Volume Three: The Academy Goes Completely Berserk - Chapter 229: A Hair's Breadth from Disaster (Part One)

"Let's play something even more interesting next! Number two! Number three!"

The metal box numbered ② flew to Fiaz's side, and with a click, a long, rod-like object emerged from it. He grabbed the rod and pulled it out forcefully. During the extraction, a large amount of strange substance, resembling both liquid metal and flowing light, flowed out from the opening of box number ③, overlapping and coalescing with countless tiny parts onto the long rod. Stretched and reshaped using the rod as a base, it had become a giant, orange-yellow sword hundreds of meters long!

Compared to this Greatsword, the monster was as small as a mouse.

"Heavy weapon for fortresses— the Ship Slicing Blade v4.0! Isn't it beautiful? Its power is even more impressive!!!"

Two deformed metal arms branched off from the thrusters behind Fiaz, two rough, giant metal hands gripping the Ship Slicing Blade tightly. Several Jet Nozzle extended from the sides of the arms, providing propulsion for the upcoming swing.

"▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇!!!!"

The monster lacked reason, but its biological instincts told it that what lay before it was no ordinary creature. It let out a defiant roar and swiftly moved to the side—

"Stay still and don't move— Stasis Field!"

The countless nanoscale machines scattered across the battlefield now demonstrated their function beyond sensors—each small machine emitted a pale blue light band, connecting with other nearby machines, instantly forming a massive, all-encompassing net of light that enveloped the monster! With a command from Fiaz, the net released a deep blue halo that gave off a viscous feeling, and the monster's movements immediately became stiff and sluggish, like a slow-motion scene in a movie!

"That's right, how adorable! Now— Ship Slicing Blade, fire!"

The Ship Slicing Blade, originally a hundred meters long, extended to nearly a kilometer, its massive mechanical arm swinging horizontally—

There was no spectacular explosion, no deafening noise; only an orange-yellow beam of light unfolded and closed like a fan. That was all. On the plane slashed by the Ship Slicing Blade, all the buildings were cleaved in two. The cut was as smooth as a mirror, and liquid orange-yellow light lingered at the break.

Fiaz grinned and snapped his fingers.

"Burst!"

The deafening roar of explosions echoed across the heavens and earth. Every point that Ship Slicing Blade exploded in succession, and the entire area was instantly engulfed in flames. A scorching wave swept across the entire region!

"Hmm... Spirit Imaging Device, activate."

Purple-blue threads immediately appeared on Fiaz's six glasses, which precisely imaged the scene obscured by flames and smoke by detecting spiritual vibrations and feeding the images back onto the lenses.

"What's wrong? It might not be dead, could it? I should adjust my power so I can just barely kill it... Ah, I've got it!"

The crimson Killing Intent swept away the ashes, and the monster's figure reappeared. Now, half of its body was charred, and a horrific wound lay beneath its ribs, with blood vessels rapidly flowing to fill the wound.

It looked quite disheveled, but that only made it appear more ferocious.

"It seems the resilience curve is a bit off," Fiaz adjusted his glasses, seemingly even more excited. "No problem, import the correction function and calculate again..."

Immediately, numerous blue light-condensed displays appeared around him, countless symbols and curves dancing on them. Fiaz directly manipulated them, chanting incantations. "... arm strength assessment correction... overall sequence reconstruction... process 1209 to 3019410 stopped... calling inventory 16 to 77... trial construction begins... first time..."

Metal boxes ③ through ⑥ immediately released a large number of parts, which began to assemble rapidly under Fiaz's control. The monster walked step by step, and as the wounds under its ribs gradually healed, its steps became more and more steady and its speed increased.

"... Starting the second phase of construction... Basic framework design complete... Backup activated... Application energy allocation..."

The monster's speed increased rapidly. With a roar, it stomped out thousands of cracks in the ground and charged towards Fiaz in the air like a cannonball!

"... Usability test successful...34th fine-tuning completed... Outer shell 83% complete..."

The blood vessels transformed into sharp, spiky claws, viciously clawing towards Fiaz's chest.

"--Build complete, confirmed to be usable."

Boom!!!!!!!

The powerful claw strike was blocked by the shield, unable to advance even an inch further.

It was a jet-black, life-size shield with white, cone-shaped blades protruding from below, and neatly arranged cannon barrels extending from both sides of the shield.

"Autonomous impact calculation armor, as long as you input the parameters obtained from analyzing your combat data, it will never be broken by you, and then--"

Click!

The Light Gun fired from the cannon pierced through the monster's limbs.

It tried to struggle, but couldn't move at all.

"Every living being has its weaknesses, and you are no exception. Interestingly, your weaknesses will decrease as your strength increases, so you need to act quickly... Can't move? Based on the data I've collected, I've determined what kind of pulses I need to continuously inject to keep you incapacitated for as long as possible."

The Light Gun, piercing through the monster, gently moved it, placing it at the base of the shield, aimed at the spikes on the side of the shield's base.

