"Dark King, Dark King!!!"
"Heh heh heh heh! I have become a god, freed at last from the shackles of mortality!!!"
At that moment, the blurry humanoid suddenly shuddered. It opened its sticky mouth, strands stretching between its jaws, and let out a string of incomprehensible sounds.
Then its body twisted grotesquely. Its upper and lower halves turned in opposite directions, and its head swiveled like a snake's toward the Dragon Exoshell.
"What did it say?"
Lin Renmei frowned and asked Nameless.
She hadn't understood a word the blurry humanoid had said, but she had a vague feeling that its unintelligible shrieks meant something.
Nameless possessed Communion with All Things, which was why she had asked him.
This time, though, even Nameless looked a little lost. "I don't know. I can't translate it."
"Then it was probably just meaningless screeching."
Lin Renmei reached that conclusion and stopped worrying about the strange sounds coming from the blurry humanoid's mouth.
"I'll eat you!"
With another strange cry, the blurry humanoid lunged at the Dragon Exoshell.
The way it moved was bizarre, combining nearly every manner of locomotion in the animal kingdom. Dragonfly-like wings sprouted from its back and beat furiously. Countless tiny legs emerged from the liquid beneath it and scurried like a millipede's, while its body twisted in an S-shape and slithered forward like a snake.
A fishlike tail fin had also grown at its rear, thrashing through the blood-red liquid that had not moved with it.
Despite that chaotic combination of movements, it was not slowed at all. It was astonishingly fast, closing in on the Dragon Exoshell almost in the blink of an eye. Then it opened its mouth and bit down.
Whoosh!
The Dragon Exoshell struck second but landed first. The instant the blurry humanoid lunged with its