Tearing Off the Mask

"Parasite?"

The eldest daughter Isabella repeated the word.

Her voice changed. It was no longer that elegant aristocratic tone, but a hiss like two wet bones rubbing together.

She slowly stood up, turning her back to the brilliant crystal chandelier, the expression on her face shifting from daze to a twisted, inhuman ecstasy.

"Poor Aurelia. You don't understand what true... ascension is at all."

Rip! A teeth-setting sound of tearing fabric.

Isabella's expensive lilac backless evening gown burst apart from the center without warning.

It was not because the dress was too tight, but because her spine suddenly bulged and deformed. Two deformed arms covered in purple chitin, ending in sharp bone claws, burst fiercely out from beneath the smooth skin of her back, dripping with viscous bodily fluids!

"Ahhhhh!!" The noblewoman sitting next to her let out a shrill scream, dropping the wine glass in her hand to shatter on the floor.

But this was only the beginning.

With Isabella's transformation, it was as if some signal had been connected.

The fat uncle in charge of finance saw his normally plump belly suddenly heave violently, then split open into a bloody maw filled with sharp teeth; the general responsible for the defense forces had his eyes instantly turn pitch-black, his jaw unhinging to spit out a barbed purple tongue.

The disguise was stripped away.

In this glittering banquet hall, among exquisite food and expensive champagne, a dozen ferocious hybrid acolytes tore away the skin named "human" and revealed their true alien forms.

"For the Four-Armed Emperor!!" The general let out a roar, grabbing the nearby bishop before the man could react.

Squelch!

Without any suspense, the bishop's head was crushed like a rotten tomato.

Blood splattered onto the snow-white tablecloth, staining the unfinished grox meat steaks.

Chaos erupted completely in that second.

"Fire!!" Aurelia roared.

She kicked over the table in front of her, using the heavy solid wood tabletop as cover as the bolt pistol in her hand spat angry tongues of fire.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Bolts were the crystallization of imperial technology, each bullet containing internal micro-explosives that only detonated after burrowing into flesh.

The first bullet struck Isabella squarely in the chest.

It did not merely burn a hole like a laser gun.

Isabella's mutated chest cavity instantly exploded, purple alien flesh and bone fragments scattering in all directions.

"Ughhh!!" Isabella screamed as she retreated, but she did not die.

A genestealer's vitality was horrifyingly tenacious.

Even with a massive hole blasted through her chest, the two strange arms on her back still thrashed wildly, grabbing silver dining knives from the table and hurling them like darts at Aurelia.

"This thing is too tough!" Li Wei hid behind the table, gripping the las pistol tightly.

He did not dare show his head.

In a battle of this level, his flashlight-like weapon, which could only burn a hole, could play no decisive role; going out there was suicide.

But he had another weapon.

"Aurelia! Draw that big thing over!" Li Wei shouted, his voice sounding somewhat muffled through the gas mask.

"What?" Aurelia was changing her magazine as a few sharp bone spurs flew past her cheek, shearing off several strands of her silver hair.

"Make it get close to me!!"

Aurelia gritted her teeth, poked her head out from behind cover, and fired another shot at the sister who had already turned into a monster, severing one of her strange arms before retreating abruptly and exposing the area where Li Wei was.

Isabella—or rather, that monster—let out an angry roar, dropping onto all fours and crawling rapidly across the floor toward this side like a giant spider.

Its speed was astonishingly fast, rushing to within three meters of Li Wei in an instant.

"Die! Heretic!" Isabella raised her remaining sharp claw and slashed fiercely at Li Wei's head.

At this very moment.

Li Wei took off his sunglasses, his indifferent eyes staring fixedly at the oncoming monster.

He neither fired nor dodged.

He simply took a step forward, meeting the monster's claws and casting the black hole of his soul as a "pariah" outward like a large net.

Disconnection.

Just as the claw was a mere half-meter from Li Wei.

Isabella suddenly froze.

It was an extremely bizarre stasis.

It was just like a machine running at high speed suddenly having its power cut off.

The pitch-black pupils of her eyes, previously filled with fanatical murderous intent, turned confused, vacant, and even terrified the moment they entered Li Wei's aura range.

