Margaret appeared at the corner of the corridor, water vapor beginning to rise from her body.
Hilde's silver needles flew out from behind her, forming an arc in the air.
One second, the Guardian was convulsing on the ground; the next, his ten fingers suddenly went still. His torso and limbs locked into place before his fingers calmed, slowly spreading open with palms upward, resting against the cracked stone tiles.
Lu Yuan saw the Guardian's lips moving, but the sound was too faint, muffled by the humming of the aura.
The Guardian was saying, "Enough."
The old man lay on his back, his cloudy eyes open and fixed on the ceiling. The pitch-black aura and dense clusters of eyeballs wrapped around him like a cocoon.
Inside that cocoon, he said "enough" to the things that had been churning within his body for over five hundred years.
With his palms open, he chose to let go. He stopped suppressing the eerie mutation and stopped blocking the Grudge. The Guardian opened himself up completely, letting the two forces settle their conflict on their own.
The nearly berserk aura surged violently. The Archbishop and the others waiting outside looked grim; it was clear that the Eerie Pathway within the Guardian had reached a critical point. If things went wrong, it would be a devastating blow to the Bronze City.
Just as Kraus was at a loss for what to do...
Without any warning, the outermost layer of eyeballs on the Guardian's skin began to sink inward, vanishing one by one from his cheeks down to his limbs.
The concentration of the pitch-black aura dropped by half within five seconds, and the black stains on the stone tiles began to fade.
Kraus's short-blade hung suspended in mid-air, a look of shock flashing in his eyes.
The Guardian's spine slowly straightened as he rolled onto his back. His chest heaved violently, and the frequency of eyeballs surfacing beneath his skin dropped to a level lower than Lu Yuan had ever seen.
They sank into the deeper layers, suppressed by something.
The grey-white text finally jumped to new content.
【Result: Partial success. The eerie mutation process has been significantly delayed but not reversed. The essence of the Grudge and the eerie mutation have reached a fragile standoff. You seem to have created a miracle?】
The small amount of power derived from "Wish" had neither won nor lost against the eerie mutation accumulated over five hundred years.
The two forces had halted at a certain threshold, neither consuming the other.
Kraus retracted his short-blade, the bone-colored material receding into his bone ring. He knelt beside the Guardian, his lips pressed into a thin line.
"Are you alright?"
The Guardian's eyes remained closed, his lips moving slightly. "Better than before."
Another line of grey-white text appeared.
【Note: The current balance depends on the environment of the Polymath Tower to maintain. The target cannot leave the effective range of the Polymath Tower; once he leaves, the balance will collapse, and the eerie mutation will immediately counterattack.】
The Guardian opened his eyes and looked down at his hands.
A single eyeball on the back of his hand was slowly sinking back under the skin, much slower than before.
His gaze swept across the stone tiles beneath him, the copper inscription circuits on the walls, the vault above his head, and finally settled on a place Lu Yuan couldn't see.
"I cannot leave anymore," the old man said raspy, his tone no different than when he had spoken of the "five or six hundred years." "But is it only this? A miracle indeed..."
Lu Yuan remained silent for a few seconds, calculating the cost of this partial success. The Guardian was now locked to the Polymath Tower, meaning the Bronze City's strongest mobile combat force was gone. In the future, no matter where trouble arose, he wouldn't be able to rush to the scene.
But fortunately, every time the Guardian acted, it seemed to be a large-scale attack. Perhaps it wouldn't have too much of an impact?
Seeing Lu Yuan's expression, the corner of the Guardian's mouth twitched.
"Enough. You did well."
【Bronze City Status: +1... 43.2/50】
After saying that, the old man closed his eyes again and leaned against the wall. The pitch-black aura wrapped around him quietly, with eyeballs slowly drifting within it.
Lu Yuan tried to stand up, swaying for two steps before steadying himself. The grey in his vision had spread to cover half his sight. He blinked several times before he could clearly see the line: 【Sanity: 21/140】.
Seeing this, Kraus walked over quickly.
"I'll take it from here. You sit down."
Lu Yuan didn't try to be a hero. He slid down the copper wall into a sitting position. A chill seeped from the back of his head down to his spine, and his blurred vision cleared slightly.
Outside the corridor, Lake and the others were still waiting anxiously.
A faint wriggling sensation came through the symbiotic link. The Knowledge Worm crawled out of the incision on the side of the Guardian's neck. It was a size smaller than when it had entered, with several burns on its surface. It flew slowly back to his feet, climbed up his pant leg and the back of his hand, and finally took flight from his fingertip to burrow back into his left eye.
A sense of presence returned to the depths of his left eye—weak and exhausted, but alive.
Lu Yuan leaned against the cold copper wall and closed his eyes, no longer wanting to move at all.
With his Sanity at twenty-one, his entire perception was shrouded in a layer of grey, making even breathing feel like a chore.
Outside the corridor, Kraus's voice drifted in, kept very low and intermittent.
The Guardian's condition had stabilized, and there was no immediate danger, but it seemed some side effects had remained.
He didn't go into detail; those few words were spoken very softly, and he stopped immediately after.
Footsteps grew more frequent from the end of the corridor, heading toward the Main Control Room. Lu Yuan opened his eyes. The grey at the edges of his vision hadn't completely receded; he blinked, and the grey barely shrank back.
The coldness of the copper wall pressed against the back of his head and down his spine, suppressing some of the grogginess. He forced himself to focus.
