plumnovel Chapter 60 : Bloodline Attack?
Chapter 60 : Bloodline Attack?
Bloodline Attack?==============================
"Jiang Cheng," watching as the mechas silently disappeared from sight, Lyle frowned and looked at Jiang Cheng.
"No matter what, the way you just spoke was a bit... inappropriate, wasn't it?"
"Which sentence?"
Jiang Cheng tilted her head and asked, "Wasn't I just complimenting them and sending them my blessings?"
"Are you serious?"
Lyle shot back. "Even someone with my emotional intelligence could tell you were being heavily sarcastic."
"That part where you said you expected even more of them to die."
"Oh, that,"
Jiang Cheng shrugged and said, "That sort of thing doesn't matter～"
"How could it not matter? They just helped you and so many of them died."
Lyle retorted.
"That makes sense,"
Jiang Cheng nodded in pretended seriousness, "But they're useless now."
"People who are useless—it doesn't really matter what happens to them. Anyway, I'll just fulfill my part of the deal, nothing more."
"What about me?"
For some reason, Lyle blurted out under the impulse of a sudden, nameless emotion.
"What about you?"
Jiang Cheng asked, somewhat puzzled.
"I mean, will I also become someone you don't care about once I'm no longer useful to you?"
Shrugging, Jiang Cheng smiled, "You still care about that? Well, since you're asking, I guess I'll have to tell the truth, huh～"
"You're different."
"What's different about me?"
Lyle pressed.
"Alright, alright,"
Jiang Cheng laughed. "It's not very gentlemanly to force a girl to answer questions, you know."
No matter how Lyle pressed after that, all Jiang Cheng did was smile without speaking.
But they had no time left to stand there, because the boss everyone had been obsessing over—the so-called king of corrupted monsters—had finally arrived.
Suddenly, the sky over this area of the Spirit Realm darkened.
Night fell silent and dead, but without even the solace of a bright crescent moon—nothing but row upon row of streetlights flickering on in Adventurer City in the spirit realm, casting a ghastly pallid glow.
"滴答, drip drip," a faint, misty rain seemed to start falling from above.
However, the Spirit Realm had no sky, nor any change between day and night. The endless overhead "sky" was just vast, surging magic tides mixed with the thoughts of intelligent beings, twisting into eternally shifting bands of dazzling color.
So, what's with this rain, then? So hard to guess～
Jiang Cheng curled her lips into a smile, gazing off into the distant sky.
It was only now, illuminated by the cold white glow of the streetlights, that one could see the falling "rain" was not a normal color—it was ink-black.
Those oil-thick, inky "droplets" that hit the ground transformed into newly-born corrupted monsters.
At last, a massive lump of pitch-black sludge plummeted to the earth like a shadow.
Next, as if a glob of dense ink had splashed into a pond, the nearby streets instantly turned jet black.
In the next second, a colossal shadow reared up from the tar-black streets, like a jet-black sun rising from the horizon.
That figure was a constantly twisting, writhing mass of darkness that shifted forms endlessly.
At first glance, it didn't seem all that different from the other corrupted monsters—
But if anything set it apart, it was this: every shape the black mass shifted into wore a crown.
The crown itself was pitch-black as ink—if you didn't look closely, it would blend right into the corrupted king's body.
But once you noticed the crown, it was hard to look away.
Because that crown was terrifyingly grotesque yet possessed a soul-stirring beauty—perfectly natural, as if it was always meant to be that way.
Yet, beneath that mesmeric beauty, there was an equally terrifying power and danger.
Jiang Cheng smirked softly to herself.
So this really is that false god's most painstakingly crafted artifact...
An artifact so important that even a god with the authority over machines would rather make it by hand than with his powers—its significance was obvious.
And the artifact's function was to mass-produce the king of corrupted monsters.
It was like a corrupted-monster version of the Hero's Sword legend; whoever wore the crown would become the king of corrupted monsters. This was the legend among corrupted monsters—and its power.
That's why the false god set the quest for Lyle to retrieve the crown, and why he so easily let Lyle kill the king of corrupted monsters.
Because this so-called king of corrupted monsters was unimportant—so long as Lyle brought back the crown, new corrupted kings could be created endlessly.
A quest about retrieving the crown—it seemed to be just a symbol for killing, but the false god had woven deep meaning into it.
With narrowed eyes, Jiang Cheng turned to look at Renata and the others.
"Can you kill it?"
Jiang Cheng asked—but it was more a statement, having already guessed their answer.
"We can't..."
Renata's lips trembled.
As the king of their own kind, the monster's innate pressure and might left them all but paralyzed.
"There's no way we could possibly do that,"
That overwhelming force nearly drove them to their knees. This is how a king subjugates his own kind.
That suffocating pressure was a constant reminder that, like the monsters before them, they were mere creatures—not true humans.
"Alright～"
Jiang Cheng said cheerfully, a dangerous cunning glinting in her eyes.
"I've got a way for you to kill it—a way for you to rebel against your king, accomplish an unprecedented feat in this world, and completely shed your identity as mere monsters. How about that～"
"Then," the clan chief hunched forward and looked at Jiang Cheng, "what's the price?"
"The price?"
Jiang Cheng chuckled, "Why, the price is the method itself."
Snapping her fingers, Jiang Cheng said, "As everyone knows, life cannot resist its own king—there's never been an exception."
"But you'll be the first, using my method—just a little exploit of this system's loophole～"
Jiang Cheng smiled wickedly, looking at the thoughtful clan chief, and said, "Exactly. Since you're of the same blood, of course you can attack each other through your bloodline."
"And attacking with a sacrificial bloodline... Well, the more, the merrier, right?"
Jiang Cheng grinned like a devil.
"Jiang Cheng?! What do you mean by that?"
Lyle, having realized something, blurted out.
Jiang Cheng shook her head, ignoring him. "So, the price is simple: death～"
"Not just your own death, but almost the entire clan. As for exactly how many will die? Who knows. Once it dies, you all can stop."
She said with a cheerful tone, "As long as this pact is fulfilled, I can sign the application for you."
"Though by then, you won't need it. A race that's rebelled against its king will, as a matter of course, become a new race."
"Well, time to make your choice."