Chapter 584: Chapter 584 - Taming the Fourth Year: Journey - Struggle - 3
Had Min ruined everything with his innocent question about whether it was all over?
No...
It surely was nothing more than coincidence, but... the arm-claw began pulsing with renewed intensity just after his words.
The mutant creatures that had already been advancing aggressively worsened. Their movements became even more aggressive, more intense, as if something had enraged them beyond their already considerable fury.
"The big creature no longer controls them," Liu observed while leaning heavily on Taro, his voice strained from exhaustion, "but the artifact is definitely still a problem."
Zhao attempted to launch some feathers toward the pulsing arm, taking advantage of his remaining fusion power, but again they bounced harmlessly against its surface. The ancient construction seemed to mock their efforts.
Julius also tried attacks with his most powerful minerals, but the ancient structure absorbed the impact without showing the least damage.
"We can’t affect it with normal attacks," Julius murmured, rapidly evaluating their limited options while watching the creature tide grow larger. "And we don’t have energy for prolonged attempts."
"Then we only can escape," Zhao declared pragmatically, though his voice carried the frustration of leaving an unsolved problem that would likely claim lives later.
But Ren still hadn’t given up like the others.
The purified roots in his system, those that had been cleansed by Sirius’s attack but not completely eliminated, began feeling more energized in a different way.
His system had expanded again, but it wasn’t like the uncontrolled corruption from before. Instead, it was something calmer, more controllable.
Perhaps now he could understand it.
"Ren," Julius called when he noticed him advancing toward the center of the bowl, "we don’t have time for experiments."
"I can feel something," Ren responded, approaching the pulsing artifact. "My system is reacting... as if it recognizes the energy."
Zhao and Julius exchanged worried glances but positioned themselves to resist the growing advance of creatures, clearly reluctant to stay there with so little energy but trusting that Ren was about to discover something crucial.
Ren hurried and, ignoring his companions’ protests, extended his hand toward the arm’s surface.
The contact released an immediate and intense flow of information. He could feel a bit of the artifact’s intricate construction through energy that was like his own but also contrary by nature.
The patterns were complex, layers upon layers of purposes he couldn’t completely decipher.
Maybe if his fungus were here to provide the deep understanding he needed...
But he couldn’t lament what he had lost or what he didn’t have now. There was no time for subtleties or complete comprehension.
So he decided to use brute force.
He channeled a good part of the purified energy he had available directly into the artifact, trying to overwhelm whatever corruption had taken hold of its original systems.
An intense effort and then...
A small section of the artifact went dark, the corrupt energy visibly cleansing like ink being washed from a surface. For a moment, Ren felt hope that he could purify the entire structure, that his sacrifice of power could be worthwhile.
Then there was a rebound of corrupt energy in the artifact, and a wave traveled through the ground and environment in response to his interference.
The mutant creatures stopped completely, as if they had received a silent signal. Then, with an almost maddened intensity they hadn’t shown before, they became much more aggressive and desperate. Their movements lost all semblance of natural behavior, becoming deranged.
"Ren!" Julius shouted while a wave of mutants climbed to the top and began directing themselves toward them. "There’s no more time!"
"Leave that thing and let’s go!" Zhao added, his wings extended in preparation for retreat.
Yet, Ren forced himself to maintain contact with the artifact, trying to concentrate more power into purification. If he fused and used all his power, maybe...
But before he could fuse to concentrate significantly more energy, a new energy signature was felt alarmingly close.
From the earth emerged another enormous abomination.
This one wasn’t connected to an arm like the previous one. Instead, what was emerging seemed to be... a leg? Ren couldn’t be completely sure from his angle, but the extremity was massive and clearly made of the same material as the arm, fused with organic technology in the same horrifying way as the previous one.
Ren couldn’t know for certain, but...
In this zone there hadn’t been one but two caves. One was the one his father had found first, and where Ren had come repeatedly with his fungus... that was different.
Ren had taken a detour in his first exploration and found a divergent small vein.
This new artifact belonged to his father’s first cave and had been buried much deeper than the first, connected to the second vein that his father had mentioned casually in his stories. And now it was also corrupted, also converted into the core of an abomination.
"How many of these artifacts are there?" Ren murmured, horror growing in his chest.
The new abomination was just as massive as the first, its movements causing tremors in the ground.
Without energy for another prolonged battle, the group faced an impossible situation.
"We have to open a tunnel in the walls!" Julius shouted, pointing toward a side where his previous defenses still partially stood. "And push by brute force through one side of the creature wave to escape!"
"The main danger is the new abomination!" Zhao added while calculating paths. "It can send the small creatures directly toward us!"
Ren had to give up on his initial objective again... understanding his friends and allies’ situation. Being caught between the massive new threat and hundreds of lesser mutants would be fatal in their current state.
He summoned his Wolverine from his dimensional space, the massive beast appearing with its jaws open and ready to serve as both transport and protection.
"Carry those who can’t move fast!" he ordered while helping unconscious Mako onto the beast, followed by Liu and Taro who were struggling to maintain balance after the energy expenditure of the previous battle.
The fusions were cancelled for everyone except Julius and Zhao, who maintained theirs through pure stubbornness and with the help of healing touches that Min managed between his own fatigue to clear a path between the mutant beasts.
Julius opened a cave on one side of his walls, and Zhao maintained elimination of beasts at the front and back, his attacks precise despite the exhaustion that made his hands tremble.
Everyone was at their limit when they barely managed to escape, heading toward the city while the sounds of thousands of paws echoed behind them like the drumbeat of approaching doom.
Ren looked back from his wolverine’s back while they put distance between themselves and the nightmare they had left behind.
The walls Julius had erected collapsed under the combined assault of hundreds of mutants and the new massive abomination. The creatures surrounded the enormous arm-artifact like pilgrims worshipping at some unholy shrine.
The creatures began molding themselves with horrible cracking sounds and wet tearing and popping noises, joining into an enormous mass that connected to the sphere at the arm’s base.
And then, as if responding to their devotion, light returned to the artifact.
It began to move again, its massive fingers flexing with new life. The systems reactivated, and the corruption Ren had managed to cleanse began returning, spreading like infection through the small purified section.
With the help of the energy and shrieks of the large creature, the new mass began taking shape into a new large abomination.
"The city’s defense," Ren murmured, understanding dawning horribly in his mind, "is far from over."