Chapter 152: The Leviathan Awakens
The moment the Bagua formation deep within Jiuyou shattered into a million ethereal fragments, the earth groaned. Chiyou moved. No, that wasn't quite right. The entirety of Jiuyou began to shift. The legendary sunken realm they had been exploring wasn't just a cavern; it was the very belly of the beast.
The ground collapsed in massive, jagged chunks. Rovel twisted through the air, his boots kicking off falling boulders with nimble precision. The sheer drop would have been fatal to an ordinary person, but he rode the descent with practiced ease, his momentum entirely under control.
Far above, the true horror unfolded. Chiyou, the ancient Judgment-class Honkai Beast, finally awakened from its millennial slumber. It drifted upward from the abyssal depths, breaching the ocean's surface. With a mere sluggish shake of its colossal form, the ocean churned into a frenzy. A monstrous whirlpool formed instantly, a dark, roaring maw of seawater powerful enough to drag down everything within a radius of several thousand meters.
"Is that... Chiyou?"
The collective gasp of the Descenders echoed across the coastline. The moment the beast breached, a suffocating wave of oppression washed over everyone, freezing the blood in their veins even from dozens of miles away.
The section emerging from the churning waves was just its back, yet it towered like a jagged mountain range, scraping the clouds hundreds of meters in the sky. Against this apocalyptic scale, the entire bustling port of Nanwu City looked no larger than a child's toy. If Chiyou simply opened its maw, it could swallow the entire coastal region in a single bite.
And now, it was moving. Slowly, inevitably, it crawled toward the shores of Shenzhou.
"How are we supposed to fight that...?" A Descender dropped his sword, his knees shaking.
The Shenzhou players were trapped in a nightmare. Most of their arsenals consisted of basic blades, spears, and clubs. Even those wielding firearms or shoulder-mounted missiles found their weapons laughably inadequate against a Honkai Beast of this magnitude.
Worse, the raging vortex surrounding Chiyou made a naval approach impossible. Any ship entering that churning death zone would be instantly sucked down and ground into splinters.
Just outside the defensive perimeter of Nanwu City, a different kind of storm was brewing. Millions of foreign Descenders were massing in highly organized formations. Their eyes burned with a singular, ruthless objective: slaughter. They didn't just want to see Chiyou fully resurrected, they wanted to protect it. They intended to stall the Shenzhou forces, allowing the beast to feed, grow, and ultimately wipe the entire Shenzhou server off the map.
"Hey, brat. You should have other mechs in stock, right?" Himeko crossed her arms, glancing down at Sin Mal.
"I'm warning you, stop calling me a brat!" Sin Mal bared her teeth, glaring viciously at the red-haired Valkyrie. She opened her mouth to flatly refuse. After all, defending Shenzhou had absolutely nothing to do with Anti-Entropy's goals.
But then, Sin Mal caught movement out of the corner of her eye. She shot an annoyed look at Bronya. The silver-haired girl was floating nearby, leisurely replaying a holographic video of Sin Mal's pathetic, beaten-down state from just a little while ago. The audio of Sin Mal's humiliating shrieks played on a quiet, looping hum.
It was a threat. A blatant, shameless threat.
"Tsk!" Sin Mal kicked a pebble, her face flushing with anger. "The Anti-Entropy mechs I can mobilize right now are limited! I just lost a ton of them earlier. I can only provide five Thunder Mechs and ten Titan Mechs at most!"
Himeko's brow furrowed. "That's it? So few?"
"Few?!" Sin Mal exploded, stomping her foot. She wildly waved her hand toward the ocean. "Thunder Mechs, shoot through that big guy for me!"
On command, dozens of tracking missiles erupted from the deployed mechs, streaking across the sky leaving trails of white smoke. They slammed into Chiyou's rocky hide in a series of fiery explosions.
When the smoke cleared, Chiyou hadn't even flinched. Not a single scratch marred its surface.
"Heh." A dry, unimpressed scoff escaped Himeko's lips.
"...If you're so capable, you do it!" Sin Mal shrieked, glaring indignantly at Himeko.
Through the system interface of the Descenders, a string of damage numbers finally popped up over Chiyou's colossal head. But instead of cheering, a suffocating silence fell over the crowd. Despair clouded their eyes.
"I... I'm not seeing things, am I? One... two... three..." A player stammered, pointing a trembling finger at the beast's health bar. He swallowed hard, the sound loud in the quiet tension.
Eight digits. A full ten million health points.
