I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 856: Subjugation
Previously on I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality...
A rocky mountain hundreds of kilometers high tore itself up out of the earth, then swept across the sky like a war hammer.
The mushroom-man leader's immense body stood behind the mountain, tens of thousands of tentacles coiled about it and swinging as one, terrible earth element gathering madly along every last tentacle.
Then, down it came with a roar!
The four seventh-level Black Giants raised their heads together.
“Roar!”
At the very front, Molten Mountain crossed both arms. Its pitch-black body swelled abruptly, and the frame of liquid metal that composed it erupted with terrible strength.
Boom!
Beneath the mountain, the ground caved in on the instant.
Rock strata across tens of thousands of kilometers heaved up like waves, then burst apart with a roar.
Molten Mountain's legs sank deep into the earth, but with the other Black Giants bracing it, it did at least take the blow head-on and hold.
Before it could catch its breath, however, a vast shadow swept past overhead.
The mushroom-man leader had actually charged in!
Dozens of thick tentacles lashed down at once.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The Black Giants' defenses were punched through one after another in an instant, their huge bodies whipped sideways through the air, shattering a dozen-odd peaks along the way and throwing up dust across the sky.
The Nest unfolded at once, a great sea of blue gel surging up, several hundred thick biological tentacles stabbing out together to wrap tight around the mushroom-man leader's legs.
The mushroom-man leader let out a low growl.
“Get off!”
A terrible eruption of earth element.
Boom!!!
Great gaps blew open across the Nest's surface in an instant.
But no sooner had those gaps appeared than they closed again at a rate visible to the naked eye, the Nest still clinging stubbornly to the mushroom-man leader.
At the same time the other three Black Giants came killing in from the flank, fists driving out together.
Bam!!!
Three fists slammed viciously into the mushroom-man leader's rock shell, and the terrible force of the impact jolted the entire underground space.
And yet the mushroom-man leader merely swayed; that layer of rock shell did not so much as show an obvious crack.
The Echo Shells followed hard behind.
Boom!!!
An earth-shaking explosion drove the mushroom-man leader staggering back once again.
Cracks finally appeared across the indestructible rock shell, but they healed over again in short order.
“Its defense is too high.” Jie Ming's gaze darkened slightly.
Its condition might be poor, but it was an eighth-level creature all the same — and an eighth-level creature specialized in the earth element and in defense at that. Its defensive power really was outrageous.
Its rock shell was practically a natural layer of high-density law armor.
An ordinary seventh-level attack landing on it could not so much as break through.
The mushroom-man leader had plainly noticed as much.
It paid no mind whatsoever to the Black Giants' attacks, manipulating the surrounding rock strata like a madman while charging straight in among them.
Boom!
One Black Giant was sent flying by a single headlong charge.
Immediately after, a tentacle swept across and caved in a Black Giant's chest on the spot, with another tentacle right behind it.
Crack!
Another Black Giant was whipped straight down into the ground.
“Roar!”
Molten Mountain flew into a rage. Seizing the opening that Augusta's suppressing attack had laid bare, it lunged, both hands closing on one of the mushroom-man leader's tentacles and bearing down with mounting force.
But the elements around the mushroom-man leader's body erupted all at once, and the Black Giant's arms were forced apart by the sheer shock of it.
“Troublesome, this one.”
Jie Ming hung above the battlefield, his gaze never once leaving the mushroom-man leader.
Not only was this thing's defense high, its capacity to heal itself was every bit as astonishing.
Jie Ming could feel it clearly: the free energy in the atmosphere of the entire plane was being devoured by it in an unbroken stream.
Let the fight drag on and there was no telling — this mushroom-man might adapt to its own power and settle its condition.
They had to find a breach!
“Augusta.”
“Understood.”
Neither said anything more. They had not worked together often, but the understanding between them was considerable.
Augusta spread both hands.
In that instant, the gravity across the entire battlefield changed abruptly.
Boom!
The mushroom-man leader, just gathering itself to charge, sank sharply; the rock beneath its feet collapsed in an instant, and its movement visibly slowed for a beat.