Once the Guardian was stable, Arthur carried the unconscious Old Dean back into the room from the corridor, laying him flat on one side of the main control console.
Lake was the first to enter.
His gaze swept over the Guardian, lingering for less than a second. He said nothing and stepped aside to clear the doorway.
The Blue Knight followed, her grey-blue cloak clinging to her side. Her footsteps were so light they were almost silent. After entering, she stood by the door and went no further.
The Great Ascendant's metal skeleton squeezed through the doorframe, his joints making a dull clicking sound as they locked.
His two silver-grey pupils slowly scanned the entire Main Control Room, from the floating crystal debris to the empty sarcophagus, finally landing on the floor. The metal parts of his face shifted silently.
Adrian was the last to enter.
The old Archbishop's fingers rested on the gold patterns of his robe's cuffs. His gaze first fell on the Old Dean lying on the floor, lingering for a moment before moving to the Guardian by the wall.
Lu Yuan followed their gazes and finally noticed the floor.
The Guardian was leaning against the wall, and in the circle where his body touched the ground, things had sprouted from the cracks in the stone tiles. Dark tissue crawled along the existing patterns of the stone, covering the surrounding area for two or three steps.
The texture of that tissue was somewhere between flesh and inscriptions. Extremely fine networks pulsed slowly on its surface. Its color was dark, faintly echoing the copper inscription circuits remaining beneath the stone tiles of the Polymath Tower, its flow almost perfectly connecting with them.
As the Guardian's body moved slightly, the tissue extending across the floor contracted with him, pulling back half an inch toward his direction before spreading out again. It expanded and contracted in rhythm with his breathing.
Lu Yuan stared at the tissue for a few seconds. Grey-white text surfaced at the edge of his vision.
【Target Detected: Guardian (Bronze City)】
【The host is currently connected to the city's inscription system. The process is stable, with no leakage of pollution.】
It looked unsettling, but the thing itself was quiet. Its surface was clean, without the restless surging that pushed out from within the flesh; it was a different matter entirely from the pitch-black eyeballs on the Guardian's body.
Lu Yuan made a general judgment in his mind.
In the end, the Guardian's body and the structure of the Polymath Tower were growing together. The inscription system supported his newly stabilized shell, and his shell had taken root within the inscriptions. The tower could provide feedback to him, and he was becoming a part of the tower.
He remembered the line the grey-white text had given him at the end of the treatment: the balance depends on the environment of the Polymath Tower to maintain; leave, and it collapses.
The dark tissue crawling on the ground was the physical manifestation of that sentence. It wouldn't disappear in the short term; it would only spread further.
Margaret knelt before the Guardian and produced something resembling a needle. As the copper-green shimmer of the needle's tip swept over the extended tissue, it brightened slightly. Her brow furrowed, but she remained silent, steadily pressing the probe down another half-inch while watching the feedback at the needle's tail.
Hilde assisted nearby, several silver needles suspended in the air. The inscriptions on the needles flickered, their humming much steadier than when they had first entered the tower. Neither of them spoke, only exchanging judgments with their eyes as the shimmer at the needle tails changed.
The Main Control Room fell silent. Kraus walked over to stand before the Guardian, his gaze moving from the slowly pulsing tissue on the floor to the old man's face, his lips pressed into a thin line.
He didn't rush Margaret, waiting for a result from the detection, but the hand resting on the hilt of his sword never left.
Lake glanced at the tissue with an expressionless face, his gaze quickly moving away to land on a black solid mass covered in eyeballs in the corner.
The aura radiating from that pile was familiar—it was the Grey Covenant. If there were no surprises, it was likely K. Now, his corpse was wedged into the gaps between the copper pipes and the stone tiles, all his pupils having lost their luster, dull and shriveled.
He watched for two seconds, then looked away and leaned against a copper wall, crossing his arms. The last member of the Grey Covenant in the Bronze City had died in that crevice.
The Great Ascendant stood closest to the tissue, his two silver-grey pupils fixed on it for a long time without moving. The metal parts of his face turned slowly, making faint clicking noises. Lu Yuan glanced at him but said nothing.
A Rank 5 senior of the Nightwatchers had grown into the inscriptions of the entire city. Lu Yuan didn't have the energy to wonder what the Ascension Society people were thinking about such a thing, nor was he inclined to stop them.
Adrian stood the furthest away, his hand pressed against the holy emblem on his chest. Especially after seeing the Guardian's state, he opened his mouth but ultimately said nothing. A faint golden light flickered between his fingers before dimming.
In this Main Control Room that had been smashed to pieces, representatives from the Nightwatchers, the Ascension Society, and the Holy Church stood side by side. Two corpses and an unconscious Old Dean lay on the floor, while a Rank 5 who had just locked himself to the Polymath Tower sat by the wall.
And then there was the wilted-looking Lu Yuan.
No one spoke first.
It was Kraus who finally broke the silence.
He took a half-step toward the Guardian, his voice very low and half a degree softer than usual. "Sir... how are you feeling now?" Only when addressing the Guardian did he use such a title and tone.
The Guardian leaned against the wall, his white hair hanging over his shoulders, his eyelids half-open. The surge of the pitch-black aura was calm, with an eyeball surfacing beneath the skin only after a long interval, turning half a circle before sinking back down.
The old man did not answer immediately. A raspy breath escaped his throat first, and only after two seconds did he force the words out.
"A pity I can no longer leave."
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