Chapter 636: Into Hell!

Chapter 636: Into the Depths of Hell!

“Unbelievable.”

In Boulder City, Ibes stood atop the great wall, staring toward the city center with an expression of sheer incredulity.

The spore cloud, shaped like a colossal tree, writhed restlessly, as if its lush canopy were swaying in a violent storm.

Clearly, someone had provoked that creature.

His astonished look gradually shifted to one of keen interest. Pausing to watch, Ibes couldn’t help but click his tongue in admiration.

“It’s been so long since that thing threw such a tantrum… How many years ago was the last time?”

Twenty years? Thirty?

As far as he recalled, a group of not-quite-right-minded vault dwellers had ventured there once, and after emerging, their minds had become even more unhinged.

Vault 117, was it?

Not that it mattered.

“Now this is going to be a show!”

Ibes’s eyes gleamed with the excitement of someone eager to watch chaos unfold, like waiting for a long-anticipated film.

Bloodshed!

Hurry up!

……

Watching the city center wasn’t just Ibes of Boulder Arms Industries; there was also a research vessel lurking dozens of kilometers away from Clearwater City, peering in from a safe distance.

At that moment, Yang Kai was collecting data on the slime mold mother nest through the ship’s equipment while maintaining contact with the Academy’s research division, reporting the situation in Clearwater City to his superiors in real time.

“A small ground force from the Alliance has entered the city center… Yes, it’s that unit composed of Awakened. They cleverly lured away the evolved creatures along the North Second Ring Road through a series of maneuvers, avoiding combat to enter that forbidden zone of life.”

“But their progress seems rough. The bait unit ran into a Titan left behind by the 111th Orbital Drop Division, and the squad that penetrated deep into the center made contact with the mother nest as soon as they landed.”

“Speaking of which, I’m curious how they managed to pinpoint that thing’s location so quickly.”

Staring at the scan images projected on the holographic screen, Yang Kai wore a baffled expression.

Long ago, exploration forces led by the Post-War Reconstruction Committee had searched for the mother nest’s location, but they never found its exact coordinates.

After all, Clearwater City’s center wasn’t just a point on a map; it was a vast area with a surface in ruins and an underground labyrinth so complex it was like a three-dimensional maze.

The mutant slime mold mother nest in the Clearwater region hid within that maze, releasing spores to the surface through underground transit networks and the city’s drainage system.

Spore concentration gradients could indeed narrow down the general area of the nest, but pinpointing its exact coordinates through that method alone was nearly impossible.

Only by deploying enough ground troops for a carpet search of the nest’s region could they hope to find it.

The Defense Department, tasked with exploring Clearwater’s center, had paid a heavy price in casualties, only ever getting close to It.

But now, judging by the changes in Clearwater’s spore cloud, those guys had clearly gotten near the mother nest—even touched It.

If it were a coincidence, it would be far too convenient.

Yang Kai was utterly perplexed.

How the hell did they do it?

……

To be honest, Fang Chang hadn’t expected that, based on Xiaoyu’s coordinates, they would land directly atop that mother nest.

What surprised him even more was that, less than half a minute after landing, they were swallowed by a gaping maw dozens of meters wide.

“……%￥#@!”

Luoyu, still in the air, was dumbfounded.

A chasm like an abyss had suddenly appeared on the barren ruins!

Crimson fungal masses, like the mouth of a carnivorous plant, thrust up from underground and snapped shut, swallowing both ten-man squads of the Burning Legion in an instant!

The entire ground trembled violently, as if boiling water were churning beneath it.

“Old Bai!”

Hang in there, brother!

Gritting his teeth, Luoyu banked the aircraft and aimed its cannon at that closed maw.

With a brief, thunderous roar, dozens of tracer rounds rained down like hail onto the sealed mouth, sending up chunks of stone and shattered fungal debris.

“Woo—!”

A deep, drawn-out wail echoed across the ruins, like a ship’s horn sounding.

Seeing the scattered black blood and tissue fragments, Luoyu realized his attack was effective and felt a surge of hope.

But just as he pulled up the nose and turned for another strafing run, he saw that closed maw slowly sinking back beneath the surface.

That thing was trying to escape!

Realizing time was running out, Luoyu aborted his climb and swung the nose back around.

But the mother nest seemed ready for him. Almost the moment he turned, a dense swarm of black shapes suddenly surged from a half-collapsed building nearby, rushing straight toward him!

Looking closer, they were quadcopter drones corroded by slime mold!

There had to be at least a thousand of them!

At the sight, Luoyu’s face twisted in shock.

Holy shit.

That’s even possible?!

“Iiiu!”

