Into Hell!

"Unbelievable." Boulder City. Standing atop the giant wall, Ibers gazed toward the city center, his face filled with incredulous amazement. The spore cloud, shaped like a colossal tree, was churning restlessly, as if swaying its leafy canopy in a violent storm. It was obvious. Someone had enraged that creature. His surprise gradually morphed into keen intrigue, and pausing to appreciate the spectacle, Ibers couldn't help but click his tongue. "After all this time, that's the first time that monster's thrown such a fit... How many years ago was the last time?" Was it twenty years, or thirty? In his recollection, a bunch of shelter dwellers with screws loose seemed to have gone there, and when they emerged, they were even more unhinged. Shelter 117, wasn't it? Well, it didn't matter. "Now this is going to be a good show!" Ibers's eyes gleamed with gleeful schadenfreude, like someone waiting for a long-anticipated movie. A river of blood! Hurry it up! *** Ibers of Boulder Military Industries wasn't the only one watching the city center; there was also a research vessel observing from a safe distance of dozens of kilometers outside Qingquan City. At that moment, Yang Kai was gathering data on the slime mold broodmother via the vessel's instruments while maintaining contact with the Academy headquarters' Research Department, relaying real-time updates on Qingquan City to his superior. "A small Alliance ground force has entered the city center... Yes, that unit composed of Awakened. Through a clever series of maneuvers, they lured away the evolved organisms around the North Second Ring Road, bypassing engagement to slip into that forbidden zone of life. "However, their progress doesn't seem to be going smoothly. The decoy force ran into a Titan left behind by the 111th Orbital Airborne Division, and the squad penetrating deep into the city center made contact with the broodmother the moment they landed. "Speaking of which, I'm quite curious myself—how did they pinpoint that thing's location so quickly?" Looking at the scan projected onto the holographic screen, Yang Kai wore a bizarre expression. Long ago, expeditionary forces led by the Post-War Reconstruction Committee had searched for the broodmother, yet they never found its exact coordinates. After all, downtown Qingquan City wasn't just a point on a map; it was an expansive region. Not to mention the utter devastation on the surface, the subterranean realm was vastly intricate, like a three-dimensional labyrinth. The mutant slime mold broodmother of Qingquan City hid within that maze, dispersing spores to the surface through the underground transit network and urban drainage system. While one could deduce the approximate area from variations in spore concentration, locking onto exact coordinates through that method alone was virtually impossible. Only by deploying massive ground troops to conduct carpet searches across the area could anyone hope to locate it. The Ministry of Defense, which had previously explored downtown Qingquan City, had suffered staggering casualties just to come anywhere near it. Yet now, judging from the shifts in Qingquan City's spore clouds, those people had clearly approached the broodmother—perhaps even touched it. If this was a coincidence, it was far too coincidental. Yang Kai was utterly baffled. Just how did they pull it off? *** To tell the truth, Fang Chang hadn't expected that following the coordinates provided by Yu would drop them right on top of the broodmother's head. What surprised him even more was that less than half a minute after landing, they were swallowed whole by a bloody maw dozens of meters wide. "...%¥#@!" Flying in the sky, Luo Yu was utterly dumbfounded. A colossal, abyss-like pit suddenly gaped open in the desolate ruins! Scarlet fungal flesh shot up from underground like the jaws of a monstrous pitcher plant and snapped shut, engulfing two ten-man squads of the Burning Corps in the blink of an eye! The entire ground shuddered violently, churning like boiling water. "Lao Bai!" Hang in there, brother! Clenching his teeth, Luo Yu banked the aircraft around and lined up the autocannon with the closed maw. In a brief, thundering roar, dozens of tracer rounds poured down like hail onto the shut maw, kicking up clouds of rubble and shredded fungal tissue. "Wuuu—!" A deep, mournful wail echoed across the ruins, resounding like a steamship's foghorn. Seeing black blood and tissue fragments splattered everywhere, Luo Yu realized his attack had done damage and felt a surge of joy. Yet just as he pulled up the nose to bank around for another strafing run, he saw the closed maw begin to slowly sink back beneath the surface. That bastard was trying to escape! Sensing he was running out of time, Luo Yu aborted his climb, banking early to swing back around. Yet the broodmother seemed prepared. Almost the instant he swung the nose around, a dense swarm of dark shapes surged out from a half-collapsed skyscraper nearby, hurtling straight toward him! Looking closer, they were quadcopter drones corrupted by slime mold! At least a thousand of them! At the sight, Luo Yu's face twisted in shock. Holy hell. You can do that?! "Ee-woo!" Yu's anxious warning sounded in his ear. Luo Yu, having already spotted the threat, yanked the flight stick back. A mere second before colliding with the drone swarm, his Lingyun fighter carved an upward arc through the sky, skirting the edge of the dense black mass to pull away. "Holy crap... has this slime mold turned into a demonic spirit or something?!" Even though it was a game, the hyper-realistic sensation broke Luo Yu out in a cold sweat. The gaping maw that had jutted from the earth was gone, leaving only a sunken crater on the level ground. Luo Yu's heart sank, wondering how his teammates were faring. "Ee-woo..." *(Something is... not right.)