Crack! Crack!
As Li Ruobing performed a dazzling series of operations on the console, the black heavy sniper rifle "Netherworld: Death's Kiss," originally mounted on a tripod at the very front of the deck, suddenly seemed to come alive.
It began to melt.
The originally sleek gun body instantly disintegrated into countless streams of black liquid metal, spreading frantically along the grooves of the deck.
In just two seconds, a twin-barreled turret brimming with violent aesthetics rose abruptly from beneath the deck!
The pitch-black muzzles were as thick as a thigh, flickering with an eerie blue particle glow inside.
"Fire Control Radar connected!"
"Energy charging complete!"
"Shipborne Mode—High-Energy Particle Annihilation Cannon, ready!"
Li Ruobing's voice trembled, a mix of excitement and fear.
She stared at the dense red warnings on the holographic screen, her palms slick with sweat.
"Qin Yu! The ship's load has reached critical levels!"
"If we don't clear out those filthy things below, the anti-gravity engine will overload and burn out!"
Qin Yu didn't respond.
He leaped directly into the turret's pilot seat.
The helmet with dark red patterns automatically clamped onto his head.
His vision instantly transformed.
The pitch-black sea surface became a vast green grid map in his eyes.
And directly below the ship's hull...
That was no human ladder.
It was a mountain of corpses piled from countless twisted limbs!
Innumerable pale arms, like giant maggots, clung tightly to the President's hull armor.
They writhed.
They shrieked.
That venomous malice surged directly into Qin Yu's brain through the data link.
"Trying to drag me down?"
A cruel smile curled at the corner of Qin Yu's lips.
"Then I'll drain the water dry!"
His finger pulled the trigger.
There was no deafening roar.
Only a sharp screech, as if tearing through cloth.
Screech—!!!
Two thick beams of eerie blue light erupted from the muzzles.
Wherever the beams passed, the air ionized instantly, emitting a charred smell.
It was a pure release of energy.
Unreasonable.
Unaffected by physical defenses.
The beams struck the densely packed "mountain of corpses" beneath the hull head-on.
Sizzle—
Like molten iron poured onto snow.
Those ghostly hands, which had been impossible to shake off, vaporized the moment they touched the blue beams.
Without even a chance to scream.
They vanished.
Completely vanished.
The beams didn't stop. They tore through the layers of stacked spirits with unstoppable force, finally crashing violently onto the dark sea surface.
Boom—!!!
Only then did the explosion sound arrive belatedly.
The seawater evaporated instantly under the terrifying high temperature, forming a massive void dozens of meters in diameter!
The spirits that had been trying to climb up were directly devoured by this enormous void.
Seawater rushed back in.
Forming a terrifying vortex.
Splash—
The strange force that had been stubbornly dragging the ship's hull vanished instantly.
The President, like a beast freed from its chains, surged upward by over ten meters!
"This is the power of an SSS-grade weapon..."
Yao Qian, standing to the side, had her mouth agape in an 'O' shape, still holding the empty beer bottle in her hand.
She stared at the massive, unhealed void on the sea surface, feeling her mind struggling to process it.
Is this still a gun?
This is practically a map editor!
One stroke, and a whole section is erased!
"Something's wrong."
Qin Yu focused on the radar scan displayed on the screen.
That last shot had cleared at least eighty percent of the filth clinging to the ship's hull.
Logically, this wave of the "Night Parade of One Hundred Demons" should have had its rhythm disrupted.
And yet.
The red dots on the radar hadn't decreased.
Instead... there were more!
"Gurgle, gurgle—"
The enormous vortex blasted into the sea surface wasn't gradually calming down as expected.
Instead, it began violently spewing black bubbles.
This time.
It wasn't just corpses.
There was... something else.
"What is that?!"
Yao Xue suddenly pointed at the center of the vortex, her voice sharp.
Amid the churning black seawater.
Thick, barb-covered black vines, like enormous tentacles, shot up violently from the depths of the ocean floor!
These tentacles weren't made of flesh and blood.
They were pitch black all over, dripping with a sticky, oil-like fluid.
At the tip of each tentacle grew a human face, filled with sharp teeth!
Those faces...
Qin Yu's eyes narrowed.
Among them, he spotted a familiar face.
It was the former number two on the leaderboard, the South Sea Dragon King, "Zhang Nanhai."
He was dead.
Now part of this... thing.
"Save... save me..."
The human face growing at the tip of the tentacle was actually still crying out for help!
