"So... artistic..."
Su Wan's fingertips dug hard into the edge of her deep blue mage robes.
The high-grade enchanted fabric was brutally crushed into deep creases.
She had previously thought that using Ice Element magic to freeze enemies into ice sculptures and then shattering them was brutal enough.
The "one-click map clear" miracle before her eyes now trampled the elite education she had received for the past dozen years, grinding it ruthlessly into the dirt.
It directly erased the life trajectories of hundreds of thousands of beings from a physical conceptual level.
This unreasonable, pure violence completely ignited the rebellious switch buried deep within the Young Mistress's soul.
Lin Xiyue held up [Blackstone's Protection], her defensive barrier flickering in the raging energy storm.
She looked up, staring fixedly at the figure wrapped in golden light in mid-air.
"Sis, this is already considered violent demolition."
"The Dungeon Management Bureau will definitely issue you a sky-high fine later."
Her voice was very faint, completely drowned out by the wind.
But the fanaticism churning in her eyes could not be hidden at all.
How was this just clearing monsters?
This was completely like a black-hearted developer leveling an old city district, refusing to leave even a speck of dust behind.
In the gloomy basin at the end of the Grand Canyon, a dull rumbling suddenly drowned out all other noises.
It was some unimaginably colossal being, awakening from the depths of the earth's crust.
It was the absolute apex of the entire Swarm's pyramid.
The absolute ruler that had never revealed its true form before anyone.
The "Empress" opened her eyes.
The soil in the center of the basin churned as a Crystal Burrowing Insect, so massive it obscured half the Grand Canyon's pit, burst from the earth.
Its appearance was utterly different from those lower-level Mantisfolk.
Its entire body was composed of translucent deep purple crystal.
At the joints of its crystalline shell, rose-gold energy patterns pulsed wildly.
The massive wing-flaps on its back unfurled, refracting a dazzlingly magnificent luster in the dim light.
It was the materialization of the Zerg "concept," the ultimate endpoint of biological evolution, and the absolute entity representing the Zerg's matriarchal authority.
Inside the cockpit, Lin Qingyue yawned in boredom.
The red alert lights on the tactical screen had been forcibly dyed gold by the radiating Divinity.
"Hiding until now to make an entrance, its presentation is certainly fitting for a Final BOSS."
The being known as the "Empress" was the true source of all these Mantisfolk.
The bio-electric field it released upon appearing alone was enough to instantly shatter the minds of ordinary Professionals.
But this originally exalted ruler, upon coming into contact with the golden ripples emanating from the Sam Mecha, froze mid-motion.
The thousands of crystalline antennae on its head, used for issuing commands, abandoned their aim at the enemy.
All the antennae began to vibrate up and down in a strange and elegant unison.
This was an extremely primitive ritual.
A token of submission offered by a lower-dimensional creature to a higher-dimensional God.
"Is it planning to turn from darkness to light?"
Robot No. 055's electronic eyes flickered twice as its logic library finally grasped the only reasonable explanation after rebooting.
"According to wavelength analysis, the target is sending commands of 'submission' and 'sacrifice.' It has abandoned control of its swarm and is applying to return to the Origin."
"Authority transfer, officially beginning."
Lin Qingyue's voice carried a cold, mechanical tone, devoid of any personal emotion.
In this Dungeon named "Shadow of the Ancient God," the underlying rules were extremely sensitive to emotion.
Any mercy was a cruelty to oneself.
Since "greed" was the rule, she would play the part of the greediest Taotie today.
The golden Mecha pulled a trail of afterimages in the low sky.
Sam instantly hovered directly above the Empress's head.
The green twin blades merged into one in mid-air, gently tapping the opponent's most central Crystal cluster.
"You want to return to the Origin, so I will show mercy and send you on your way."
There was no explosion.
There was only a gentle, strange sensation of fusion, like sunlight melting snow.
The colossal, floating-island-like insect, whose accumulated Fate power of countless ages was enough to sustain tens of millions of insect soldiers for another century of war, had finally found its true destination at this moment.
A blinding golden pillar of light erupted within the massive basin.
The Empress's crystal shell, hundreds of meters tall, began to disintegrate from the inside out.
Countless high-purity energy streams were forcibly stripped from its body.
