Chapter 255: Chapter 250: Retreat
Stimulated by both the nutrients and Velin, the Blood-sucking Vine seeds grew at an accelerated rate. Countless sharp, barbed tendrils pierced the gaps in the Multi-Armed Race Warriors’ carapaces.
This unconventional attack left them momentarily unsure how to respond.
Two of the Warriors quickly lost their balance.
Their limbs tightly bound, they crashed heavily into the murky water.
The vines didn’t stop. They tightened their grip, burrowing into the unprotected flesh beneath the carapace.
Blue-black blood seeped from the wounds, blooming in the water like ink blots.
The parasitized Warriors let out furious shrieks. They tried to resist, but they had long since missed the prime window to break free. Now, they could only struggle in vain, each twitch causing the vines to constrict even tighter.
The other three Multi-Armed Race Warriors, however, reacted with far more composure.
Two of them reversed their grip on their trident-like halberds and aimed them at the roots of the vines on their own chests.
VMMMM—
The three shells embedded in the tips of their halberds began to vibrate at a high frequency.
Ripples spread out in concentric circles.
The Molten Blood-sucking Vines clinging to their bodies trembled violently from the sonic resonance before shattering inch by inch and falling away.
But this was not without a price.
The high-frequency vibrations also shattered their symbiotic carapaces. The armor on the two Warriors’ chests cracked into a spiderweb of fissures, and seawater mixed with blood gushed from the openings.
The last Warrior’s response was even more ferocious.
He tossed aside his weapon. The four tentacles on his back curled sharply, gripping the vines on his body with their sucker-lined undersides.
RRRIP!
He forcibly tore the vines, which had already begun to root themselves in his flesh, straight from his body.
Large chunks of flesh and symbiotic carapace fragments were ripped away with them, revealing the violently twitching muscle tissue underneath.
He paid it no mind, slamming the remnants of the vines onto the ground. The tangled mass of vines continued to attack the flesh torn away with it.
[Ola!]
Velin signaled that it was the Dwarf’s turn to enter the fray.
[For the Gray Swamp!]
Ola let out a war cry and charged forward simultaneously with the ten shield-bearing Knights behind him.
Their heavy plate armor kicked up huge splashes in the shallow water as they formed a steel line, their target the three members of the Multi-Armed Race who had just freed themselves from the vines.
The battle erupted!
Ola, charging at the very front, was intercepted by a tall member of the Multi-Armed Race.
It locked onto the Dwarf Baron, pointing its halberd forward as the three shells began to hum.
The air around Ola started to distort as a sonic barrier attempted to slow his advance.
The Dwarf Baron roared again, the muscles in his arms bulging as he brought his glowing battle-axe crashing down.
CLANG!
The battle-axe struck the invisible sonic force field, sending sparks flying.
The force field distorted but didn’t break. The recoil brought Ola’s charge to a halt.
The Multi-Armed Race member was also sent staggering by the impact, but it steadied itself and brandished its halberd, engaging Ola in a fierce duel.
Every clash between the battle-axe and the halberd unleashed a tremendous bang and a shockwave. The man and the monster were evenly matched in raw strength.
The rest of the Knights were locked in a deadly struggle with the other two members of the Multi-Armed Race.
The battle fell into a stalemate.
The combat style of the Multi-Armed Race Warriors far exceeded everyone’s expectations.
They used their tentacles to move at high speeds across the slippery ground, their movements bizarre, and the halberds in their hands were wielded with unpredictable versatility.
One Knight swung his heavy hammer, only for it to be caught by two of the enemy’s hands, while a third hand was already stabbing a bone blade toward the gaps in his armor, forcing him into a desperate block.
Elsewhere, it took three Knights in a shield formation to hold off the attacks of a single enemy.
The coral halberd struck the steel shields, creating a dense shower of sparks and sending tremors up their arms that left them numb and their formation wavering.
The Knights managed to hold the line with their heavy armor and strength, but the Multi-Armed Race Warriors used their superior agility and the advantage of multiple arms to constantly probe for weaknesses. For the moment, neither side could gain the upper hand, but Velin knew they couldn’t last long in a battle of attrition like this.
[Barrett, left flank! Suppress the most agile one!]
Velin’s mental command shot across.
[Understood!]
Barrett seized the opportunity and gave an order to the six Scouts beside him.
[Fire!]
SWISH! SWISH! SWISH!
A second volley of gel arrows cut through the gloom, striking a member of the Multi-Armed Race that was using four arms to attack two Knights.
The gel burst, and the seeds of the Molten Blood-sucking Vine erupted under Velin’s remote catalysis.
The Warrior dodged most of the arrows, but two of the tentacles on its legs were still hit.
Barbed tendrils coiled around its lower limbs, digging into the seams of its carapace.
Its high-speed movement came to an abrupt halt, and it let out a furious shriek.
This momentary delay broke the battlefield’s equilibrium.
The two Knights facing it seized the opportunity, roaring as they slammed into it with their shields. They knocked it off balance, and their warhammer and Longsword came whistling down.
The tide of battle began to turn in Velin’s favor.
Just then, something unexpected happened.
The Warrior that had first been ensnared by the vines, the one lying still in the water, began to convulse violently.
With the sound of snapping bones, seven of its eight thick tentacles broke off cleanly at the base!
Its single remaining tentacle twisted and, with a sudden jerk, pulled its head free from the vines’ grasp.
Where the tentacles had detached, at the center of the mangled, fleshy stumps, a hidden structure was revealed.
It was a massive, toothless, circular maw. Ring after ring of folded flesh contracted inward, leading into a bottomless depth.
A humming sound, a mixture of high and low frequencies, emanated from the great maw.
Deep within the maw, dark energy gathered, forming an unstable point of light.
A sense of foreboding seized Velin.
[Warning! High energy reading! Retreat!]
Her stronger biological instincts allowed Sarah to be the first to react.
Ola didn’t hesitate for a second. He instantly abandoned the opportunity to crush his enemy’s skull, took a sharp step back, and simultaneously used the back of his axe to sweep back a hot-headed Knight.
The moment the order was given, Barrett and his Scouts had already hit the ground rolling, diving behind the nearest rock for cover.
The next second.
The point of light deep within the maw abruptly contracted and vanished.
A jet of pitch-black matter spewed forth from the circular maw.
The instant it touched the cavern air, it transformed into a light-devouring darkness.
The light from the Sun Flame Grass potion Velin had detonated earlier was also swallowed.
The cavern plunged into absolute blackness.
[Connection... interrupted...]
[Father... I...]
Sarah’s intermittent mental messages dissolved into static in Velin’s mind, then vanished.
The hive terminal had failed.
Shared vision, teammate locations, mental coordination—all of it was severed.
At that moment, everyone became an isolated island in the dark.
In the darkness, a few muffled thuds could be heard, along with the loud crash of splitting rock.
Ola was cursing something, but his voice didn’t travel far in the eerie darkness before it was devoured.
This corrosive black fog lasted for about a dozen breaths.
When it dispersed, and the lingering glow of the Sun Flame Grass crystals once again illuminated the cavern...
The murky, pooled water was still there.
Ola’s Knights stood in a defensive posture, back-to-back.
But the enemy was gone.
All five Multi-Armed Race Warriors, injured or not, had vanished without a trace.
The tunnel entrance they had broken through was now sealed shut by a massive amount of freshly collapsed rock.
On the ground, wherever the black fog had passed, the rock was corroded and pitted, still emitting wisps of green smoke.
They had completed their retreat in a bizarre manner never seen before.
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