That entire barrage of Thunder Mech missiles had barely scraped together 10,000 damage. They would have to repeat that exact strike a thousand times just to whittle it down.
"Major Himeko, the local forces of Nanwu City are deploying a massive stockpile of munitions for support," Ai-chan's crisp voice crackled through Himeko's earpiece.
"Distribute them to the Shenzhou Descenders," Himeko ordered, her eyes narrowing at the encroaching foreign armies. "Tell them to hold the line against the invaders outside."
Though Himeko didn't fully grasp the complex politics of these Descenders, she knew one thing for certain: she trusted Rovel. If he was fighting on the inside, she would hold the outside.
The player war erupted. Armed with the heavy munitions supplied by Nanwu City's NPCs, the Shenzhou Descenders formed a desperate perimeter, laying down a blistering curtain of suppressive fire. Himeko hefted her greatsword, charging into the fray alongside the others, her blade cleaving through the foreign Descenders with brutal efficiency.
Deep within the belly of the beast, the violent tremors finally subsided. Rovel brushed the dust from his shoulders and looked up. Before him lay a sprawling, magnificent ruin. Massive stone walls and crumbling towers were piled atop one another, forming the skeletal remains of an ancient city.
This swallowed civilization was the very reason for Chiyou's existence. The Fire Moth Project of the Previous Era had drastically accelerated the progress of human civilization, which in turn triggered an early, devastating response from the Honkai. To eradicate that rapid growth, the Will of Honkai birthed Chiyou, a Judgment-class Honkai Beast designed to devour entire cities.
And it seemed Chiyou could fuel its own evolution by consuming these metropolises. The devouring trait felt eerily similar to Vishnu. If Chiyou also possessed Vishnu's terrifying capacity for infinite growth, it might eventually cross the threshold into an End-class Honkai Beast.
Rovel couldn't afford to waste a single second. He sprinted into the twisting maze of Chiyou's digestive tract.
Ji Lin's lingering will was trapped at the beast's heart. To find it, Rovel needed to track the flow of Honkai Energy, which meant breaking the two massive seals locking the heart away. Only then could Ji Lin's will manifest. Only then could she be saved.
The interior was a dark, confusing maze of stone and flesh. Fortunately, the damp environment was saturated with water molecules. Rovel closed his eyes, extending his senses outward through the ambient moisture. The subtle currents of water painted a three-dimensional holographic map in his mind, revealing every corridor and dead end within a fifty-meter radius.
It didn't take long to locate the first seal.
A colossal purple crystal hovered in the center of a cavernous chamber, pulsing with a sickeningly dense Honkai Energy. A quick scan revealed its energy index far exceeded the maximum output of the Hyperion's main engine.
"Inch Force: Heaven Opening!" Rovel pivoted, driving his fist into the crystal with bone-shattering force.
A massive damage number exploded above the seal. But just three seconds later, a soft green glow washed over the crystal.
[+10,000]
The seal hummed, vibrating slightly from the impact, but not a single hairline fracture marred its smooth surface.
"A seal with 500,000 HP? And it regenerates 10,000 every three seconds?" Rovel stared at the numbers, almost tripping over his own feet in disbelief.
No wonder this damn thing required a direct hit from the Hyperion's main cannon in the original timeline. But the Hyperion was still a long way off. Rovel had to crack this walnut himself.
He took a deep breath, his eyes glowing with lethal intent. "Dead Force: Waning Moon!"
He threw another punch. Then another. His fists became a blur of devastating kinetic impacts. He unleashed Dead Force ten consecutive times in the span of thirty seconds, his knuckles slamming into the exact same microscopic point on the crystal's surface.
A sharp crack echoed through the chamber. Spiderweb fractures spread outward from the point of impact, racing rapidly across the purple surface until the entire structure violently shattered into glowing dust.
A heavy object clattered to the stone floor.
[Obtained Item: Soulium - Ice x1]
Rovel picked up the cold, metallic block. Ancient, indecipherable characters were etched deep into its surface. An ice-attribute piece of Soulium. A rare find. Perhaps the next time he visited the Elysian Realm, he could bribe Vill-V into forging him a top-tier ice-attribute longsword.
A string of system notifications suddenly chimed in his mind.
[Chiyou's sealing crystal has been broken. Resurrection progress increased by 25%.]
[Chiyou's current resurrection progress: 27.9%]
[The waters around Chiyou have returned to calm. Descenders can now travel by ship to subjugate Chiyou.]
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