Chapter 207: A Calm Mind's Gamble
Everyone on the battlefield went blind instantly.
System notifications flashed across Min's vision one after another while debuffs stacked hard. Attack power reduced. Speed reduced. Regeneration crippled. She was a frontline fighter built to trade damage head-on, she had no way to deal with this contaminated field.
A cultist's guttural scream erupted beside her.
She threw her arms up on instinct, but misjudged the distance and felt a burning slash rip across her thigh, immediately followed by a fist cracking against her jaw hard enough to spin her sideways.
"Motherfucker—!"
She swung wildly through empty air, hitting nothing. Another blade split open her cheek before she could recover, hot blood running down her face.
"Duck!"
A familiar voice cut through the chaos.
She dropped instantly and felt something rush over her head a split second later. Then came a wet impact like a hammer smashing through rotten fruit, followed by a heavy body hitting the ground near her feet.
"Stay down."
Bile. The broodling had already killed the cultist attacking her.
"Can you see?"
"No. I can smell."
Bile tore a large bite from the cultist's severed skull and tossed the remains aside before drawing in a long breath through his nose. The entire battlefield unfolded in his mind through blood, sweat, movement, and fear.
At that moment, Synapse's voice cut through the broodlink.
'There is an altar about thirty feet directly behind you. Destroy that and everyone's sight should return.'
Even blind, Bile trusted his brother immediately. Dropping to all fours, he shifted the blood wrapped around his arms up across his shoulders, thickening the muscle there before exploding forward toward the direction Synapse gave him.
"Stop!"
Unseen by Bile through the miasmic dark, the massive demon twisted toward him and swung a huge arm down to intercept.
Too late.
Bile never slowed. Dirt exploded beneath his claws as he slammed shoulder-first into the altar, pulverizing bone, ligament, and black stone in a spray of shattered remains.
Instantly, the fog blanketing the battlefield lifted.
Blinking hard against the sudden return of sight, Min looked around in shock and realized every broodling had continued fighting without hesitation. Even the vent bugs had never slowed, tearing through cultists like the blindness hadn't mattered at all.
"Was it just me?"
A cultist beside her burst apart mid-charge as Synapse's shot caved in the man's chest from the inside, spraying blood across the cracked concrete.
"Destroy the center altar!"
Lynn screamed the order while pointing frantically toward the middle of the camp, her voice nearly drowned out by the fighting.
"Insects!"
The cult leader roared, burning eyes locking onto Lynn and Synapse as he raised a clawed finger toward them, and black light erupted from the tip.
At the same instant, Synapse slammed his hand into the ground and released a surge of bloodlight.
Nearby corpses burst open. Flesh melted and twisted while bone snapped into new shapes, muscle and ribs folding together into a massive wall of gore that rose directly into the path of the attack.
The black beam struck. Everything it touched decayed instantly. Bone collapsed into ash while muscle sagged into wet rotten sludge before crumbling apart as well.
"Adequate. Gather more corpses immediately."
Synapse's voice remained calm despite the sweat running down his face.
Both Teal and Lynn nodded immediately and scattered through the battlefield grabbing bodies wherever they could.
"Why stubbornly cling to life?! Embrace my Lord and accept your deaths!"
The demon's aura spiked violently, black miasma pouring upward like a reverse waterfall before splitting apart and funneling into every surviving cultist in the camp.
Except for the few currently dangling high above the battlefield while Grimm prepared to throw them.
Whether intentional or not, most of the surviving cultists had gathered near the center altar. As the miasma poured into them, their bodies began to swell and twist with loud cracks of shifting bone.
They stopped resembling humans entirely.
Skin stretched thin over bulging muscle that churned beneath the surface while jagged bones punched outward through flesh like spikes, covering their bodies in uneven growths. Their mouths split wider and wider as their screams deepened into something wet and inhuman.
System light leaked from their warped bodies in broken flashes, corrupted notifications stuttering across their skin like dying static. Before any of the transformed cultists could release a skill, John suddenly dropped into their midst.
"Blasphemer!"
One lunged immediately. The thick syringes jutting from its back pumped foul liquid through exposed tubes and into its body, the flesh along its arm swelling grotesquely before it swung.
John stomped once.
