The moment the swarm of worms crashed into them, Lake knew these things were more than a size larger than the one from the Old Council Square.
Without a moment of hesitation, the Swarming Worms surged forward like a rising tide, the grey swarm clawing frantically up the carapace of the first amalgamation, piling over one another as they rushed upward.
But the surface of this creature was covered in a peculiar network of plant roots, and when the Swarming Worms bit down, they left behind nothing but rows of faint white marks.
They couldn't bite through? They actually couldn't bite through?
Lake was startled.
Logically speaking, his Swarming Worms should have had an easy time dealing with these greater ghouls.
The inscriptions on the city walls suddenly flashed, and the moment the immense pressure descended, the greater ghouls that had just crawled out of the sinkhole stiffened in unison, with several of them being forced directly to their knees.
But this light only lasted for a few breaths. The intensity of the inscriptions flickered erratically, flashing repeatedly before dimming across vast sections.
Lake felt the force pressing down on the Swarming Worms suddenly loosen by more than half, and the swarm instantly came alive again, more than doubling its speed as it surged and shifted.
However, those greater ghouls also broke free from their constraints.
Those pinned down by the pressure stood back up one by one, their movements swifter than before and their screeches sharper as they began to spread in all directions. Needless to say, those polluted by the Forest Seed were barely affected by the Bronze City's pressure in the first place, and now that the restriction was lifted, they rushed forward with incredible speed.
The energy in the inscriptions on the inner city walls was slowly draining away. This was already inevitable, especially after the bronze pillar in the underground Abyss had been destroyed.
Lake had no time to think about this.
The pair of glowing crimson eyes at the crest of the swarm narrowed slightly, and in the next instant, the Swarming Worms abruptly shifted their form.
A stream of grey worms gathered and linked at the base, twisting into a massive serpent as thick as an adult's waist. The serpent's head violently thrust into the midsection of the first giant amalgamation, instantly piercing through the tough layer of green roots.
The amalgamation let out a muffled, mournful shriek as its body began to bulge from the inside.
In one spot, then another, the abdomen of the giant body suddenly burst open, and a massive tide of grey Swarming Worms came pouring out from within.
Its interior consisted of flesh-colored chambers, their walls lined with writhing greater ghouls. Some were not yet fully formed, possessing only half a torso and a mouth without a trace of limbs, slowly taking shape as they soaked in a viscous, fleshy fluid.
The Swarming Worms flooded into these chambers. Unlike its tough exterior, the inside of this giant amalgamation was practically a paradise for the Swarming Worms, and a frenzied feeding began.
The Swarming Worms devoured it from the inside out. Those ghouls that had not yet had the chance to hatch did not even get the opportunity to struggle before they were swept up by countless worms and vanished into the sea of insects. The spots in the chambers where the embryos had hung were gradually reduced to hollow pits and sticky bits of shredded flesh.
The Swarming Worms had no intention of stopping. They rampaged through the amalgamation's body, tunneling from one chamber to the next, hollowing out each one they breached.
Bulges continuously formed and ruptured across the amalgamation's surface, and grey worms spewed from every tear, raining down upon the ghouls at the sinkhole.
A rancid stench of decay drifted over the inner city, mingled with the sounds of tearing and gnawing.
The first amalgamation's body quickly went limp. With its limbs and chambers completely hollowed out, it could no longer hold together; its torso snapped in two, and a massive deluge of unformed ghoul fragments and grey worms poured from the rupture.
But this was only the first one.
A second giant amalgamation had already squeezed its way out of the sinkhole. Its mass was far greater than the first, the wooden fibers on its carapace thicker and denser, and its entire body exuded a pungent, metallic stench.
Right behind it came a third, and then a fourth.
Lake commanded the Swarming Worms to surge out from the remains of the first one, condensing them into a new serpent of insects to lunge at the second.
But the second was smarter than the first. The moment a crack split open on its carapace, a dense horde of greater ghouls poured out in advance, throwing themselves at the oncoming serpent as soon as they hit the ground, using their own bodies to block the breach.
While the Swarming Worms devoured the greater ghouls, they were also being consumed by them in turn.
Lake split off another stream of insects to flow toward the overflowing greater ghouls.
But this was already his limit. With too many diversions, the sea of insects grew visibly thin.
Moreover, for every bite of this flesh polluted by the Forest Seed that the Swarming Worms consumed, a batch of them died. The grey insects became stuck to the torn flesh, and even more Swarming Worms surged from behind, stepping over their dead kin to press forward.
Lake was relying purely on numbers to force these greater ghouls down.
From the direction of the outer city, scattered gunshots suddenly rang out. The gunfire was sparse, with only a few shots cracking after long intervals, muffled by the roars of the ghouls in the inner city.
These were clearly the residents who hadn't managed to evacuate in time. The Nightwatchers had previously distributed silver-plated short-shotguns and ammunition door-to-door precisely to give them some small measure of self-defense when the greater ghouls invaded.
Lake knew exactly what those gunshots meant.
