Lu Yuan looked at the roots embedded in the Copper Pillar.
Not a single one had stopped growing upward throughout the time he had been speaking.
"The roots have been growing upward the entire time I was talking."
Silence.
A brief silence.
Then the voice changed.
It was no longer gentle.
"...You aren't smart enough."
When dozens of mouths spoke those words at once, their synchronization reached its peak.
Every syllable fit together perfectly.
A consciousness that had only recently been born, yet learned incredibly fast.
From his earlier observations, Lu Yuan had already confirmed that the thing before him was merely a low-intelligence, weak combatant—nothing more than prey.
His awareness sank into his chest.
Click.
[Time Bestower (Activated)] [Sanity: -1... -1...]
The world slowed down.
Lu Yuan pulled the stopper from the Eeriebane Potion and charged forward.
Twenty meters.
Only a few seconds in his accelerated state.
The sphere made its final response.
All the suspended hosts stretched out their arms.
Hundreds of vines reached for Lu Yuan at once.
In his accelerated vision, the vines moved far too slowly.
Lu Yuan slipped between two vines, even using one as a foothold to leap again.
Five meters from the sphere.
He threw the bottle of Eeriebane Potion.
The glass bottle spun through the air and struck precisely where the sphere's surface met the Copper Pillar roots.
It shattered.
The moment the potion touched living tissue, its effect was far more violent than expected.
The veined patterns on the sphere's surface contracted madly around the point of contact. The fungal hyphae tissue began rotting from the surface inward, grayish-green turning black, black turning into a viscous slurry that ran down the sphere's surface.
Within three seconds, a large section of its outer tissue had completely died, exposing the