Chapter 65: Advance Without Retreat

In this moment, a line of dialogue with an extremely high family-content rating flashed through Kraft's mind.

Translate, translate! What do you call a surprise!

Outside the window on the other side, the same Bai Guang flared up, accompanied by layered choruses amidst the sound of water droplets, climbing up the stone wall, creating the illusion of a breathing moon rising on the other side.

His heart pounded like a drum, the vibration transmitting through his entire chest cavity, tugging at his lungs until even his breathing stalled for a moment. Streams of blood squeezed into his arteries, the rising blood pressure causing a dull ache inside his skull.

The window shutter before him was tapped, the rhythmic knocking echoing in the room; its patience and stamina were being depleted, the white light traces shining into the room moving back and forth with increasing obviousness, while his tense muscles urged it to act.

Hunting was never always smooth sailing; even the most seasoned hunters would occasionally miscalculate. So, he had not come with only traps.

Kraft did not hesitate any longer; he drew his sword, pried open the wooden stopper of the fish oil jar, and poured a little less than half directly onto the blade, the pale yellow oily liquid flecked with white foam flowing down along the groove. He turned his wrist, tilting the blade slightly to coat both sides with the oil film.

He poured the remaining half of the jar directly into the brazier; a wave of heat rushed to his face, and the leaping tongues of fire nearly licked his cheeks.

He waved the long sword casually; the blade ignited the instant it cut through the flames. The most violent and untamable substance known to man burned on the steel surface, releasing heat that made the weapon recall its birth, as if returning to its primal form in the forge.

Through the hilt and the glove, he could feel that dangerous temperature, one that instantly denatured and carbonized protein; no carbon-based life form would like it, and even the smith would frown at such an act of damaging the weapon.

Lowering the sword tip, Kraft walked step by step toward the window; the burning oil dripped down, stretched by gravity into bright ellipsoids, hissing as they hit the floor.

The sound of knocking on the wood grew more urgent; hard, skin-covered things like knuckles frequently struck different positions, with multiple knocking points sounding at the same time, as if a group of people of varying heights and sizes were calling out anxiously from outside.

He raised the blade as a response. The distance had closed to less than five paces; there was no need to hide his footsteps anymore, and the creeping thing behind the barrier could not possibly judge his movements through the sudden noise.

After a brief buildup of force, he pushed off the ground with his legs first, charging forward. His body leaned forward, utilizing inertia to the maximum, leaving no room for retreat.

Holding the long sword level, his good hand-eye coordination helped him adjust the angle; the target was the gap in the middle of the window.

The knocking sound hesitated for a moment, seemingly confused by the suddenly approaching noise; having never encountered such a situation, it did not know whether to continue its mischief or break through the window.

A moment of hesitation completely ruined its last chance to react; amidst a not-so-obvious, sluggish friction sound, the superheated blade pierced through the gap and broke out of the window.

The wet, slippery outer skin crumbled at a touch, splitting along with the uneven layers; the tip stabbed into the tangled, tough muscles beneath.

It felt like stabbing into a freshly woven grass ball, slicing through the cord-like and block-like collections of muscle fibers and penetrating deeper.

Water-rich tissues contracted violently upon contact with the blade; heat transmitted outward, turning everything within reach into sticky or dry, hardened clumps of denatured protein, which were then blackened by subsequent heating. Even a hundred coagulation electrocautery knives combined could not match its efficiency.

The massive amount of water vapor generated rushed into the existing and artificially created loose gaps, causing secondary burns, indiscriminately steaming the fluid-filled lumens, plexuses of nerve bundles, and fragile glands.

The spasming, twitching muscles lost their ability to cling; the teeth on the branches that had hooked into the stone crevices loosened, and the body swayed, losing its balance.

The length advantage of the weapon personally selected by Old Wood manifested; Kraft, with residual force, could still press his weight forward, driving the blade diagonally downward with the remaining momentum, sending the rest of the blade to the other side.

Small flat bones and connecting cartilage were crushed together; the sword's momentum grazed and was blocked by an irregular bone edge, likely a vertebra, stopping against an extremely hard, thick bone plate, stabbing two inches deep.

Before the victory could be further expanded, a painful, mad roar erupted; it was an unmasked shriek, the most terrifying noise from its vocal organs, like the final screams of all passengers on a roller coaster heading straight to hell, a death curse spewing from a bloodied trachea.

Just as the most painful part of his fragmented memories earlier, contrary to the sound it made while disguised, this roar possessed a magic that tormented the mind, like thorny brambles soaked in saltwater whipping the spirit.

It mutilated formed thoughts and disrupted human reason. Kraft exerted all his strength to execute the action of pressing the sword hilt downward, lifting the blade to slice through as much tissue as possible.

This action clearly brought greater pain; after a series of weak, bone-raking sounds against the wall, the weight on the sword lightened, the shrieker slid downward, and amidst a huge splash, turned into a dull rumbling sound, sinking into the water.

