Even before Lake could call out a warning, the hooded Nightwatcher also sensed the dangerous aura. On his right arm, which had been stripped down to the bone, the newly growing flesh was beginning to drape back over, but it stopped before it was even halfway done.
He turned his head and looked deep into the sinkhole.
“It’s here.”
Before his words could even fade, a blood-red afterimage suddenly shot out of the sinkhole. Its speed was countless times faster than that of a greater ghoul, appearing as almost nothing more than a dark red dashed line.
It did not charge toward Lake, who was closer. Instead, the afterimage dashed straight for the hooded Nightwatcher’s flank.
Lake reacted with lightning speed. The moment the swarm of insects covering the sinkhole exploded, a massive number of Swarming Worms coalesced into a wall of insects, forcefully interposing themselves between the blood-red afterimage and the hooded Nightwatcher.
The instant the insect wall made contact with the afterimage, the entire layer of grey meat-worms curled and became polluted, splitting apart piece by piece from the inside out. The insect wall held for less than two breaths before it was completely pierced through.
But those two breaths were enough.
The hooded Nightwatcher had already dodged three paces away. The flesh on his arms peeled away and condensed once more, with numerous flesh-blades hovering around him, their sharp edges pointing outward as his gaze locked onto the blood-red afterimage.
The afterimage burst through the debris of the insect wall, finally revealing its form.
It was a bizarre-looking ghoul, its body covered in raw, exposed flesh without any skin. A horizontal-slit eye sat across the top of its head, its body was hunched over, and its hands hung at its sides with extremely long fingertips.
Lake and the hooded Nightwatcher recognized it instantly: it was a special individual.
It stared at the hooded Nightwatcher, its horizontal-slit eye gleaming with a cold, scrutinizing gaze, completely ignoring Lake. Clearly, in its eyes, Lake no longer posed any threat.
Lake had lost over half of his swarm, with less than half of his original Swarming Worms remaining. The creature could tell that an eerie transcendent who had been drained to this extent was not worth prioritizing.
At almost the exact same moment, the hooded Nightwatcher struck first.
The flesh-blades shot out in unison. However, the special individual's speed far exceeded that of the greater ghouls on the battlefield. With a mere sway of its body, it evaded most of them. As for the remaining few that managed to plunge into its body, the wounds closed up the instant they pierced the flesh, without a single drop of blood spilling out.
The hooded Nightwatcher had originally intended to use his flesh-stripping ability.
But the moment he clashed with it, he realized that this creature’s entire body was already exposed flesh.
Logically speaking, dealing with it should have been even simpler than dealing with an amalgamation. However, this creature's flesh seemed to possess an extremely high vitality, making it completely impossible for him to mutate its flesh. In other words, his usual trick of mutating flesh could not be deployed at all.
The special individual gave him no time to devise a countermeasure.
With a flash of its body, it closed the distance and lunged right in front of him, its blood-drenched palms clawing straight for his chest.
The hooded Nightwatcher’s flesh condensed into a layer of meat armor over his chest as he leaned backward to dodge. The moment the bloody palms grazed the surface of the meat armor, the entire layer rapidly decayed and became polluted from the inside out, and even the skin directly beneath it began to turn black.
The hooded Nightwatcher's expression shifted.
Is the pollution actually this severe?
He immediately stripped off the entire layer of meat armor and flung it away, blood welling out of the newly exposed wound.
Lake’s sea of insects swept in from the side, attempting to entangle the special individual.
The Swarming Worms died in massive numbers the instant they made contact with it, but Lake could no longer care about that. The Swarming Worms seemed endless as they threw themselves frantically at the creature, surging forward wave after wave, only to die batch by batch.
Lake was using the lives of his Swarming Worms to buy time for the hooded Nightwatcher.
Lake's insect wave, piled high with Swarming Worms, shrank at a visible rate.
Lake, who had long since lost any human appearance, let out a muffled groan as his transcendent pathway began to experience some abnormal fluctuations.
The Swarming Worms were originally one with him, and normally, the life or death of these insects barely affected him. But this time, they were being corroded to death by the raw pollution. With every worm that died, a faint thread of backlash traveled back to him along their connection.
The more insects that died, the heavier the backlash became.
The special individual was entangled by the sea of Swarming Worms for several breaths.
During these few breaths, another round of flesh-blades peeled away from the hooded Nightwatcher's arms. This time, he did not shoot them out; instead, he gripped them in his hands—two long, serrated blades, one in each hand—while a simple suit of meat armor covered his body.
The moment the special individual shook off the sea of insects, the hooded Nightwatcher charged forward to meet it.
He knew his only chance was a head-on clash. If he chose to flee, the losses in the inner city would be catastrophic. He dared not imagine the consequences of such a powerful special individual breaching the inner city.
Moreover, Lake would likely die here. Lake could not die, at least not now.
The two figures collided amidst the ruins of the sinkhole. The sound of clashing flesh was dull and heavy, mingled with a bizarre, squelching wetness.
Every strike of the hooded Nightwatcher's serrated blades sliced into the special individual's body, but the wounds began to heal the instant they were made. This creature's self-regeneration speed almost kept pace with his attacks.
Furthermore, its every touch carried extremely potent pollution. Every clash rotted away a layer of his flesh-condensed blades.