Concrete burst upward in a violent spray, throwing the cultist off balance and cutting the attack short. In the same motion, John bent forward and a long mandible shot from his mouth, punching clean through the cultist's skull with a wet crack.
'What the fuck was that?!'
'No need to yell, John. That was our tongue—'
'Our what?!'
Min crashed in right behind him.
Steel and chitin started tearing through the demonic cultists before they could regroup, blood splashing hot across the broken concrete as bodies started coming apart piece by piece.
But strangely, unless it was the head, anything severed or broken began reforming. What felt like light exercise earlier had now turned into a brutal workout. Killing a cultist now took three times as much effort.
Suddenly, a massive shockwave ripped through the camp and froze every nearby fight for a split second.
Tomb had engaged the cult leader.
The two giants collided head-on, each impact detonating the air around them hard enough to rattle the surrounding tents and send loose debris skidding across the ground. In his new form, Tomb was overwhelming to look at, all crushing muscle and monstrous strength, but the difference in level and rank became obvious almost immediately.
He couldn't win.
When the demon tore one of Tomb's arms free and used it like a club, the impact launched the giant broodling clear across the battlefield. Synapse, Teal, and Lynn barely managed to dive aside before Tomb's massive body smashed through the ground nearby, dirt and broken stone spraying over them.
Teal had hit the ground hard, her chest heaved as she laid on her back.
"Are we in trouble?!"
Already back on his feet and firing again, Synapse's body steamed beneath the sweat, bloodlight flickering around his eyes as his mind raced.
"Our current damage output isn't enough. The highest rank we possess right now is C. Unless we destroy that altar, this battle will be lost."
He stopped firing for only a moment and scanned the battlefield, eyes moving rapidly while calculations ran through his head. Then his gaze locked onto Tomb's severed arm lying across the opposite side of the camp where the cult leader had discarded it.
"Can you use Rank-Up again?"
Caught off guard for a second, Teal blinked sweat from her eyes and quickly nodded.
"Yeah."
"Can you control it?"
"Kinda. It's pick a stat, or I can rank up a random skill."
Synapse clicked his tongue in thought. Around them, screams and impacts kept shaking the battlefield while black miasma rolled through the camp in waves. Without another word, he opened his mouth and shoved his rifle into the storage space in his gut. A vent bug suddenly shot toward him like a bullet, forcing him to twist aside before dropping to all fours on the cracked concrete.
"Rank up one of my skills."
It was a gamble, and he knew it.
Pressing a hand against his back, Teal focused hard enough for her shoulders to tense. Unlike normal system abilities, there was no light or notification, no visible sign anything had activated, but Synapse felt it immediately. Warmth spread through his body from the point of contact, like hot water flooding through his veins and settling behind his eyes.
"Done!"
He didn't answer. The second the sensation finished settling into his body, he exploded forward.
As Tomb dragged himself back to his feet nearby, black blood pouring from the torn stump of his arm and splashing against the ruined ground, Synapse leapt onto the giant broodling's calf and sprinted upward. Wind whipped past him as he climbed over thick ash-colored muscle until he reached Tomb's shoulder.
"Get your arm!"
Tomb frowned for only a moment. Then, ignoring the blood still pumping from his missing limb, he locked onto the severed arm lying across the camp and charged for it.
The giant broodling tore through the battlefield like a runaway avalanche. Every step crushed vent bugs and shattered corpses beneath his feet, wet bursts of flesh and chitin exploding around his ankles while cultists scattered screaming from his path. The ground trembled under his weight as he barreled foward.
All around him, the chaos of battle had gotten worse.
Loosed by Grimm, cultists fell from the sky while Bile ripped through a cluster of cultists with his new katars, bloodmask dripping down his forearms, converting them into jagged crimson blades that curved like hooked fangs.
One cultist lunged with a glowing spear of corrupted system light, only for Bile to duck inside the strike and drive both katars into the man's stomach. Lightning erupted from inside the cultist a split-second later. Flesh ballooned outward before detonating into steaming chunks.
Above the screams and impacts, Hex's guitar continued to howl.
