healed injuries was steadily driving away the cursed power on his surface.
His body officially entered a positive healing cycle.
In this process, Blood King’s consciousness also gradually woke.
The strength brought by the special grade recovery potion wiped out all the damage he had suffered in the countercurrent channel, and the displaced consciousness recovered as well.
At this moment he opened confused eyes, and the first thing he did was instinctively call out his spatial pack.
“Close one, the data didn’t get lost… what the hell!”
Seeing one hundred twenty thousand sacrificial power, Little Mage was stunned. His first thought was that a bug had occurred during teleportation.
The sacrificial power data had errored on return, causing his sacrificial power to skyrocket.
“Hope there won’t be a rollback.”
Thrilled, Little Mage next opened his contacts, ready to share the joy with his good brothers.
But when he opened his friends list and saw 999+ private message requests and the flood of messages from his friends, he was dumbfounded.
“Little Mage, are you crazy? Quit the guild. We can’t afford to support a big Buddha like you.”
“Little Mage, what’s your situation now? You’re not replying to messages, just killing nonstop, huh? World-against-me story line? What’s the benefit of your hidden plot, worth going this crazy? Can’t you cooperate with your fellow villagers another way and pass intel from the inside?”
“You, kid, might as well stay in the Etherbreath instance world for life and never come back. Even if you do, you won’t make it out of the village. Outside are all people wanting to kill you. From now on your game will be played in the instance world. Your dad here almost wants to disown you.”
Glancing at the mute function toggled on in the lower right corner, Little Mage was even more confused.
“Wait, didn’t I just fail the teleport, was it necessary to…”
Before he could finish, Little Mage realized his head seemed to have lots of new things.
Blood King’s memories, the process of him, in Blood King’s identity, leading the Blood Pool Super Beast Legion to slaughter players with brutality… As his injuries continued to heal, all the information surged into his mind.
He suddenly realized he had not suffered data packet loss, but had been very lucky to draw a hidden plot during teleportation.
This mode was practically a boosting mode: his consciousness was fully hosted by Blood King’s memories, and he could idle for gains.
But the problem was…
Thinking of what he had done in idle mode, Little Mage glanced again at the 999+ private message requests, and his mentality collapsed.
“It’s over, completely over, I’m dead.”
“I was fine when coming here, and now there’s no going back.”