* Hearing the voice beside his ear, Luo Yu asked hurriedly, "Did you sense something?" "...Ee-woo!" *(...It has its eyes on us. We need to get out of here, fast!)* Luo Yu blinked. Its eyes on us... After fighting for so long, wasn't that blatantly obvious? Perhaps because Yu had phrased it too euphemistically, he failed to grasp the deeper meaning behind the warning. Just then, disaster struck! The jet engine's exhaust flame flickered erratically before snuffing out like a candle blown by the wind, and the climbing aircraft instantly lost all thrust. Luo Yu's face drained of color. The situation was virtually identical to a jet engine flaming out at extreme altitude. Yet he was less than a thousand meters above the ground—how could— Wait! The spores that absorb oxygen! The realization hit him like a brick, and Luo Yu screamed "Holy shit!" in his mind. Meanwhile, the drone swarm behind him had already closed in. Rotor-driven drones had no hope of catching a fixed-wing aircraft under normal conditions. But stripped of power and bleeding airspeed, his ride had turned into a floating target. Seeing the dense drone swarm on the verge of overtaking him while the engine stubbornly refused to reignite, he gritted his teeth and pushed the nose down, using gravity to regain speed as he charged straight toward the shrieking swarm. "Die, you bastards!!!" Staring at the surging black cloud of drones, Luo Yu roared and squeezed the trigger to the floor. *BRRRTT—!* With an ear-splitting roar, the flame-spitting autocannon plunged like a bayonet straight into the dense black cloud. Swarms of drones were ripped to shreds by the concentrated fire, the streaks of orange-yellow tracer rounds carving a corridor of empty space through the torrential sea of machines! Yet there were simply too many. A single 20mm cannon was far from enough to shoot down every drone rushing him. Soon, the stragglers slammed into the fuselage, sticking to the aircraft like tar. The Lingyun's weight multiplied in an instant. More and more drones latched on, practically covering the entire cockpit canopy. Having expended his final round of autocannon ammunition, Luo Yu launched the two missiles mounted beneath the wings before they could be pinned down, and braced himself to force a crash landing toward the nuclear crater. That was the only possible landing zone. The nuclear blast two hundred years ago had obliterated every obstacle in the area. Just as touchdown seemed within reach, his peripheral vision caught a dark blur whipping straight toward him. It was a flailing tendril. Like the maw before it, it burrowed out of the earth, lying in ambush for him to plunge into its path. Clutching the flight stick, he instinctively kicked the rudder pedal. The incoming tendril shaved past the left side of the canopy, slamming violently into the Lingyun's left forward-swept wing. In that instant, the sole virtue of Goblin Technology shone through: the forward-swept wing forged of stainless steel acted like a razor blade, cleanly shearing the emerging tendril in two. The severed half writhed on the ground like a cut earthworm, black slime spewing like a fountain from the wound and splattering across the dirt. Yet Luo Yu had no time to celebrate. While that clean slice severed one of the broodmother's tendrils, it threw the aircraft completely out of balance. It rolled over and cartwheeled toward the center of the nuclear crater, snapping off both forward-swept wings in the violent tumble. Fortunately, the brutal rolls also crushed the vast majority of fruiting bodies clinging to the fuselage into pulp, littering the ground with debris until the tumbling airframe finally ground to a halt. By now, the entire Lingyun was reduced to a bare fuselage. The stainless steel body was battered and dented, with scarcely a single square inch of intact plating. For an ordinary pilot, leaving an intact corpse after such a sequence of events would have been considered a medical miracle. Yet Luo Yu was no ordinary pilot, nor was he an ordinary human. Two seconds after his heartbeat stopped, the pale red fungal mass grafted to his chest contracted violently twice. Roughly half a minute later, the unconscious Luo Yu suddenly coughed violently, hacking up mouthfuls of blood mixed with bits of flesh as he stirred awake. "Ee-woo!" A joyful cry rang in his ear. He knew Yu had saved his life once again. "Thanks..." "Ee-woo!" *(As long as you're all right.)