Humans and Ants (See the End for Group Info) / The Herrscher of Erosion

"You..."

"Did you kill my family? You're utterly useless."

The girl turned her head indifferently to look at the bat on the stage that had been torn to shreds, her tone devoid of any pity.

Then, she glanced at the mountaintop, and finally looked back at Lin.

"Human, come and become my servant."

The special edition has been updated; please go to the group to receive it.

Main text: 4,000 words per day; Special edition: 26,000 words in two days.

In short, thanks to various reasons, I've updated two super long specials in a row, which can be considered Mei (?). After that, I'll get back on track and update the main story for a long time to come, and there will probably be quite a few more chapters than before, so please look forward to it.

Chapter 40 Man and Ant (See the end to join the group)

What does "family members" mean?

Even if Lin's knowledge of vampires was limited to the basics of being afraid of light, garlic, silver, and not being allowed to enter a house without an invitation, he still knew that the familiars of vampires were those who transformed humans into their subordinates.

"You have great potential, human. What's the point of being a fragile species? To die as easily as those pieces of trash, and then be easily forgotten?" The silver-haired girl's gaze moved from Lin's body to the severed limbs beside him. They were indeed, as the girl said, like a pile of trash, dumped in a landfill.

"... cough cough."

Lin didn't answer. He didn't even have the strength to speak. Now he could only lean against the tree, vomiting the little blood he had left, while coldly staring at the girl who had essentially admitted that she had caused this disaster.

"Human, I smell anger on you. Are you showing me pointless resentment because of these trash?" The silver-haired girl showed some emotion for the first time. She stared curiously at the silent Lin. "Do you know what it means that you can kill my familiars? You and these 'things' are no longer the same species in essence."

"Ahem... So what are you...?"

Lin weakly spat out a mouthful of black liquid. He could feel his body rapidly adapting to the invading toxins, but the bat's poison was far superior to any ordinary toxins, and his organs were failing.

"I am..."

The silver-haired girl had been looking down on humans and forests with utter contempt, and she intended to answer his question in the same tone. However, she suddenly stopped after uttering just two words.

On her pretty face, which resembled Theresa's, lay an extremely troubled expression.

"I am... what..."

"..."

This surprised Lin as well.

"Human, do you know what I am?" After pondering for a while, she posed this question to Lin.

Monster, vampire, murderer... Lin felt these words were perfectly appropriate to describe her, but when he met her innocent eyes, he couldn't bring himself to say them.

But what does it matter? She is the culprit. Lin tried to raise his hand, wanting to use Honkai Energy to attack the girl in front of him.

But as soon as he tried to circulate his qi, he spat out another mouthful of black blood and collapsed to his knees, gasping for breath.

"You'd better not move. Your stomach and liver are practically rotting into a puddle of stinking water. If you don't become my familiar, you'll only live for ten minutes." The girl squatted down in front of Lin and bluntly reached out her hand to him, but was stopped by the man's cold gaze as he looked up.

"Who... who are you? Why do you look exactly like Theresa?"

"Theresa? The one whose blood smells a little different from yours?" The girl's tone of voice remained unchanged. "Hmm... she does look just like me. Since we look alike, why do you treat us differently?"

"Because you are not Theresa."

"Then why don't you just treat me like her?"

A chillingly innocent statement came from her thin lips. Lin scrutinized her unusually red eyes, pondering what kind of thought process could lead her to say such a thing.

"Is it because of her existence that you can't treat me as her? Then I'll go and kill her right now, and then I'll be 'Theresa'. At that time, you'll be willing to become my servant."

The girl acted immediately, turning around to look for Theresa, which forced Lin to say, "No... wait a minute."

"What's wrong? Human, have you changed your mind?"

"Why did you kill so many people? Do you know that you did all of this?"

"Of course I know."

The girl stood Moon Underneath, looking down at the forest sprawling on the ground. She said matter-of-factly, "Those things are as fragile as insects. Even if you leave them alone, they'll die on their own."

"This is different."

