He should have died.
But several writhing worms crawled out of his ears. He seemed to notice them, pinched them out, stuffed them into his mouth, chewed them to pieces, and kept walking.
New worms kept crawling out of his body, and he kept pinching them to death and eating them. He tore open his own flesh, felt his bones, and dug them into his empty eye sockets. But the worms kept coming without end.
He did not know how long he had walked. At last, he was tired. Endless exhaustion flooded his heart, and all around him was dim. He did not know how he had made it this far.
Whether it was good luck or bad, he had encountered neither any rifts nor any Eerie beings. But at that moment, he no longer wanted to struggle.
He swayed as he lay down and pulled another worm from his body.
He stuffed it into his mouth.
"Hehehe..."
Just as he closed his eyes, a voice came from afar.
"Captain, there's a corpse here. It's still moving. Looks like a child. Contaminated too. Damn it."
Then the scene shattered.
Leike stood once more on the Rock Platform within the Gray Mist.
His expression darkened to the extreme.
That was the scene he least wanted to face—the reason he had embarked on the Path of Transcendence, and the beginning of every tragedy.
The other child had not survived. She had lost herself in the Insect Tide and completely turned into an Eerie being.
Leike later returned there with the Night Watchers. There, he saw many people who had been eaten into hollow shells, wandering across the ground and luring other Eerie beings in as bait.
They were all people Leike knew. The Swarm Insects had turned them into the most tempting