Chapter 402: Definition, Without End
"I want to see just how long your arrogance can last!"
A space of churning black and green bled together, and countless black spikes lashed out from every direction—above, below, and all around.
Boom!
Venomous barbs struck one after another, only to twist and shatter the instant they neared Sigurd.
"An illusion?"
Sigurd's gaze shifted slightly as he examined the attacks.
Ordinarily, with Sigurd's mental strength and computational ability, the falsehoods of illusion techniques could never deceive him.
But Mobius had wrapped her illusions in a material shell, while applying invisibility to a handful of real attacks—truly insidious. To the naked eye, the illusions appeared real, while the genuine killing blows were invisible.
Whoosh!
At the very moment Sigurd was analyzing the situation, the dark-green mist suddenly surged. Mobius emerged at his side, one hand transforming into a jade-green spear as she stabbed forward with a feral grin.
But her target was not Sigurd.
It was Sin Mal.
"Hm?"
Sigurd raised his hand and caught the green spike, frost spreading through his eyes.
Mobius let out a cold laugh. Her entire body melted away like liquid, slipping free from his grasp.
In the next instant, even more attacks poured in from all directions, all aimed at Sin Mal.
Sin Mal was Sigurd's weakness—or so Mobius told herself. She convinced herself this was a rational judgment, not something born of intense resentment… or even regret.
Why? Why is he able to protect her so well? And I…
The fleeting thought only drove Mobius further into frenzy.
Energy constructs, physical spears, genetic viruses, biochemical toxins, illusions—methods emerged one after another in dizzying succession. For a moment, Sigurd felt as though he had wandered into a grand exhibition, almost unable to take it all in.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
After an unending barrage of explosions, Mobius's true body shrank back into the shadows. She stared at Sigurd as he brushed away the dust, an unconscious, seductive panting escaping her lips.
As the agitation stirred up by memory gradually settled, Mobius reassessed the assault she had just launched. Strategically, she had made no real mistakes. Sigurd had already freed himself from the burden of Sin Mal—now, to him, it merely meant expanding the scope of protection slightly. The overall expenditure was negligible compared to before.
In terms of accumulated reserves and recovery speed, Mobius was nowhere near Sigurd's equal.
Her only advantage lay in the terrain she had seized by striking first. That was why she had to attack fast, attack hard—trading rapid consumption for time.
Strike his weakest point. All I need… is the tiniest opening.
Mobius took a deep breath. Her snake-like pupils, blue tinged with pink, trembled and gradually flared with intense light—she was stepping past the edge of reason, sliding toward a deeper collapse.
Pitch-black serpentine armor formed once more, helping Mobius further stimulate her Honkai energy, along with her own bizarre and unfathomable life force.
"Sigurd!!!"
Mobius hissed, commanding the serpent beast as it thrust its long spear forward.
BOOM!!!
A thunderous explosion erupted as two surging energies collided, the shockwaves sending the surrounding dark-green mist into violent turbulence.
Moments later, Sigurd stood there with one arm wrapped around Sin Mal's body. With the other hand, he pinched the spear tip held by the serpent beast between his fingers. The jet-black, razor-sharp blade hovered mere inches from Sin Mal's head—yet it could neither advance nor retreat.
"Is it over?"
Facing the massive serpent beast, frozen as if time itself had stopped, Sigurd asked calmly.
Then he tightened his grip.
Crack!
The pinnacle of biological bone, the serpent-beast lance—whose overall performance even surpassed Soulium—had its spearhead snapped off by Sigurd. He casually tossed it onto the ground.
Inside the serpent beast's abdominal cavity, Mobius's pupils contracted. At the same time, the beast lashed its tail and retreated a short distance.
"Because you can't break through the limits of inherent genetic structures in the Elysian Realm, you've been researching alternative attack methods, haven't you?" Sigurd said calmly. "Very flashy. At the very least, they look quite impressive."
"You—"
"My patience and tolerance are exhausted, Doctor," Sigurd said coldly.
Making a few underhanded moves on Sin Mal wasn't a big deal in itself. After all, Mobius still adhered to a scientist's principles. Aside from inducing Sin Mal to attack him, she had genuinely put effort into enhancing and modifying her, without cutting corners.