Seizing the chance, the four Black Giants and the Nest lunged in together, entangling the mushroom-man as far as they were able.
A dazzling electromagnetic torrent streaked past in the distance.
Augusta raised a hand, and a vast mass of rock gathered furiously overhead — yet the stone above her head never grew any larger.
Terrible electromagnetic energy was compressed to the utmost, until the whole sky seemed to darken for it.
Electromagnetic Cannon!
A highly compressed, reinforced stone at very nearly sublight speed shot out with a roar.
The mushroom-man leader had already turned while Augusta was gathering her power, and the rock shell on the side facing her proliferated rapidly.
Boom!!!
In the instant the two met, the sheer force of the impact set off particle fusion, and the searing light vaporized every substance around it on the spot.
When the light faded, the layer upon layer of rock defense over the mushroom-man's cap came away in great sheets.
Even so, that single shot still had not broken through its defense.
Only a last thin layer of rock defense remained, but in the end it had held.
And in the blink of an eye the surrounding rock was gathering again, trying to rebuild the armor.
But Jie Ming had already picked his moment and struck.
“Void String.”
Hisssss…
A spatial cross-section, all but imperceptible, swept across the battlefield. It caught the weakened region atop the mushroom-man leader's head.
That layer of high-density rock law armor finally showed a single fine fissure.
Like a flawless pane of glass taking its first fracture from the point of a needle.
Jie Ming's gaze fixed.
“Now.”
The Echo Shell Talisman-Rune Artifact array, long since ready, activated in full.
Several thousand light shells rose into the sky at once.
Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom!!!
Elemental particles stacked without cease, and every explosion made the next round of attacks more terrible still.
The mushroom-man leader finally realized the danger. It twisted its body wildly and lashed a mass of tentacles toward Jie Ming.
But Molten Mountain was already in the way.
Boom!
The tentacle struck Molten Mountain in the chest. Its body shuddered violently, but it kept a death grip on that tentacle.
“Get off!” the mushroom-man leader bellowed.
Molten Mountain split the great maw in its chest wide. “Not a chance!”
Boom!
The several Black Giants that had just been driven back came slamming in from the flank.
The Nest too released several hundred more biological tentacles, binding the mushroom-man leader's other limbs.
Augusta's gravitational field bore down once more, and the mushroom-man leader's movement was restricted utterly.
And the Echo Shells in Jie Ming's hands had stacked to a terrifying degree.
Boom!!!
The final volley of light shells came down together, and heaven and earth turned to daylight in an instant.
The rock armor over the mushroom-man leader's head finally gave way.
Crack, crack, crack…
Countless fissures spread wildly.
Great swathes of the rock shell blew clean open, exposing the ceaselessly writhing gray-green living tissue beneath.
Its defense had been broken!
Jie Ming gave it no chance to breathe.
His left hand rose, and the Terminus Ray Talisman-Rune Artifact lit with white light.
Augusta raised her right hand at the same moment, dazzling electromagnetic radiance gathering in her palm.
The power of them both reached its limit at almost the same instant.
Boom!!!
Two terrible attacks tore across the battlefield together, the Terminus Ray and the Electromagnetic Cannon driving into the mushroom-man leader's body from left and right.
In that moment.
It was as though the whole world had gone silent.
After a brief stillness, a searing light kindled at the center of the mushroom-man leader's immense body.
Boom!!!
Terrible energy burst out through it from within; the huge body was punched clean through, and great masses of rock and flesh became fragments filling the sky.
Its immense frame swayed a few times.
At last, it crashed to its knees.
The whole of the ground shook with it.
Seeing this, Jie Ming slowly lowered his hand, and Augusta drew her power back as well.
The mushroom-man leader's life fluctuations had already fallen to rock bottom, its aura so faint it seemed it might gutter out at any moment.
“It's over,” said Augusta.
And just then…
Boom!
The ground shook without warning, and that vast body which had only just fallen actually rose to its feet again.
Jie Ming's pupils contracted slightly.
Augusta snapped into a combat state in an instant.
“After all that, it can still fight?!”
