Chapter 162: Saintly Body
Ye Tian led the battered remnants of his team through a final, bloody battle, at last bursting into the designated safe zone. The swarms of insects were noticeably thinner here. One by one, the survivors collapsed onto the scorched earth, chests heaving, the acrid taste of smoke still coating their tongues. A wave of bone-deep exhaustion washed over them, mingling with the giddy, trembling relief of having cheated death.
But Ye Tian remained standing, a solitary pillar of tension. He didn't rest. His gaze was locked on the distant base, a pinprick of chaos on the horizon. Even from this great distance, he could see endless streams of insects still converging on it like a river of death. There was still no sign of Haruto or Kaguya.
Time stretched, each minute an eternity, each second a torment.
"Take a rest," his secretary said, offering him a bottle of water.
Ye Tian neither took it nor replied. His fists, hanging at his sides, clenched unconsciously, the veins on his forearms standing out like cords of steel.
Yotsuya Miko and Lin Xuelao's faces were also pale from the grueling sprint. They had held an almost religious faith in Haruto's abilities, but seeing Ye Tian's grim vigil, a seed of doubt began to sprout. A cold knot of anxiety tightened in their stomachs. Could something have really happened?
They instinctively glanced toward Youmu, their last bastion of hope. She sat quietly to one side, her expression as placid as a calm lake, her posture radiating an absolute, unshakable trust in her master.
Suddenly—
A blinding flash of fire erupted from the direction of the base, painting the sky in searing white and orange. A moment later, a deafening explosion rolled across the landscape, so powerful that the very ground beneath their feet trembled.
The surface of the base was instantly swallowed by a roiling fireball. A pillar of thick, black smoke churned into the sky, a funeral pyre marking the complete annihilation of everything below.
Ye Tian's eyes, now shot through with red, remained fixed on that sea of fire. No figures emerged. No one escaped.
At that exact moment, a clear notification echoed in the minds of every survivor. As long as they returned to the area above the now-obliterated base, they could complete the instance and extract.
A guttural roar tore from Ye Tian's throat as he slammed his fist into the trunk of a nearby tree.
The massive trunk, thick enough for two people to encircle, audibly cracked. A deep, fist-shaped indentation appeared in the bark before the entire tree groaned and toppled to the ground with a final, shuddering crash. Bright red blood welled up from between his knuckles, dripping slowly onto the dusty soil.
The members of Ascending God lowered their heads in shared grief.
Ye Tian stood frozen for a long moment, his shoulders slumped, visibly struggling to find the right words. When he finally turned, the usual pride and unshakeable composure had been stripped from his face, leaving behind only raw, haggard grief.
He walked over to Yotsuya Miko and Lin Xuelao and crouched down, bringing his gaze level with theirs. He took a deep, ragged breath, his voice raspy but imbued with a newfound, solemn firmness.
"Miko, Xuelao… join us. Join Ascending God. Haruto and Lady Kaguya… they sacrificed themselves for us."
He swallowed hard. "I will take on this responsibility. From now on, I will protect you in his stead."
Before he could finish, a wave of panic washed over Miko and Xuelao.
Could it be true? Did something really happen to Brother Haruto and Sister Kaguya?
Their hands flew to their pockets, fumbling for their Ghost Phones, desperate to send a message, to get any kind of confirmation. Just as their fingers closed around the cool metal, a familiar, lazy voice laced with dissatisfaction cut through the somber air.
"I'm gone for five minutes and someone's already trying to poach my people?"
Hearing that voice, sheer, unadulterated joy bloomed on Miko and Xuelao's faces. The tension drained from their bodies in a single, collective sigh of relief.
Ye Tian's entire body jolted as if struck by lightning. He whipped his head around.
Standing there, at some unknown point, were Haruto and Kaguya. Their clothes were almost spotless, showing no signs of having just escaped a cataclysmic explosion.
"Haruto!" Ye Tian gasped, his expression a whirlwind of shock and elation. "You're alive!"
The other survivors crowded around, their faces alight with disbelief and joy.
