Less than three seconds had passed.
【Timekeeper · Acceleration (Deactivated)】
【Sanity: -3... 115/120】
Lu Yuan deactivated the acceleration and grabbed Wolf by the shoulder, dragging him back.
Wolf was still resisting.
The dark red patterns flickered, like red-hot iron struggling against cold water.
His teeth ground together with a rasping sound, and the veins at his temples bulged.
"Retreat!" Lu Yuan roared into his ear.
Wolf’s eyes snapped toward Lu Yuan, and the dark red patterns flared with blinding intensity, as if the furnace fire had incinerated something in a single burst.
He stumbled back several steps, moving out of the range of the fruit.
He gasped for air, his face drenched in sweat.
"...What was that?" he rasped.
Lu Yuan didn't answer.
He looked at the sphere; after releasing the flowers and fruit, it had shriveled significantly, its pulsing now weak.
【Detection target: ?... It has released a lure to all living things...】
【Note: The hyphae spores within the fruit can invade the host's nervous system in an extremely short time... infection occurs upon contact...】
【Forbidden Lore: Knowledge Seeker: +0.8... 16.6/100】
"Everyone, fall back to the entrance! Stay away from the fruit!" Lu Yuan’s voice echoed through the catchment basin.
Does the lure effect have very little impact on me?
Lu Yuan looked at the two fruits inside a small vial in his hand, then flicked his wrist and tucked it into his satchel.
Ever since he learned that this strange 'organism' could induce evolution, Lu Yuan had set his sights on it.
Especially after activating Timekeeper and approaching the fruit, he realized his Sanity could hold firm.
He had decisively used an alchemical sampling bottle—a small accessory from the professional equipment Laurina had given him—which was perfectly airtight.
He used his copper sword to pluck two and stowed them away.
Two Iron Guard soldiers dragged the four unconscious men back.
Heinrich rushed to the two unconscious Holy Armored Army soldiers and checked the one who had grabbed the fruit.
The greyish-green patterns on the man's arm had already spread to his shoulder.
But the good news was that the rate of spread had slowed significantly after the man lost consciousness.
"Can he be saved?" Heinrich looked up at Lu Yuan.
【Detection target: Holy Armored Army soldier (Contaminated... Sanity collapse...)】
【A human lured by evolution; he seems to be heading toward an irreversible state.】
"I don't know," Lu Yuan said truthfully.
"But his will has been eroded. The holy light on his armor has gone out. You know better than I do what that means."
Heinrich fell silent for a moment.
He certainly did.
The armor of the Holy Armored Army was linked to the wearer's will through inscriptions.
If the will remained, the holy light remained.
If the will vanished, the holy light vanished.
The moment that soldier's holy light went out, Heinrich felt a link break in the energy chain of the curved formation.
It was like a taut lute string suddenly snapping, causing the entire defensive line to waver.
He pulled a vial of dark grey potion from his waist and forced it down the soldier's throat, then stood up without another word.
"Can those flowers be burned?" Wolf had regained his senses. He stood up and glanced at his palm; the dark red patterns were still there but much fainter than before.
"Mithril can burn them," Lu Yuan said decisively.
"Bo Er!"
Hearing this, Bo Er snatched a canister of mithril from his waist and threw it.
Silver-white flames exploded among the vine remnants. The pale blue petals withered and curled, and the fruits burst, hissing with black smoke.
The sweetness dissipated quickly under the silver flames, though it wasn't entirely gone yet.
Seeing this, Wolf didn't hesitate.
He stepped a few paces away from the group and pressed his right hand to his chest.
Dark red light flared from his fingertips, spreading up his arm to his shoulder, then across his chest until it covered his entire body.
Something was burning beneath every inch of his skin.
A wave of heat swept out violently.
The Iron Guard soldiers behind him did the same.
Dark red patterns appeared on the skin of all ten men simultaneously.
Within seconds, the temperature soared to a suffocating level.
【Environmental Perception: Pure Fire detected! You have received a weak purification... Your resistance to pollution has slightly increased...】
The last of the cloying sweetness in the air evaporated with a sizzle.
Even the remaining hyphae on the walls shriveled in the intense heat.
Heinrich ordered two Holy Armored Army soldiers to carry the four unconscious wounded back into the passage.
"Tell Glock to bind the one who touched the fruit with copper chains. Don't let anyone touch his skin directly."
"Yes, sir!"
Six people left the team.
Four wounded and two escorts.
Thirty-five became twenty-nine.
The Holy Armored Army was reduced from fifteen to eleven.
The Iron Guard was reduced from twelve to ten.
Once the sweetness had fully dissipated, Lu Yuan took his first proper look around the catchment basin.
The silver flames and Pure Fire had cleared away most of the vines and hyphae, finally revealing the full layout of the space.
It was larger and more complex than he had expected.
The entire chamber was an irregular oval with a copper dome and a floor made of joined copper plates.
Besides the main entrance they had used, there were four other passage openings.
The one on the right was the largest, featuring a copper frame; that was Bolen’s objective.
The deep green vines had surged from that direction, now burned down to nothing but their roots.
However, the roots were thick—half a meter in diameter—and were still twitching faintly.
On the left were two smaller drainage branch passages, each a man's width, their inner walls coated in layers of hyphae.
Directly opposite was a medium-sized maintenance passage.
It was a crossroads of tunnels.
The sphere was still there.
It had shrunken considerably, its pulse extremely faint.
Lu Yuan glanced at it.