The heavy rhythm rolled over the battlefield in violent pulses, feeding strength into the brood while draining the cultists with every chord. Some staggered mid-fight, clutching bleeding ears beneath their masks while the broodlings only moved faster. Fang became a blur in the middle of it all, striking blind spots and gaps in movement with surgical precision. One cut opened a throat. Another slipped beneath an arm. Bodies kept dropping before they even realized he was there.
Near the center altar, Min and John fought side by side against the mutated cultists flooding around them. Min tore one apart with her bare hands while John's kick crushed another skull. Behind them towered the immense demon torso, its enormous upper body hovering above the center altar while black miasma poured endlessly from its chest and arms into the remaining followers below.
The thing laughed.
The sound rolled across the camp thick and wet, vibrating through the concrete and into everyone's bones as more cultists twisted beneath the blessing of its aura.
Then its burning eyes locked onto Tomb. The demon's grin widened as one massive finger extended.
A beam of black light exploded across the battlefield and struck Tomb's leg mid-stride. There was no explosion. No resistance. His entire leg simply liquified into black sludge beneath him.
Tomb crashed.
The giant slammed into the camp hard enough to flatten tents and send bodies flying through the air. The impact ripped through the battlefield in a wave of dust and shattered concrete as Synapse launched himself free from Tomb's shoulder.
Air rushed around him as his body ragdolled. Unable to right himself, he braced for impact—
Then something caught him.
A massive web suddenly spread open beneath him. The entire thing flexed under the impact, holding him suspended above the ground while sticky fibers wrapped around his limbs.
The instant he hit the web, Synapse tore himself free, strands snapping and peeling from his armor-like flesh as he landed hard beside Tomb's severed arm. At the same time, a command shot through the entire broodlink.
'Prioritize feeding over combat. I need Tomb healed immediately.'
He slammed a hand against the torn flesh as crimson system light burst from his body and crawled over the limb. He hadn't gotten lucky enough to evolve [Improvised Flesh Tool] itself during the rank-up, but what he had gained would still be enough.
The arm began to change.
Like ice melting under boiling water, flesh dissolved away from the limb in wet streams while exposed bone and muscle twisted together and reformed. Tendons stretched and snapped into place as the entire structure elongated, thinning rapidly until the severed arm reshaped itself into an enormous spear of bone and hardened flesh.
Looking back toward Tomb, Synapse could see the bleeding had finally stopped, but neither missing limb had started regenerating yet. Every one of his siblings was under constant pressure now. Widow had entered the battle fully, webs spreading across tents, corpses, and broken concrete to bind enemies in place, but even she struggled to secure enough time to feed.
Synapse was about to sprint toward the nearest corpse himself when a calm voice spread through the broodlink.
Sin.
'Do not worry, my brothers. The Broodfather will provide.'
A beam of crimson system light erupted from the edge of the camp, bright enough to cut through the smoke and black miasma. At its center, Sin knelt in the rubble with his clawed hands pressed together in prayer, blood and dust sticking to his dark skin.
He'd leveled and finally gained his class.
Without the Broodfather present to interfere if he wanted, the acquisition had happened automatically. Fresh power flooded through Sin's body as he slowly rose to his feet, red cracks of system light spreading across his dark pink skin and forming countless jagged symbols that pulsed like living scars.
Then he turned toward his enormous brother and smiled.
"Receive his blessing, brother."
Black light burst from Sin's eyes and flared through every glowing mark on his body. At the exact same moment, Tomb's missing limbs began regenerating. Bone pushed outward first, followed by layers of thick muscle and ash-colored flesh. In only a few seconds, both limbs had completely regrown.
'Use the spear.'
Synapse shoved the command through the broodlink while raising his own aura. Planting his feet against the broken ground, he lifted both hands toward the cult leader and activated his ranked skill.
[Structural Weakness]
A pulse of crimson light rippled over the demon torso, and the pressure in the air shifted as the skill bit into the creature. The demon's defense dropped by twenty-five percent, while every broodling's damage against it rose by the same amount.
"Everyone attack the altar! Now!"
Usually expressionless, Synapse's face had tightened with strain as he pulled his weapon out from the storage space in his gut. Across the battlefield, Min was starting to slow. So was John. The rest of the brood still fought like monsters unleashed, but none of them had the damage output needed to end this quickly.
If they didn't finish this now, every last one of them was going to die here.