* Squeezing out a faint smile, Luo Yu took a deep breath and unbuckled the harness pinning his chest. Looking at his reflection in the canopy glass—where only half of his handsome face remained—he touched the pale red fungal tissue with his index finger and smiled wryly. This accelerated healing buff was undeniably fantastic; its only drawback was that he looked less and less human. Still, it wasn't ugly, per se. Perhaps from looking at it for so long, he had grown used to it. Initially he hadn't cared for the appearance of Yu's fruiting bodies, but after spending enough time together, it seemed decent—sometimes even downright pleasant to look at. Partly, his own aesthetic standards might have subtly shifted; on the other hand, Yu might also be adapting toward human aesthetics. As a completely distinct lifeform, in a sense, it was just like the androids and AIs living in the Alliance—it was being slowly assimilated by Alliance society. Just like the cats and dogs that drew close to human settlements over ten thousand years ago. Cooperation was always better than conflict for surviving in this peril-ridden universe. Yet that was a matter for the distant future... Yu was a singular exception among millions of evolutionary paths of the mutant slime mold. The monster entrenched in downtown Qingquan City at this moment was no gentle puppy or kitten. It was a bloodthirsty wolf baring its fangs! The cockpit canopy was jammed. Luo Yu tried to pop it open, but it didn't budge. He retrieved an emergency glass breaker from the toolkit beneath the ejection seat and smashed it violently against the canopy glass. After shattering the glass, he grabbed a submachine gun, climbed out of the cockpit, and racked the bolt. This was near the center of the nuclear crater. All around was a barren expanse; in the distance, the uplifted rim of the crater was visible. Just as he attempted to contact command via his radio, the ground violently shook once again. Luo Yu's expression changed. Just as he thought the broodmother was about to repeat the trick and swallow him whole, billows of dust erupted from an open patch of ground roughly twenty meters away. A gaping maw resembling a pitcher plant breached the loose soil like a whale leaping from the ocean. Luo Yu's first instinct was that the monster had misjudged his position and missed, so he immediately raised his pea-shooter to open fire. But he soon noticed something abnormal about the creature. The gigantic maw let out an agonizing, prolonged wail, writhing amid the rising clouds of dust as if dry-heaving, spewing out geysers of sand and crushed stone. Seeing this, Luo Yu froze in disbelief. "What the fuck?! What's happening?!" Is this... an upset stomach? From the looks of it, yes. The colossal maw kept retching, as if pumping all the subterranean dirt and gravel straight up to the surface. Seeing the erupting spray of crushed stones and clods hurtling toward him, Luo Yu scrambled backward to dodge. Right then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a figure hurtling through the billowing dust, slamming hard onto the open ground five meters away from him. The person lay splayed out in a star shape, clutching a short axe coated in black blood. A moment later, something else slapped down beside him with a wet thud—it appeared to be a severed hand. Luo Yu rushed over and lifted the person's helmet visor, revealing Lao Bai. Seeing Luo Yu's face, Lao Bai smiled sheepishly and said with slight embarrassment, "A bit embarrassing, brother. Don't laugh at me... cough, by the way, how'd you end up down here?" And what happened to your face? Luo Yu gave a wry smile. "Don't get me started... This broodmother has one hack after another, no repeats. I've flown planes for years, and this is the first time I've ever fought something this ridiculous." "It really is ridiculous..." Scrambling up from the ground, Lao Bai wiped his black-blood-stained face, but because his hands were also coated in black slime, it only smeared the dirt worse. Realizing the futility of his efforts, he gave up trying to clean his face, walking over instead to pick up Brother Kuang Feng's severed hand. Kuang Feng had been the unluckiest. The moment that maw snapped shut, a tendril had skewered him from below straight through the top, leaving nothing behind except this indigestible prosthetic arm. Since the founding of the Burning Corps, they had fought in countless battles big and small. Such grievous casualties were likely a first. Seeing the server's highest-level, most formidable Strength-type beast looking this battered, Luo Yu couldn't help but swallow hard. "What on earth did you guys run into?" "Just as you saw—we got swallowed by that thing." Looking toward the squirming maw, Lao Bai grinned with his split lip. "That bastard probably wanted to crack open our skulls to see what was inside, dragging us down into the depths... but the beast clearly underestimated us." To be fair, they had indeed been caught off guard, but only off guard. Right after Kuang Feng was instantly taken out, the others reacted swiftly, focusing on their footing and surroundings