The voice was shrill, laced with desperate sobs.
"Don't shoot... I'm human... save me..."
Countless tentacles, topped with countless human faces, sprouted wildly like weeds after rain.
They didn't attack directly.
Instead, they intertwined with each other, weaving into a massive black net that began to descend toward the "President" hovering in mid-air!
"Mental attack?"
Yao Xue's face turned deathly pale. She covered her ears. "He's crying for help... is that a living person?"
"Living, my ass!"
Qin Yu barked sharply, cutting off Yao Xue's wild thoughts.
"That's rule corruption!"
"Dead is dead. Turning into this monstrosity is just meant to mess with us!"
Qin Yu's finger rested on the trigger again.
But he hesitated.
It was because he had discovered a fatal problem.
The Ocean Stabilizing Pearl.
That pearl, which originally emitted a soft blue light, was now beginning to show cracks!
"Crack!"
A faint, crisp sound.
The blue energy screen inside the cockpit flickered violently several times, then visibly dimmed.
"Alert! Environmental rejection reaction intensifying!"
"Ocean Stabilizing Pearl energy output obstructed!"
"Rule suppression! Rule suppression!"
Li Ruobing watched the red data frantically jumping on the instrument panel, stomping her foot in anxiety.
"What's happening? This is an S-Class Item! How could it be failing so quickly?"
"Unless..."
Qin Yu narrowed his eyes, looking up at the sky as dark as ink above.
His intuition told him.
This wasn't right.
Very not right.
While S-Class Items weren't invincible, they shouldn't be suppressed this badly by a bunch of newly corrupted spirits either.
The Ocean Stabilizing Pearl's function was to pacify the sea's rules.
Now it was cracking.
That meant...
The rules of this sea area had been altered.
And it was forcibly altered.
It was as if someone with administrator privileges had directly adjusted the difficulty coefficient here from "hard" to "hell."
"This isn't any Night Parade of One Hundred Demons."
Qin Yu sneered, his eyes turning exceptionally cold.
"Someone is behind this, trying to push our heads underwater."
"Want to play dirty?"
"Fine."
Qin Yu took a deep breath, a hint of madness flashing in his eyes.
"Since you've raised the difficulty."
"Then I'll just cheat!"
He abruptly pressed a row of buttons on the control panel.
"Kiss of Death, form switch!"
"Unlock trait—Gravity Magazine!"
The originally double-barreled muzzle suddenly retracted, replaced by a massive, spiral-shaped strange launcher.
Black currents of electricity crackled and popped around the launcher.
A heavy pressure instantly enveloped the entire deck.
"Ruo Bing! Keep the ship steady!"
"I don't even know what will happen after I fire this shot!"
Without waiting for Li Ruobing's response.
Qin Yu directly aimed the scope at the "human-faced net" closing in below.
"Gravity Field Mode: Tenfold Gravity!"
"Kneel... for me!"
"Boom—!!!"
A pitch-black sphere shot out from the spiral launcher.
It emitted no light.
Even the sound seemed to be swallowed.
The sphere was only the size of a fist, appearing light and weightless.
But the space around its flight path twisted slightly!
The sphere accurately pierced into the center of the massive net.
Then.
It exploded!
There was no flash of light.
Only an invisible ripple instantly swept across a five-hundred-meter radius of the sea!
"Hum!"
The entire world seemed to freeze for a second.
Immediately after.
The once menacing, all-encompassing net of tentacles.
Was suddenly crushed by an invisible mountain!
"Squelch!"
The sound was like forcefully stomping on a tomato.
Countless thick tentacles, along with the wailing human faces on them.
In that instant.
Were violently crushed by tenfold gravity!
Turning into a sky full of black mush!
Not only that.
The sea surface below also instantly caved in under this terrifying gravity.
Forming a massive depression over ten meters deep!
Seawater tried to rush back in but was held down by gravity, unable to flow in!
Even the "Abyssal Lord" that had been watching from the clouds earlier.
Now seemed frightened, frantically flapping its wings to climb higher.
In that moment, it had sensed a terrifying gravitational pull strong enough to crush it into paste!
"This is the second trait of an SSS-grade weapon..."
Qin Yu looked at the "gravity pit" below that took a long time to recover, shaking his slightly numb arm.
This level of power.
Was practically cheating.
But there was little joy on his face.
Because the feeling of being watched had not disappeared.
Instead...
It had grown stronger.
"It's not over yet."
