Chapter 1184: Corruption
The situation collapsed in seconds.
Sir Youlong and Fei Yuhan stood momentarily frozen — not from fear but from the simple inadequacy of every plan they’d made. A traditional martialist spun and threw himself between the new Fallen Evils and the rest of the team, buying them a breath.
“Out!” a middle-aged martialist barked. “Find a way out — now!”
The other two containers had begun to shudder. The people inside beat against the iron walls with a frenzy that sent lumps and deformations rippling across the surface, the locks straining. When those broke — and they would break — there would be nothing left to do. Dozens per box, possibly more. The team would be swallowed.
The only answer was open ground. Scatter and regroup.
Fei Yuhan understood it before anyone spoke. She broke for the plant entrance — a white streak threading through the chaos.
Right call. Roland waited until the others had pushed through, then dealt with the new Fallen Evils pressing in from behind. They moved like the recently dead — lurching, purposeless — but a bite was still a bite, and he had no interest in being careless.
“Team One to command — we’re outnumbered, under active attack. Request immediate assistance.” Sir Youlong’s voice came tight over the speaker phone, clipped by the effort of fighting mid-sentence.
Before the reply came, two martialists went down. Not injured — gone. The Fallen Evils were on them before they could rise, and Roland made himself look away from what followed. Sir Youlong saw it too. His rhythm fractured. The strikes that had been automatic became hesitant, a fraction slow — and a fraction was all it took. He took his first scratch.
BANG.
Both remaining containers burst at the seams. Iron panels crashed to the ground.
But far fewer Fallen Evils came out than the numbers inside should have produced.
Roland’s eyebrows went up. Through the dust he could see the containers’ walls — rows of puncture holes, clean and spaced, like something had moved along the outside and thrust its claws in. The dead inside were soaked through. They’d completed the transition and been killed before they could step out.
Phyllis. He could see it perfectly: Phyllis circling the containers under Dawnen’s Invisibility Veil, Blade Claws driving through iron as though it were paper, methodical as surgery.
“What did you do to my children!” The butler’s voice cracked with rage. “You filthy scoundrels—”
Nobody answered him. The martialists didn’t know what had happened either, but the shrinking number of enemies was enough — the fight shifted again, leaning back toward possible. They pressed forward.
“Fine,” the butler said, quieter now, almost to himself, and stamped his foot once. He drew a small square box from his jacket — the size of a remote, blunt-edged — and pressed its button.
The ground split open.
The explosion came from beneath the floor, not above it — a muffled concussive crump that sheared the concrete into slabs and opened a yawning hole at the center of the plant. The torches were flung into the air. The greenish-white flames snuffed out one by one as the air rushed past them. Darkness swallowed everything.
“Son of a bitch.” Roland could not stop the words. He’d never thought to check for buried charges. He had no ability to fly.
A small hand found him in the dark.
It caught his arm and held — a grip far stronger than its size suggested — and they came down together, skating through the shockwave, landing hard but intact.
“Ling?” he managed, coughing dust.
“Yes. Are you hurt?” She was already scanning around them, calm as though darkness were simply her natural medium, which it was. The torches were gone; to her eyes, the plant was perfectly legible. “The light went out, so I could find you.”
“I’m fine. The other witches?”
“Phyllis is with us. The explosion won’t touch Dawnen. Faldi was watching from outside — she’s safe.”
Roland pulled his goggles down from his forehead and looked around through the night-vision lens.
“What is that?” Ling asked, peering at them. “It looks like one of those Eye Demons—”
“Night-vision device. It reads light you can’t see.” He kept his voice low. “So remember — darkness isn’t cover anymore, not from everyone. Don’t be seen.”
“Understood.” She melted back into the shadows until only the pale oval of her face remained, a few bubbles rising from her nose as though she breathed underwater.
Under the thin moonlight reaching through the broken roof, Roland mapped the situation. The team was scattered. Concrete slabs buried whatever hadn’t escaped the initial collapse. He couldn’t locate his other team members — but a managed explosion wouldn’t be fatal to martialists; the Force of Nature cushioned them. The Fallen Evils knew that. Which meant the explosion was not meant to kill.
It was meant to create this — the hole.
And the hole was wrong. C02’s survey had shown no basement. The ground underneath the plant should have been flat. The walls around them were rough, organic, nothing like a foundation — scraped earth, not poured concrete.
They had dug it themselves. In advance.
Why?
Roland studied the geometry of the pit. Near the rim the floor leveled off; toward the center it steepened into a smooth bowl — a whirlpool in stone, drawing everything inward. Dead Fallen Evils were already sliding down into it, accumulating at the bottom.
It’s another part of the ceremony.
The butler reappeared at the lip of the pit. At a single gesture, the surviving Fallen Evils stopped hunting martialists. Each one walked to the edge and stepped in — carrying their cyclones, dragging the dead with them, stripping bodies of the fallen martialists as they went. Efficient. Unhurried. As though this were the only outcome they had ever planned for.