while firing their rifles at the sealed gullet. Finding that regular rifle bullets couldn't pierce the broodmother's flesh, Fang Chang was the first to draw his Daybreak bow, loosing a charged explosive arrow toward the ceiling. The arrow detonated after embedding itself in the fungal mass, dealing impressive damage. The broodmother swallowing them quickly developed symptoms of severe indigestion, the walls of its digestive sac convulsing violently. The party's morale soared, and everyone unleashed whatever gear they had onto the scarlet fungal tissue around them. The most ruthless of them was undoubtedly Brother Ye Shi. He had previously been converted into a cyborg by the Academy's researchers; not only were the broodmother's digestive juices useless against him, but his defenses were ridiculously high. A tendril had thrust right into his crotch—a strike powerful enough to skewer a man through—yet aside from launching him into the air, it did no damage whatsoever. Ye Shi then reacted swiftly, grabbing hold of the tendril and activating the electrodes installed on him by a researcher, delivering an electric shock straight into the broodmother's digestive tract. That instantaneous discharge nearly drained his exoskeleton's battery, but the results were spectacular. Hit with a hundred thousand volts, the broodmother's cavity walls spasmed as if it had swallowed a dose of laxatives, and the gravel and sand under their feet erupted upward. Evidently, it couldn't handle them anymore. The broodmother gave up trying to assimilate them and decided to vomit them out. While the two were talking, Fang Chang was also spewed out of the gaping maw, crashing down not far from them. "Damn, Fang Chang? You made it out too?" Looking at Fang Chang cursing as he scrambled to his feet, Lao Bai wore a look of surprise. Earlier, after firing that arrow, Fang Chang had been targeted by a barrage of tendrils; Lao Bai had assumed he was a goner. "Almost bought the farm..." Removing his helmet with its cracked visor, Fang Chang glared resentfully at the squirming maw. Almost getting turned into a loot box right upon landing—in all his time playing this game, he had never been so thoroughly humiliated. Lao Bai walked over, lent him a hand, and asked, "Where's Ye Shi?" Recalling the scene before being spat out, Fang Chang paused for a moment. "Probably still clinging to that tendril... but I'm guessing his battery is running low." Just then, he noticed Luo Yu beside Lao Bai. His gaze lingered on the half of Luo Yu's face consumed by slime mold, and he froze for a second. "Luo Yu..." Luo Yu gave a small cough. "Don't ask. Got shot down. As for my face... this is how it ended up after Yu healed me." Fang Chang didn't care about that. He stepped straight up to him and excitedly grabbed his shoulders. "I'm not asking about that—anyone can see what happened... How do you feel right now?" Unsettled by that burning gaze, Luo Yu took a nervous half-step back. "I'm... fine. What's up?" That look was all too familiar. It was the exact same look Mosquito had whenever he invited him to test-fly a new Goblin Tech aircraft! Seeing Luo Yu's uneasy expression, Fang Chang cleared his throat and said seriously, "Ye Shi won't last much longer... and I've realized, conventional weapons can't kill this thing." "Can't kill it as in..." "Literally! It's already merged with this land; its body permeates the entire subterranean space of downtown. Look at it from another angle: our weapons can't possibly be more powerful than what the Post-War Reconstruction Committee had... If the lore in the setting compendium wasn't just made up by Ah Guang, then using explosives to blow up the broodmother was a non-starter from the beginning. It isn't located in any single spot in this land—it *is* everywhere!" Perhaps that was why the Post-War Reconstruction Committee's expeditionary forces never pinpointed the broodmother's exact location. Every coordinate they explored had been correct, yet each was merely a part of it. And whenever they destroyed a piece of it, it went dormant for a time, only to return not long after with the memories and combat experience gained from fighting them. By the same token... Luo Yu looked at him in disbelief. "How can that be? Didn't you guys..." "Successfully inflict damage on it, right?" Guessing his thought, Fang Chang looked at him and continued earnestly, "It's useless. That damage was like a flea bite to it. Even if we give it our all, the best we can do is what the Post-War Reconstruction Committee did: force it into dormancy underground for two or three years... Now, there's only one last method to finish it off once and for all." Luo Yu knew what that method was. It was Plan B, provided by the Administrator— If, after locating the broodmother, they found it indestructible, Luo Yu—carrying Yu's fruiting body—would consume it. Yet there was a prerequisite: they had to reach the broodmother first. Seeing the doubt in Luo Yu's eyes, Fang Chang cast his gaze toward the maw vomiting rubble. "We're right on top of the broodmother, and it is right beneath our feet. "That is the closest entrance!"