Xiaoyu’s urgent warning came through his earpiece. Already aware of the threat, Luoyu yanked the nose up sharply.

Just a second before colliding with the drone swarm, his Lingyun fighter traced an upward arc, barely skimming past the edge of that dense black mass.

“Damn… That slime mold’s practically sentient!”

Even though it was a game, the experience was so real that Luoyu broke out in a cold sweat.

The massive mouth that had emerged from the ground was gone, leaving only a sunken pit in the flat terrain.

Luoyu’s heart sank, uncertain of his teammates’ fate.

“Iiiu…” (Something’s… off.)

Hearing the voice, Luoyu quickly asked, “Did you find something?”

“…Iiiu!” (…It’s locked onto us. We’d better get out of here fast!)

Hearing that, Luoyu was taken aback.

They've got their eyes on us...

After fighting this long, isn't it obvious?

Perhaps Xiaoyu's expression was too subtle; he didn't grasp the deeper meaning in those words.

And just then, a sudden change occurred!

The tail flame from the engine nozzle flickered abruptly, like a candle snuffed out by the wind, dying out in an instant, and the climbing plane lost its power.

Luoyu's face turned ashen; this situation was exactly like a jet engine flaming out at extreme altitude.

Yet here, less than a thousand meters from the surface, how could it—

Wait, that spore that sucks away oxygen!

Realizing in a flash, Luoyu screamed "Holy crap!" in his mind, but the swarm of drones behind him had already caught up.

Those drones, relying on rotors, could never catch a fixed-wing aircraft.

But with power lost and speed steadily dropping, his ride had become a sitting duck in the sky.

As the dense drone swarm was about to overtake him, and the engine refused to reignite, he had no choice but to grit his teeth, bank the nose, regain speed under gravity's pull, and charge straight into the howling drone swarm.

"Go to hell!!!"

Watching the surging drone horde, Luoyu roared, his index finger squeezing the trigger all the way.

"Brrr—!"

With a deafening roar, the cannon spitting fire like a bayonet plunged into that dense black cloud.

Swaths of drones were shredded by the concentrated fire, and streaks of orange tracer rounds carved a vacuum zone through the tide-like drone sea!

But their numbers were overwhelming.

A single 20mm cannon wasn't enough to shoot down every drone charging at him.

Soon, the stragglers slammed into his plane, sticking to its fuselage like sticky toffee.

The weight of the Lingyun fighter multiplied in an instant, more and more drones clinging on, nearly covering the entire cockpit.

Emptying the last round from the cannon, Luoyu, before the wings were completely tangled, fired the two missiles slung under the wings, and braced himself for an emergency landing toward the nuclear crater.

That was the only possible landing spot.

The nuclear blast two hundred years ago had cleared every obstacle in the entire area.

Just as he seemed about to land successfully, he caught a glimpse of a dark shadow hurtling toward him.

It was a lashing tentacle.

Like the giant maw before, it burst from the soil, lying in wait for him to come.

Gripping the control stick, he instinctively stomped on the rudder.

The tentacle swung past, grazing the left side of the canopy, and slammed hard into the left forward-swept wing of the Lingyun.

The goblin tech's sole advantage now shone through: the stainless steel forward-swept wing, like a sharp razor, sliced the tentacle emerging from the ground cleanly in two.

The remaining half of the tentacle writhed in agony on the ground like a severed earthworm, black ichor gushing from the wound like a fountain, spattering everywhere.

But Luoyu had no time to rejoice.

This elegant cut, while severing one of the mother nest's tentacles, also sent his ride into a complete loss of balance, tumbling sideways toward the center of the nuclear crater, snapping both beautiful forward-swept wings in the process.

Yet thanks to that, the masses of fruiting bodies clinging to his craft were crushed to pieces in the roll, leaving a trail of debris until the tumbling fuselage finally came to a halt.

Now, the entire Lingyun fighter was reduced to a bare, stripped cockpit; the stainless steel body was dented and battered, with hardly an inch of intact skin left.

For an ordinary pilot, surviving such a series of maneuvers with a whole corpse would be a medical miracle.

But Luoyu, at the controls, was no ordinary pilot—he couldn't even be considered an ordinary human.

Just two seconds after his heart stopped, the pale red fungal mass on his chest contracted sharply twice.

About half a minute passed.

The unconscious Luoyu suddenly coughed violently twice, spitting out mouthfuls of blood mixed with flesh, and woke from his coma.

"Ee-oo!"

A delighted cry reached his ears; he knew Xiaoyu had saved him again.

"Thanks..."

"Ee-oo!" (I'm just glad you're okay.)