Roland’s chest tightened with something he could not immediately name. Then a warmth moved through him — diffuse, unasked-for — as though the ground itself were calling.
“Dear God — accept our offering!” The butler’s arms spread wide. He leaned forward into the hole and fell.
Light detonated from the cyclones.
Roland ripped off his goggles. The crimson cores rose, merged, spread in a vast irregular stain across the floor of the pit — a corrupted area, growing, the edges softening the solid world into something fluid and wrong. Red-black, shifting, like looking through a wound.
Something climbed out of it.
A shape assembled itself from the stain: a faceless humanoid form — only head and hands visible, the rest still below the surface — rendered entirely in black, scattered with points of light like a cut of deep space. It rose until only its upper half was visible above the pit, and it stood two or three stories tall.
Blood began to weep from its body the moment it solidified, spreading outward across the floor, warping the underground into a space that was no longer quite real.
The bug on Roland’s shoulder buzzed. Faldi had seen it.
He had encountered something like this before — smaller, during an earlier fight — and he had learned what it contained. An astrolabe. Tear the astrolabe free and the thing collapsed. But he had never faced one this size.
That was why they had chosen tonight. Why they had lured the Martialist Association here.
Dozens of black tentacles erupted from the ground — slicked with blood, fast as striking snakes — and one of them found a martialist pinned under a concrete slab, dragged him out, and delivered him upward into the creature’s waiting hand.
“M-monster—” the man choked, fighting the grip with everything he had.
“You stole something that does not belong to you,” the creature said. Its voice was enormous and resonant, unhurried, as though it had all the time there had ever been. “You attempt to keep it for yourself. Now it is time to return it.” It tossed the martialist into the hole and raised its voice to carry across the ruined plant: “I will correct this mistake. I will restore order upon the world. Accept your fate — return to the origin.”
The corrupted area spread at the edges, bleeding outward. With each increment of its expansion, the creature grew.
It was going to climb free of the ground entirely.
Chapter 1184: Corruption
Translator: Transn Editor: Transn
The situation suddenly turned for the worse.
Both Sir Youlong and Fei Yuhan looked startled and lost at the abrupt change in the unfolding of the event. Fortunately, a traditional martialist turned around just in time and stopped the Fallen Evils.
“Get out of here!” a flustered middle-aged martialist yelled. “We must find a way out!”
The other two containers also started to wobble ominously as the people inside banged frantically against the container. Numerous lumps and bumps started to emerge on the surface of the iron containers. A lock was definitely not enough to hold them back, and the prisoners would soon break out.
If there were also dozens of prisoners in each of these two boxes, let alone killing the Fallen Evils, there was a chance that the whole team would be wiped out.
The last thing they wanted was being trapped by the enemies, so they must use all their efforts to avoid that situation!
Fei Yuhan immediately pulled herself together and darted toward the entrance of the plant. The only way to get themselves out of this dilemma was to find an open space and scatter.
This was the right plan.
Roland decided to wait until everyone had left the scene. He was putting all his efforts dealing with those new Fallen Evils who lunged at him like
zombies. They were not necessarily dangerous, but Roland would still get injured if he got bitten.
“This is Team One. We’re outnumbered and under attack. We request immediate assistance!” Sir Youlong yelled over the speaker phone while fighting.
A moment later, another two martialists fell down before a pack of crazy Fallen Evils who soon ripped their bodies apart.
Sir Youlong’s moves significantly slowed down as he watched his fellow martialists torn into pieces. Even Roland, a layman, noticed that his action had become seemingly sluggish. After knocking down a few more Fallen Evils, Sir Youlong got a scratch for the first time.
BANG!
The containers were finally burst open and crashed to the ground as the raging Fallen Evils rushed out.
However, there were fewer Fallen Evils than they had thought.
Roland raised his eyebrows. A dozen tethered Fallen Evils, who had completed their transitioning, lay dead in the containers. Their blood oozing profusely from the several holes in their bodies, as though being penetrated by something.
He could clearly see a line of holes on the walls of the containers.
“Nicely done,” Roland praised in his heart.
Without a doubt, it was Phyllis’s work. Roland could even see in his mind’s eye that Phyllis had sneaked around the containers under Dawnen’s Invisibility Veil and dived her Blade Claws into the boxes.
“What… what happened?” the leader of the Fallen Evils bellowed. “What did you do to my children, you filthy scoundrels!”
Nobody responded to him. Although everybody was as confused as the leader, they could not afford to give the incident any thought. As the number of their enemies reduced remarkably, the martialists felt, once again, encouraged and saw the ray of hope and survival.
“Fine, whatever,” the leader grunted while stamping his feet. “Nothing shall thwart my plan. You’ll all end up dying here!”
With these words, he took out a square box that reminded Roland of a remote and pressed the button on it decisively.
