Arc 15Chapters 355–375
No recap yet. An arc gets one once it has 25 chapters.
No recap yet. An arc gets one once it has 25 chapters.
Lu Xiu reviewed the privileges and Authority of Blood she gained as the Berserker class founder, then designed Bloodborne as a Berserker Class Contest Instance focused on blood control and self-restraint. After returning to the Witch Forest and seeing players tease her about her title, she decided to raise the Versus Instance’s difficulty.
Lu Xiu reassured Jian Li after her memories of Jian Ning triggered a spell of self-doubt, and helped her feel accepted as a friend. After lunch, Lu Xiu returned to the Construction Space and decided to prepare a cryptic trailer to promote the upcoming Class Contest Instance.
Lu Xiu designed a Bloodborne-themed Class Contest Instance and unveiled its trailer, which showed the cursed city of Yharnam instead of the battlefield players expected. The trailer ended by revealing a grotesque monster, leaving players shocked and wondering how the instance related to Berserkers.
Lu Xiu’s Bloodborne trailer stunned players and rival delegates with its nightmarish bosses and the reveal of Lu Xiu as the final opponent. After she insisted the instance’s mechanics fit Berserkers, a distant roar from the Northern Seventh Defense Line suggested the monsters there were growing stronger as the expansion countdown neared its end.
After a roar swept across the world, the front-line Assimilation Zones withdrew and exposed the ruined cities, while Lu Xiu received a fleeting warning about King-class monsters, intelligent monsters, Xenogenic gods, and a wager. Unable to reveal the warning because the system censored her, Lu Xiu went to Chen Capital and prepared to strengthen humanity’s equipment while asking to explore the changed front line.
Lu Xiu crafted Monster Hunter armor and gave master-rank Odogaron Sets to Shen Nian and Jian Li before leading a squad to Sea City’s Northern Seventh Defense Line. As Lu Xiu entered the formerly assimilated ruins, an enormous tentacled phantom rose in the southern district and spoke of building a nest.
Lu Xiu’s squad entered the lifeless ruins and was ambushed by a parasitic shadow creature called the King's Scion, which nearly mind-controlled them before Lu Xiu broke its hold. As the King's Scion restored the monster-filled assimilation zone and summoned three more of its kind, the squad fought back while their mental contamination rose, and Yan Fushou confronted Chen Fu for keeping the troops outside despite Lu Xiu being inside.
Lu Xiu and the Strategy Group survived the four King's Scions when she shielded them with a Psychic Barrier and destroyed the Scions with charged lightning. After discovering that their eyes connected to a King-class monster on Sea City's coast, Lu Xiu sent the others back and planned to summon powerful opponents for it.
Lu Xiu placed the Dark Souls dungeon in central South City to counter the King's Scions and stop the mountain of flesh from advancing. She recruited Gravelord Nito, who emerged into the real world and began destroying the Scions, while the dungeon spread and a wyvern appeared above the ruins.
Lu Xiu fought through the Dark Souls instance, persuaded Quelaag and Gwyndolin to join her, and forced many other bosses into reality to help repel the King's Scions. Anor Londo descended over South City as the frontline monsters’ assault began, while the flesh-covered king on the beach recoiled from its false sunset.
Lu Xiu cleared the Dark Souls offline instance by rejecting both primordial serpents’ choices and received an Ancient Lord Soul Shard that evolved Judgment. Back in reality, she found the King’s Scions gone and tried to target the distant king with her upgraded blade, but it concealed itself as she began to draw.
Lu Xiu returned from placing the Dark Souls Dungeon, reported that a King threatened Sea City, and planned to strengthen herself and the others through the Bloodborne Dungeon. After soldiers entered the manifested dungeon to observe its devastation, Lu Xiu returned to the Witch Forest, where Jian Li and Shen Nian reflected on their fear for her.
Lu Xiu demonstrated the intimidation of her Crimson King Eyes to Shen Nian, then reassured Jian Li that she could grow stronger after Jian Li admitted she wanted to close the gap between them. Jian Li used her newly plundered Myriad Forms, All Under Control and later considered a decision while Lu Xiu rested on her lap; elsewhere, Rosalind learned that a King-class Monster had destroyed the Third Legion.
After learning that every country faced a different King-class Monster, Lu Xiu rushed to finish the Bloodborne instance, which opened to players across Vast Firmament. Rosalind and Ulysses prepared to enter it, while unidentified figures approaching the Nine Provinces continued toward the King-class Monster.
Lu Xiu launched the Bloodborne Class Contest Instance, where players had to control their blood and Beasthood Erosion to qualify as Berserkers. Ulysses discovered that death allowed him to revive in the Hunter’s Dream, but after players grouped up to fight, one of them transformed into a hostile beast and began slaughtering the others.
Ulysses and the other players learned that fighting and healing raised Beasthood Erosion, so they adopted a rotation strategy to survive Bloodborne’s monsters. After opening a shortcut, they found an enormous elite monster whose leaping Great Axe attacks scattered the group.
Ulysses’s party was wiped out by an elite monster after Zhao Heng demonstrated Gun Parry, then regrouped to practice the mechanic and mental control of blood. In another run, Rosalind’s team defeated the monster when she unexpectedly used Rampage, and she realized the instance could teach players to harness frenzied blood; players across the instance remained at very different stages of progress.
Lu Xiu watched Rosalind exploit her ancestral bloodline and Jian Li defeat Father Gascoigne alone, while Shen Nian used an unorthodox tactic against a sewer pig. Ulysses and Gong Yu’s team reached the Cleric Beast, where Donovan became entranced by it and began speaking of a man and living wolves.
Si Gongyusi's group fought their way through Yharnam, encountered the Cleric Beast, and then faced Father Yulixin, a skilled Hunter whose later phases became increasingly dangerous. Donovan's high Insight caused him to transform into a werewolf, and after the group was wiped out, they revived at the Lamp and chose to avoid the bridge for now.
The players defeated the Cleric Beast with Molotov cocktails and discovered they could carry the dungeon’s method of controlling vital energy into reality. They then used a little girl’s music box against Father Yulixin, killed him after he transformed, and found a brooch that raised questions about the girl’s missing mother.