Chapter 520: Chiseling the Wall

The castle lies to the north of the town, while shops and the church are to the east. Logically, someone should be sent to scout the castle direction and confirm its condition at this point.

But clearly, the players have all watched plenty of horror thrillers—splitting up now would almost certainly mean getting picked off one by one.

Thus, the group did not scatter; instead, they continued advancing rapidly eastward in a tight formation, while Lei Yesi activated his Ink Division Fruit, peeling off an ink clone from his chest skin.

"What the hell is that? So disgusting!"

Mian Yue's shocked exclamation echoed the thoughts of Wan Li Fengdao and the others.

There, Lei Yesi's ink clone was unmistakably a two-meter-tall, oval, egg-like mass resembling a hairworm, with a pair of wings, four muscular arms, and two legs unnaturally slender compared to its body.

"It's a universal tool."

Lei Yesi's own expression was equally tragic—this tattoo design had originally been his first love from his youth. Inked on his chest to symbolize eternal love, it had, unsurprisingly, ended in a breakup.

To avoid embarrassment, he kept altering the tattoo, replacing it with an angel from the Bible, until it became this thing.

After being activated by the tattoo fruit, its strength and agility were only slightly above average, but it excelled in greater operational range and stronger self-awareness than other tattoos.

It could fly, dive into the sea, pick locks, cook, wash dishes, and dispose of corpses—the only flaw being its absurd appearance, which even Lei Yesi himself found abstracting.

"Pakki pakki."

The angel tattoo flapped its wings, detaching from Lei Yesi's body via a tail-like ink line, lifting off the ground and flying toward the town's north.

Lei Yesi pulled his hands apart, releasing ink that formed animated lines, displaying the angel's viewpoint.

The angel swiftly neared the castle, where a dried-up moat encircled it, and atop the circular towers stood lifelike gargoyles.

The castle itself had all windows and doors sealed, no entrance visible. Pressing an "ear" against the frosted, opaque windows, one could hear clear, rhythmic clangs echoing from within.

Claudia reacted quickly, "What's that sound? Morse code?"

"No. The sound's too even—it's more like… chiseling a wall?"

Wan Li Fengdao instinctively turned to look at the Fungus King; the others realized too—could this have something to do with their mission item, the ice pick?

"I'll try prying open the window."

Lei Yesi took a deep breath, remotely controlling the clone as he carefully pried at the window. But because the angel's legs were too thin and frail, it couldn't brace itself on the windowsill—after several failed attempts, it still couldn't hold.

Li Cheng watched, solemnly saying, "If you don't train your legs, you'll regret it someday."

Wan Li Fengdao glanced over, "Isn't it 'you'll end up impotent'?"

Li Cheng shook his head firmly, "Of course not—I've got zinc tablets, Andean maca, and Fu Fang Xuan Ju capsules."

"?? You're doing memes with footnotes now?"

While they were joking, the angel tattoo finally pried open the frosted opaque glass—but behind it remained another sealed, normal glass window.

Through the glass, they clearly saw the castle's dusty floor, where an absurdly out-of-place autopsy bed, loaded with supports, sat.

On the supports rested a series of prisms, microscopes, control levers, and medical robotic arms.

And the astronaut, system-named "Annihilation Device," was wielding an ice pick identical to the one carried by the Fungus King's team, smashing against a brick wall pressed tightly against the castle's metallic dome.

Every player's body hair stood on end; all the transcendent beings realized one fact—their two missions, escorting the astronaut and protecting the ice pick, ultimately led to the same destination.

"Dang dang dang!"

The astronaut swung the ice pick, breaking through the brick wall to reveal a narrow, pre-existing mine tunnel. He seemed to sense the gaze, looked up, and saw the angel tattoo pressed against the window.

The astronaut paused, not startled by the tattoo, but slowly and deliberately waved his hands back and forth toward it.

Mian Yue hesitated, "Is he…"

"Telling us to get out," Wan Li Fengdao said with a solemn expression. The next second, the gargoyles perched atop the castle towers shook their bodies, shedding stone fragments to reveal intricate mechanical bodies resembling the Alpha Python's design.

"Wuuu!!"

Hundreds of mechanical gargoyles shrieked in unison, flapping their wings into the air and unleashing a wave of light beams that instantly reduced the angel tattoo to ash.

The blinding light illuminated nearly the entire town as bright as daylight, stretching the players' shadows long and thin to the street corners.

"Go!"

Wan Li Fengdao roared, instantly drawing his Dragon-Slaying Sword, then pressing his index and middle fingers together along the blade's spine and tapping seven times.

Zing zing zing zing—

Fierce sword qi surged from the Dragon-Slaying Sword, radiating divine energy in all directions, forming countless ethereal sword shadows that hovered around Wan Li Fengdao.

The swords moved according to his will; over a hundred divine energy sword shadows shot skyward, striking the swarm of diving gargoyles.

The mechanical gargoyles' base physical stats were roughly equivalent to Lv15 melee transcendent beings, with a few reaching Lv20.

Wan Li Fengdao pushed his divine energy to its limit; the sword shadows sliced through the gargoyles' outer shells, sparking dense showers of sparks.

"Their material hardness matches the Alpha Python's—target the cables beneath the exoskeleton!"

Xiao Dao Ge shouted a warning: the sky was thick with gargoyles; the larger ones spread their wings to block the front, buying time for their comrades to charge their breath attacks.

Mian Yue, sprinting, kicked off the ground with her rabbit legs, twisting her rabbit waist midair, drawing her bow and firing a string of vine arrows.

The arrows quivered violently, as if self-aware, curving around the front barriers and piercing precisely through the metal support columns behind the gargoyles' necks, lodging into the data cables behind.

Boom!

The vine arrows exploded simultaneously, bursting like fireworks—dozens of gargoyles spiraled down and crashed.

"Well done!"

Claudia, mid-casting black magic, couldn't help praising: "What skill is that?"

"Not a skill—just trembling-arrow technique."

Mian Yue's ears twitched (rabbits primarily dissipate heat through their ears), she panted heavily—this single volley had drained more energy than usual by several times.

She had no breath to explain; Li Cheng quickly said, "Simply put: adjust the arrow shaft's angle so it doesn't point at the target, then shift the fletching from the tail to the front, so the airflow pressure acts more strongly on the arrow's surface, pushing the shaft to rotate around its center of gravity mid-flight, automatically adjusting pitch and climb angle."

Thus achieving one, two, or even multiple mid-air turns.

I know an archer named Cupid—he's reportedly been practicing this technique lately.

???

Holy shit, the culprit behind the recent drop in marriage rates has been found.

Li Cheng kept a casual expression on his face, but his eyes were constantly monitoring the speed at which the glowing bar representing his stamina on his arm was dropping,

He spewed Dragon's Breath into the air, Claudia cast the Acid Rain black magic, Centipede used telekinesis to make the gargoyles crash into each other, and the group of players retreated while maintaining their defensive line,

All the Awakened were panting heavily, and with every move they made, their stamina plummeted at a speed far beyond reason.

At the critical moment, a two-story wooden shop suddenly flung its doors open, and the shop owner, wearing a cowboy hat with a toothpick dangling from his lips, raised a strange-looking rotary machine gun connected to an air canister and sprayed into the gargoyles high above.

Strangely enough, the rotary machine gun didn't fire solid rounds but blank cartridges wrapped in gas, which didn't hurt the gargoyles at all, yet somehow terrified them immensely and drove them far back.

The cowboy owner spat out his toothpick and said impatiently, "What are you standing around for? Get in here."