With a deafening roar, the plant exploded, and the ground cracked and sank rapidly. The torches went flying into the air and extinguished as gusts of wind swept over the plant. Within a second, they found themselves groping in an impenetrable darkness.
“Son of a b*tch!” Roland swore, unable to help himself. He had never anticipated that the Fallen Evils would bury explosives underneath the ground. Although Roland had special abilities, he could not fly like Lightning.
“Your Majesty!” Just at that critical moment, a little hand had reached Roland.
Roland staggered until someone steadied him with a firm clutch. They finally landed safely after wallowing in the aftermath of the explosion.
“Aargh… Ling?” Roland asked in a low tone while coughing in the dust.
“Yes, it’s me. Are you okay?” Ling replied immediately. “The light was out, so I was able to spot you in the dark.”
Ling specialized in moving about in darkness. As the torchlight was extinguished and darkness fell upon the entire plant, she could glide through shadows as Nightingale fly through the Mist.
“I’m fine. How about the other witches?”
“Don’t worry. Phyllis is with us. The explosion won’t hurt Dawnen either. Faldi is keeping an eye outside the plant, so she’s fine too.”
“That’s great,” Roland said as he pulled on the goggles mounted on his head and started to look around.
“Your Majesty, what’s this? It looks like that Eye Demon…” Ling asked curiously.
“It’s a night vision device that helps you see things at night,” Roland explained. “So you ought to be careful even in the darkness. Remember, you shouldn’t be seen.”
“Okay…” Ling promised as she disappeared into the darkness again while only poking out half of her head. Some bubbles escaped from her nose as if she were submerged in water.
Under the dismal moonlight that spilled across the ground, Roland soon understood the current situation.
The group was dispersed. The plant was littered with concrete slabs. Roland could not see where his other team members were. However, he assumed that such an explosion would not be fatal to martialists who were normally protected by the Force of Nature. As the Fallen Evils were also well aware this fact, they must have other plans. What he needed to do was to hold out until the second group came to their rescue. By that time, they would be able to interrupt the Fallen Evils’ sacrifice ceremony.
What bothered Roland, however, was the hole created by the explosion.
According to C02, there was no basement underneath the plant. Moreover, judging from the map, the plant should have been built on a flat surface.
The bumpy walls around them were apparently not a part of the plant.
In other words, the Fallen Evils had excavated the ground underneath the plant and buried the explosives in advance.
Why did they do that?
Roland noticed that the area close to the rim of the hole was relatively flat, but it soon steepened with a sheer drop, as if it was a huge whirlpool. The bodies of the dead Fallen Evils slid into the whirlpool and piled up.
“Is this… also a part of the sacrifice ceremony?”
Roland’s suspicion was soon confirmed. He saw the leader of the Fallen Evils reappear. At his command, the rest of the Fallen Evils stopped searching for the martialists. Instead, they all jumped into the hole along with their cyclones. Not only did they carry the dead Fallen Evils with them but they also snatched up the bodies of the martialists. Within a blink of an eye, the hole had almost been filled up.
Roland’s heart stopped with a queer jerk. Suddenly, a warmth spread through him as though something was summoning upon him.
“Dear God, please accept our offering!” the butler exclaimed with his hands outstretched and fell forward into the hole.
Just at that moment, a jet of dazzling light erupted from all the cyclones!
Roland pulled off his goggles, standing agape. The crimson cyclones slowly rose, clustered then spread out, gradually forming a large, irregular-shaped “corrupted” area!
Then, something crept out of the corrupted area and took the form of a faceless man, but it only possessed a head and two hands. The shape was simply an inky silhouette strewn with numerous swirling stars, which reminded Roland of the black, unfathomed universe.
As the human-shaped shadow materialized, scarlet blood started to exude from its body and immediately spread through the entire hole on the ground, distorting the underground into a twisted space with red and black.
The bug on Roland’s shoulder began to buzz, indicating that Faldi had sensed danger.
Roland had seen a similar scene before. He had once encountered a magic creature during a fight with a Fallen Evil. However, this one was much larger. It was almost two or three stories tall when it reared with only upper half of its body!
That was the real purpose of this human sacrifice. The Fallen Evils intended to create corruption and summon the monster that was not belonging to this Dream World!
But Roland did not understand why they chose to do this today and while luring the Martialist Association. The could summon the creature anytime.
He soon got the answer.
Dozens of black tentacles soaked in blood suddenly sprouted from the ground, dragged a martialist from underneath a concrete slab, and handed him over to the magic creature.
“M-monster…” the captured martialist stammered, making every effort to break away from the clutch but failed miserably.
“You stole something that doesn’t belong to you, and you attempt to keep it to yourself. Now, it’s time to return it to its owner.” The magic creature snatched up the martialist, tossed him into the hole and said, “I’ll correct this mistake and restore order upon the world. Now, accept your fate and return to the origin of the world!”
Its ringing proclamation reverberated across the deserted plant. With the corrupted area expanding rapidly, the monster grew larger as well, as though it was soon going to leap out of the ground.