Dozens of bands of light converged into a magnificent river of stars, which then poured into Sam's power core with an extremely domineering posture.
The interface in the tactical visor turned completely into gibberish.
The golden energy charging bar danced wildly on Lin Qingyue's retina.
10%... 45%... 89%...
As this progress bar filled up completely,
The entire Grand Canyon froze in an eerie, static image.
The Mantisfolk on the outskirts, who had just hatched and were preparing to join the battle, stopped dead in their tracks.
Their carapaces lit up with a blinding white light.
Immediately after, they emitted a series of soft "pop pop" sounds.
They vaporized instantly, leaving not even a corpse behind.
The source had been physically deleted, and all branch connections naturally failed on the spot.
The entire war was declared completely over in the single second Lin Qingyue pressed the confirmation button.
The ground was covered in a thick layer of purple crystal powder, which was swept up by the reverse wind in the canyon and gently scattered into the air.
This was a bloodless erasure, a return to what was called "Propagation."
The towering Empress emitted an extremely short insectoid chirp.
Her massive body shrank drastically.
The once imperious overlord became a pile of glistening, top-grade Core Powder that could be sold by the gram at the trading post for an astronomical price.
[Ding! A massive amount of same-source Path power has been detected.]
[Data overflow, the System Calculation Core is urgently overclocking.]
[Parsing progress 100%!]
A series of shimmering black and gold characters frantically flashed across the center of the vision.
At the same time, the System's notification sounded in Lin Qingyue's mind.
[Ding! Congratulations to the Host for achieving the "Civilization Eraser" accomplishment.]
[Reward Settlement: Due to absorbing excess Path energy, the "Firefly Trial Card" has undergone a permanent mutation in its form...]
Lin Qingyue's eyes, which were somewhat unfocused due to overexertion, instantly sharpened.
[Firefly Character Card (Permanent/Rechargeable)]
[Status: Activated.]
[Trait Description: Maximum duration of the armed form per use is 30 minutes. Natural recharge takes 30 minutes. Charging speed can be accelerated by killing high-energy targets.]
This meant she now held a tactical nuke that could be reused indefinitely.
As long as she willed it, she would be the inextinguishable fire of world-burning on the battlefield.
"I've really fleeced them clean this time. I even stripped them of their underwear."
The golden cocoon of light in the air rapidly dimmed.
The three-meter-tall silver-white mecha landed heavily on the vitrified scorched earth, its descent breaking the wind.
"Sis! Are you okay?"
Lin Xiyue's anxious voice called out from below.
The scene of Sam forcibly devouring energy just now had been too overwhelming, the golden energy vortex blocking all detection methods.
"I'm fine. It's just that this buffet was a bit too much. I need to digest."
Lin Qingyue deactivated the mecha's built-in electronic synthesized voice.
Her familiar, lazy voice once again echoed across the field.
The twelve imposing gold-red fire wings on Sam's back shattered inch by inch, dissolving into motes of light.
The streamlined armor was revealed once more under the sunlight.
After being baptized by high-dimensional energy, the edges of the originally deep green energy veins were now plated with a dazzling gold trim.
Transformation deactivated.
A pink-haired girl in a priest's robe materialized out of thin air.
"Digest?"
Hao Chi pressed himself flat into the mud of the trench, his mouth full of sand and dirt.
The Zerg army of hundreds of thousands, which could have crushed a medium-sized city into dust, had been utterly annihilated, with the entire map itself being completely reset.
You call this being too full and needing to digest?!
This made a "veteran player" like him, who clutched a life-saving talisman and was ready to flee at a moment's notice, look like a complete joke.
"Team Leader Lin... in all honesty, are you really just a freshman at Tianshu University?"
Hao Chi's lips trembled as he looked at Lin Qingyue, his gaze no different from how one would look at a human-shaped natural disaster.
Lin Qingyue looked down and patted the dust off her priest's robe.
Under the pressure of the Dungeon's "Survival Instinct" rule, her stamina was draining at an abnormal rate after the intense battle.
She casually pulled a White Rabbit Creamy Candy from her pocket, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth.
The rich sweetness slightly eased the soreness in her limbs.
She mumbled unclearly with her cheeks puffed out.
"My student records state it clearly. You can verify the authenticity on the academic affairs system at any time."
"Also, don't call me Team Leader. It just makes me want to work overtime."