Qin Yu stared at the bottom of the depression created by gravity.
The seawater there had been pushed away.
Revealing the true scene of the seabed.
It wasn't sand.
Nor was it rock.
But an...
Eye.
An enormous, grayish-white eye that covered the entire bottom of the depression.
The eye had no eyelids.
Its surface was covered in red blood vessels.
It lay quietly on the seabed, peering through the "window" blasted open by Qin Yu.
Staring fixedly at the "President" suspended in mid-air.
There was no anger in its gaze.
Only a chilling... mockery.
Like a human watching a grasshopper struggling inside a bottle.
"What the hell is that..."
Yao Qian was so frightened she fell back onto the deck, the beer bottle in her hand rolling away and dropping into the sea.
"Deep Sea Gaze."
Yao Xue's voice trembled as she clutched the railing, her nails digging into her flesh.
"That's... a biological characteristic of an S-Class or higher creature!"
"It's been down there all along!"
"Those wraiths earlier, those tentacles... were all just bait it released!"
Qin Yu didn't speak.
His heart was pounding wildly.
Not from fear.
But from an instinctive tremor.
The owner of this eye was definitely not something players should be facing at this stage.
Even that "Abyssal Lord" in the sky might be nothing more than a little brother in front of this eye.
"No wonder the difficulty suddenly became insane."
Qin Yu licked his dry, cracked lips, the ferocity in his eyes growing more intense.
He seemed to have guessed something.
"They really want to screw me over."
"Not even following the plot anymore, just unleashing the ultimate move right away?"
He could feel it.
The air around them was growing thick and viscous.
Although the eye hadn't moved.
An invisible psychic wave was frantically assaulting the "President's" protective shield.
The surface of the Ocean Stabilizing Pearl was already covered in spiderweb-like cracks.
It could shatter completely at any moment.
"Qin Yu! The radar's malfunctioning!"
"All electronic equipment is reporting errors!"
"The gravity data is completely messed up! We're bouncing between weightlessness and hypergravity!"
Li Ruobing's scream was choked with tears.
The lights in the cockpit flickered on and off, sparks flying everywhere.
The ship began to shake violently, like a drunken man staggering.
"Hold steady!"
Qin Yu gripped the cannon's control levers with both hands and roared.
"Forget the radar!"
"Use your eyes!"
"Yao Xue! Take your sister into the cabin! Turn the defense modules to maximum!"
"But..."
"Get inside!"
Qin Yu turned his head, his eyes fierce like a lone wolf.
"That's an order!"
Yao Xue bit her lip, gave Qin Yu a deep look, then grabbed the collapsed Yao Qian and stumbled into the cabin.
On the deck.
Only Qin Yu remained.
Sitting alone in that black cannon turret.
Above him, dark clouds gathered, lightning flashing and thunder rumbling.
Below him, that enormous, bizarre eyeball.
All around, black flesh and shattered wraiths swirled through the air.
This was hell.
But Qin Yu laughed.
A somewhat maniacal laugh.
He pulled out a cigarette from his pocket and, ignoring how strong the wind was, stubbornly lit it with a windproof lighter.
Took a deep drag.
The pungent smoke rushed into his lungs, clearing his foggy mind a little.
"Playing by the rules, huh?"
"Changing the data, huh?"
Qin Yu raised a middle finger toward the sky.
Then flipped it around and pointed it at the giant eyeball in the sea.
"Fine."
"Since you don't want me to have it easy."
"Then nobody gets to have it easy."
He abruptly entered a string of commands on the control screen.
It was the extreme Overload Mode of "Netherworld: Death's Kiss."
Also an incredibly dangerous gamble.
"Devour and Evolve Trait—reverse activation!"
"Target locked: Sea Soul Crystal Mother (Fragment One)!"
"Confirm absorption?"
This was originally a method used to upgrade weapons.
But now.
What Qin Yu intended to do was not an upgrade.
It was detonation.
He was going to feed this stone, which contained fragments of the world's laws, to this gun.
Then use this gun to blast a hole through this bastardized, nonsensical rule!
[Warning! Detected extremely high-energy source!]
[Forced absorption may cause weapon damage!]
[Continue?]
The system's warning blazed a glaring red.
Qin Yu did not hesitate in the slightest.
He smashed his finger down hard on the "Confirm" button.
"Eat it... for me!"
"Bzzzz——!!!"
An aura even more terrifying than the earlier tenfold gravity instantly erupted from the black cannon's body!