Chapter 106: Severed Arm Melts Steel, Runes Whisper

In the deathly silent Shi Shizhong, the muffled roar of churning lava and Rough and Heavy's ragged breathing wove together. Despair, like icy vines, coiled around every heart.

Rough and Heavy's single eye was blood-red, streaked with burst vessels, fixed on the fist-sized, dimly glowing emerald orb atop the Life Altar—a candle guttering in the wind—then on Xiang Lingna's pale, translucent little face beside it, and on the star-dust crystal over Lin Mo's chest, which had dimmed just the same.

The Tender Branch's embers had gone out. With its final will it had beaten back the Corrupted Claw Mark's lethal counterstrike, but in doing so it had utterly drained the Altar's power. Xiang Lingna's breath was still faint; without the Altar's sustained nourishment, her condition would only worsen. Lin Mo's Corrupted Claw Mark had been suppressed once more, but it lay coiled like a dormant viper, ready to strike again at any moment. And he himself—the wounds on his chest and back had torn completely open under the violent exertion just now. The violet-black corrosive energy, no longer held in check, was madly eating into his body, bringing a bone-deep agony and a biting cold.

At the geothermal vent, the miniature energy-conversion core was still greedily sucking up the lava's heat, emitting an overloaded hum. Several thorn-steel conduits connected to the Altar's grooves were force-feeding the unstable yet torrential energy into the wounded Altar—like forcing a blood transfusion into a mortally wounded man on the brink of death; it would only hasten its collapse. The runes on the Altar's base flickered in and out, crying out in pain.

"Can't stop… but can't keep force-feeding like this either…" Rough and Heavy's mind raced through agony and despair. The dwarf's stubbornness and the craftsman's wisdom burned to their absolute peak in this moment. The Altar needed energy to repair itself, but it had to be gentle, controllable life-energy it could absorb! What the Root Furnace supplied was violent geothermal heat, its nature at odds with life-energy—and it had drawn the Corrupted Claw Mark's covetous gaze!

He needed a converter! A buffer! A… filter!

His gaze snapped to his own scrapped mechanical prosthetic arm—stripped down to its skeleton, still connected to the thorn-steel conduit. More precisely, to the few relatively intact special-alloy energy conduits inside it, with their natural corrosion-resistant and energy-guiding patterns!

A mad, bloody, yet life-thread-of-a plan took shape in his mind in an instant—using his body as a vessel, melting steel to forge a conduit!

"A dwarf's life… is a tough one!" he rasped in a low snarl, with a resolve bordering on tragic grandeur.

He snatched the twisted but still reasonably sharp metal probe from his tool belt, and without a moment's hesitation drove it hard into his left shoulder joint—the junction where the mechanical prosthetic met flesh and nerve!

"Gyaa—!" The agony blacked out his vision; his whole body shook violently, but he ground his teeth to powder and forced himself to endure! With his right hand, pouring in every ounce of strength, he hacked madly along the already corroded and rotted junction of flesh and metal!

Blood gushed out like a fountain! Flesh, nerves, snapped alloy connectors… Rough and Heavy became a cold-blooded surgeon, performing the cruelest amputation on himself! He meant to use this severed arm-bone—imbued with his life's essence (though mostly corroded away), directly linked to the Root Furnace, and threaded with energy-guiding patterns—as a bridge between the violent geothermal heat and the elven Life Altar! To use his own flesh and will to filter and transform that devastating energy!

The agony nearly made him pass out, but he held on through sheer stubborn will. At last, with a teeth-grating sound of tearing, half an arm-bone—still attached to the metal connectors and the special-alloy conduits—was hacked free!

Blood spurted wildly from the severed stump! His vision swam and darkened; he nearly collapsed. Staggering upright, he used his remaining right hand to grab that severed arm, and slammed the writhing flesh and exposed nerve-bundle of the stump hard against the energy groove on the Life Altar's base! At the same time, he reconnected the special-alloy conduits at the other end of the severed arm back to the thorn-steel conduit!

Hmm—!

The instant the bloody severed arm touched the Altar's groove, another change erupted!

The flickering elven runes on the Altar's base, as if injected with some catalyst, flared up at once! The light was no longer emerald, but a strange blue-gold that fused the green of life with the cold gleam of metal! The runes came alive, racing along the thorn-steel conduit and that severed flesh-and-blood arm, coiling around them in an instant!

An indescribable, gentle yet tenacious pull came from the Altar! Rough and Heavy felt the blood and the lingering essence of life at his severed stump being frantically drained by the Altar! At the same time, the violent geothermal energy streaming from the Root Furnace, as it passed through that severed arm of flesh imbued with a dwarf's blood and will, was like a tamed wild horse—under the elven runes' guidance, it began to undergo some wondrous transformation!

The violent heat was stripped away and settled out; a strange energy, pure and carrying Earth's Heaviness and life's tenacity, poured ceaselessly through the severed arm's flesh and nerves into the wounded Life Altar!

The emerald orb jolted! Its dim light began to recover and stabilize at a speed visible to the eye! Though far from its former brilliance, the aura of decay had been checked! Fed by the most fitting nourishment, the orb began to slowly repair itself! The runes on the base steadied, the blue-gold light flowing ceaselessly, forming a stable energy cycle!

It worked!

Rough and Heavy collapsed on the ground, the tearing agony of the severed stump and the biting cold of massive blood loss overwhelming him utterly. His vision darkened rapidly; his consciousness guttered like a candle in the wind.

In the last instant before he sank into darkness, he saw the Altar's stabilized light gently envelop Xiang Lingna; her tightly furrowed brow seemed to ease a fraction. The star-dust glow over Lin Mo's chest also seemed to steady somewhat. In the corner, Wrench's fingers twitched unconsciously.

And that severed arm of his, still connected to the Altar, wrapped in the blue-gold runes, saw its flesh rapidly wither, dry, and crystallize, gradually fusing with the metal conduits inside and the Altar's base—becoming, as it were, an extension of the Altar itself—an energy conduit forged of flesh, steel, and elven runes, alive.

In Shi Shizhong, the new energy cycle ran steadily, emitting a low hum, like a heartbeat from deep within the earth.

Just as Rough and Heavy's consciousness was about to sink completely into darkness, an extremely faint yet unusually clear fragment of thought, like a pebble dropped into a still lake, traveled along that flesh-and-steel conduit and the elven runes' connection, and passed directly into the depths of his crumbling consciousness:

【…Thorns… entwining… guarding… resonance… origin…】

The thought was cold, ancient, and inhuman, yet carried a sense of scrutiny and... searching? As if confirming him, this forcibly inserted "foreign node."

In Rough and Heavy's single eye, a final flicker of startled doubt crossed before he passed out. That voice… who was it?

Deep within the Elven Sanctuary's stone walls, something seemed to have been stirred more deeply by this forcibly established energy connection and the infusion of a dwarf's flesh and blood.