"What's the difference?" The girl's innocent face revealed not a trace of humanity. "I have an urge to destroy all these lowly creatures. Since their existence is irrelevant, and they will all die anyway, as easily as stepping on an insect, why should I restrain myself?"

It was completely illogical... or rather, it had a logic that was difficult for normal people to understand. Lin knew that nothing she said made sense. This "person" killed others while fully conscious, and she didn't think she had done anything wrong.

She didn't even realize she was "doing evil."

The moment the girl turned around, Lin's cold and ruthless black eyes transformed into dazzling Prismatic Eyes. He listened to the sound of his body collapsing, and with his left hand, he gathered the last bit of Honkai Energy and blasted it towards the girl's petite head.

"Bang!"

Shattered.

Blood from his veins and fragments of bone splattered onto Lin's face and wounds, adding a fresh pang of pain to his still numb nerves.

His left hand, which was about to touch the girl's head, suddenly exploded in mid-air without warning. It was as if his fist had hit an invisible wall. The reaction force instantly shattered his entire fist and forearm. The shredded flesh was blocked in mid-air and could not get any closer to the girl.

"Hmm... I've changed my mind."

The girl slowly turned around, her eyes still clear and pure, and... devoid of any human quality.

Ants, once observed by humans, have no idea whether they will be spared or trampled to death by capricious humans.

Because, whether you step on an ant or kill one, it makes no difference to humans. Will life become worse or better because you step on an ant? If that's the case, what's the harm in stepping on creatures that have no idea they're about to meet their doom?

Yes, that's what the girl thought too.

"Bang!"

The moment he saw the girl's eyes, Lin, who was filled with terror, took cover in advance. He lunged to the side, feeling a gust of wind brush past his face, and then his lower body felt light.

"Clatter".

It fell to the ground like a bag of garbage thrown into a trash can.

Lin looked at his feet silently... or rather, where his feet used to be.

The lower half of the body is completely bare, and you can't tell that there used to be a pair of legs.

Her two legs disintegrated in mid-air, turning into two pools of blood. The traces left on the ground seemed to tell of the girl's inhuman brutality.

The girl wasn't angry about her mistake, nor was she happy that Lin was missing two legs. She was just doing something "normal," expressionlessly turning her gaze back to Lin, who was lying on the ground with nowhere to hide.

Death struck Lin once again.

"Forest!"

At this moment, a loud voice rang out, and another silver-haired girl who had gone up the mountain to scout came running from behind the girl. After seeing the girl's appearance, she did not hesitate at all. Halfway there, she anxiously drew her gun and aimed it at the back of the girl's head!

However, Lin's pupils contracted to their maximum size, and he instinctively shouted—

"Don't want..."

"Smack."

Two hands landed in front of Lin, still stained with their owner's muscle and skin, with blood flowing down from the gruesome cuts.

In his palm, he held two black pistols, which once belonged to a girl who loved to eat, a caged bird who had confided in Lin and longed for the world "outside the cage".

Just a second ago, her running body collapsed without warning, as if an invisible giant hand had crushed her into a pile of minced meat, creating a mountain of flesh on the ground.

Lin Mo lowered his head and shut his mouth.

Something seemed to be slowly, imperceptibly... disappearing from my chest.

Some unimportant things.

Chapter 41 The Herrscher of Erosion

Is death romantic?

In many literary works, death is depicted in an extremely romantic way, as if it were a second rebirth, a journey to a world without suffering, a transformation into a carefree being, transcending the mundane body.

But Lin Cong considered death to be romantic.

There will be no rose petals falling on the head of the dying person, nor will they turn into butterflies and fly away after death, nor will there be time for them to utter beautifully worded last words.

Death is death.

Just like that girl named Kallen, she turned into a pile of foul-smelling minced meat, lying quietly on the ground, like minced meat that had just come out of a meat grinder.

No one cares, no one pays attention, and it will not be able to reassemble into a complete physical body and be resurrected on the spot.

