Chapter 404: Relief

Li Cheng's human appearance vanished completely; his height shot up to two meters eighty, muscles swelling, bones proliferating, horns thrusting toward the sky.

His chest, abdomen, hands, legs and other areas were all covered in a reflective, glossy black chitinous carapace.

These carapaces, inherited from the rhinoceros beetle's genes, had an uneven microscopic structure on their surface that could selectively reflect light, thereby presenting a nearly iridescent metallic texture.

Clang!

Two mantis-arm bone blades sprang from his arms, scraping against each other and emitting a teeth-grinding squeak.

The tattered clothing, torn apart by the transformed form, hung on the carapace's barbs and was set alight by the flames remaining from the aphid's explosion.

The crimson beetle parted its bloody maw lined with double-layered ring-shaped fangs, as if silently smiling.

The chimney-shaped vector nozzles on its back once again blasted out fierce flames, providing violent thrust, allowing the beetle to advance through the air in a lightning-fast "Z"-shaped dash, a speed utterly disproportionate to its massive frame.

Clang, clang!

Bone blade met scythe, metal against metal, sparks flying.

Li Cheng retreated half a step, his hooked foot stomping through the tile and gouging into the ground.

The crimson beetle knew full well the player's cunning tricks, and gave Li Cheng no chance to lock onto it; the vector nozzles on its back abruptly increased their output,

propelling it at extreme speed to vault over Li Cheng's head, four blades snapping and twisting together, while simultaneously whipping out its long tail to stab at Li Cheng's neck.

With his hands unable to spare a moment, Li Cheng's mind stirred, summoning from his back column the long-unused Shark-type single-soldier exoskeleton.

This piece of equipment was something he had bought back when he had just reached lv11, costing nearly a thousand game coins.

As his level rose step by step, the single-soldier exoskeleton, originally intended for elite soldiers in the real world, saw fewer and fewer opportunities to appear—until now.

Click,

Under the special-effect control of 【Assembled Puppet · Modified】, the exoskeleton's interface connected directly to Li Cheng's nerves, responding as smoothly as his own limbs.

The mechanical arm clamped onto the long tail midair, the AC motor spinning until it smoked, straining with all its might against the beetle's monstrous strength.

Realizing it could not simply stab Li Cheng's head apart with its tail, the crimson beetle instantly changed tactics; its tail writhed, the tip blooming like a flower as it sprayed out a great gush of green acid.

Even Grey Rain's liquid metal could not withstand this kind of acid; its corrosiveness went without saying.

Just a few drops splashed onto the floor tiles, and acrid smoke rose as they melted and liquefied.

At the critical moment, the frontal armor on Li Cheng's body surface actually detonated on its own, like a tank's reactive armor, intercepting the splashing acid in advance.

The only thing missing was He Sai having seen "Hidden Blade," otherwise the crimson beetle, having absorbed his memories, would surely have tossed out a line: "Junior brother, we were taught by the same master—can't break that move!"

Boom!

The crimson beetle landed heavily; the instant it crashed down, the chimneys on its back fired up again. But this time, instead of spraying fire, they sprayed smoke.

Rolling smoke billowed out, spreading through the entire basement, blocking sight, dampening sound, and erasing the beetle's silhouette.

Holy crap, isn't that my 【Mist Concealment】?

Li Cheng's expression turned strange; carapace plates popped out from behind both cheeks, covering his mouth and forming a breathing mask,

and with a single-handed snap of his fingers, he simultaneously released the 【Mist Concealment】 skill, spreading thick fog to further reduce visibility.

The fog spread thick; in the basement one could not see one's own hand, and even the sound of concrete collapsing from violent explosions was greatly reduced.

"Your gaze has been trying to lock onto me."

A muffled, hoarse voice came through the smoke—that should be the crimson beetle's true voice. "I have dissected the heads of He Sai and several other humans.

Human eye movement has two types: saccades and fixation. The average saccade lasts 20–40 ms, at a speed of 600°/s; because it is too fast, it cannot obtain effective visual information.

Fixation lasts between 80–600 ms, with a viewing angle of 1–2 degrees, providing the human brain with 50% of its effective visual information.

Human Summoners with Constitution and Perception attributes greater than or equal to 12 can, to a certain extent, overcome instinct,

and during the brief gaps of saccades, also obtain effective visual information. But the information-gathering effect is still not as good as fixation.

During the fight just now, you would rather forgo fixation and kept saccading at high frequency, using your foveal central vision to lock onto my torso as much as possible, rather than my head.

In other words, you very likely have some powerful skill or item on you that needs to lock onto my exact position before it can be activated.

And, after seeing my strength, you still did not leave the battlefield with your demon pet and return to Earth.

