Backstab

After an unknown amount of time, when the colorful magic particles finally faded into the void, Ivette saw the charred, mangled corpses of the Mechanical Tyrant and the Night Walker Demon.

After landing from the air, she checked the remaining mana in her body and found that only around 377 points remained. If she treated 100 mana points as an untouchable red line, then she had just 277 freely usable points left. That might not be enough to deal with the Nest Lord, the Tide Worm Queen, and that mysterious fog-maker.

But fortunately, there was still a way to replenish it.

She walked over to the Night Walker Demon's corpse, whose head had been blasted apart, drew her Alloy Combat Blade, and awkwardly began operating on it. With the help of Wind Control to clear away the debris, she spent a long time before finally digging a Mana Core out of the charred abdomen.

After absorbing its mana, however, she could not help frowning. This Mana Core has way too little energy. Just over twenty points—barely enough to fill a tooth gap.

It must have been the mana the Night Walker Demon had not used up during the fight... That also proved that its bat-summoning ability was a mana-consuming technique... she thought.

It seemed that every Third Stage Mutant had to possess at least one special technique. Otherwise, what would be the point of having a Mana Core?

Then...

What special technique did the Twin-Blade Demon possess? Speed enhancement?

She did not dwell on it further and turned to search for the Mechanical Tyrant's Mana Core. Unfortunately, the Mechanical Tyrant had not reached the Third Stage at all, so it had no Mana Core. Still, among the pile of scrap metal it had dropped were quite a few reusable components, such as certain functional modules from the magic cannon. She decided to return and inspect them carefully after everything was over.

After finishing the looting, she summoned pillars of fire and incinerated the two Mutants' corpses. Once she had completely cleaned up the aftermath, she removed the Magic Skateboard from her back, took flight again, and sped toward the depths of the fog.

The final stretch of the journey took around half an hour.

It was obvious that the fog's creator had no desire to let an intruder find the way, constantly adjusting the route. But Ivette was a Rune Hacker. Even if she could not disrupt the operation of the magic array, she could still analyze the techniques for clues and identify the correct path forward.

At last, after breaking through a gray region where the fog was so dense it was practically solid, Ivette's view suddenly opened up, revealing a bizarre expanse of empty ground.

The earth was completely covered by a writhing purplish-red carpet of flesh, forming a perfectly round isolated island several hundred meters in diameter. Endless thick fog surrounded it on all sides and overhead.

Although she could not see the Mother Nest, the pulsating flesh on the ground was enough to tell her that it had to be nearby.

And at the very center of this area lurked something even stranger—a creature whose upper half was a huge, gelatinous pale lump of flesh, while dozens of long red-and-white tendrils, thin and constantly wriggling like intestinal tubes, dangled and waved below it. It resembled a terrifying jellyfish that had crawled out of the deepest nightmares and into reality.

After Ivette appeared, a ferocious gigantic mouth full of sharp teeth split open in the center of the flesh mass. The surrounding fog boiled and churned as well, as if it had sensed some kind of nervous emotion.

So this was the Mist Beast?

Rune Rings appeared around Ivette, and countless elemental strikes turned into dazzling streams of light as they blasted toward it.

But the Jellyfish Mist Beast was no simple opponent. Using its tendrils as legs, it scuttled rapidly across the ground like an agile cockroach, narrowly evading Ivette's magical bombardment. At the same time, it did not forget to lash several tendrils toward her in retaliation.

During this exchange of dodging and counterattacking, Ivette discovered that this Jellyfish Mist Beast was far more troublesome than the Mechanical Tyrant and Night Walker Demon. It was exceptionally good at evasion, causing many of her techniques to miss. Unlike the first two Mother Nest guards, it did not simply stand in place and trade attacks until it lost and died without any fear.

Even more troublesome, a large number of Low-Tier Mutants poured out of the fog at that moment—well over a hundred of them. These Mutants were not Tideworms. Their forms varied wildly, apparently making them the Mother Nest's final defensive force.

The Tideworm army outside might also be returning. She could not waste any more time... Ivette bent slightly, then cyan airflow swirled around her body as she shot toward the Jellyfish Mist Beast like a cannonball.

Of course, she was not planning to draw her blade and fight in close quarters like Rosaline. That was not her specialty. She had only one reason for closing the distance: to improve her techniques' accuracy and shove the Rune Rings right into this thing's mouth!

In an instant, before the jellyfish had time to react, she summoned a large number of Rune Rings directly in front of it. Blood-red tendrils lashed at her from every direction, but they failed to break through the Scarlet Armor's defenses.

The next second, magic roared. Ice, Fire, Wind, and Thunder intertwined like a blossoming rainbow! The Jellyfish Mist Beast, unable to escape the attack range in time, had nearly half its head blasted away. It collapsed to the ground at once, becoming a charred lump of twitching rotten flesh.

Seeing the Jellyfish Mist Beast nearly killed in an instant, Ivette showed no emotion. So far, there had yet to be a Third Stage Mutant whose defenses she could not break through. With enough mana, this outcome was hardly surprising.

Then, while clearing out the surrounding Low-Tier Mutants, she cast her gaze into the depths of the fog ring.

At that moment, the dense fog enclosing this core area began to vanish and recede across a vast area at a visible speed, like a massive curtain being rapidly pulled away by an invisible giant hand.