The girl who did it didn't even turn around, as if she hadn't done it, or... as if she hadn't carelessly stepped on an insect.

The mangled body was frozen solid.

Whether it was the soul that was frozen or the body that was immobilized, Lin did not know.

His limbs had all lost their original form, and he was now just a human pig that couldn't even float in the blood. He stared indifferently at the girl squatting in front of him, looking at him with innocent eyes.

"Human, why are you looking at me like that? If you like humans, then why are you doing this because of that..."

The girl turned her head and glanced at the pile of minced meat.

"Is it something different from humans that's staring at me?"

"..."

There was no response.

Lin waited, waiting for the girl to kill him. No matter what the current situation was, or what she really was, whether he would return to the Hyperion after death or enter the Three-Day Cycle again, he would come to the girl again.

"Besides, I just smelled that you are completely different from humans. You are clearly not human. You have a similar scent to me. You are not even the same kind as them." The girl was very curious about everything, and this curiosity contained the unconscious evil of a child after coming into this world.

"..."

"Hmm... Now, is the real you somewhere else?"

The girl suddenly stared into his eyes and said something that made everything around them, time and space, fall silent.

The wind stopped.

"Lin, let me take over!"

The white-haired man appeared behind the girl. His eyes no longer held the indifferent mockery of before, but rather a very incomprehensible emotion.

He tried to reach out and grab the girl, but his arm passed right through her body. This forbidden black and white world, which had lasted for a much shorter time than before, trembled before the girl as if it would collapse at any moment. From that petite body, indescribable... terror emerged.

"..."

"She really will kill us! This isn't just a matter of consciousness projection anymore. I thought she was just an ordinary 'member' before." The white-haired man couldn't do anything to the girl, so he could only walk up to Lin. His Prismatic Eyes emitted a light that made Lin's consciousness uncomfortable, as if he were being choked and unable to breathe. "Why would such a 'thing' exist in the World Bubble ... It can't be naturally generated, it must be man-made?"

Lin's gaze shifted back and forth between the white-haired man and the girl. He asked in a deep voice, "What exactly is she?"

The white-haired man, who had originally intended to just watch the show, was now unable to remain unaffected. If Lin Ruo died, he would perish as well. All he could do was say, "Herrscher."

"..."

An absolutely unexpected answer.

The Herrscher.

Lin had seen this extremely special ranking in the Hyperion's data. In fact, the most information about Honkai was on the Hyperion, and Honkai appeared most frequently in the World Bubble, the Quantum Sea, and Parallel World. Even the Hunter of the Quantum Sea and the Hyperion itself were related to Honkai.

In countless worlds, humanity fights against the "catastrophe" of Honkai.

Among them, the most representative manifestation of Honkai, that incomprehensible "natural disaster," is the Honkai creature and the Herrscher them.

But why? Of all the World Bubble Lin had visited, he had never encountered Herrscher, except in this World Bubble ...

Suddenly, Lin understood.

Because this World Bubble extremely close to the real world, it has a complete structure and no bizarre underlying logic. He originally thought that the "vampire" was a "distorted" existence, but it was actually a product of the large-scale Honkai caused by the Herrscher.

Those weren't vampires, but Honkai zombie. That bat should be the Herrscher's familiar, Emperor-class Honkai Beast, mentioned in the data.

Furthermore, he also discovered something terrifying.

His hearing should have been damaged during the battle with the Emperor-class Honkai Beast, and all he could hear were vague noises, making it very difficult to hear clearly. However, he was still able to clearly hear the girl's ethereal voice just now. When he came back to his senses and savored the moment, he noticed that apart from his own voice, the white-haired man's voice, and the girl's voice, he still couldn't hear any other sounds.

Just what kind of person is this girl?

During the forbidden time, her unusual red eyes radiated a captivating light.

"What are you still hesitating about? Do you think you can escape this calamity by simply projecting your consciousness?" The white-haired man's tone carried an unprecedented urgency. "She is no ordinary Herrscher."

"..."

What are you waiting for?