This proves that, in your estimation, you remain confident you can kill and devour me, which indirectly confirms that the skill or item truly is a finishing move."

"You react fast,"

Li Cheng said, his expression unchanged: "I happen to have a 【Heaven and Earth Severance: Star of Creation, Instant Hell-Slay, Ascending Dragon Sword】 on me. Once I bring it out, even a god I'll kill for you to see."

"I'm skeptical of that."

The crimson beetle's voice drifted near and far. "That name sounds like it was just made up."

Before the word "made" was even finished, a void abruptly appeared within the thick fog.

The beetle's scythe-like forelimbs cut through the fog toward Li Cheng, but were blocked by something.

It was the Steel and Victory banner-spear—or more precisely, the steel banner-spear fused with Li Cheng's right arm.

Originally a spear-like banner-spear, after his height had swollen by another size, it had become quite a bit smaller, just right to be mounted within his arm.

Li Cheng stepped forward, leaned his body, every muscle taut, and with tremendous force physically bent the steel banner-spear,

when 【Special Effect: Counter Moment】 suddenly activated, sending the crimson beetle flying backward even faster than it had come, slamming into the wall and gouging out a huge crater,

Naturally, an impact of this level could not inflict much damage on it, but—

a nylon fishing line had, at some unknown moment, become stuck to its body via the steel banner-spear.

No longer needing to lock on by sight, the fishing line itself was the best guide.

Float! Air! Engine!

The engine on Li Cheng's chest lit up with a faint glow, and his entire body became a meteor, savagely charging along the direction of the fishing line.

The already badly battered basement now collapsed by more than half; amid the swirling dust, a narrow tunnel comparable to a subway tunnel had been forcibly bored through the thick rock layer.

Li Cheng stood at the end of the tunnel, still holding his charging stance.

Plop, plop.

The chunks of flesh and blood originally belonging to the crimson beetle that clung to his body dropped off one clump after another, but in his eyes there was no joy whatsoever.

The meat mass—no, that's not right.

The tonnage of the red beetle was even more Grey Rain than Grey Rain itself, yet the blood and minced flesh here, plus the chitinous carapace, came to only about three hundred kilograms.

"So this is your trump card."

A faint voice drifted from the basement ruins, and the chunks of the red beetle spoke while fusing back together.

The instant it spotted the fishing line, it had decisively torn itself into five pieces, severing the connection between its torso and its limbs. Trading its torso as the price, it preserved the rest of its body.

As a high-tier Worm-Lord Divine-Scourge infected host, the red beetle had long ago extracted a gene sample from an alien octopus creature from a "compatriot," and dispersed its brain across its body.

Besides the main brain in its head, every limb contained enough neurons to think independently.

At this moment, the fungal mat on the third basement level dissolved entirely, transforming into primordial flesh that flowed into the beetle's body.

The reborn red beetle rose once more, its bulk several times greater than before, the two scythe-like forelimbs as exaggerated as a Ultralisk from StarCraft.

"Heh heh,"

Seeing this, Li Cheng raised a hand to cover his forehead and suddenly laughed, as if a weight had been lifted from his heart.

The red beetle did not question Li Cheng's laughter—that last 【Hover Engine】 strike, Li Cheng had definitely not held back,

and after careful calculation, the red beetle had concluded that it could absolutely take another 【Hover Engine】 head-on with its massive bulk and regenerate.

It no longer dodged nimbly, but kicked off the ground, propelled by its vector nozzles into the tunnel, its two scythes crossing to plow through ten thousand jin of earth.

Trapped at the dead end of the cave, with nowhere left to retreat,

Li Cheng drew a deep breath and shouted: "Combine!"

"Coming, coming!"

Grey Rain, who had activated 【Spirit-Stalk Ambush】 and turned her body translucent, drifted down from the floor above, passing through the rock layer and wrapping around Li Cheng from behind.

Grey Rain shifted into a liquid-metal form, coating Li Cheng's body and laying a layer of metallic armor over his pitch-black armor.

The armor wrapped his entire body, leaving only a small bare patch at his neck.

Under the insectoid form, the burden of nearly nine hundred kilograms was heavy, but not so much that he couldn't bear it,

Li Cheng silently pulled from the void a ridiculously thick veterinary syringe, comparable in girth to a 300 ml cola bottle.

Inside the syringe was a crystalline, translucent scarlet plasma threaded with golden filaments—precisely that bottle of Xuanlei Qilin blood obtained from the Immortal Court Lawyer mission.

An inexplicable aura spread down the tunnel,

The red beetle instinctively sensed danger approaching, and its dorsal vector nozzles surged to higher speed once more,

"Fifteen seconds left."

Muttering to himself, Li Cheng drove the 300 ml veterinary syringe straight into his neck and pushed the plunger all the way down.

(End of this chapter)