On a distant clearing paved in flesh, as the fog disappeared, a massive Mother Nest as large as a small mountain was finally exposed beneath the dazzling sunlight, with nowhere left to hide.

Unexpectedly, the Corrosive Beak Demon Vulture, which should have been missing, was now guarding the Mother Nest. Half of its body was charred black. Its clouded eyes had regained some clarity, but they also held obvious fear. There was a ninety-percent chance that the Mother Nest had forcibly ordered it back.

Ivette merely glanced at it before shifting her attention to the Mother Nest.

Unlike the one in Grayport City, this Mother Nest in the Corrupt Forest was even larger and more bloated. Its enormous body, far beyond the proportions of an ordinary nest, looked like a gigantic pulsing heart of flesh exposed above the ground. Beneath its translucent yet tough membrane walls, she saw a creature sleeping within: its upper body resembled that of a human woman, while its lower half was the giant hard-shelled body of an insect.

This must be the Nest Lord, the Tide Worm Queen.

Killing the Jellyfish Mist Beast had used more than a hundred mana points. Adding the other mana expenditures, she had around 260 points remaining...

She calculated silently, then saw the Corrosive Beak Demon Vulture suddenly charge at her. It screeched while wildly spraying green acid everywhere, like a crazed, delirious three-headed dragon.

Half a minute later, as she watched the Corrosive Beak Demon Vulture's corpse slowly collapse, Ivette recalculated and found that she still had a little over 200 Mana Points left.

That should be enough.

Apparently unwilling to sit and wait for death, the Tide Worm Queen, who had been dormant within the Mother Nest, suddenly opened all six scarlet eyes on her humanlike female face.

She tore open the membrane wall. Her four-story-tall insect body struggled free from the incubation chamber before crashing heavily onto the flesh-covered ground.

At the same time, Ivette noticed that two enormous insect limbs extended outward from the abdomen of her female upper body. Each ended in a huge, scythe-shaped blade of bone. Their thick edges gleamed with a metallic luster, looking far more threatening than the Twin-Blade Demon's two brittle blades.

But perhaps because its evolution had failed, Ivette saw numerous cracks across the Tide Worm Queen's body, especially the insect half. They made it look battered and badly wounded. It panted heavily, appearing extremely weak and completely lacking any sense of pressure.

That seemed like a good thing, yet Ivette still found it somewhat strange.

She had already prepared herself to face a top-tier Mutant at Great Perfection of the Third Tier, half a step into the Fourth Tier, even if its evolution had failed. Yet the opponent came with a weakness debuff... It felt like her emotions had been wasted.

Then I'll give you a quick death, she thought. Rising into the air, she began bombarding it with everything she had. Massive amounts of magical elements scattered across the area, accompanied by the Tide Worm Queen's shrill cries.

But the queen did not struggle without resistance. As it twisted its body to minimize the area covered by the bombardment, it released large numbers of Mutated Tideworms from its abdomen, sending them surging toward Ivette. Finally, it cast some kind of technique that enhanced its self-healing. Within green light, its festering flesh began to repair itself, increasing the mana required to kill it once again.

Ivette's frown deepened. Clearly due to insufficient mana, the scale of her technique bombardment visibly shrank, as though a high-pressure water cannon had been reduced to a thin hose.

Fortunately, the Tide Worm Queen was the first to give out. Amid miserable wails, it collapsed onto the ground, barely alive and no longer moving. But to be safe, Ivette still drew the Alloy Combat Blade at her waist, intending to finish off the dying Tide Worm Queen in close combat and save the last bit of her mana.

But at that very instant, an abnormal sound of something slicing through the air from behind alerted her.

She spun around instantly and tried to block sideways with her blade. But her stiff movements and incorrect grip caused the blade to be violently knocked from her hand before she could even grasp the hilt properly.

In her panic, she could only forcefully grab the attacker's blade with her slender hand covered in glowing red runes. Amid a piercing scrape of metal, golden sparks scattered in every direction! The next second, she was knocked out of the air and slammed into the ground, leaving behind a shallow crater.

Before she could rise, the attacker dove down again and repeatedly struck at the silver-haired girl in the crater, forcing her to fire techniques in every direction before she could temporarily drive it back.

Only after the attacker pulled away and stopped for the moment did Ivette slowly rise from the crater.

She lowered her gaze to the terrifying, blood-soaked wound in her palm, then looked up and said expressionlessly, "You really didn't disappoint me."

The attacker's figure was now clear. It was the Twin-Blade Demon... but not entirely.

Its scale-covered body had expanded by more than double. Rock-like muscles bulged and rolled wildly beneath its skin, filled with explosive power.

Two pairs of newly grown membrane wings, thin as cicada wings and gleaming with metallic coldness along their edges, tore through the flesh of its back and spread open. At its shoulders and waist, a pair of enormous claws and a pair of humanoid arms with distinct five-fingered hands had appeared as though grafted onto its body from nowhere.

At this moment, calling it a Twin-Blade Demon was no longer quite fitting. Six-armed Demon was a more accurate description. Its black scales shone like metal beneath the sunlight. Two claws, two blades, two hands, six wings on its back, and an even more muscular body—it looked every bit like a demon king at the height of its power.

"Likewise." The Six-armed Demon looked at Ivette. The corners of its mouth slowly curled upward, forming a faint smile that was smug, contemptuous, and filled with malice.