Directly facing the center of the monster's torso, the spike slowly contracted, continuously compressing an unseen, immense force.

"Of course, given the above premise, it's already been calculated how much force I need to exert to make you behave... Bang!"

The cone, compressed to its limit, is ejected with maximum force.

Then,

This already ravaged region has once again suffered a devastating blow.

The monster, propelled at an unknown Mach number, plummeted to the ground. Compared to this, Black Crystal's finishing move, "Fallen Feather," seemed rather insignificant.

Even though most of the impact was absorbed by the monster and converted into physical damage, the earth was still completely smashed through by the red alien. The shockwave traveled for hundreds of miles, destroying everything around it, and the monster itself was buried deep underground.

"Phew, all done!"

In contrast, Fiaz showed no signs of strain.

He controlled the thruster to slowly descend to the ground, using a low-powered kinetic energy gun to sweep away the rubble, revealing the terrifying crater created by the impact.

"Hurry up and retrieve it... huh?"

The sensors that flew into the hole did not send back any information.

There was no biological reaction below.

So it is --

"--The area below, from a few meters to hundreds of meters deep, seems to be the central hub of the water supply pipeline on the west side of the Central United Academy, with thousands of pipelines..."

After a few seconds of stunned silence, Fiaz's roar echoed across the shattered earth.

"Damn it!!! He got away!!!!"

What exactly happened?

I was on the verge of collapse when I suddenly regained consciousness.

The endless biting and torment by the Blood Corpse suddenly stopped.

No, it's less that it stopped, and more that it moved further away.

The Blood Sea and mountains of corpses were right there, yet I suddenly felt a strange sense of distance.

It was like compressing a distance of hundreds of meters into a thin film, separating me from the Blood Corpse.

I don't know when, but my hands and feet were freed, and the chains formed by the crimson runes faded and disappeared. I was liberated.

But liberation and the restoration of freedom are not the same thing. Even if the chains were gone, my spirit was broken and I could not escape this place.

Just as I was thinking this --

Whoosh!

Like a water-filled balloon bursting, the countless Blood Corpse before them exploded into blossoms of blood, turning into endless viscous blood, and then began to rise.

The sight before me left me speechless with shock. Countless drops of blood fell like a crimson rain curtain, but instead of the ground, they fell into the sky! I felt as if I were hanging upside down in this crimson rain curtain!

Am I the one who's turned upside down, or is the world? I can't help but wonder.

As the inverted curtain of rain intensified, the hazy horizon in the distance became even more blurred, and cracks gradually appeared on the sky. The cracks looked strange, like intertwined tentacles separating to reveal a slit.

There's probably only one reason.

"The berserk state... has lessened?"

The feeling in the body is no longer light and airy, but rather a faint sense of heaviness. This is a sign that the separation between the mind and the body has lessened. The mind, which was originally suppressed by the rampage of the Rakshasa True Word, begins to rise and reconnect with the body.

But I didn't have the luxury of taking a breather.

Because at that moment, the physical pain finally broke through the increasingly thinning barrier and reached me.

"... Hmm?"

I was caught off guard by this sudden sensation, but my nerve endings faithfully carried out their function, transmitting the intense physical pain to my brain.

"Ugh... no... stop!!!"

The connection between consciousness and body became closer and closer, and I regained the sensation in my limbs, but the feeling was extremely bad. It was as if there were countless worms covered in thorns under my skin, wriggling violently and trying to crawl out!

Finally, the vision connection is established.

Seeing the outside world again did not bring me relief, but rather fear.

My vision wasn't a uniform crimson, but rather fragmented, with normal colors and crimson embedded in my eyes like shards of glass. Even more bizarre was the edge of my vision; instead of the ant-like, horrifying runes I had expected, there were wriggling red streaks, as if tiny tentacles were burrowing into my eyeballs.

I could barely control myself. I used all my strength to move my hands in front of me, only to see a dense network of ugly veins.

"This is--"

I immediately grabbed my right hand, which was also covered in veins, with my left hand and tried to pry the veins off. But as soon as I pried them off a little, the veins started to tremble violently, and at the same time, I felt a piercing pain in my right hand! Only then did I realize that these veins were not some foreign objects parasitizing my body; they had actually sprouted from my skin!

Seemingly spurred by my actions, more and more blood vessels burst through the skin and protruded. I struggled to peel them off, but what followed was excruciating pain comparable to a limb being shattered! What was even more terrifying was that as soon as the old blood vessels were removed, new ones would sprout, seemingly impossible to eradicate! Moreover, the pain of the blood vessels bursting out was a hundred times greater than the pain of removing them!

Only now did I realize that it wasn't just the Rakshasa True Word that was out of control. The Rakshasa True Word's loss of control had just been broken and greatly reduced for some unknown reason, so now the main thing out of control wasn't it, but my physical body itself! The excessive influence of the Rakshasa True Word had caused my body to undergo irreversible mutations!

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I feel like this book's popularity is getting weaker and weaker...