Blood Mountain Falls!

"No—!" A roar erupted inside the blood-soaked cavern. The blood-drenched Beastmaster snapped awake from his fury, simultaneously catching the wails echoing through the red mist. The altar! Those bastards had reached the altar! A drop of cold sweat mingled with gore slid down his brow. He suddenly realized he had focused his attention on a single physical body for far too long! Having set all his plans in motion, he had been desperate to see the look on that fellow's face. Thus, he had deliberately selected this most flawless body from his collection to serve as his vessel in the mortal realm. Yet it was precisely this arrogance that had led to an inexcusable blunder in his plan. The negative emotions bred by an imperfect vessel had backfired upon his psyche. Instead of thinking with cold detachment, he had let fury lead him by the nose until he became a puppet of his own emotions. And in that momentary lapse of reason, those people had managed to reach the side of the broodmother. Regret was pointless now, however. He could only place his hopes on that fellow's two centuries of cultivation being of some use. "...No, my friend, can you hear my voice? Answer me!" Cleaving an attacking soldier in two with savage force, the Beastmaster drove the others back with a deafening bellow. Taking advantage of the brief lull in the relentless assault, he frantically called out to the Lord of Pestilence in his mind, simultaneously attempting to contact the plague monks at the altar. Yet to his utter despair, he could not reach them at all. They had once cried to him for help, but those desperate cries had long been drowned out by the chaotic roar of gunfire and shouting. Just then, a faint, dying voice drifted into his ear, like the whisper of a dying man from his sickbed. "...Farewell, my friend." "The two-hundred-year journey was a pleasant one, but... the world ultimately belongs to the newborn youngsters. In the end, I am simply too old." "For over two hundred years, my steps spanned five light-years, yet I could not walk out of this mountain. What that child said was not without reason; perhaps my method was flawed from the very beginning." "Fortunately, you are still very young... whether by human standards or by ours." "May you find the ideal Kingdom of Heaven." The words sounded like a final will and testament. The moment they fell, the last strand of thought connecting to his sea of consciousness was severed completely, plunging along with its presence into a bottomless abyss. Though this would not affect the Kingdom of Heaven that had already descended, he had lost the most important card in his hand! Now, he could only rely on the might of the Kingdom of Heaven itself and hope that the Human Emperor's reinforcements proved reliable. "Die! All of you, die!" The Beastmaster bellowed in furious rage, venting his wrath entirely upon the tenacious foes clinging to him. Yet it was this very frenzy that left more and more openings in his attacks. A second syringe was plunged into his right leg. The Strain B extract injected into his flesh completely overwhelmed his body's regenerative limits, immediately followed by a white phosphorus grenade slamming into the right side of his torso. Roaring flames carbonized massive patches of skin, and the excruciating pain nearly ripped his consciousness free from the vessel. Staggering backward, he tripped over a corpse, and his three-meter-tall frame toppled uncontrollably onto its back. It was the body of I'm Responsible for Dying First—who had indeed been the very first to fall among the hundreds of corpses carpeting the tunnel. Refusing to let the fleeting opportunity slip by, Fa Wai Kuang Tu caught a syringe thrown by a teammate and lunged forward recklessly, driving the needle deep into the monster's chest. The blunt shock of piercing flesh had barely registered in the crook of his thumb when he felt a massive hand clamp around his waist, lifting him clean off the ground. "Ah—! Get off me, you insect!" The Beastmaster roared in pain. Grabbing the human clinging to his chest with his right hand, he violently smashed him into the stone wall, crushing him into a pulp of mangled flesh. At that exact moment, an exploding drone piloted by Xing Le Jiu Kun of the Intelligence branch darted in front of his face and detonated its self-destruct charge. The blast pinned the monster back down just as it was struggling to sit up, its upper body slamming heavily against the rock. In the blink of an eye, Carrying Umbrella Not Knife at Midnight darted forward, scooped up the shotgun Fa Wai Kuang Tu had dropped, and smoothly jammed the massive muzzle straight beneath the creature's jaw. "Die—" He pulled the trigger. Shattered pellets exploded outward in a gout of roaring flame, bursting the head like an overripe melon across the floor. He did not stop. Pushing the muzzle down, he fired five more deafening shots until the magazine was completely empty. The Plague Champion's body was reduced to a mangled mess, crimson chunks of flesh splattered everywhere. Amidst the scattered gore, he even spotted an emerald eyeball... "Is it... over?" He exhaled a long breath and collapsed backward onto the ground, unable to tell whether the hot liquid streaming down his body was sweat or blood. His right hand brushed against a slick pool of fluids. Lifting his hand to look, he saw only pitch-black sludge, and wiped it on his clothes with a bitter smile. *If this game doesn't introduce a censorship filter, it's never gonna get an official publishing license...