Chapter Ninety-Three: The Unknown Land (9)

Zhuo Ke was not playing around; it was switching forms.

Its form-switching spell was hardly intelligent. Not only did it require a specific posture to activate each time, it also had a certain delay, making it horribly clumsy in actual combat.

But more importantly, the number of forms it could change into freely was limited. To shift into any other form, it first had to strip away all of its current forms and rebuild from scratch, like turning the pages of a book.

In truth, it was hardly surprising that the hidden hand behind this place had made the system so badly designed. By theory, no battle should ever have broken out in this dungeon to begin with. Even if some high-level hero had blundered in, it would not have mattered, for all souls were supposed to be sealed away. Who could have imagined that an S-plus hero would suddenly make a move and wake Zhao Tianhe?

Alisa’s massive body slowly rose into the air, then shot toward Zhuo Ke at astonishing speed.

"Damn it! It cannot seize a body? Or was it something cultivated after the seizure?" Zhuo Ke looked at Alisa in that state, but did not seem especially concerned. "It should be some kind of anti-seizure measure, otherwise the timing would never work."

Beneath Alisa’s fluttering princess dress were white stockings, and at her toes, like her fingers, were ten hooked claws as sharp as an eagle’s talons.

While in flight, the black sphere to Alisa’s right spat out a disc of light, slicing off several limbs from Zhuo Ke, who was distant and still in tentacled-monster form.

Zhuo Ke did not counterattack, because it knew that with its current form and energy level, any retaliation would end only one way: it would be crushed to death with absurd ease.

Fresh scars split open across Zhao Tianhe’s back, and the forty-stack resistance debuff was now ready.

All the subspace spheres formed from the paintings around Alisa began pouring fire upon Zhuo Ke!

Artoria and Ere stood guard beside Zhao Tianhe and did not join the assault. After all, their destructive power truly could not compare to Alisa’s. Rather than adding one more drop of water to an already full cup, it was better to protect Zhao Tianhe and guard against any surprise.

"Haha, it is over!" Zhuo Ke watched the hail of light projectiles fill the sky, and secretly rejoiced. "I will show you something fun..."

Boom, boom, boom!

A series of thunderous blasts rang out, and Zhuo Ke’s enormous body was swallowed by the light and shockwaves of the explosions.

The long nails on Alisa’s hands dissolved, and she reached into a nearby small subspace to pull out a wooden war hammer more than ten meters long!

As the explosions faded, a figure slowly rose, and Alisa, without saying a word, brought the hammer crashing down on it!

Boom!

The terrifying wind pressure generated by that monstrous force made even Zhao Tianhe squint; if not for Artoria gripping his arm, he himself might have been blown away.

Zhuo Ke, struck by the blow, dropped straight to its knees. One could see that the place hit by the giant hammer not only caved inward, but had also begun to turn to wood around the wound, with a great mass of vines sprouting from it. This weapon, derived from a boss-tier ability, carried a unique attribute-based attack effect. Those vines could even be harvested afterward to restore life and mana. One hit was enough to cost half a life.

But Alisa had no intention of ending it there. She kept hammering down again and again, blow after blow, until the wooden giant hammer itself cracked apart and vanished.

Zhao Tianhe, Artoria, and Ere were now standing high in the air upon the back of a giant whale-like Garula spirit, staring down at the dust gradually drifting away below, all of them deeply astonished.

"This should be settled now, right?" Zhao Tianhe covered his mouth and cast a breeze around himself, scattering the dust.

Where Zhuo Ke had stood before had become a vast depression dozens of meters across and more than ten meters deep. Countless vines spread around the pit, filling the ground riddled with cracks and turning it to wood.

It seemed that even if the giant hammer missed its mark, it could still produce these eerie vines, which possessed both erosion and recovery.

"How is it? Can you take control of the dungeon now?" Zhao Tianhe shouted.

"There is still a barrier. It will not work," Alisa said, shaking her head.

"Then it still has a clone?" Zhao Tianhe said unhappily. "It is not that strong, but it sure is annoying!"

"I do not know how big this dungeon is. If I leave, and the Garula spirit is not replenished, it will become a one-time shield. In the end, that thing might seize this body, and then we will be in real trouble," Ere said with some worry.

"It is fine. At this level, if we go all out, we can still bring it down," Artoria said carelessly.

"Good to hear... Hmm? Is Alisa a little off?" Ere frowned as she looked down at Alisa.

Alisa was staring at her own hands, her whole body emitting a faint fluctuation of mana.

"What is going on, Alisa?" Zhao Tianhe asked as the Garula spirit descended to Alisa’s shoulder.

"My mana is recovering continuously..." Alisa said with a frown. "And the vines are not spreading outward. They keep going downward..."

That vine-based erosion had its own priorities. Its first target, naturally, was the body of the enemy. Only when no enemy remained would it spread to the surroundings, and the current situation clearly meant that the "enemy" was still there!