Acting against him himself was also tolerable. Times had changed—he was far more magnanimous now. As long as someone was useful, a bit of overstepping could be overlooked.
But to persist to this extent, repeatedly using attacks on Sin Mal as leverage against him—Sigurd wasn't broad-minded to begin with. On the contrary, he held grudges very well.
Clink—clink—clink!
The core of the Herrscher of Corruption began to tremble violently. The chime grew faster and faster, until at a certain instant, the gemstone within the golden filament sphere suddenly vanished, and the crisp ringing stopped just as abruptly.
Mobius sensed something profoundly strange—like a fish leaping onto dry land, no longer in control of its own life or death. A terror welled up within her, as if heaven and earth themselves had turned against her.
A nameless biological instinct kept screaming warnings at Mobius.
"What did you do!? This isn't the power of corruption!"
"Dr. Mobius," Sigurd replied calmly, "the flow of all things is nothing more than the interaction of countless strands of information at the world's underlying level. Take the Elysian Realm, for example—once I insert my hand into the informational construct that represents it, everything will dance to my tune."
Boom!
In an instant, the world cleared. A blazing sun hung high in the heavens, illuminating the floating divine palace beneath the blue sky with searing brilliance.
"Ah!!"
Mobius should not have feared sunlight—she could swim freely through magma.
And yet now, the moment she was bathed in sunlight, she reacted like a vampire. The serpent beast's body rapidly dissolved, the effect spreading until it reached her flesh.
"Ahhh!!!"
Her delicate, bewitching petite form had its skin split open beneath the blazing sun. Large chunks of charred flesh fell away, and she rolled on the ground in agony, no longer resembling a human at all—an utterly horrifying sight.
Boom!
Mobius quickly burrowed underground, escaping the sunlight. She tunneled straight into the dark recesses beneath the divine palace, panting heavily.
Only then did Sigurd speak again, unhurriedly:
"Definition—sunlight decomposes Mobius's genetic structure."
Rumble—!
The divine palace began to quake.
Beneath it, Mobius once more summoned the form of the serpent beast. A gigantic lance pierced through the palace's foundation, shooting straight up toward Sigurd's feet.
"Definition—there is no Honkai energy within Mobius's body," Sigurd said lightly.
The lance that was about to pierce through the foundation vanished in an instant. The serpent-beast body of Mobius was gone as well, leaving her limp and powerless as she fell toward the desert below.
Bang!!
Her small body slammed into the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Sigurd descended after her.
Within the sand pit, Mobius was once again exposed to sunlight. Her body was burned anew; skin that had just regenerated was charred, split apart, and peeled away, a gruesome sight.
"Ahhh!!!"
Screaming, Mobius used her hands—bare muscle and bone exposed—to frantically dig into the sand. In moments, she buried herself, escaping the judgment of sunlight.
Underground, Mobius's skin slowly regenerated once more. In the pitch darkness, she locked onto Sigurd using biological senses—smell, hearing, touch.
She did not know what Sigurd had done, but she knew there was no longer any retreat. Only by becoming more insane, more desperate, could she pursue victory.
The sand swelled into a low mound, like a snake swimming beneath loose yellow sand, rapidly approaching Sigurd's feet.
"Definition—Mobius cannot move sand."
At once, the moving dune froze in place. Mobius was trapped beneath the sand, unable to move.
"Definition—Mobius requires sunlight as the medium for survival."
And then Mobius died.
Silently, without any resistance—dead for lack of sunlight to provide life energy.
But this was not the end.
The Infinite Serpent never truly dies. It only walks from life to death, and from death back to life, again and again, in an endless cycle.
Rumble—!
Movement came from beneath the sands. The revived Mobius was about to abandon her human form, entering the most frenzied stage of rebirth—one devoted solely to devouring life energy.
Yet because Mobius could not move sand, her body was confined to its original form—her girl's form. She could neither escape that shape nor move even an inch.
And so Mobius died again, once more from the absence of sunlight.
Then came revival, death; revival, death…
At this stage, Mobius was trapped in an unending loop, as though it would never end.
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