* The entire tunnel was littered with corpses—players from the Death Corps, plague monks, and goblins. And the thing before him, that talking Plague Champion, was probably the final boss. At the same time, the red mist drifting through the tunnel began to shift. The foul stench of rot seemed to fade, replaced by a strangely familiar scent. Every player knew what that meant. "Yu probably won." Laplace looked upward, glanced around the carnage, and then turned to Brother Umbrella slumped on the ground. "What do we do now? Keep pushing forward? Or head back and plant our flag on the peak?" Their mission was to capture the broodmother. In truth, taking the broodmother was equivalent to taking all of Blood Mountain. Once Yu gained full control over the broodmother nestled in this mountain, she could quickly synthesize new fruiting bodies to scour every filthy corner, ferreting out any hidden mutants and their captive human survivors. If any were still left alive, that is. "Obviously we push forward to take a look." Scrambling swiftly to his feet, Carrying Umbrella Not Knife at Midnight reloaded his shotgun. The weariness vanished from his face, replaced by his usual spirited grin. "...I'm gonna see what kind of treasures those mutants stashed in their palace. We came all this way; it'd be a waste not to check it out." Laplace's expression turned slightly odd, his gaze drifting aside. "I feel like we're far more likely to get mentally contaminated..." ... "No, honored Lord of Pestilence, please do not abandon your children... We cannot live without you." Huddled in a bloated heap before the great cauldron, Sodo's face was the very picture of despair. He had even lost all interest in his beloved soup-brewing craft. Once, he had basked in the devotion of countless followers, but now he was utterly alone. The plague monks who had once crowded this place had all perished in battle against those humans. There were no longer any frail little brats begging for his soup. The surrounding red mist remained a deep, suffocating crimson, yet he could no longer catch the slightest trace of the Lord of Pestilence. The only answer to his prayers was an endless, hollow silence. His evolution had reached its end. No new creations would ever crawl out from the pustules covering his flesh again. He hung his head like a two-hundred-ton child, staring at the layers of belly fat resting on the ground and muttering, "Why..." A sigh drifted through the gradually clearing pale-red mist. He looked up and stared blankly into the thinning haze, trying to find the source of the sound. "...Just what kind of form would satisfy your desire for evolution?" "One that can devour everything!" Sodo answered without a moment's hesitation. A long, melancholic sigh echoed from the mist. "...Such a thing does not exist. Even a black hole has things it cannot swallow." What was a black hole? Sodo stared blankly ahead, not understanding the words, though he clearly caught the rejection in them. In an instant, his repulsive face twisted into a knot, growing even more hideous. "You... you lie! The great Lord of Pestilence told us its mother can swallow an entire planet! As long as we keep evolving, one day we will also—" "Perhaps." As if tired of listening to his fever dreams, the voice cut him off indifferently. "...Though if that day ever truly comes, it will be a catastrophe for the entire universe." The voice vanished. As if it had never been there at all. Sodo looked around uneasily, seized by a sudden dread at the silence closing in on him. Right then, light footsteps and boisterous clamor shattered the quiet of the palace. The footsteps halted at the palace entrance. "Holy crap!" "What a massive toad! Wait... does this thing even count as a toad?" "Good thing we came to take a look, or we almost missed the true boss!" "Brothers, get ready to pull the boss!" "Ooooh!" Though Sodo could not understand what they were saying, he could sense that it boded nothing good. Facing those green-eyed figures alone, Sodo panicked completely... ... The battle on Blood Mountain had drawn to a close, but the fierce fighting across the Weifu Wasteland had only just reached its fever pitch. With artillery support from the airships *Heart of Steel* and *Loyalty*, the Skeleton Corps' armored column cleaved a path of blood through the surrounding horde of fruiting bodies. The 37mm rapid-fire cannons poured out sustained fire alongside the vehicle-mounted machine guns of the Type No. 2 tanks. Whether they were infected beings corrupted by the Na fruit or walking corpses reanimated by it, all were turned to dust before that iron storm and crushed beneath the churning tank treads. Even so, the puppets steered by fungal mycelium showed no sign of stopping. Some swarmed toward the armored column cutting across the wasteland, while others surged toward the Weifu Military Base. Once slain, they sank into the earth, only to sprout anew after some time. Just like wild grass after the spring breeze. As long as the gray-green smog did not disperse, as long as the mycelium rooted in this soil did not perish— They were infinite! Above the Weifu Military Base. The fierce firefight raged on without pause. Twenty Cloud Dragonfly ornithopters darted freely through the fog-choked skies, unloading their autocannons and rocket pods. Yet the swarms of Batwings blotting out the sky were simply too vast. Even with ground-based anti-air support, the three strike flights of twenty Cloud Dragonflies could barely hold them back. Four Thunder fighters stationed at the base scrambled into the air as emergency support, their 20mm cannons roaring continuously as they drew dazzling streaks of tracer fire across the sky. In addition, a hundred propeller planes launched from the *Heart of Steel*. Even with all that, the