Chapter Ninety-Two: The Unknown Land (8)

Zhao Tianhe had originally meant to look for Alyssa, but he ran into her in the corridor instead. And by then, Alyssa had once again taken on the form of a gigantic monster, more than ten meters tall. No one knew just how many nightmare jars she had devoured to become like this...

Artoria and Elei both raised their weapons in tense alarm, but Zhao Tianhe simply stepped in front of the two women and waved a greeting.

“Do you remember me, Alyssa? It’s your heroic big brother!” Zhao Tianhe said with a cheerful smile.

“Heroic big brother?” Alyssa was holding a three-headed giant python that was writhing furiously in her hands. She tilted her head at Zhao Tianhe, then began stuffing the python into her face, tail first.

The three-headed serpent bit madly at Alyssa’s arm, but unfortunately for it, she was far too powerful. From one of the paintings around her, a torrent of steaming noodles, thick as vines, burst forth and bound the creature’s mouth shut.

Seeing this, Artoria and Elei grew even more nervous, and Zhao Tianhe felt a little awkward too.

Has she forgotten me this quickly? Well, that does make sense. Her intelligence is practically that of someone sleepwalking...

In truth, Zhao Tianhe was not even sure he could still talk her around.

“Oh! Good person! Heroic big brother is a good person!” Alyssa suddenly said. “I remember! Heroic big brother killed the nightmare so many times, and that’s why I’m not afraid of nightmares anymore. Big brother is amazing!”

Nightmares were much like horror films. The first time, anyone would be scared. But after enough exposure, people simply got used to them.

Alyssa was exactly like that. Repeatedly awakened by the nightmare jars, and jolted by both Old Barton and Zhao Tianhe, she had finally come to her senses.

However, for the final boss of a dungeon, this was meaningless. A revolt was impossible from the start, because it could simply seize another host at will. At most, the awakened one would just be discarded. Unless Zhao Tianhe could grind every monster in the entire dungeon dozens of times over, this trick would have almost no practical use.

After Zhao Tianhe roughly explained Alyssa’s situation, Elei decided to see whether she could figure out the structure of her body.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Saint Veil.

“I’m sorry, my lord. In theory there should never have been any accidents inside, so... so we didn’t prepare a backup for the recording crystal...” A shadow sat trembling before a communication formation, speaking to someone unknown. “It was our mistake, so I have decided to turn myself in and tell them the truth, as well as the fact that the dungeon has not actually been cracked!”

“It was only a minor mishap. It doesn’t matter.” From within the communication formation came a vague voice. “You do not need to reveal yourself. You still have a far more difficult task ahead of you. And this may not be a bad opportunity either...”

“Give the dungeon its final order directly. Erase all those souls, then open the dungeon,” the unknown existence instructed. “That will make our next move much easier as well. After all, credibility is very important. Since they have made such a firm decision, we cannot let ourselves fall behind them...”

“This... all right...” The shadow bit its lip, shut down the communication formation, and walked into a basement. There, it took out a crystal sphere shaped like a single eye.

“Zhuoke, enter the final stage,” the shadow said.

Although the image could no longer be broadcast directly, the shadow still had a hidden backup method for communicating with the final boss inside.

“The final stage? Erase the souls? But...” Zhuoke hesitated. “But there are still pests that haven’t been eliminated!”

If the final stage were executed, then all the nightmare jars would lose the source of their monster forms. In the end, Zhuoke would be forced to fight with only its most basic form and the dungeon’s own energy. But even it felt that its original form was far too weak. No matter how much it was strengthened, it would still probably be no match for Zhao Tianhe.

“What do you mean, haven’t been eliminated? That bastard Zhao Tianhe, the one they’ve been praising as a hero? How could he possibly beat you? You are my most perfect creation!” The shadow’s tone was full of naked contempt and disdain. “Then kill him, and only then carry out the final stage.”

It seemed Zhuoke’s memories of Zhao Tianhe came directly from its creator.

“Troublesome... to think that worthless trash would ruin such an important matter!” the shadow muttered in great irritation. “Then go on and be erased by nightmares, idiot! If it weren’t for you, those children might not have died either... damn it!”

Inside the unknown dungeon, Zhuoke watched a large group of giant monsters battling one another, but its gaze remained fixed on one place.

There, a tiny figure sat crouched on the ground, wooden sword in hand, wearing cloth armor, staring blankly at the floor.

“I never thought something so peculiar would appear! Ha... hahahaha... hahahahahaha...” Zhuoke laughed up at the sky as it looked at that figure. “Feel despair, fools!”

On the other side, Elei had also more or less settled Alyssa’s matter.

The reason the children had been directly possessed by Zhuoke was mainly because the nightmare jars had opened a breach in their mental defenses. And it was an extremely difficult breach to mend, formed by the laws of the dungeon itself, one that only Zhuoke could exploit.