It was dying, but still pulsing. He couldn't leave it to be dealt with after Bolen finished the inscriptions.
If it recovered and forced another bloom of flowers and fruit, no one would survive a second time.
Lu Yuan took the last canister of mithril from his waist, unscrewed the cap, and hurled it at the sphere.
Silver flames erupted.
The sphere burned in the silver fire; the eyes on its surface burst, and the hyphae carbonized and peeled away.
The pulsing stopped.
The sphere detached from the vine remnants, crashed to the floor, and shattered into dozens of charred fragments.
Only now was this sub-core completely incinerated.
Something was revealed beneath where the sphere had shattered.
It had been hidden before by the sphere and the dense network of vines.
Now that everything was burned away, it was finally exposed.
A main trunk vine.
It was at least half a meter in diameter.
It extended from deep within the right passage, passed through the copper frame, and connected to where the sphere had originally hung.
The cross-section looked like that of a severed giant tree.
There were no eyes on its deep green surface, only a dense network of vein-like patterns.
And the wound was still pulsing.
The frequency matched the rhythm of the sphere’s earlier pulsing, though it was much weaker.
It was like an umbilical cord, connecting the newly destroyed sub-core to something even deeper.
【Detection target: ? (Damaged)】
【An existence that transcends the ordinary, possessing an extremely rare kind of power. You have unveiled another piece of it...】
【Forbidden Lore: Knowledge Seeker: +0.5... 17.1/100】
Lu Yuan crouched down, picked a relatively well-preserved fragment from the sphere's remains, and sealed it in a glass container with wax.
He then used the tip of a copper knife to carefully lift a fruit remnant that hadn't been completely consumed by the silver flames and sealed that as well.
Two samples.
"Bolen!"
The old man had already hobbled in with his cane.
He crouched before the copper frame, opened his toolbox, and pulled out a chisel. A faint blue-white light flickered as he pressed it against the copper surface.
"Don't interrupt me for anything. My life is in your hands now," Bolen shouted without looking up.
Kail stayed close by his side, clutching the strap of the toolbox.
Four Holy Armored Army soldiers surrounded them as guards.
The remaining seven Holy Armored Army soldiers, including Heinrich, formed a semi-circular formation in front of the right passage opening.
The three in the front row held their copper swords, while the four in the back row stood at even intervals.
The holy light inscriptions on their armor were activated to maximum brightness. Golden energy flowed between the soldiers like an invisible chain, linking the seven of them together to form a curved light curtain.
A seven-man formation was much thinner than the full fifteen-man squad, but the passage opening was narrow enough that this number was just right to seal it.
Wolf led the Iron Guard to deploy slag in front of the other three passage openings.
【Detection target: Pure Furnace slag (Believer creation)】
【A type of slag repeatedly scorched by Pure Fire, containing trace amounts of furnace embers. It ignites the internal structure of any pollutant it contacts. Especially effective against hyphae-based organisms.】
【Forbidden Lore: Knowledge Seeker: +0.1... 17.2/100】
"How long can this hold them back?" Bo Er asked as he helped scatter the copper powder.
"Not for long," Wolf answered bluntly.
"But anything that steps on it will ignite on its own."
The four Nightwatchers guarding the rear were positioned by Lu Yuan between the entrance they came from and the left passages.
The veteran missing a pinky stood closest to the left passage opening, his back against the wall and his copper sword held across his chest, his expression steady.
Bolen began the engraving.
A thirty-minute countdown.
For a time, the entire catchment basin fell silent.
There was only the rolling heat and the sound of Bolen’s tools.
About five minutes later, sounds echoed from deep within the right passage.
Numerous limbs trampled the wet ground—dense and heavy.
The reinforcements summoned by the vibrations the sphere released before its destruction had arrived.
The ghouls that swarmed out were covered in greyish-green hyphae patterns; every one of them was parasitized.
The vanguard-type in the front row moved on all fours, their speed incredible.
Behind them stood two greater ghouls with thicker keratin layers and clearly defined meat sacs in their palms.
Seeing this, Heinrich led the Holy Armored Army forward to meet them.
The moment the vanguard-type ghouls charged into the range of the light curtain, their skin began to smoke, and the hyphae patterns on them contracted violently, causing their speed to plummet.
The ghouls taken over by hyphae had a higher resistance to holy light than normal individuals, but the width of the passage was limited; at most, only three or four could rush in at once.
For the seven-man formation, this was manageable.
The three in the front row slashed in unison, each strike carrying an afterglow of holy light.
The four in the back row maintained the light curtain, their armor inscriptions flashing as they continuously funneled holy light to the front.
"Number two, half-step back. Number three, take his place," Heinrich gave a brief command.
The rotation took less than a second.
The rate at which the ghouls fell was clearly faster than the rate at which they poured in.
Corpses began to pile up at the passage opening.
Almost simultaneously, there was movement in the small passage on the left.
Three or four vanguard-type ghouls attempted to flank them.
They stepped onto the slag.
The first one stopped after two steps.
It lowered its head.
The greyish-green hyphae patterns on the soles of its feet changed color before its eyes, turning from grey-green to dark red, and then to charred black.
It was as if an invisible match had ignited all the hyphae in its body starting from its feet.
The fire didn't burn from the outside in.
But ignited spontaneously from within the hyphae.
Tiny dark red flames spread along the hyphae patterns, from the feet to the calves, from the calves to the thighs, and finally to the torso.
The hyphae were spread throughout their entire bodies.
And so, their entire bodies were ablaze.
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