Crawlers

Biodata

Power Progression

These developments concern the faction’s forces rather than a single member’s cultivation.

Organization and Hierarchy

• Naming: Kin and Elders use numerical designations rather than personal names. From Priest onward, members receive titles that change with their strength and status 289.
• Borrowed power: Rank does not reliably indicate every ability a member can deploy. Retainer 9527 remains a lowest-ranking Crawler despite wielding the Time-Void Prism and power comparable to an Elder 198 238.
• Historical resources: Their East Pole base contains ancient historical books whose dangerous knowledge has affected the physical condition of the books themselves 315.

Beliefs and Objectives

• Survival through parasitism: Unlike humanity, which seeks escape from the Great Being, the Crawlers intend to survive through dependence on it. Their supposed “Blessings” are actually stolen power 466.
• Worship without protection: The Sanctum describes them as self-appointed fanatics, not the Great Being’s minions. The Great Being can still erase them when it notices them 98 477.
• Welcoming the Great Being: Their chosen path ultimately requires its arrival, making their interests incompatible with humanity’s escape 466.
• Opposition to the Main Quest: Although they have helped repair system loopholes, they wage war to prevent players from completing the Game Main Quest. Lin Yuan eventually attributes this contradiction to the Great Being’s instinctive influence over them 466 477.
• Sacrifices rather than partners: Red Anglerfish regards allied pirates and the Four Great Families as expendable tools. His regional plan would turn humans into sacrifices once the Apostle returned 281.
• Claim to humanity’s future: Even while obstructing Lin Yuan, their Leader insists that the Crawlers themselves represent humanity’s future 617.

Appearance

• Black slime or mud: Certain Crawlers constantly exude an oily black substance. It is part of the Crawler rather than an unrelated secretion, and its activity reflects the condition of the main body 71 239.
• Bone crosses: Retainer 9527’s original body lies prostrate beneath a large bone cross driven through his spine. Later Apostles bear smaller crosses embedded in their bodies, including one on Elder Zhao’s forehead 84 573.
• Unstable flesh: Bodies may form tentacles, separate into independently moving pieces, or reassemble from flesh and blood 117 118.
• Humanlike disguises: Low- and mid-ranking Crawlers can disguise their human bodies, but cannot similarly falsify the condition of their black mud 239.
• Rootlike transformation: The Leader can become a humanoid mass of intertwined tentacles resembling tree roots, matching the Primordial Distorted Beast’s form 605.

Abilities and Skills

Regeneration and Resurrection

Crawler survivability substantially exceeds their direct fighting strength 52.

• Severed tentacles can crawl back and reattach; splitting the body into mobile pieces can also provide an escape from concentrated attacks 118.
• One Crawler repairs his body after removing and swallowing his own heart. His spilled blood becomes black slime that retrieves and reconnects the pieces of his ship 87.
• An Elder remains alive and conscious after being reduced to a mass of flesh 241.
• Their knowledge of recovery and resurrection includes methods intended to prevent an opponent’s revival, though the weakened Elder’s attempt fails against Lilia 241.

Stolen and Borrowed Powers

Their powers need not form a coherent set: one Crawler may possess unrelated abilities of very different ranks 64.

• This variety provides unpredictable methods and escape options, but can leave a member less effective in a straightforward confrontation 64.
• Senior members can transmit power to subordinates. The Oathbreaker supplies power used by Retainer 9527, first manifested as a severed hand and later as a crystal 72 201.
• The Great Being’s Chaos Crown reproduces powers it has absorbed, explaining the Apostles’ diverse authority domains 510.
• Destruction causes dead Apostles’ Authority Bodies to be destroyed; Lin Yuan’s A-rank Energy can counter this effect 510.

Rituals and Altars

Crawler rituals petition higher beings for power and can support large, interconnected operations 117 123.

• Documented possibilities include area attacks, life sacrifices, and terrain destruction 123.
• Individual ritual sites can operate independently while also forming parts of a larger ritual 117.
• Elders can construct reusable altars with greater functionality and power than ordinary rituals 239.
• Rituals remain constrained by materials and the power required to transport those materials. A theoretically devastating ritual may be impractical inside Paradise 123.

Avatars, Projections, and Spatial Manipulation

Exceptional members use external power and prepared anchors to act beyond their ordinary limits 118 198 209.

• Retainer 9527 manifests an avatar from the Grim-faced Diver’s flesh and blood. Destroying the remaining skeleton causes that avatar to melt and lose consciousness 117 119.
• The Time-Void Prism repeatedly recreates a Crawler from an imprint. Destroying each projection weakens the imprint, rather than immediately killing the Crawler permanently 205 209.
• Retainer 9527 overlaps four Instances and conceals himself within spatial fog using Apostle-level power and extensive preparations 198.
• Restored rituals allow the prism to reverse the destruction of ritual sites and rematerialize its Crawler projection 211.

Corruption and Recruitment

The Crawlers recruit through power, survival, and promises of longer life 115 272.

• Wayne’s new ability grants players Crawler-like powers without transforming them into Crawlers, enabling the Diving Club to operate inside human society 117.
• Followers include desperate survivors, power-seekers, violent malcontents, and people coerced into specialized work such as ritual construction 115 117.
• Their life-extension methods attract East Pole Island residents, including a Warehouse manager whose abnormal vitality conceals corruption inside his head 272.
• Detection is imperfect: Lin Yuan and Lilia fail to identify Crawler connections among certain Diving Club members after their arrival in the Endless Sea 334.