disparity in numbers remained immense, entirely on different scales. Crucially, the Batwings were not rushing forward in a single mindless swarm to die; they were scattered wide across the vast night sky. What was more, their peculiar flight mechanics made their flight paths unpredictable. Even though their flight speed and climb rate were vastly inferior to the Alliance's old-fashioned propeller aircraft, landing hits on them remained remarkably difficult. This had not caught the Alliance off guard. Many players had already faced them during the Battle of Jinhe City and had even developed a specialized "bird-hunting tactic" to counter these winged monstrosities: dump a burst of fire and pull away immediately. While the propeller planes could not match the winged beasts in raw agility, it was virtually impossible for the creatures to catch a propeller plane fleeing at full throttle. Torch seemed well aware of this, however. They made no attempt to tangle with the Alliance aircraft in the sky, instead driving straight toward the ground base—especially the airfield! If they took the airfield, the Alliance planes would have nowhere to resupply. They would be forced either to return to the *Heart of Steel* or set down somewhere in the wasteland. And the entire wasteland was crawling with fruiting bodies awakened alongside the Kingdom of Heaven. Though individual fruiting bodies were frail, even a Deathclaw could not withstand being swarmed by such overwhelming numbers. The aerial defensive perimeter was breached before long, shifting the focal point of the battle from the air down to the ground. Faced with monsters raining down from the heavens, the anti-air positions at Weifu Military Base were forced to cease firing. The soldiers had no choice but to raise their rifles and engage in close-quarters melee against the fanged, winged, and clawed beasts. As for the enemies tangled with friendly units, the circling aircraft could not provide close air support without risking friendly fire, forced instead to concentrate their fire on targets that had not yet landed. As the fighting intensified, it engulfed not only the anti-air positions and the airfield, but even the machine-gun nests along the perimeter of the military base. Sitting inside the cockpit of his Thunder fighter, a bead of warm sweat slid down Luo Yu's forehead. All four of his air-to-ground TV-guided missiles were spent, and he had only three hundred rounds of autocannon ammunition remaining. Even though nearly a hundred Batwings had fallen to his guns, it barely made a dent in the overall situation. Unless— They wiped out all the bastards wearing biological power armor! He remembered the official database clearly: these Batwings were bred from mutant infants. Because of their unnaturally accelerated growth, they lacked fully developed minds, much like the goblins. They were even more chaotic than goblins, requiring psychic interference modules just to coordinate them. The Alliance Biological Research Institute had attempted to crack the psychic signals controlling them, but had unfortunately failed. This technology represented a Singularity for both Torch and the Alliance; the methods of its deployment and its ethical boundaries were still being explored. Because Torch possessed no moral bottom line in its applications and experiments, and had researched the field for over a decade, it was hard to say who held the technological edge. One thing was certain, however: as long as the biological power armor serving as communication nodes was destroyed, these winged monsters would instantly lose their guiding minds like headless flies, devolving from organized cannon fodder back into unruly beasts. Beasts were nothing to fear. Much like the mutants roaming the wasteland, no matter how numerous they were, they were merely mobile bundles of experience points. At least to the players, that was all they were. Yet Luo Yu immediately faced another dilemma. The area was thick with mist. Just shooting down the Batwings was difficult enough, let alone picking out the figures clad in biological power armor from among them. Those pilots were clever. Instead of throwing all their cannon fodder at the military base, they had kept a considerable portion behind to tie down the allied aircraft, using them as cover to conceal themselves. Worse yet, unlike last time, there might well be more than one set of biological power armor concealed among the swarm. Just then, a voice that had been silent for a long time crackled over the communication channel. "Ee-woo! *(I'm done!)*" Luo Yu froze for a moment before crying out in delight, "You finished things on your end? Fantastic! How do you feel?" "Ee-woo..." Yu seemed somewhat conflicted, and for a moment Luo Yu could not quite decipher what she meant. This was not uncommon. In a sense, her sounds were expressions of emotion; when she herself could not put a feeling into words, no outsider could possibly understand it. Even he was no exception. "Upset stomach?" "Ee-woo. *(No, but it's a bit of a pity... Those people were actually quite interesting.)*" Those people? Did she mean the ones wearing gas masks? Luo Yu remembered Yu complaining to him before about how boring those people were, yet now she had abruptly changed her opinion of them. Vaguely guessing what had happened, his Adam's apple bobbed slightly. Just as he was pondering how to comfort her, the little creature suddenly perked up. "Ee-woo... woo? *(The battle isn't over yet. I won't let their sacrifice be in vain... Is there anything I can help with?)*" Now was not the time for idle chatter. Hearing the resolve in her voice, Luo Yu did not hesitate and said at once, "Can you sense the spores around you? The spores secreted by the Na fruit mycelium!" "Ee-woo! *(I can!)