She could no longer hear the voice of the "god".

The "broodmind" that had constantly guided her, given her strength, and made her feel no pain turned into a dead, silent blind spot around Li Wei.

This sudden emotional cliff caused her hive ganglia to instantly overload.

Her movements stalled, her body began to twitch violently, and meaningless rattling sounds came from her mouth.

"Now!!" Li Wei roared.

Bang!!

Aurelia did not waste this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

She had already taken aim from the flank for a long time.

This shot blasted directly into Isabella's motionless head.

This time, there was no regeneration, no struggle.

Isabella's skull was completely shattered, and her headless corpse collapsed limply to the floor like a pile of mud beside Li Wei's feet.

Purple blood flowed across the carpet, exuding a sickeningly sweet and foul stench.

"Hoo... Hoo..." Li Wei sat down flat on the ground, panting heavily.

In that brief moment just now, he had truly been gambling with his life.

If the monster's momentum had been even slightly greater, her claws could have cleaved him in two even with her brain deadened.

"Don't just stare! It's not over yet!" Aurelia pulled him up by the arm. "Look around!"

Li Wei looked up and gasped.

The entire banquet hall had turned into a slaughterhouse.

Those nobles who had once been high and mighty were now being butchered like pigs and sheep.

The mutated general was tearing his colleagues apart with his bare hands; the mutated finance officer was using that gaping maw to devour the face of a noblewoman.

Severed limbs and desperate screams were everywhere.

And most terrifyingly, more uniformed family guards were pouring out of every exit in the hall.

Yet their bald heads were tattooed with the purple double-headed serpent insignia, and they held automatic weapons, firing indiscriminately into the normal people who had not mutated.

"The guards have turned." Aurelia's face turned ashen. "That fool Valerius handed the family guards over to the bugs too."

"What about the Governor?!" Li Wei suddenly remembered. "If that old man dies, our legitimacy is gone!"

They turned their gaze toward the throne on the high dais.

That scene was even more bizarre.

The elderly Governor Tiberius was still sitting upon the golden throne, tubes inserted all over his body.

Facing the bloody massacre below, he neither fled nor screamed.

He merely tilted his head, his cloudy old eyes watching the hellscape below while drool dripped from the corner of his mouth in a demented smile.

Beside him, Valerius—the second brother who had previously provoked Aurelia—was holding a bolt pistol, pointing it at his elderly father's head.

Yet he did not fire. Veins bulged on Valerius's forehead as if he were struggling with all his might against something.

Half of his face twitched; one hand wanted to pull the trigger, while the other hand gripped his own wrist for dear life.

"It looks like your second brother hasn't been completely controlled yet," Li Wei analyzed. "He's resisting."

"It's my father's personal shield generator protecting him," Aurelia said coldly. "But it won't hold much longer."

"We have to get over there!" Li Wei shouted. "Get the Governor's seal, or even just that scepter! That's the key to activating the hive city's defense system!"

"We can't get past!" Aurelia pointed ahead.

Between them and the throne lay dozens of feeding genestealer hybrids and hundreds of rebellious guards. Even if Li Wei was a pariah who could interfere with one or two, he couldn't stop a veritable sea of gunfire.

"We have to retreat." Aurelia made her decision, demonstrating her extreme rationality.

"This place has fallen. As long as we're alive, I can summon my 'Purification Force' to counterattack. Dying here is meaningless."

She pulled a concussion grenade from beneath her skirt and yanked the pin. "Cover your ears! Close your eyes!"

Boom!!!

A massive flash and concussive blast detonated in the center of the hall.

Taking advantage of the instant when those acute aliens were blinded by the strong light and plunged into chaos.

Aurelia grabbed Li Wei and smashed through a nearby floor-to-ceiling window.

Crash! Glass shattered.

The two of them plummeted from the hundreds-of-meters-high top floor of the Crown of Atalos toward the terrace garden below.

The wind howled in their ears.

In mid-air, Li Wei looked up at the burning banquet hall above.

He knew House Atalos was finished.

The order of the upper hive was finished.

The catastrophe known as the Genestealer Uprising had officially begun.