I'm suffocating! I can finally go all out!

"Is he... trying to scheme against me?" Wang Zhen brushed off his shoulder, right where Zhang Jie had patted him. He focused his psychic energy to scan the area; although he detected nothing unusual, given that old fox's personality, such an intimate gesture was the most suspicious thing of all!

Though Wang Zhen found no anomalies, he still chose to decompose and reconstruct every piece of clothing he was wearing using his Transmutation Circle.

"No matter what you're planning, don't even think about it—forget the basic tricks like 'no door' or 'no window,' I've even torn down the house and rebuilt it from scratch, damn it!" Wang Zhen curled his lip. He'd encountered old foxes who loved to scheme against others among his peers before, but perhaps because they were too young or lacked the skill, the ones who died the fastest were always those types.

He stood in place for a moment, and once he felt Zhang Jie had moved beyond his sensory range, Wang Zhen turned and continued toward the Xenomorph nest.

As he walked, he analyzed and deduced how to take down the Xenomorph Queen and the five Royal Guards. Based on the information he had, the Queen's size was at least five meters, with no upper limit; theoretically, the longer a Queen lived, the larger she grew. The Royal Guards, meanwhile, were generally around five meters tall. Unlike the Drones or the Drone Xenomorphs, these were specialized guards whose sole mission was to protect the Queen, allowing her to lay eggs and propagate the species in peace.

From this, he could roughly guess that these Royal Guards were likely quite slow in terms of speed. Not to mention compared to that freakish Cat Xenomorph, they were probably significantly slower even than the standard Drones or Drone Xenomorphs. Conversely, these five-meter-tall behemoths would likely possess several times the defensive strength of a Drone Xenomorph. The Queen was also easy to judge: the larger she was, the longer she had lived, the higher her intelligence, and the greater her power. Regardless of her future potential, her defensive strength should at minimum be on par with the Royal Guards, and at most, several times higher!

Wang Zhen felt the pressure. While none of the remaining six were fast, their defensive capabilities would likely be several times greater.

However, while such enemies were stressful, it wasn't overwhelming. For a mage like Wang Zhen who considered himself a "glass cannon," these six hyper-defensive Xenomorphs were actually less intimidating than that elusive, lightning-fast Cat Xenomorph.

Through multiple battles, Wang Zhen had become familiar with the biology of Xenomorphs. Although the Royal Guards and the Queen had astonishing defenses, they were slow, and their tissue composition was similar to that of the Drones and Drone Xenomorphs. Since they were all born from human hosts, absorbing and fusing human genes, there was no fundamental difference in their bodily structures or organ systems.

With this realization, Wang Zhen knew how to deal with these final Xenomorphs. At the same time, he lamented that the Main God had lowered the difficulty. If these high-defense Xenomorphs hadn't been fed to them in a piecemeal fashion but had instead defended as a cohesive unit, the plot difficulty wouldn't have been a mere D-rank side quest; it would have been at least a C-rank or two, plus bonus points.

Still, this was fine. It was only the second plot world; if the difficulty had been that high, even a protagonist like Zheng Zha would have had zero chance of clearing it. Unlike now, where despite only three people remaining, there was a high probability of success.

At this moment, Wang Zhen reached the end of the corridor. The scenery here had shifted from cyber-tech to bio-tech. Beyond this point, although the corridor remained, the metallic base color was gone. The entire passage was completely encased in a thick, sticky, carpet-like substance formed by something akin to fungi, covering all the floors, walls, and ceilings like a white intestine...

"That is damn disgusting." Wang Zhen didn't step inside. No matter how he looked at it, this was the home turf the Queen had prepared, much like the Zerg Creep in StarCraft 2. Wherever the Zerg base expanded, the Creep spread, and only on ground covered by Creep could Zerg structures be built!

Wang Zhen stood at the entrance, removed the ridiculous palm-sized lighter, and tucked it into his trench coat pocket. He then put on a pair of white gloves, each featuring a crimson hexagram Transmutation Circle on the back of the hand. With a light clap in front of him, fist-sized blue fireballs appeared in the air. Each one burned with a beautiful blue hue, but their temperatures all exceeded 3,000 degrees!

It could be said that with Zhang Jie and Zheng Zha no longer by his side, Wang Zhen was now firing on all cylinders!

Wang Zhen waved his hands, and the blue fireballs quickly darted into the corridor covered in white fungal carpet. Under the scorching heat of these 3,000-degree fireballs, the carpet turned into black ash in an instant. Once the white layer was completely burned away, the metal corridor beneath was revealed to be riddled with holes and corroded, unable to support the weight of a person.

Wang Zhen wasn't surprised by this; after all, the Queen was intelligent. Since she chose to nest here, how could she not prepare the terrain to her advantage?

Wang Zhen pressed his hands to the ground, and the riddled, dilapidated floor returned to a brand-new, alloy-plated metal surface at a speed visible to the naked eye. Only then did he step into the corridor, walking step by step along the path he had reconstructed toward the source of the six cruel, tyrannical killing intents that were becoming increasingly distinct in his perception.

When he reached the center of the corridor, Wang Zhen stopped. He didn't move forward because he sensed that the Royal Guards and the Queen weren't at the end of the corridor, but below it. In other words, he was currently standing directly above the Xenomorph nest. If he continued forward, he would be right over their heads, which was disadvantageous for fighting such massive creatures.

Once he stood firm, Wang Zhen pressed his hands to the floor again. In front of him, it was as if an invisible, massive drill were boring into the alloy plating. First, a small hole appeared, then it expanded rapidly to the surroundings at a speed visible to the naked eye, quickly becoming a circular opening two meters in diameter.

Through this hole, Wang Zhen saw a completely dark, massive space below—presumably the spaceship's cargo hold or a place for storing large machinery. The pitch-black environment left him speechless. The Queen really knew how to set the stage; this kind of dark, cavernous space posed no obstacle to Xenomorphs, who relied on infrared vision and keen senses, but for humans, the darkness was a massive hindrance. Without auxiliary equipment like night-vision goggles or supernatural abilities, a human would be effectively blind.

"Too bad for you, I'm a cheater!" Wang Zhen whispered to himself.

Before the words had even faded, Wang Zhen jumped down!