*" Heartened, Luo Yu hurriedly pressed on, "Then... can you find where their broodmother is? Or rather, the controlling core or something similar?" His description was abstract, but he believed Yu could understand. After all, sound was merely a carrier of information; while they used spoken language on the surface, they communicated through thought. Yu: "Ee-woo... *(I can't sense its presence.)*" Hearing this, Luo Yu suddenly remembered that the fourth stage of the Kingdom of Heaven seemed capable of existing without a broodmother—which was precisely why Torch claimed it to be irreversible. Yet right at that moment, another idea popped into his mind, and he asked on an impulse, "If we use the broodmother on Blood Mountain to produce some fruiting bodies, could we use them as seedbeds to cultivate the Strain B Na fruit?" Although the broodmother on Blood Mountain lacked experience in synthesizing fruiting bodies, the broodmother in Qingquan City possessed a vast repository of fruiting body blueprints. If even mutants of an entirely different species could serve as seedbeds for producing spores, there was no reason gnawers—creatures naturally capable of releasing spores—could not. All they needed to do was find a way to insert the Strain B genetic fragments into the gnawers. And the ability to hijack hosts to produce spores was stored within the Alpha broodmother on Blood Mountain. That creature had spent nearly a century mastering this art, capable of reshaping mutants into endless bizarre forms without repeating a single design. Luo Yu clenched his fists, praying silently in his heart. Yu fell silent for a moment, as though carefully considering the feasibility, or perhaps running some internal trials. A moment later, she gave a firm answer. "Ee-woo! *(I just tried it. It works!)*" Hearing that voice, which sounded like music to his ears, Luo Yu's face lit up with sheer joy. He wanted nothing more than to scoop the little creature up and plant a kiss on her... though unfortunately, he was stuck in a plane. Strain B suppressed the growth of Torch's modified Strain J, and the spores produced by the former had the exact same effect on the latter. In other words, gnawers carrying Strain B would be the absolute bane of the puppets manipulated by the Strain J Na fruit! They would dismantle the Kingdom of Heaven across the Weifu Wasteland at its very roots! They would force those filthy things crawling endlessly from the earth to lie right back down for good! "Quick! Spawn more of them!" Without a second thought, he shouted into the comms channel. From the other end came an energetic reply. "Ee-woo! *(Roger!)*" ... At the same time, deep within Blood Mountain at the altar, thick crimson mist billowed from the bottomless abyss. Standing by the edge of the pit, In Debt God stared blankly into the red haze. The other players beside him did the same, including Roller Hair Washer, whose head he had previously held down. All of them gazed silently into the depths. "It would've been better to let me go down..." In Debt God muttered, a trace of regret in his eyes. If only he had brought more with him. Not twenty, but a hundred and twenty. Then maybe those people wouldn't have had to sacrifice themselves... Though he had grown attached to those fruiting bodies, he knew full well they were nothing more than Yu's dander. They possessed no independent consciousness, had never viewed him as a father, and merely ate and drank on his dime. Those people, on the other hand, had been living beings... even if they were merely AIs running on a server. Brother Edge placed a hand on his shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze. "We should get going... At the very least, we have to bring their things back and deliver them to their families." To capture this position, an entire battalion of a thousand men had been virtually wiped out. Even including those who had arrived as reinforcements, over a thousand corpses had been left behind, almost choking the entire passageway. It was a victory won at an agonizing cost... In Debt God nodded. Casting one last glance at the deep pit, he prepared to turn and leave. Just then, the crimson mist stirred, and something began crawling out from the abyss. Startled, a flicker of hope flared in his chest. *Could it be...* Yet before that faint spark of hope could spread across his face, the moment his eyes locked onto the creature, his heart plummeted alongside a crushing wave of disappointment. No miracle had occurred. What crawled up was a pack of Crawlers. Some bore several gnawers or other types of fruiting bodies on their backs. Yet among those faces, not a single one was familiar. "Only we are immortal... It's been that way since the server opened," Brother Edge said softly, standing beside him. Though he had known her for only a short time, he had to admit she had been a brave warrior. "...I know that. It's not like I just got my helmet yesterday. I don't need you to remind me," In Debt God mumbled. Brother Edge nodded understandingly. Without pressing the heavy topic any further, he patted his buddy on the shoulder. "...Time to move." In Debt God said nothing, merely nodding in silence before falling in behind him. The battle outside was far from over. Brother Spring and the others were likely locked in a vicious firefight with Torch at this very moment. There was still a mountain of work to do. They had to leave a contingent behind to secure this position, while detaching another force to reinforce their allies at the Weifu Military Base. If the Administrator needed it...