Many acupoints were located on Gromos's massive eyeball, almost all of its body's acupoints were concentrated there.
Zhang Chen's finger strike, though seemingly casual, was a matter of a hair's breadth difference leading to a thousand miles of divergence.
The moment his fingertip collided with Gromos's giant eyeball, a powerful energy ray shot out from its pupil!
Zhang Chen had anticipated this, and as he pressed the acupoint, he had already placed the Spider Queen Egg in front of his chest.
*Buzz!*
A pure blue energy beam shot violently towards Zhang Chen's body. However, as it passed by the Spider Queen Egg, it instantly deflected.
All the energy was absorbed without a single drop spared into the dark red folds of the Spider Queen Egg.
【Spider Queen Egg】 Current incubation progress: 48%.
Gromos's casual strike dealt damage equivalent to that of the energy-type talent metamorphic who had unleashed his full power earlier.
With the acupoint struck, Gromos's body went limp, its eight tentacles hanging powerlessly. Simultaneously, its massive body crashed down from the ceiling...
It was done?!
Zhang Chen rejoiced!
However, before a smile could even form on his face, he was immediately shocked.
He discovered that his finger, which had struck Gromos, could not be retracted!
It was as if it were stuck. Zhang Chen was forcefully slammed onto the ground along with Gromos's colossal body.
What surprised Zhang Chen even more came next.
Gromos's body acted like a bottomless abyss, greedily siphoning the energy from Zhang Chen's body through his fingertip.
Zhang Chen could clearly see the blue energy within him surging into Gromos's body like a waterfall.
As this energy flowed towards the center of Gromos's eyeball, it vanished abruptly.
At this moment, a prompt slowly appeared beside Zhang Chen's fingertip:
【Gromos's body is currently a conduit connecting you to a parallel world.】
【The energy within you is pouring into another world through this conduit, ceaselessly.】
Zhang Chen recalled that the prompt had previously mentioned Gromos's ability to transfer energy across multiple parallel spaces.
If this continued, Zhang Chen would soon be depleted of his internal energy and meet the same fate as Xu Ruina's long-haired doppelganger.
However, Zhang Chen was completely drained of strength and his internal energy was no longer under his control.
Even moving a finger was a strenuous effort.
*Swish!*
The clone standing by the door instantly appeared beside Zhang Chen.
In his current weakened state, Zhang Chen's telepathic communication range had significantly decreased. This clone was his only controllable reinforcement.
"Stab its pupil!"
Zhang Chen commanded directly.
Since energy was being transferred interdimensionally through the pupil, destroying it would save him.
Receiving the command, the clone abruptly raised its right hand, fingers clenched together like a blade, and fiercely plunged them into the center of Gromos's massive eyeball's pupil!
Gromos, currently paralyzed, could not make any movements and could only watch as the clone's fingers gouged into it.
*Squelch!*
Blue fluid gushed out from the wound in the eyeball.
Gromos's body twisted and trembled in pain.
The energy conduit within its body also fluctuated.
"Success?"
Zhang Chen stared nervously at Gromos.
Gromos's body trembled a few times. The blue energy being siphoned from Zhang Chen could no longer enter the parallel world through the pupil but slowly gathered at the pupil's location.
Soon, the pupil regenerated using Zhang Chen's energy.
As the pupil recovered, the energy flow within the clone began to rapidly deplete.
Because she had attacked the precise core location of energy transfer, the rate of energy loss was much faster than Zhang Chen's.
In just a dozen seconds, the energy flow within the clone dimmed rapidly, and eventually, even the energy core lost its light and completely extinguished...
The entire person fell to the ground with a sallow complexion.
At this moment, her hand was finally able to withdraw from Gromos's pupil.
The clone was dead!
Zhang Chen looked at the clone with vacant eyes, as if seeing himself a few minutes later!
The others were currently searching the research institute.
In the vast research institute, searching every room and every corner would take at least an hour.
By the time they finished searching the rooms and returned, Zhang Chen's corpse would probably have long gone cold.
What to do?
He couldn't just wait to die; he had to find a way!
Zhang Chen's gaze shifted to the man sitting on the ground nearby.
This man had disappeared.
Where he had been sitting, a pile of blue fragments remained on the ground.
The fragments extended towards the door.
Less than ten meters from the door, the man, dragging his upper body with great difficulty, was crawling outwards.
His legs had completely disintegrated into fragments and scattered away.
"Hey, come back! I have a way to get us all out of this predicament!"
Zhang Chen shouted towards the man with all his might.
However, due to the energy drain, even with his full effort, only an extremely weak sound emerged.
Fortunately, the laboratory environment was quiet enough that even such a faint sound was clearly heard by the man.
"What way do you have? Stop lying to me!"
"You just want to drag me down with you to die! I'm not that stupid to fall for your tricks!"
The man said, increasing his crawling speed outwards.
"I... I'm not lying to you... Gromos is defenseless now..."
"You just need to stab its eye with a weapon, and you won't have your energy absorbed!"
"I... I can also... while it's... regenerating... escape completely..."
"I promise I'll take you... with... me... away... from here..."
By the time Zhang Chen finished speaking, he was panting heavily, sweat beading on his forehead.
The abundant blue energy within him was gradually becoming slender and dim...
His time was running out...
"Ha! I killed it, and then you'd stay behind to stall for time and escape yourself? I saw through your trick long ago. The intelligence of this generation of轮回者 isn't that great..."
"My only way to survive now... is to crawl as far away as possible before you die..."
"The further I crawl... the greater my chances of survival..."
The man spoke while his hands continued to move.
In the time it took him to speak, he was almost at the door.
"You... you idiot!"
Zhang Chen, exhausting the last of his body's strength, cursed helplessly.
Then, the energy within him was gradually drawn out, the energy flow steadily dimming...
The energy core also gradually lost its original luminescence...