Chapter 96: They Were Racing Against Time
Crash—!
The protective barrier around Luo Xianghuai shattered into fragments the instant the bicep-thick vine struck it.
Zhou Xue realized something was wrong immediately, but she was too far from him, hemmed in by the thrashing vines nearby.
“Old Luo!”
Hall could only twist around in time to flick out an ice blade.
Seeing this, Shelley reached toward Luo Xianghuai.
Woody tendrils burst from her body, wrapping around the unusually thick vine and checking its pull before Luo Xianghuai could be dragged away.
The Dark Star crew reacted with startling speed.
All thanks to their heightened senses.
Unfortunately, the ice blade merely sank into the vine with zero effect; the creeper didn’t even flinch as it kept hauling Luo Xianghuai toward the outer dark.
[Heal] grabbed Luo Xianghuai’s hands, [Levitation] locked an arm around his waist, and [Haste] seized his arm, throwing their full weight into a desperate tug-of-war against the mutated tendril to keep him from being carried off.
[Paralysis] stepped up, slapping her bare palm onto the vine to channel her ability.
The vine paused for a split second, then resumed thrashing instantly.
“It doesn’t work! Its rank is too high—I can’t lock it down!”
[Seduction] was just as useless before a plant of this caliber.
Luo Xianghuai drew his combat knife, plunging it viciously into the coil around his leg.
A row of earthen spikes erupted from the pavement, spearing the vine from below.
It was [Piercing] lending a hand.
Snap.
Zhou Xue finally broke through. Channeling her strength straight into the heavy blade, she severed the massive tendril with a brutal, vicious stroke.
Luo Xianghuai and the cluster of people pulling on him tumbled backward onto the ground.
He was finally loose.
“Stay sharp!”
Zhou Xue planted herself before the fallen squad, swinging her longblade in furious arcs to shear through the encroaching vines.
Heixi swallowed several crystals—his energy reserves had just scraped the bottom of the barrel.
Whoosh—
A stray tendril whipped past Hall’s cheek, slicing through his face cloth and gouging a bloody welt across his skin.
“Captain! These vines have gone completely feral! They’re going after my face!”
Swish—
A grazing strike caught [Ignition] across the arm at the same time.
He couldn’t hold back a sharp cry of pain.
“What happened? You alright?” Hall called out, checking on their allied comrade.
“It just grazed my skin, but it burns like the flesh is rotting off… Aren’t you in agony?!”
“Of course it hurts! But I ate the shredded pork with runner beans!”
“The hell is that?”
“Prevents wound infections!”
“Huh?!”
“Cut the chatter!” Zhou Xue barked. “[Heal], patch him up!”
“On it!”
“Keep your eyes peeled, everyone! It knows how to ambush!”
“These vines aren’t blinded by the dark at all—we’re the only ones fighting blind!”
Night had fallen completely. The only visibility they had left came from the flickering firelight produced by [Ignition].
“Protect Luo Xianghuai!”
Heixi had caught onto something from the vine’s targeted aggression.
“Is this thing backed into a corner because Tracking can actually find its source?” [Heal] asked while channeling her power.
“Old Luo, take this severed stalk and track it.” Quick picked up the thick piece of vine Zhou Xue had lopped off and shoved it into his chest.
“Got it.”
Hacking away at the incoming tendrils, Zhou Xue’s brow furrowed.
Something felt off.
Why had this mutated Virginia creeper singled out Luo Xianghuai?
Could the beast actually perceive his power?
Yet this wasn’t his first time using [Tracking] today.
Before destroying the banyan tree, he had already activated his ability once to pinpoint its location.
Why hadn’t it struck then, only to target him now?
There were two possibilities.
First, Luo Xianghuai might truly be on the verge of uncovering this A-rank entity’s core.
The creature sensed an existential threat.
They had been tangling with this A-rank horror since the afternoon. Fourteen Awakeners cycling through crystals without pause had whittled down an enormous mass of its foliage.
They had also shattered the mutated banyan, which had to be one of the creeper’s primary energy reserves.
Judging by the state of the banyan, it hadn’t been fully drained yet, which explained why the vines were in such a murderous frenzy.
No matter how high its rank or how vast its reserves, every living creature had a ceiling.
Their own energy was nearing depletion, but the creeper couldn’t be in much better shape.
Once they found the core, an A-rank mutant might not be beyond their power to bring down.
The second possibility… was far more chilling.
—This A-rank entity was terrifyingly intelligent. It knew how to conceal itself, how to coordinate ambushes, and while Luo Xianghuai was tracking it, it had likely read the nature of his ability.
The creeper tendrils assailing them were interlaced with banyan branches, proving it had already integrated the banyan’s attack vectors into its own.
Could a mutated organism, once evolved past a certain threshold, harvest and assimilate the abilities of its prey?
Zhou Xue’s heart sank.
Perhaps both factors were at play.
They had to end this fast.
Caw-caw— Screeech—
The din of battle carried far in the dead of night, drawing out predators that prowled after dark.
Hearing the calls, the group looked up, only to find the sky littered with an unnerving canopy of glowing red embers.
…Those weren’t embers, of course; they were the predatory eyes of a massive flock of ghost birds.
After mutating, the ghost birds’ hooked beaks had grown longer and sharper.
A suffocating, black tidal wave of wings swept overhead, pressing down on them with brutal menace.
“The Commander warned us that E-rank ghost bird flocks hunt the urban ruins after dark—huge swarms, vicious and relentless. He told us to stay sharp and withdraw to the walls in time,” Heixi said, his brow knotting tight.
“…Every piece of bad luck had to hit us at once.”
A tiger in front, wolves behind. They could barely hold off the vines as it was, and now a flock of predatory avian mutants had locked onto their position.
Swish—
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—
Countless vines stirred, yet they didn’t lash out at the humans.
Instead, they whipped skyward toward the flock.
The vines surged upward like rabid serpents, coiling around bird legs and dragging them down one after another.
Skreee—!
Under assault, the ghost birds tore into the tendrils with their razor-sharp beaks.
Dull, tough bark was punched through with bloody gouges. Had that beak struck human flesh, it would have punched clean through bone.
Yet the vines were endless. Fresh runners immediately snaked upward, wrapping the thrashing birds into tight cocoons and dragging them to the dirt.
Fierce and numerous as the ghost birds were, against the sheer, overwhelming mass of the creeper, they were hopelessly outmatched.
With the vines diverted toward a new target, the pressure on the Awakeners lifted instantly.
“Are they… fighting over who gets to eat us?” Hall asked, blinking.
“Wonderful. We’ve been relegated to the appetizer platter,” [Levitation] muttered with a deadpan expression.
“Found it! Head west! By an ornamental rockery!”
Luo Xianghuai’s eyes snapped open.
“Move! We use this opening to get over there!” Heixi hauled Luo Xianghuai up and slung him over one shoulder.
Luo Xianghuai’s leg was already swollen from the strangling vine, making it impossible to walk.
“Go, go!” Zhou Xue cut a path through the scattered brush, keeping a hawkish eye on the chaos. “[Haste], pop your speed!”
“Understood!”
“It’s just… letting us walk away?” Turner asked, finding the turn of events hard to believe.
“No.”
As the group sprinted toward the coordinates Luo Xianghuai had given, Zhou Xue’s voice turned grim. “The creeper is feeding on the ghost birds’ energy.”
“We have to reach the core before it finishes draining them.”
The flock was massive. If the creeper finished assimilating that power…
They had come this far; there was no turning back for the Awakeners.
All they could do now was pray the birds put up a prolonged struggle to buy them a few more minutes.
They were racing against time.
