Chapter 37: A Meng

Having just been beguiled by the voice of that creature that was unclear whether it was a deer or a tree, Leiketon immediately began meditating the moment he sensed something wrong with his condition.

As an image composed of countless flowing golden sand grains forming gears, chains, and eyeless eyes was sketched out, Leiketon felt his negative condition dispelled once again.

"Imprisonment!" a single word in Draconic language burst from Leiketon's mouth.

The talisman pinched in Leiketon's left hand turned to ash, and an invisible wave surged toward the huge monster ahead with his will.

The monster's painful wail and trembling body froze for an instant, but in less than a breath its body resumed trembling. Leiketon only had time to draw his gun and fire a purification bullet.

Afterward Leiketon fired two more shots in succession, but this huge-bodied monster, clearly just struggling and writhing in place, always managed to dodge the bullets with an eerie posture, as if its bodily instinct controlled its movements to avoid harm.

Seeing that the shooting had little effect, Leiketon gave up on continuing to fire, since purification bullets were scarce and he needed to make them count.

After putting his gun back into the waist holster, Leiketon, wielding the sickle taken from the golden hand, walked to the side, trying to clear the vines spreading from the monster's body.

Leiketon's intuition told him these vines were important to the creature, and since they were originally part of its body, cutting them would likewise harm the monster's main body.

Upon seeing the monster's main body, Leiketon discarded the idea of rushing forward with the sickle to hack at it.

Faced with the choice between a suicidal charge and hot-blooded recklessness, Leiketon decisively opted to pull back a bit.

"This sickle seems to bring out the wielder's rashness and courage, but still within a controllable range." Leiketon then realized his earlier impulsive thought stemmed from the sickle's negative effect.

After Leiketon spent a while clearing the surrounding vines with the sickle, he stopped; the vines' strength was far greater than he had expected, nothing like the ease with which Jin had moved earlier.

"We're all Sequence Eight; the gap shouldn't be this huge! Could these vines even count as a doctor's patient?" Leiketon couldn't understand why Jin had moved so easily earlier.

Leiketon stopped his movements, glanced around, mentally calculated the number of vines around him and his own stamina, and decisively gave up the idea of clearing them.

After returning to his previous position, Leiketon simply threw the sickle to the ground. He had been holding the sickle for nearly three minutes since just now, and he had reached his limit.

Since he could inflict no real damage on the huge monster, he decided to test various extraordinary bullets against it. Having formed the idea, Leiketon immediately sprang into action.

Leiketon drew his gun again from the holster, took out all the purification bullets, and loaded two types of bullets with burning and shock effects.

He then fired a single shot at the monster's huge body before him.

The burning-effect bullet left a crimson trail in the air, then plunged into the monster's tree-like body. Red flames ignited on the monster's surface, with a tendency to spread outward.

But shortly afterward, the monster's image in Leiketon's eyes shifted to a giant deer bearing massive antlers, with roots sprouting from its feet and vines entwining it.

As the monster's form changed, the flames that had spread across it gradually faded, leaving only a palm-sized black spot on its body. Compared to the monster's huge size, this palm‑sized black spot was utterly negligible.

"Can it avoid different attribute damages by shifting its own form?" Leiketon whispered.

He immediately fired again, this time with a shock bullet. The bullet itself looked unremarkable, but upon striking the giant deer it sent a ripple across its body, accompanied by a faint dragon's chant echoing.

The giant deer's body froze in place, and its shifting form between deer and tree became unstable, with different parts switching between deer and tree states at varying frequencies, making it look as if the world had glitched.

Seeing the shock bullet produce an unexpected effect, Leiketon replaced all remaining bullets in his gun with shock bullets and then unleashed them all at the monster's ever‑shifting form.

"Bang! Bang! Bang~!"

Several bullets struck the monster's body in succession, causing its state switches to become denser and faster.

"This bug‑like state always makes one a bit uneasy, but that angel said there should be no A Meng avatar here." Leiketon didn't know where his unease came from.

"If what's here isn't an avatar?" a low whisper sounded in Leiketon's ear.

Anxiety and fear instantly permeated Leiketon's body as he stiffly lifted his head toward the direction of the voice.

The monster that had been constantly shifting between deer and tree had, at some point, ceased its shifting and become a spliced entity of a giant deer and a giant tree.

On this spliced monster's body grew a human face: black curly hair, black eyes, a broad forehead, a thin visage. In the position of the right eye lay a monocle of indeterminate material.

Leiketon felt his heart almost stop, as the name "A Meng" kept echoing in his mind.

"Didn't they say there were no A Meng avatars left?" Leiketon silently shouted in his heart.

Leiketon felt his emotions were extremely tangled, as if he were still fighting low‑level monsters in the novice village when suddenly a wild boss sprang from the nearby grass.

"Strictly speaking, I am not an avatar, nor am I parasitizing anything." The A Meng face that had sprouted on the huge monster seemed to hear Leiketon's thought and respond.

Leiketon neither listened to A Meng's words nor pondered them, uttering Draconic phrase after phrase from his mouth: "The power of knowledge, the power of reason, the God of Wisdom."

But the moment the words left his lips they vanished, as if they had never existed.

Leiketon hadn't really expected his chanting of the God of Knowledge's honorific to be useful; even without A Meng's theft, the God of Knowledge might not bother with a follower who merely pretended to be himself.

Leiketon silently recited another honorific in Draconic language in his heart.

"The retinue of knowledge and wisdom, the ancient guardian, the eyes that see the world, the wise one seated in the heavens, the keeper of reason and knowledge."

Although this angel in Ma Dan is not the true body either, since he is an angel under the God of Knowledge, his arrival would surely draw the God of Knowledge's gaze as well.

Whether it was this A Meng avatar deliberately doing so, or due to its poor condition, it neither stole Leiketon's thoughts from his mind nor had already taken them without his knowing.

As Leiketon finished mentally reciting the angel's honorific, nothing happened around him.

"What's going on? Is there a delay? Must the chant be spoken aloud? Or did the other side see A Meng and chicken out?" Leiketon felt bewildered.

"You seem quite familiar with me?" the A Meng face spoke again.

(End of chapter)