Transformation

A trap!

This was a trap from the start.

The mermaids' shrieks rose and fell amid the Sea Locusts' cries, a jumble of chaos and fury. They sounded like fish discovering that what they had swallowed wasn't food, but a hook!

Luo Island had looked utterly defenseless. In truth, it was like a crumbling house full of holes and drafts... except that if you skirted the minefields, cut through the electric fences, braved the gunfire, and gave it a kick, the stone facade would fall away to reveal tens of thousands of gun turrets and missile launchers, ready to blast everything for hundreds of miles to pieces!

Now Luo Island was a scene of carnage, running like a slaughterhouse assembly line—plucking, shelling, bleeding, butchering. Every step proceeded in order. It was filthy, foul, and deafening, but astonishingly efficient.

It wasn't a hero who defeated monsters. It was a monster more terrifying than they were.

Machines trampled vermin. Beasts slaughtered beasts.

The Curtain's disguise was finally torn away. Death and Destruction sang like performers on a stage, while bones and blood danced in the palm of the Formless Hand.

A horrifying sight.

Amid the slaughter, the horn sounded faster and faster, urging them on again and again in impotent rage.

Waves rose across the churning sea once more. Little mountains seemed to emerge from the water, their black shells built from countless bones. A sharp stench and sour tang filled the wind. Even the rain turned strange, taking on a green tint and hissing as it fell.

More than sixteen mountains of shell rose from the sea. Limbs writhed beneath them as they crawled slowly across the seabed, climbed onto the beaches and reefs, and landed on Luo Island.

Concentrated fire swept over them, but bullets bounced off shells as tall