Having ordinary people use silver-plated short-shotguns to fight greater ghouls meant that even if they hit their targets, they wouldn't necessarily kill them. And even if one died, there were dozens more waiting behind it. The sinkhole had been breached—or rather, they had failed to hold it.
Once the gunshots ceased, there would be no living souls left in that invaded sector.
A trace of helplessness touched Lake's heart, and the pair of bright red eyes on the hive glowed a bit brighter. But he knew he had no power to save them, and the Nightwatchers had already done everything they could. If he failed, this inner city sinkhole before him would completely fall.
With four giant amalgamations and the constantly spewing greater ghouls, it would take only dozens of breaths for them to reach the inner city walls.
The inner city walls were the Bronze City's final line of defense.
Lake's teeth ground together. Or rather, he no longer had teeth; the Swarming Worms that made up his body twisted together, producing a sound like leather rubbing against leather.
Taking advantage of his momentary distraction, the second amalgamation suddenly rose, taking another step toward the inner city walls with a body covered in ghouls. The third also began to move.
They had no intention of staying at the sinkhole to waste time with Lake. Flesh churned continuously as greater ghouls tumbled from their carapaces, struggling briefly upon landing before screeching and surging in all directions.
The ghouls inside the chambers were dwindling one by one.
Yet more and more ghouls were pouring out from the sinkhole.
Lake was starting to buckle under the strain.
Right at that moment, a figure swept over from the direction of the outer city toward Lake.
The figure was extremely fast, gliding almost flush with the ground. He wore the signature hood of the Nightwatchers pulled low, and his build was not particularly tall, even somewhat thin, with his face obscured.
The moment he landed, his arms were already raised. His skin instantly split open as muscles peeled away from his arm bones. The separated flesh elongated and twisted in the air, condensing in a mere instant into dozens of serrated blades that hung in a dense cluster around him.
They did not fly toward the ghouls. Instead, over a dozen serrated blades plunged into the carapace of the second giant amalgamation, seemingly coming alive the instant they penetrated as the flesh tunneled frantically into its body.
Following this, the carapace of the second amalgamation began to slough off.
The carapace peeled outward layer by layer, rolling up with the underlying fascia like the skin of a pared fruit. The flesh beneath turned inside out, and dense rows of sharp, pointed teeth abruptly sprouted on every peeled strip of meat, snapping inward with feral intensity.
Those teeth bit down into the amalgamation's own flesh.
The amalgamation let out a mournful wail, its muscles contracting violently, but more and more flesh was peeled away, and the teeth grew denser. Its body was being chewed to pieces, bite by bite, from the outside in by its own flesh.
This was his ability.
Lake controlled the sweeping swarm of insects, his bright red eyes lighting up slightly. His helper had arrived.
He did not remain idle either, immediately commanding the sea of insects to wheel around. Releasing the second amalgamation, they pounced on the third, which had only managed to take two or three steps.
The two Rank 4s exchanged no words. The vast sea of insects took charge of pinning down the creature's movements, while the other Rank 4 thrust his own flesh into the amalgamation's body, mutating its flesh to sprout teeth that bit back, ultimately stripping it clean.
The second amalgamation finally collapsed with a thunderous crash.
When its corpse split down the middle, its internal organs and unformed ghouls spilled out in a heap, completely minced from within by the flesh mutated by the hooded Nightwatcher.
The third amalgamation did not last much longer either. Scarcely a dozen breaths after the hooded Nightwatcher's blades pierced it, the entire corpse began to collapse from the inside, its skeleton unable to support the swelling gums and teeth, crumbling to the ground.
Lake's sea of insects surged forward, devouring every bit of shredded meat they could swallow while doing their best to avoid those polluted by the Forest Seed.
However, at least half of the ghouls here carried the Forest Seed's pollution. Vast swaths of Swarming Worms were dying, and the total volume of the swarm shrank at a visible rate, causing the column of insects supporting Lake to drop by a noticeable fraction.
The hooded Nightwatcher, on the other hand, was completely unharmed.
He dealt with the fourth amalgamation entirely on his own. He stripped away the creature's carapace layer by layer to expose the core flesh within, then drove all his flesh-blades straight through it in unison.
The moment the core exploded, greyish-green shredded flesh splattered everywhere, drenching the hooded Nightwatcher's robes from head to toe. He didn't even bother to wipe it off, merely raising a hand to adjust his hood.
The four giant amalgamations were thus completely eliminated.
The area around the sinkhole was finally cleared, leaving behind a ground covered in shredded meat and still-writhing severed limbs, with the air thick with a stench of burnt and rotting flesh. Lake's swarm of insects formed a perimeter around the sinkhole, tightly sealing off any ghouls that still tried to poke their heads out.
This sinkhole had, at least for now, been barely held.
Before the two of them could even breathe a sigh of relief.
An extremely powerful aura of pollution suddenly emerged from the deepest depths of the sinkhole. In the very next instant, it had already closed in right before Lake's swarm of insects.
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