"Of course I'm alive," Haruto said, spreading his hands with a wry grin. "Didn't I tell you? I have my own ways of staying alive. You didn't actually think I was pulling some cliché, noble self-sacrifice speech, did you?"
A flash of embarrassment crossed the faces of Ye Tian and his guild members. That was, in fact, exactly what they had thought.
A short while later, the group returned to the surface above the base. The fires had subsided, revealing a massive, sunken crater where the facility once stood.
Ye Tian exchanged a few brief words with Haruto before bidding him farewell and leading his team away. It wasn't until he had returned to his own world that he smacked his forehead in regret, realizing he'd completely forgotten to challenge Haruto to that duel.
Yotsuya Miko and Lin Xuelao were the first to depart the instance, with Kaguya following closely behind. Haruto was about to leave himself when he noticed Youmu standing motionless, a dazed look on her face. He turned back, a hint of confusion in his voice.
"What's wrong?"
"That thing… it's still here."
"What thing? The Broodmother?" Haruto asked, baffled. The instance was over. There was no way the Broodmother could have survived that.
Youmu shook her head gently. "Not her. It's that creature that was following us in the tunnels."
"The spider monster!?"
Haruto was genuinely surprised. He hadn't expected it to still be alive. Based on the strength he'd sensed from it earlier, surviving an explosion of that magnitude should have been impossible.
Only two possibilities came to mind.
Either it had somehow predicted their plan to detonate the base and had fled far in advance.
Or, it had been devouring the corpses of all the monsters they had slain, using them to fuel a rapid evolution until it was strong enough to withstand the blast.
But the instance was over. Deciding not to dwell on it, Haruto simply took Youmu's hand and initiated their departure.
Long after the two of them had vanished completely, an eerie figure slowly crawled out from the distant woods. Just as Youmu had said, it was the spider monster from the tunnels.
But it was different now. A pair of new wings, shaped like those of a mosquito but covered in fine, dark feathers, sprouted from its back. Its body had swelled to a much larger size, and its entire form radiated a deeply unsettling, ominous aura.
It crept to the exact spot where Haruto had disappeared. A tongue over a meter long, thin and sharp like a mosquito's proboscis, flicked out, tasting the air and searching for something on the ground.
A flicker of what looked like confusion crossed its monstrous face. Then, its razor-sharp claws suddenly swung down.
The reinforced concrete, which had survived the initial blast, was sliced apart as easily as tofu. The creature began to dig, burrowing deeper and deeper into the earth…
---
Haruto and Youmu reappeared inside the familiar old wooden house. Perhaps because their entry time into the instance had been so different from Kaguya's group, they found themselves alone, assigned to a private reward room.
After briefly explaining the reward mechanism to a curious Youmu, Haruto placed his hand on the weathered wooden table.
[Player Haruto has cleared the instance — Swarm Escape]
[Missions Completed: Survive and reach the extraction point within three days; Discover the final mission and resolve the Broodmother; Save the remaining survivors in the city.]
[Clearance Evaluation: S]
[Calculating S-Rank Rewards…]
[You have received: Unique Title - Zerg Dominator]
[You have received: Passive Skill - Toxin Adaptability]
[You have received: Ability Mastery +10%]
[You have received: Physical Strength +10%]
The rewards were surprisingly good.
Haruto had figured he was just coasting through and wouldn't get a particularly high rating, let alone decent rewards. The result was far better than he'd anticipated.
The first reward was self-explanatory. [Zerg Dominator] would allow him to exert a suppressive pressure on Zerg-type creatures, meaning he wouldn't have to bother running from insect races that relied on sheer numbers.
The second, [Toxin Adaptability], was a passive skill. It granted him high resistance to a wide variety of poisons, from neurotoxins to paralytic agents, and even allowed him to convert a portion of any toxic energy he absorbed into his own. This would not only slightly accelerate his physical recovery but also provide a small, permanent boost to his overall constitution.
'Isn't this just a license to chug poison like it's an EXP potion?' Haruto mused.
And when he thought about where one could find the most potent poisons in all of Gensokyo… two places immediately sprang to mind.
Eientei, and the Kirisame Magic Shop.
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