While the flesh on the hooded Nightwatcher's body was being corroded, it also slowly regenerated, but what was eroded away was always faster than what grew back.
The flesh beneath his robes was gradually withering away, his face growing paler and paler, and the newly formed meat armor on his right arm had already been mostly rotted away again.
If the fight continued like this, he would eventually be ground to death.
Lake could see this clearly as well.
He did not have many Swarming Worms left; even gathered together, they amounted to barely thirty percent of his original number.
Yet, he still made his move.
In the exact same instant, all the Swarming Worms transformed into a grey torrent, forcefully wrapping around the special individual from behind.
The grey meat-worms died and turned to ash in massive swathes from the outside in, crumbling to dust in large patches. The sea of insects shrank at a visible rate, until only a fist-sized ball of grey worms remained, clinging to Lake's chest.
Lake could no longer support his body. His legs buckled, and he nearly collapsed to his knees.
Blood gushed from his mouth and nose simultaneously, and dense cracks spiderwebbed across his entire skin. With too many insects dying too quickly, the backlash traveled back to him, causing his own body to begin breaking down.
But he did not let go.
This brief moment of entanglement provided the hooded Nightwatcher with his final window of opportunity.
The hooded Nightwatcher's eyes suddenly turned fierce. He stopped using blades altogether, instead stripping away all the flesh from his arms in one breath, leaving behind nothing from his shoulders to his elbows but two pale, bare bones.
All the stripped flesh twisted together, condensing in the air into a fist-sized sphere of blood, its surface covered with dense rows of massive teeth.
Using his bare hand-bones, the hooded Nightwatcher forcefully ripped a gash in the chest of the special individual. In the next instant, he shoved the entire blood sphere into its abdomen. The mutation of the flesh began from within.
This time, the special individual's body shuddered violently. It finally sensed that something was terribly wrong.
Right at that moment, the inscriptions on the inner city walls of the Bronze City suddenly lit up once more.
The light this time was far dimmer than before, carrying a sense of imminent extinction, but the immense pressure still descended with undeniable force.
The special individual's movements suddenly stiffened.
The hooded Nightwatcher grabbed the sole remaining serrated blade from the ground and lunged forward. The blade pierced from its chest through to its back, nearly slicing its entire head off.
The special individual let out a silent wail, its entire body of flesh churning and expanding wildly as it tried to dissolve into a blood mist to escape.
But the blood sphere inside its abdomen was still there, tearing and biting from within. The teeth gnawed through layer after layer of flesh, gripping tightly and refusing to let go. It could not shake off this mass of mutated flesh inside its body.
The special individual abandoned its attempt to dissolve into blood mist. Its entire body violently recoiled, tearing itself away from the hooded Nightwatcher with the blade still in its chest and the blood sphere in its abdomen.
The hooded Nightwatcher wanted to stop it, but he lacked the strength. He swung his two bare bone arms desperately to strike, but the special individual dodged the blow.
It retreated to the edge of the sinkhole, its horizontal-slit eye glaring intently at the hooded Nightwatcher, the scrutiny in its gaze now replaced by wariness.
In the next instant, it leapt into the sinkhole, its figure vanishing into the darkness.
The blood sphere that the hooded Nightwatcher had shoved inside had already moved beyond his range of control the moment the creature plunged into the depths of the sinkhole.
Yet the blood sphere did not return. Instead, it detonated inside the creature's abdomen, sending the teeth condensed from flesh exploding in all directions within its body. The special individual shuddered once more, nearly failing to maintain its humanoid form.
However, the pollution contained within its flesh was simply too strong, and the damage that a Nightwatcher's transcendent pathway could inflict upon it was ultimately limited. The creature's aura gradually sank into the deep.
It was still alive—merely repelled.
After lighting up this final time, the inscriptions on the inner city walls of the Bronze City dimmed completely, exuding a deathly silence.
Lake painfully supported his body, forcing himself not to collapse. The fist-sized ball of insects on his chest was still writhing slightly. Though he didn't fall, he could no longer walk. Blood continued to seep from the cracks covering his body, and his crimson eyes had lost most of their luster.
The hooded Nightwatcher walked over, his two skeletal arms hanging at his sides as new flesh began to sprout thread by thread from the stumps.
After all, when fighting with one's own flesh, one could never survive to this point without corresponding recovery methods.
But the time I need to recover is a bit too long... the hooded Nightwatcher thought as he pulled out a bottle of light pink potion and downed it in one gulp.
The moment he consumed the potion, the flesh that had been emerging like thin threads began to grow at an even faster rate.
He cast a downward glance at Lake, said nothing, and turned to face the sinkhole, shielding Lake behind him.
He knew Lake's unique constitution made it impossible for him to use potions brewed with ordinary holy water. However, the Swarming Worms possessed an extremely resilient life force. As long as he could buy enough time for Lake, the dead insects would eventually grow back.
Besides, having devoured a significant amount of flesh in this battle, Lake's recovery this time likely wouldn't take too long.
For the time being, no new entities emerged from this sinkhole at the boundary between the inner and outer cities.
This sector could be considered secured, but as for the other areas, he had no way of knowing.
Yet, the sound of gunfire from the direction of the outer city had now ceased completely.
There was no telling how many more residents and Nightwatchers had died at the hands of the ghouls, but for now, they were utterly powerless.
Rate on N.U.