Looking at the mushroom-man leader with a hole bored clean through it, even Jie Ming thought this thing's vitality was getting a little outrageous.
The mushroom-man leader slowly lifted its head, its huge body wobbling, and then it charged at the two of them.
Rumble!
A body hundreds of kilometers tall, like a moving pillar holding up the sky.
Jie Ming and Augusta readied their attacks together.
But the next moment, the expressions on both their faces turned rather odd.
The mushroom-man leader had not charged far before it slammed to a sudden halt.
And then…
Flop!
The whole mushroom-man dropped flat onto the ground.
Its huge body rolled over, exposing the most fragile part of it, the mushroom stalk, completely before the two of them.
A mental fluctuation followed immediately after.
“I surrender! I am willing to become your slave!”
The battlefield fell into a deathly silence.
Jie Ming: “…”
Augusta: “…”
The two exchanged a glance, both with a trace of poorly concealed astonishment in their eyes.
This surrender… wasn't it a little too decisive?
What was more, Jie Ming quickly noticed another problem: the way this mushroom-man leader spoke was completely different from before.
Its earlier mental communication had been intelligible enough, but halting and broken, like a creature of low intelligence struggling to string words together.
Now its mental communication was extraordinarily fluent.
Jie Ming's eyes narrowed slightly.
“Don't tell me you…” He looked at the mushroom-man leader sprawled on the ground. “…were putting it on the whole time?”
The mushroom-man leader was silent for a beat, then answered with complete readiness. “Yes.”
“…”
For a moment Jie Ming did not even know what to say.
It had owned up quickly enough, at least.
Augusta could not help rubbing lightly at the space between her brows.
The mushroom-man leader lay where it was, not daring to move a muscle.
“The reason I feigned a deficient intellect earlier was to find an opening and pull something on you, but…” There was a certain bitterness in its mental fluctuations. “…I can't beat you.”
“From beginning to end, all I have ever wanted is to go on living. To go on living, I will do anything. And so, I surrender.”
Jie Ming glanced at the posture it had assumed. From a human point of view, the pose was more than a little ridiculous.
But postures of submission all have their own internal logic, and the great majority of them involve baring one's most vulnerable part.
Humans bow the head; certain beasts show the belly; and mushroom-men… given that the cap is the hardest part of their bodies, baring the most fragile part, the stalk, did indeed seem to follow.
Jie Ming looked away. “You're a candid one.”
The mushroom-man leader did not answer, only lay there quietly, plainly having given up resistance entirely.
Augusta looked to Jie Ming. “How do we handle it?”
Jie Ming waved a hand. “You take the contract. I've already collected plenty of samples.”
Augusta nodded.
She raised a hand, and a vast dark-blue contract array unfolded in the void, at its center a core rune signifying the enslavement of the soul.
Augusta looked at the mushroom-man leader. “Cast your soul into it and sign the master-servant contract. From this day forward, your soul belongs to me.”
The mushroom-man leader did not hesitate in the slightest. “Yes!”
An immense soul fluctuation rose from within it, and then a grayish-yellow soul core drifted slowly free of its body and into the contract array.
Hummm…
The contract array blazed with brilliant light in an instant. Countless runes turned into chains and coiled about that soul core, and a dark-blue contract seal was slowly branded into it.
The contract was complete.
Augusta's mental energy quivered faintly; she could perceive everything about it with perfect clarity.
Should she wish it.
A single thought would be enough to scatter the soul of this mushroom-man who had just set foot in the eighth level.
The mushroom-man leader clearly felt this too. It was silent a moment, and then, as though resigning itself to fate, it lay flat on the ground and stuck its rear end up in the air.
“Master.”
Augusta: “…”
Jie Ming: “…”
The two looked at each other again.
Truth be told, for all the planar wars the pair of them had fought, they had rarely seen an attitude as shamelessly practical as this one's.
Jie Ming looked at Augusta. “The result differs somewhat from the plan, but — congratulations.”
Augusta glanced at the mushroom-man leader on the ground, her expression complicated. “The harvest this time really isn't bad. I do have you to thank for it.”
And with that, this planar war came at last to a complete end.