HLnovel Chapter 209: Only a Fight to the Death
Chapter 209: Only a Fight to the Death
Beyond the hatch lay what must once have been the crew's living quarters.
It spanned four levels, each lined with private cabins arranged elegantly around a central atrium. The space was wide, luxurious—like a lavish apartment complex built inside the ship itself.
But now, that luxury had become a grotesque charnel house.
The atrium's ground floor once held a pool of over four hundred square meters. Now, it was brimming with clotted blood, transformed into a ghastly blood pool.
Bloated corpses bobbed within, rising and sinking in the viscous red mire.
Every inch of the ceiling was covered with densely packed, hanging black cocoons. The faint life-signs Athena had detected earlier came from within those pods.
"Lord Roya above!" Odin's voice shook. "Are these monsters feeding our blood to hatch their brood? Or are those corpses themselves being—"
He broke off, for one of the swollen corpses suddenly moved.
Waterlogged and pale, its stiff joints cracked as it clawed its way from the blood pool. Slowly, it clambered up toward the ceiling, ascending past rows of black cocoons.
Reaching the top floor, it found a bare patch of ceiling. With a sickening flip, its feet suctioned to the surface, suspending its body upside down.
From beneath its skin, yellow-brown mucus oozed in torrents, layering over its form again and again until it was fully cocooned.
The slime hardened swiftly, transforming the corpse into yet another black chrysalis—adding one more piece to the hideous mosaic above.
Plop.
The silence broke. Another corpse slid from the piled bodies at the pool's edge, splashing down to fill the space left vacant.
At that moment, the central cocoon hanging in the atrium shuddered as though awaiting this very signal. It split apart from bottom to top.
From the glistening membrane slid a black, malformed monster.
Its ugly, darkened face twisted with unmistakable hunger.
Nuwa and the others knew that look too well. It was the same gaze the bio-weapons of Oceanus Star had turned on them before their near-extermination—an endless, ravenous desire for human blood.
A hammer whistled through the air. Thor's Mjölnir struck squarely into the creature's face, smashing its craving back down into its gut before it could even act.
Catching the hammer as it returned, Thor's voice shook with fury:
"Damn them! Using our very bodies to incubate their spawn—and then unleashing them to slaughter and plunder us!"
Nuwa's tone was deathly cold:
"Kill them all."
At her command, turquoise psionic energy surged from her twin whips, lashing out to engulf the entire first-floor corridor.
Athena answered in kind, the flames on her Chaos Blades flaring over a meter high. Like twin walls of fire, they swept down the second-floor hall from both ends.
Mars's Calamity of the Progenitors roared with crimson lightning, arcs lashing out as he swung into the right-hand passage. The jagged bolts shredded cocoon after cocoon, tearing the hatchery apart.
Odin slammed the Eternal Spear into the ground. It leapt from his hands, flying row by row, piercing cocoons with relentless precision.
The hatchery's destruction triggered a nerve.
A violent psychic wave exploded outward, surging through the monsters' hive mind, reaching every node in an instant.
The hordes besieging Whitebeard and the others abruptly broke off, retreating in different directions.
Wrenching his club free from a skull, Kaido grinned:
"Looks like our new friends have kicked the hornet's nest."
Whitebeard chuckled:
>"Judging by the directions they're retreating, there's more than one nest they're guarding so fiercely."
Kaido laughed darkly:
"Old friend, you always read my thoughts. One nest each?"
Whitebeard raised his Murakumogiri with a smile:
"One each."
Even before the words were finished, Squard had already charged off, chasing down one retreating swarm.
Whitebeard bellowed with laughter:
"Kaido, you'd better hurry, or that boy will outdo you yet again."
Cursing, Kaido stormed into another tunnel, smashing headlong into the retreating horde.
The furious psychic wave radiated outward from the wreck, spreading far and wide.
The natives' wills crumbled under it at once. Branded deep into their very genes, this terror resurfaced, dragging their souls into primal dread.
The warriors, still kneeling before Roya, froze where they were, eyes snapping toward the wreck in horror.
Every fifteen years, this wave returned. And every time, it heralded massacres without end.
Every tribesman present had lived through at least one such wave. They could never forget what followed—the swarms of black monsters, descending to devour their kin.
The creatures drained their victims of blood and did not even spare the desiccated corpses.
This psychic wave was the source of all terror—the reason the tribes, even beyond the slaughter, waged endless wars on one another.
Only by conquering other clans, only by growing stronger, could a tribe hope to survive the next cycle of horror, to shield more of its people when the wave returned.
And fifteen years—fifteen fleeting years—was just long enough for ambition to cloud memory, for schemers to forget that the wave always, inevitably, returned.
Back at the two tribes' settlements, panic erupted.
Their warriors had marched away, their return uncertain—and now the dreaded wave had come early.
Left behind were only women and children.
The women tried desperately to corral the terrified children, shoving them into cellars. Then, taking up spears and shields, they stood guard at the entrances.
For the lesson had been passed down in every tribe: no matter how deep you hid, the black monsters would scent your fear and drag you out.
There was only one answer—fight to the death.
Fight until the monsters had gorged on enough blood, carried away enough corpses.
Only then could the survivors claw back another fifteen years of life.
Fight to the death!
Please drop some power stones support me at my
PS: Access the complete/finished chapters/series at Patreon: NanamiTL