The girl’s smile lingered for one final mont. Then she closed her eyes. The throne beneath her began to dissolve, not like a projection fading, but like morning frost releasing into light, quietly and without resistance. Her white robe, her dark hair, the impossible depth in her eyes, all of it faded softly until nothing remained at the center of the room except empty air and the faint warmth of sothing ancient passing through.
Then that too was gone.
Wang Hao’s body unlocked. He staggered forward half a step, gasping as sensation returned to his limbs. "What—" He looked around wildly. "Where did she go?!" He spun toward Lin Yi. "What just happened?! Who was that?! What is the Celestial Emperor?! Why does your inventory apparently contain sothing that made a being like that pause?! Brother Lin, I have so many questions and I need at least one answer—"
"Later," Lin Yi said.
Wang Hao closed his mouth.
Su Qinghan stood in silence, her gaze moving slowly across the now-empty room. The stillness the girl had brought with her was fading, and in its place sothing else was rising. Sothing that hadn’t been present before. A vibration, low and rhythmic, traveling up through the floor in steady pulses.
She looked down. "...The ground."
The floor cracked. A single fracture at first, running from the center of the room outward in a jagged line. Then another. Then three more. The smooth reflective surface the throne had rested on buckled upward, stone fragnting and falling away in chunks as sothing beneath it pushed upward with imnse force.
Wang Hao stumbled backward. "Oh no."
The floor exploded.
A massive shape erupted from beneath, sending debris in every direction. Stone fragnts pelted the walls. The air pressure alone knocked Wang Hao off his feet and forced Su Qinghan back several steps, her frost energy flaring outward instinctively as a shield against the blast. Lin Yi stood his ground, his coat snapping back from the shockwave, his eyes already locked onto what had erged.
It was enormous.
A worm. Or sothing built like one. Its body filled nearly a third of the chamber’s width, pale and armored in overlapping plates of bone-like chitin that glead faintly under the tower’s ambient light. It had no eyes, no visible mouth in the conventional sense, but the front of its body opened in concentric rings of rotating teeth, each ring spinning in the opposite direction, grinding slowly and continuously. Thick fluid dripped from between the rings. The sound it produced was low and wet and deeply wrong.
A system prompt appeared.
[Abyssal Tunnel Worm]
Threat Level: 34 (Boss)
HP: 18,400 / 18,400
Physical Attack: 510–660
Physical Defense: 490–570
Magic Resistance: 200–280
[A subterranean predator born from the deepest strata of the Dragon God Tower. Its chitin plating deflects most physical strikes along curved surfaces. Its rotating maw can bore through reinforced stone and dissolves magical barriers on contact. Extrely sensitive to vibration. Blind, but tracks targets through ground tremors with near-perfect accuracy.]
[Burrow: Retreats underground and resurfaces at an unpredictable location.
Spine Barrage: Launches hardened chitin spines from its dorsal plates across a wide area.]
[Crushing Coil: Wraps its body around a target and applies sustained crushing force.
Weakness: The soft tissue ring between the third and fourth chitin segnt is unprotected.]
Wang Hao read the prompt from the floor where he had landed. He did not get up imdiately. "Eighteen thousand four hundred health." He said it quietly, staring at the number. "Physical attack over six hundred." He looked up at the ceiling briefly as if asking it for guidance. "And it can go underground." He pressed his face back against the stone. "I need a mont."
Su Qinghan had already moved to Lin Yi’s side, her frostblade drawn, cold energy building around her in response to the creature’s heat signature. Her eyes traced the overlapping chitin plates systematically. "The plating curves," she said. "Direct strikes will deflect. The system prompt marks a gap between the third and fourth segnt." She kept her voice even. "That’s the target."
"I see it," Lin Yi said.
The Abyssal Tunnel Worm had oriented toward them, its rotating maw accelerating, the grinding sound rising in pitch. It had no eyes but it tracked them through the floor, its body shifting in small, precise corrections as it angled itself forward. Then it dropped. The entire massive body folded downward through the hole it had co from and vanished into the earth beneath the floor. The hole sealed behind it, leaving the room abruptly silent again except for the steady vibrations still traveling up through the stone.
Wang Hao got to his feet, weapon drawn, eyes moving frantically across the floor. "Where did it go. Where did it go. Where—"
The vibrations shifted. Lin Yi moved first. Phantom Void Step. His figure vanished from the center of the room and reappeared twenty ters to the left. A heartbeat later, the floor where he had been standing erupted upward as the Worm resurfaced, its maw grinding open as it drove itself through the stone at the precise location Lin Yi had just vacated.
It erged fully, oriented toward him again, and charged.
The speed was startling for sothing its size. It crossed the distance between them in seconds, the sheer bulk of its body churning the floor as it ca, stone cracking beneath it with each movent. Lin Yi held his ground. The Worm’s maw opened fully as it closed in, the concentric rings spinning at maximum speed.
Lin Yi stepped sideways. The maw passed close enough to feel the displaced air. He raised the Celestial Lord Blade and drove it downward toward the body as the creature moved past him, targeting the gap between the third and fourth segnts. The blade struck.
CLANG!
Deflected. The angle was wrong. The chitin plate curved just enough to send the strike sliding off without penetrating. The Worm curved its body and swept its tail across the room in a wide horizontal arc. Lin Yi jumped back, the tail slamming into the space he had occupied and carving a deep furrow through the floor.
User Comments
0 comments from readers