Forcing a smile onto his face, Luoyu took a deep breath and unbuckled the seatbelt pressing against his chest.

Looking at his reflection in the canopy—a face now only half handsome—he reached out a finger to touch the pale red fungal mass and couldn't help a bitter laugh.

This accelerated recovery buff was indeed useful; the only downside was looking less and less human.

But it wasn't ugly, really.

Maybe because he'd grown used to it; at first, he hadn't been comfortable with Xiaoyu's fruiting body form, but over time, he found it acceptable, even somewhat pleasing to the eye.

Partly because his own aesthetic was subtly shifting, and partly because Xiaoyu seemed to be converging toward human tastes.

As a fundamentally different life form, in a way, it was like the androids and AIs living in the Alliance—it was being slowly assimilated by Alliance society.

Just like the cats and dogs that approached human settlements over ten thousand years ago.

Cooperation is always easier than confrontation for survival in this perilous universe.

But that might be a long way off...

Xiaoyu was a unique exception among millions of evolutionary paths for variant slime molds; the monster currently entrenched in the center of Clearwater City was no gentle kitten or puppy.

It was a bloodthirsty wolf, sharpening its fangs!

The cockpit canopy was jammed. Luoyu tried to open it, found it immovable, so he retrieved a window-breaking hammer from the toolbox under the ejection seat and smashed it hard against the canopy glass.

After shattering the glass, he grabbed a submachine gun, crawled out of the cockpit, and chambered a round.

He was near the center of the nuclear crater.

All around was barren wilderness; in the distance, the raised rim of the crater was visible.

Just as he tried to contact command via the onboard radio, the ground suddenly shook violently again.

Luoyu's expression shifted.

Just as he thought the mother nest was about to pull the same trick and swallow him, he saw a cloud of dust erupt from the empty ground about twenty meters away.

A giant maw, shaped like a carnivorous plant, burst through the soft soil like a whale breaching the surface.

Luoyu's first reaction was that it had misjudged and missed him; he immediately raised his small-caliber weapon to fire, but soon noticed something odd about the creature.

The giant maw let out a painful, long cry, twisting its body in the rising dust as if retching, spewing sand and gravel continuously.

Seeing this, Luoyu stood frozen.

"Holy crap?! What the hell!?"

Is this...

A case of indigestion?

For now, it seemed so—that enormous maw still kept vomiting endlessly, as if it meant to suck all the sand from deep underground up to the surface.

Seeing the gushing rubble and clods of earth hurtling toward him, Fallen Feather hastily dodged backward to avoid them.

And just then, from the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of what seemed to be a human figure flying out from the swirling clouds of dust, crashing heavily onto the open ground five meters away.

In that person’s hand was a short axe stained with black blood, and he lay sprawled in a starfish shape.

A moment later, with a thud, something else landed beside him—it appeared to be a severed hand.

Fallen Feather rushed over, lifted the man’s visor, and saw that it was Old White.

Catching sight of Fallen Feather’s face, Old White gave a somewhat embarrassed smile and said sheepishly,

“Kinda embarrassing, bro—don’t laugh at me… *cough* Anyway, how’d you get down here?”

And your face turned out like this.

Fallen Feather let out a bitter laugh.

“Don’t even ask… That mother nest’s got one cheat after another, never the same twice. I’ve been flying for years, but this is the first time I’ve faced something this absurd.”

“Yeah, it really is absurd…”

Getting up from the ground, Old White wiped his face, which was smeared with black blood, but since his hands were also covered in black slime, he only made it dirtier.

Realizing the futility, he gave up on cleaning his face and instead walked over to pick up Gale’s severed hand.

That guy was the unluckiest.

The moment that giant maw closed, a tentacle pierced him straight through from bottom to top, leaving only this indigestible mechanical hand.

Since the Burning Legion was founded, they had taken part in countless battles, big and small.

Such a brutal loss of life—this was probably the first time.

Seeing even the strongest strength-type beast on the server, with the highest level and greatest combat power, in such a sorry state, Fallen Feather couldn’t help but swallow hard.

“What exactly did you run into?”

“Just what you saw—swallowed by that thing.” Looking at the writhing maw, Old White grinned with a cracked lip. “It probably wanted to crack open our skulls and see what’s inside, so it dragged us deep underground… But that beast clearly underestimated us.”

To be honest, they had been caught off guard—but only off guard.

Right after Gale was taken out in an instant, the others quickly reacted, focusing on the ground and their surroundings while opening fire with their rifles at the closing mouth.

When they realized ordinary rifle rounds couldn’t penetrate the mother nest’s mouth, Fang Chang was the first to draw the Dawnbreaker Longbow and fire a charged explosive arrow overhead.

