Despair: When All Your Alts Are Stronger

By the time Hu Wenxu and Gao Xiaowen had finished dealing with all the Deep One hybrids, they found no sign of Lu Li. After searching, they only discovered a hybrid bound in a fishing net, while Lu Li had vanished without a trace. With no other choice, they had to interrogate the captive, learn the location of the Deep One altar, and set off together.

Moving back in time slightly, Lu Li had once again submerged himself into the darkness. He appeared behind a hybrid and swiftly snapped the target's neck before retreating into the shadows. Several hybrids approached, brandishing harpoons in unison, and Lu Li slowly began to grasp the rhythm of fighting a group.

When facing a mob that outnumbers you, if your strength is not enough to crush them, you must use movement and leverage the terrain to create a relatively fair engagement.

When we watch television, heroes always seem capable of facing a horde of minions, taking them down one by one. We often see several minions just standing on the periphery holding weapons, which makes one want to complain—if they had all swarmed at once, the hero would have been reduced to dust long ago. In reality, this is just a limitation of television production budgets. The truth is that those heroes use positioning and terrain advantages to successfully isolate the battlefield, turning a one-versus-many situation into a series of one-on-one duels.

Of course, we must set aside the logic-defying factors, such as why heroes can take countless hits while minions fall in one, or why the hero's stamina seems infinite.

Returning to Lu Li, if he were surrounded by several hybrids and faced their harpoons stabbing down simultaneously, he would not fare well. Thus, he chose to use the terrain to split the battlefield, turning and leaping through a window into a room, attempting to use the cramped environment to his advantage.

Behind him, shadows writhed and lay in ambush beneath the window. Should any hybrid attempt to follow Lu Li through the window, the lurking shadows would teach them a lesson in mortality.

"Where is this?" Lu Li's darkvision allowed him to see the scene within the dim room. In the center stood an altar, upon which several rune-engraved harpoons were erected. Impaled on these harpoons were several human heads. The old woman who had previously received Lu Li and his companions was among them, her caved-in skull looking particularly wretched.

The ability of Deep One hybrids to survive on the seabed emerges gradually as their bloodline awakens. Unawakened hybrids are much like humans—terrestrial beings. Only after the bloodline awakens and their organs mutate can they gain the ability to survive at the bottom of shallow waters. Only after fully mutating into true Deep Ones can they potentially live on the deep-sea floor.

However, hybrids require sacrifices, so those who had not yet awakened designed this altar here. There is another altar on the seabed of the shallow waters, and the support point for the Deep Ones that Gao Xiaowen mentioned is located there.

Lu Li walked to the altar and took down the old woman's head; he was still wearing the clothes she had given him. Lu Li scanned the area and, not far away, saw the white floral princess dress he had worn earlier. He had left it at the old woman's house after changing. The dress had been a gift from the Mermaid Princess, and naturally, the clothes she collected were not ordinary. After the hybrids killed the old woman, they found the dress in her house. Seeing that it looked valuable, they kept it in this altar room to be distributed after the sacrifice was completed.

Now, the dress was back in Lu Li's hands. He used it to wrap the old woman's head and carried it with him. "You gave me a piece of clothing, so I can only return the favor. Come to think of it, you came out ahead—the Mermaid Princess's clothes aren't cheap."

"What are those hybrids doing? Why haven't they come in yet? Have they given up on catching me?" Lu Li waited in the room for a while, but seeing no hybrids enter, he began to study the altar.

He tossed the harpoons and the heads aside and crouched by the altar, examining the runes closely. Although he couldn't fully understand them, Lu Li relied on his memory to record most of them. As he traced the runes with his hand, they suddenly flickered with spiritual light, and the altar began to rotate slowly.

Lu Li stepped back, watching the shifting altar while noting that a significant amount of his Shadow Magic had been depleted. He seized the moment to memorize the runes. Finally, the altar transformed into a circular opening three people wide. Lu Li peered down into it and smiled. "I didn't expect an unexpected harvest..."

Without notifying Hu Wenxu and the others, Lu Li flipped and jumped into the hole. Once he was inside, the opening closed, reverting back into an altar.

This tunnel was dark and damp, roughly excavated into a circular shape. Judging by the marks on the ground, the hybrids frequently passed through here. The passage was straight with no forks, but Lu Li felt that it sloped slightly downward. Based on the orientation, if he continued this way, he would soon be on the seabed.

"Hm, someone's here..." Lu Li shifted his feet and pressed his entire body against the wall. In the distance, there was a faint firelight. Several hybrids with Deep One features were walking toward him, holding torches. True Deep Ones, like Lu Li, possessed darkvision, as they lived on the deep-sea floor and disliked the warmth of fire, preferring the cold and damp. However, some hybrids who had only just begun to transform had only initial changes, and their darkvision had not yet developed, which was why they needed torches.

If Hu Wenxu were here, he would recognize that the one leading the group with the torch was the same one who had killed the old woman and chased them. These hybrids were all newly transformed; they had spent the day performing sacrificial rites on the seabed, but since their Deep One organs were not yet fully developed, they needed to come ashore to rest.

The firelight slowly approached. Lu Li waited quietly. The flames on the torches flickered, causing the light and shadows to sway. At the very moment the flames shifted, Lu Li lowered his body, covering himself in a layer of shadow. Using the shifting light and shadow to his advantage, he bypassed the hybrids right under their noses. Some felt nothing, and those who did merely assumed it was the flickering of the torchlight.

Lu Li adjusted his gait, matching the frequency of one of the hybrids perfectly, and followed behind the group. He listened to their conversation, and as he trailed the last hybrid, he struck in an instant, covering the creature's mouth. The shadow in Lu Li's hand morphed into a spike, piercing the hybrid's scaled skull without making a sound.

Gently placing the silent corpse on the ground, Lu Li continued to follow the group, listening to their talk and even modulating his own vocal cords to mimic the voice of the hybrid he had just killed.

As they walked, one hybrid corpse would fall every so often. By the end, only the hybrid holding the torch at the front remained. Lu Li continued to mimic voices, speaking to the hybrid—whose name was Haige—from behind. There is a kind of despair called: you think many people are talking to you? They're all just my alternate accounts!