Countermeasures

• Kill immediately or flee: Human organizations advise killing a Crawler at any cost only when an immediate kill is certain. Otherwise, even someone capable of winning the fight should flee 52.
• Bronze Templar Badge: Detects Crawlers within one kilometer and blocks their senses. Activation increases damage against them but also increases incoming damage; prolonged use risks attracting senior Crawlers or the Great Being 99.
• Silver Templar Badge: Extends detection to ten kilometers for Kin-level Crawlers and lets the Holy Hall Light Blade consume the wielder’s vitality to suppress Crawler regeneration and resurrection 242.
• Vitality cost: The Silver Badge’s suppression effect is an indirect contest of vitality, not an unconditional cancellation of resurrection 242.
• Black mud: Active mud indicates that an apparently crippled low- or mid-ranking Crawler is not as helpless as it appears 239.
• Avatars and anchors: Attacking an avatar’s supporting structure can be more effective than repeatedly cutting off regenerating limbs, as demonstrated by Retainer 9527’s skeleton anchor 118 119.

History

Origins and the Four Pole Islands

The Life Sect is eventually confirmed as the Crawlers’ origin. Their transformation is not presented as a simple history of willing surrender: within a History Secret Realm, Lin Yuan encounters the Life Sect Master publicly calling for united resistance against the Great Being, leaving him questioning what caused the later change 429 430 596.

Near the end of the Golden Age, the Crawlers concentrated attacks on the Four Pole Islands because they suspected the islands were crucial to humanity. The Island Lords proved stronger than expected. When the islands sealed themselves off, the attacking Crawlers also lost contact with the outside world 315.

Infiltration of Paradise

Wayne developed the Diving Club as an espionage and sabotage organization. His ability to empower players without transforming them solved an earlier obstacle to infiltration, while the influx of billions of new players made covert recruitment easier 117.

Retainer 9527 entered Paradise and used recruited players to prepare ritual sites. Lin Yuan destroyed his flesh-and-blood avatar, but later confronted the surviving operation involving overlapping Instances, spatial barriers, and the Time-Void Prism’s regenerating projections 117 119 190 198 211.

East Pole Sea Conspiracy

The East Pole Crawlers cultivated ties with the Pirate Emperors, Pirate Generals, and Four Great Families. Promises of power and extended life weakened resistance to their influence, while Red Anglerfish used these divided interests to suppress the Island Lord’s Residence 272 277 281.

Their central undertaking sought to restore the wounded Apostle Sin of the Fallen, whose soul had become inseparable from the East Pole Island Lord’s. Red Anglerfish intended to use the pirates’ lives to illuminate the Apostle’s return path. Lin Yuan disrupted the awakening formation and later attacked the lightly guarded regional headquarters in the Abyssal Sea 281 289 295 313.

Central Sea War

The Crawlers established a fortress through a large Space Channel in the Central Sea. Although their number of Authority Holders roughly matched humanity’s, their members were generally stronger at that level; humanity retained an advantage at the level above 446 452.

Their offensive intensified as the Great Being’s influence produced Priest-level troops in batches. Accelerated High Priests further strained the Federation, but the deaths of twenty High Priests created an opening to recover all seven outposts. The Crawlers later released thousands of scattered Priests through a new channel as the Island of Beginning and End appeared 476 489 491.

The Primordial Distorted Beast and Nether River

Elder Zhao led seven or eight Apostles into the Abyss of Sealing to capture the Primordial Distorted Beast. Lao Jiu suspected that his notes about himself and Chaos had drawn their attention; Lin Yuan connected the operation to the Oathbreaker’s earlier attempt to mutate Never Skunked into a similar form 573 578.

In the Land of Manifest Death, the Crawlers’ Leader attacked Lin Yuan with moonlight and a rootlike, tentacled transformation. During the subsequent Nether River battle, Crawler monarchs coordinated an assault that left Lin Yuan unharmed, while the Leader fought Lord Yi and the Second Lord 605 613.

The Leader continued obstructing Lin Yuan even while gravely wounded, claiming the Crawlers were humanity’s future. Later, the Oathbreaker recognized that their apparently pragmatic path was a dead end, but could no longer change his fate 617 625.

Relationships

• Human Federation — Irreconcilable enemy. Their conflict includes infiltration, defections, and open warfare, although both sides sometimes restrain their deployments to avoid unnecessary losses 395 452 466.
• Sanctum — Eternal enemy dedicated to opposing the Crawlers’ attempts to draw the Great Being’s attention to the world; its badges and Light Blades provide specialized anti-Crawler capabilities 98 99 242.
• Research Institute — Maintains a fragile neutral relationship with the Crawlers. Research Institute 3154 acknowledges that even sharing certain information with Lin Yuan crosses that boundary 110.
• Island Lord’s Residence — Principal opponent of Crawler influence on East Pole Island; secretly eliminates corrupted residents 272.
• Ocean creatures — Not natural allies. Crawlers enslave weaker sea beasts but can themselves be attacked by stronger ones 313.

Items and Infrastructure

• Bone crosses — Embedded in members’ bodies and prominently used in worship at the East Pole base 84 313 573.
• Crawler-exclusive relics — Carried by Priests and unusable by ordinary humans. Lin Yuan’s Energy Collector can nevertheless consume them for upgrades 452 472.
• Living ships — At least one Giant Ship contains organlike masses of flesh instead of ordinary compartments and can be reconstructed with black slime 84 87.
• East Pole regional base — A stationary, dilapidated Giant Ship resembling a palace built on a hull, supported by smaller travel boats and hidden inside an Abyssal Sea cavern 313.
• Spatial channels — Used to establish and reinforce their Central Sea territory and to deploy large numbers of Priests 452 491.