That arrow, which detonated after embedding itself in the fungal mass, dealt considerable damage. The mother nest that had swallowed them soon showed signs of indigestion, its digestive sac’s inner walls convulsing violently.

The morale of the group was instantly boosted, and the others each used their own skills to unleash whatever gear they had on the crimson fungal masses around them.

The most ruthless of them all was undoubtedly Night Ten.

Earlier, that guy had been turned into a mechanical body by the academy’s researchers. The mother nest’s digestive juices had little effect on him, and his defense was absurdly strong.

A tentacle jabbed him right in the crotch—a blow that could pierce a man clean through—but aside from sending him flying, it did absolutely nothing.

Then Night Ten, quick as a flash, grabbed hold of that tentacle, activated the electrodes installed on him by some researcher, and delivered an electric shock directly to the mother nest’s digestive system.

The instantaneous current nearly drained his exoskeleton’s battery, but the results were astonishing.

After taking a hundred-thousand-volt hit, the mother nest’s cavity walls twitched as if it had swallowed laxatives, and soon the rubble and sand beneath their feet began to spew upward.

This move clearly meant it was done playing.

The mother nest had given up trying to assimilate them and wanted to spit them out of its body.

Just as the two were talking, Fang Chang also shot out from that giant maw and landed not far from them.

“Holy crap, Fang Chang? You’re out too?”

Watching Fang Chang scramble up from the ground, cursing, Old White’s face showed a hint of surprise.

After Fang Chang fired that arrow, he had been targeted by a cluster of tentacles—Old White thought he was dead.

“Almost kicked the bucket…”

Taking off his helmet, whose visor was already shattered, Fang Chang glared grimly at the twisting maw.

He had nearly been eliminated the moment he landed. After playing this game for so long, this was the first time he’d been this humiliated.

Old White walked over, reached out a hand to pull him up, and asked,

“Where’s Night Ten?”

Recalling the scene he saw just before being spat out, Fang Chang paused for a moment before saying,

“Probably still holding onto that tentacle… But I think he’s almost out of power.”

Just then, he suddenly noticed Fallen Feather beside Old White, and his gaze lingered on the half of his face eroded by the slime mold. His expression froze for a moment.

“Fallen Feather…”

Fallen Feather gave a light cough.

“Don’t ask—shot down. As for this face… it ended up like this after Little Feather healed me.”

But Fang Chang didn’t care. He strode straight over, reached out both hands in delight, and gripped Fallen Feather’s shoulders. “I wasn’t going to ask about that—that’s obvious at a glance… How are you feeling now?”

Uncomfortable under that intense gaze, Fallen Feather nervously stepped back half a pace.

“I’m… fine. What’s up?”

That look was exactly the same.

Exactly like when Mosquito invited him to test-fly the Goblin Tech’s new plane!

Seeing Fallen Feather’s uneasy expression, Fang Chang cleared his throat and said seriously,

“Night Ten probably can’t hold out much longer… And I’ve realized that conventional weapons can’t kill this thing.”

“Can’t kill it?”

“Literally! It has merged with this land—its body spans the entire underground space of the city center. Look at it another way: our weapons can’t be stronger than the Post-War Reconstruction Committee’s… If the data in the setting collection wasn’t just A-Guang making stuff up, then the idea of blowing up the mother nest with explosives from the start was doomed. It isn’t located in any single spot on this land—it’s in every spot!”

Perhaps that was why the Post-War Reconstruction Committee’s exploration forces couldn’t pinpoint the mother nest’s exact location.

Every coordinate they explored was correct, but they only ever found a part of it.

And whenever they destroyed a part of it, it would go dormant for a while, only to return soon after, carrying the memories and experience of its previous battles with them.

The same logic applied.

Fallen Feather stared at him in disbelief.

“How? Didn’t you guys…”

“Successfully damage it, right?” Fang Chang guessed his thoughts, looked him in the eye, and continued earnestly, “It’s useless. That damage is like a flea biting it. Even if we give it our all, at best we’ll end up like the Post-War Reconstruction Committee—making it lie low underground for two or three years… Now there’s only one last way to kill it for good.”

Fallen Feather knew what that way was—the B-plan the Administrator had provided for them—

Once the mother nest was found, if it proved indestructible, then he, carrying Little Feather’s entity, would go and devour it.

But there was a prerequisite: first, they had to get close to the mother nest.

Seeing the confusion in Fallen Feather’s eyes, Fang Chang turned his gaze to the giant maw still violently spewing rubble.

“We’re right on top of the mother nest—and it’s right beneath our feet.”

"There, that is the nearest entrance!"