Elei had no way to repair that breach. It was a flaw in the very fabric of the rules, impossible to mend. So she chose the next best thing: she added another layer of soul protection outside the nightmare jars. In that case, if Zhuoke wanted to possess someone, it would first have to break through that layer of protection.

“I feel much clearer now. This body... is it really mine?” Alyssa looked at her own hands. Her voice was not only lucid, but faintly afraid as well.

Having regained some measure of awareness, Alyssa seemed somewhat resistant to this body.

“A protective layer built from Garula spirits and magical power should work, but without my presence I still can’t be sure it can completely block that thing,” Elei said with a frown. “And there isn’t enough time. It took a full twenty minutes to finish. This dungeon is huge, so we need to move quickly.”

Zhao Tianhe nodded, then went over to comfort Alyssa for a few words. Although the girl had recovered some of her intelligence, her dependence on and trust in Zhao Tianhe had not disappeared at all.

“So, anyway, that’s the situation. If you do your best to help big brother clear this dungeon, then once we get out, you’ll be a hero just like me!” Zhao Tianhe encouraged her.

“Mm! I want to become a hero! This is only a dream! So Alyssa can do anything! I can kill all the monsters!” Alyssa nodded.

Zhao Tianhe gave the two women a sign that everything was fine, then nodded with full confidence.

Alyssa’s combat instincts had already been thoroughly awakened through these repeated killings, and she had become exquisitely skilled at wielding the attacks that poured forth from the paintings around her. That was why, by the time Zhao Tianhe found her, she had already defeated a great many monsters and grown stronger.

And now, with the assistance of the three of them, she was sweeping everything before her with unstoppable force, flattening every monster they encountered. Her height had grown to a monstrous thirty meters, and the paintings around her had become black spheres one after another. As they rolled, they seemed to contain entire little worlds within them.

This strength is already on the level of a B-rank boss, isn’t it? Zhao Tianhe stood on Alyssa’s shoulder and watched as she knocked a Zhuoke-possessed monster with a chrysanthemum-shaped mouth to the ground, drawing out its soul.

Naturally, Black Mist Zhuoke would not let this chance slip by. Riding on the authority of souls, it tried to exploit the flaw in the laws and seize Alyssa’s body. But just as it approached Alyssa’s nightmare jar, a ferocious mouth suddenly opened and swallowed it whole.

“Mm, the protection works. The Garula spirits, with their incorporeal state ability, can attack on the soul level. I deployed eight of them in total, so there’s absolutely no problem,” Elei said with a smile.

The Garula spirits were limited in strength, but their functions were absurdly numerous. Their abilities could be configured however one wished. From self-detonation to defense, they could do almost anything.

“Excellent. Let’s completely conquer this damned place before Elei disappears!” Zhao Tianhe said with a proud laugh.

And on the other side, after absorbing that monster with the chrysanthemum mouth, Alyssa clutched her face and trembled all over.

The pitch-black surface of her face began to crack and shatter, dissolving into wisps of black smoke.

When Alyssa moved her enormous ghostly claw away from her face, what was revealed was a spotless, doll-like countenance, with a pair of pale blue eyes and golden bangs.

Her long black hair, once dry, split, and curled, had become soft golden locks. Her ragged black dress, covered in strange ornaments, had transformed into a princess gown trimmed with lace.

Her huge, dead-tree-like ghost claw had become a delicate little hand, each finger adorned with ten golden talons.

Though still ghostly in appearance, Alyssa had now evolved from a vengeful spirit to a ghost princess.

“So strange... I feel like I’m almost able to control this entire dungeon,” Alyssa murmured dreamily.

“She evolved?” Zhao Tianhe looked at her with some curiosity. “So, if she swallows all the nightmare jars, would Alyssa be able to take full control of the dungeon and unfold it?”

“She could. But it still feels like there’s another layer between me and this dungeon,” Alyssa said, shaking her head. “Unless I break through that layer, I still won’t be able to truly control it.”

That so-called final layer was Zhuoke, the official boss. Unless it was completely dead, this dungeon could never be controlled by any other being.

“Let’s speed things up,” Elei said with a frown. “Don’t underestimate the other side. Who knows whether they left any backup plans behind.”

So Alyssa once again began her triumphant advance through the dungeon. But this time, something strange happened. The group went a full ten minutes without encountering a single monster.

“That thing is getting scared. It’s starting to pull its monsters back to use them for itself,” said Artoria, dressed in a swimsuit, her eyes sharp. “We need to press the attack!”

“Yes, but I can already see it,” Zhao Tianhe said, using his superhuman vision to take in the situation from afar. Yet the other side’s actions were a little odd.

A giant creature thrust a claw into its own chest, and its entire body then turned into a mass of smoke in a bizarre color. The smoke then transformed into a hand that reached into the body once more, changing into a tin-coated man wearing a grotesque mask...

What on earth is it doing? Zhao Tianhe stared at the scene, feeling rather dazed.