Kraft shook his head, striving to dispel the dizziness and the strange sensation of falling; just now, he felt himself detaching and falling in a blur of consciousness, yet before reaching a certain critical point, he exhausted his strength and did not fall into another, deeper place.

The situation did not allow him to think much; the sound of wood being squeezed and twisted came from the opposite window, and his barely recovered reason urged him to forcefully pull out the long sword.

The process of retracting was not smooth; the grainy blade bumped and scraped in the gap, knocking off black-and-white charred fragments; the adhering, dry, glue-like substance stretched into threads, truly like an electrocautery probe used for half a surgery without cleaning, wrapped so tightly its original shape was unrecognizable.

The window shattered completely under the heavy pressure; bright Bai Guang flooded the room, overpowering the light from the brazier, casting long, slender shadows of objects.

The incessant repeating verses echoed again in the space, reflecting back and forth between the walls; the wet, slippery tentacle singing the loudest extended into the room first.

The spreading anxiety was suppressed in his mind; after experiencing their voices repeatedly, resistance inevitably developed.

Perhaps this annoying noise also had to act through the sensory organs, and the repeated stimulation finally made the adaptability of the receptors take effect, selectively reducing its reaction to it.

Logical thinking regained the upper hand. Kraft did not turn to face it directly; instead, he bent down and picked up another fish oil jar.

The setup ultimately proved useful; accompanying the sound of viscous internal organs hitting the ground was the crisp sound of a mechanism springing up.

This was the moment Kraft had been waiting for; his spirit was prepared to welcome another wave of shrieking sound waves.

This was undoubtedly a test of willpower; for the first time, his mind, still retaining a shred of clarity, endured its baptism while maintaining autonomous consciousness.

If he could, Kraft would have preferred to lose consciousness temporarily as before; that physiological escape response of losing consciousness was a mechanism to avoid receiving the full brunt of stimuli beyond the threshold.

His skeletal muscles trembled involuntarily, his breathing was rapid, his ventricles contracted blindly at a high frequency, stomach acid refluxed, and a burning sensation surged upward, yet his consciousness deliberately remained clear, striving to command his trembling body to throw the oil jar.

Toward the position of the window in his memory, it must now be fixed in place; the oil jar struck it accurately, the inferior jar shattering with a clatter, the oil spreading over its slippery skin.

It had not yet realized the severity of the problem, roaring on its own, until Kraft regained control of his body, spun around, used his sword to lift the brazier, and scattered the flying, scorching charcoal and a sky full of sparks toward it.

The fluctuating light of the flying fire illuminated the full form of that writhing creature.

Growing on the tentacle structures that fascinated Kalman were bright light tumors and waving small branches; those with hollow cavities groaned and shrieked, while those with mouths and sharp teeth chewed and devoured their surrounding kin.

Previous fragmented memories of witnessing it left little effective information; the only thing remembered was rows of serrated teeth.

Now that he understood, those were clearly gums that had spawned too many fangs, forming a single structure suitable only for tearing, placed where prey was most accessible and where the other branches were, controlled by an unknown central nervous system to bite wildly.

The furrowed skin was pushed up by bent joints; movement consisted of the flexion and extension of bone chains formed by long bones articulating, driving tentacles that should not be used for climbing to perform support and pulling actions.

The tangled tentacles were indistinguishable in number; the body from which these twisted things grew was an abomination that even Kraft's knowledge could not accurately describe.

It was a great collection of a main body mixed with excess flesh, shattered bones, useless hyperplasia, and everything "unnecessary," decorated with facial features and hair; everything not used in the "perfect" tentacle structure had been stuffed in here.

They were chaotically interlocked, like a particularly enlarged version of a teratoma. Skin struggled to cover part of the surface, with granulation tissue filling the gaps.

However, the healing of unordered hyperplasia often exceeded actual needs; scars protruded, and new small blood vessels took root within them. Lacking a protective keratin layer, they were repeatedly torn and regenerated, with hyperplastic polyps protruding in clusters like flesh horns.

The elongated outer ears seemed to be the result of volume expansion; the sides of the mouth split open, toothless and tongueless, gaping hollowly in a silent roar. Yellow-white eyeballs without pupils rotated in vain, gathering in twos and threes within crowded eye sockets beneath pterygium.

Some small tentacles sprouted and grew on top; some had already taken shape, while most hung limply from the base of the large tentacles, as if lacking nutrients.

Charcoal fell from the air, igniting the fish oil; the erupting flames engulfed several of its large and small tentacles. The concerto of shrieking reached a climax, like scraping a knife against the spirit and flesh, a dual pain, both real and illusory, torturing consciousness.

The writhing thing struggled madly, pulling the tentacle caught by the bear trap; disregarding the misaligned iron teeth tearing its muscles, it used immense strength to pull the trap, along with the chain and the fixed long nail, out of the ground, a deep wound visible to the bone oozing turbid, glowing white liquid.

Dragging its nearly severed, dangling limb, it finally regained freedom; its vicious small branches opened their mouths, and the deformed, cumbersome lump of a body, propelled by its burning tentacles, charged straight at Kraft with a roar.