"And that still did not kill it?" Zhao Tianhe frowned.

"The Tree Hammer is my strongest ability. If even that cannot bring it down, then there is nothing I can do," Alisa said, a trace of fear in her voice. "Am I... still too weak?"

"No. Even in a specialized form devoted to defense and recovery, this thing has definitely reached its limit," Artoria analyzed. "Ere, join me, and let us do it again!"

"Indeed. No matter how strong it is, at most it is only B-rank. It cannot be without a limit," Zhao Tianhe said with a nod, then looked toward Ere.

Around Ere, a great many spear-like prisons appeared. Her summoning time was nearly over, and there was no point in keeping so much mana stored.

The vines gradually slowed. That meant the attack effect was about to end.

Crack!

The pit filled with wooden vines began to split apart, and the tip of a sword thrust through from within.

Then, amid a spray of shattered wooden vines, a figure slowly crawled out...

It was a giant puppet with its mouth gaping wide, black button eyes, and hair that was dry and tangled like straw.

It looked like nothing more than an ordinary cloth doll stitched together from fabric stuffed with cotton, moving with a certain sluggishness and a rather absurd air. A wooden short sword was embedded in its right hand, and it wore a suit of cloth armor.

All in all, compared with the other nightmare monsters that looked as though they could send anyone’s sanity plunging on sight, this thing was a complete joke.

The problem was that this very thing had tanked Alisa’s ultimate attack and come out completely unscathed. At least from the outside, there was not a single sign of damage!

Zhao Tianhe looked at the cloth armor on the puppet and found it strangely familiar. After thinking for a moment, he suddenly realized where he had seen it before.

"Ere, is that not your clear reward?" Zhao Tianhe asked, pointing at the unique portrait on the chest of the armor.

It was a chibi avatar of a little blonde girl with twin tails. Her face had no features, only a single number one, representing that Ere was the first player to clear the mutated demon king.

"Is that the boy?" Ere blinked, then said with a bitter smile, "He got dragged in too, huh. But his nightmare is a little strange..."

"Yeah." Zhao Tianhe nodded, and the forty-stack resistance debuff surged out again!

Artoria’s entire body erupted with immense magical power. Stepping on the air, she shot forward like a bolt, and in a blur, her holy sword severed the giant puppet’s neck!

From the shaft of Meslamthea, a violent furnace-like heat erupted and pierced into the puppet’s body, then detonated with a roar, blasting a blazing hole through its abdomen.

The subspace spheres beside Alisa also kept releasing light projectiles of all shapes and sizes, battering the puppet until it shook all over.

Under the combined assault of the three of them, the puppet was torn to pieces.

"It does not seem that impressive. Could it be that it only has resistance against life-based attacks?" Zhao Tianhe watched the puppet be blasted into scraps without offering the slightest resistance, and he could not sense anything particularly special about it at all.

Its defense did not seem especially hard, and it had shown none of the recovery that one might expect. It had been taken out without the slightest trouble.

However, the next moment, everyone understood how that thing had withstood Alisa’s attack just now.

Without any warning whatsoever, the puppet suddenly reappeared before them in perfect condition!

"Hm?!" Zhao Tianhe rubbed his eyes. The scene before him was no longer something that could be explained by mere fantasy or sorcery. It was like watching a video that had suddenly skipped a whole edit.

"An illusion?!" Artoria closed her eyes in thought, then looked at Ere with confusion as well. "An illusion?"

"Impossible. Unless it possesses Grand-level strength, it could not possibly deceive me. And you as well. Since you had such a teacher, you should have received training in this area, should you not?" Ere clearly had learned of Merlin’s existence while chatting with Artoria.

"That is true. It could not possibly have that kind of power. But this phenomenon does look very much like an illusion! Should we be thinking along those lines?" Artoria nodded, yet still could not make sense of what she was seeing.

"Hahahaha! Heroes, are you bewildered?" Zhuo Ke laughed smugly, lifting the wooden short sword in its hand. "This is my world. Everything here is an evolution of the dungeon’s laws. Even I did not expect it to give birth to such a useful 'nightmare'! But now, it is time for you to taste the terror of this nightmare!"

With that, the giant puppet leaped up and slashed at Alisa’s dress.

Every part of Alisa’s body had already been pushed near the limit allowed by this dungeon, including even that seemingly light and fluttering princess dress.

Yet under the attack of that wooden short sword, the princess dress, despite its astonishing toughness, was directly cut away in a huge swath!

"Haha! Feel the power of the Hero’s Sword!" Zhuo Ke laughed wildly in triumph.

The sword in its hand could ignore the opponent’s defense and produce an effect much like the one seen earlier in the simulated dungeon, where children used tools to defeat monsters, meaning it could directly carve away portions of a body and existence itself.