“Incredible.”

Boulder Town.

Standing atop the Great Wall, Eberts stared toward the distant city center, his face full of disbelief.

The colossal spore cloud, shaped like a giant tree, was trembling restlessly, its vast crown swaying as if caught in a storm.

Clearly, someone had enraged it.

His shocked expression slowly turned into one of gleeful fascination. Eberts clicked his tongue as if admiring a fine spectacle.

“It’s been so long... That thing hasn’t thrown a tantrum like this in ages. How many years has it been?”

Was it 20? Or 30 years?

If he recalled correctly, a bunch of lunatic shelter dwellers had ventured there long ago, and came out even crazier than before.

Shelter 117, perhaps?

Not that it mattered.

“This is going to be fun!”

A thrill of sadistic excitement flashed in his eyes. He looked like a man settling in to watch a long-awaited film.

Let rivers of blood flow!

Come on!

...

Eberts wasn’t the only one watching the city center.

Several dozen kilometers away from Clearspring City, a scientific research vessel was also observing the chaos through its surveillance instruments.

Onboard, Yang Kai was busily collecting data on the Mother Body while maintaining a live communication link with the Academy’s Research Division, relaying updates in real time.

“A small New Alliance ground unit has entered the city center... yes, it’s the one composed of awakeners. They cleverly diverted the evolved creatures around the north of the second ring, avoiding direct engagement and slipping straight into the no-go zone.”

“But it seems their progress isn’t going smoothly. Their diversion force ran into the Titan left behind by the 111th Orbital Airborne Division, and the assault team made contact with the Main Mother Body almost immediately after landing.”

“Frankly, I’m curious how they managed to locate that thing so fast.”

As Yang Kai looked at the holographic scan projection, his expression twisted into one of bafflement.

Decades ago, the exploration teams led by the Post-War Reconstruction Committee had tried countless times to pinpoint the Main Mother Body’s location, but never succeeded.

Clearspring City’s center wasn’t a single map coordinate, it was an enormous area. The surface was ruined beyond recognition, and the underground network was even worse, a labyrinth of collapsed tunnels and layers of prewar infrastructure.

The Main Mother Body of Clearspring City had long hidden within that maze, using the old subway and drainage systems to spread its spores toward the surface.

By analyzing spore density gradients, researchers could roughly estimate its general area, but locking down precise coordinates that way was nearly impossible.

Only by deploying massive numbers of ground troops and conducting a full-scale sweep could one even hope to find it.

The Defense Department had paid dearly in casualties during its early exploration attempts, and had barely managed to get close.

Yet now, judging from the sudden, violent changes in the spore cloud above Clearspring City, it was obvious that the current strike team had not only approached the Main Mother Body but had made contact with it.

Coincidence? Impossible. That level of luck was too absurd.

Yang Kai couldn’t make sense of it.

How did they pull this off?

...

To be honest, Ample Time hadn’t expected that following Little Feather’s coordinates would lead them to land directly on top of the Main Mother Body’s head.

What shocked him even more was that less than 30 seconds after landing, they were swallowed whole by a gaping, fleshy maw tens of meters wide.

“FUUUUUCK!”

Even Falling Feather who was flying above them, was stunned.

Before his eyes, a colossal abyss had opened up in the barren ruins, a pit like the mouth of hell itself!

Scarlet Slime Mold stretched upward like a giant man-eating flower, closing in a split second and swallowing both squads of the Burning Corps alive!

The entire ground was shaking violently, as if the earth itself had started to boil.

“Old White!”

Hang in there, brother!

Clenching his teeth, Falling Feather banked his fighter hard and aimed the cannons at the gaping maw.

With a burst of thunderous roars, streams of tracer rounds rained down like hail, tearing through the closing jaws in a storm of sparks and shredded flesh.

“Uuuuhhhhhh!”

A low, mournful wail, like the horn of a ship, echoed across the ruins.

Seeing the black blood and mangled tissue splatter across the ground, Falling Feather’s eyes lit up. The attack was working!

But just as he pulled up and turned to make another strafing run, the enormous mouth began to sink slowly beneath the earth.

It was trying to flee!

Realizing he was running out of time, Falling Feather aborted his climb and swung the nose back down.

But the Main Mother Body seemed to have anticipated his move. Almost simultaneously, a dense swarm of black shapes burst from the ruins of a half-collapsed skyscraper, flying straight toward him.

On closer look, they were Slime Mold corrupted quadrotor drones!

There were thousands of them!

Falling Feather’s face went pale.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

“Yiwu!”

Little Feather’s anxious warning reached his ears, and Falling Feather immediately pulled back on the stick.

Barely a second before collision, the Lofty Cloud arced sharply upward, skimming past the swarm’s outer edge by a hair’s breadth.

“Holy, the Slime Mold has gained sentience!”

Even knowing it was just a game, the realism was enough to make cold sweat run down his spine.

The monstrous maw had vanished, leaving only a vast crater in the ground.

A sinking feeling settled in Falling Feather’s chest, he didn’t know if his teammates were still alive.

“Yiwuu...” (Something... isn’t right.)

“What do you mean?” Falling Feather asked quickly.

“Yiwuuu!” (It’s watching us. We need to leave, now!)

Falling Feather blinked in confusion.

Watching us?

After all this fighting, isn’t that obvious?

Perhaps Little Feather’s tone had been too gentle, because he didn’t grasp the true meaning hidden behind those words.

And then, it happened.

The engine’s exhaust flames flickered, like candles in a sudden draft, then went out entirely. The fighter lost thrust in an instant.

Falling Feather’s face drained of color. It was just like a high-altitude flameout, except they weren’t even a kilometer above the ground.

Wait, the oxygen-draining spores!

The realization hit him like lightning.

“Oh, shit!”

Behind him, the swarm of drones was closing fast.

Normally, no drone could possibly catch a fixed-wing jet.

But without power, with speed bleeding away, his plane was nothing more than a hovering target.

As the swarm drew near and the engine refused to restart, Falling Feather could only dive, using gravity to regain speed, then turned straight toward the oncoming mass.

“COME ON THEN!”

He roared, slamming the trigger.

BRRRRT!

The roaring cannon spewed flame like a blade of light, stabbing directly into the black cloud.

Hundreds of drones were shredded instantly, tracer fire carving a glowing path through the swarm.

But there were simply too many. A single 20mm cannon couldn’t stop them all.

Soon, the survivors crashed into his plane, sticking to the fuselage like flies on meat.

The Lofty Cloud’s weight skyrocketed; more and more drones clung to it, smothering the cockpit in darkness.

As the last round fired, Falling Feather quickly launched his two remaining missiles before the wings were completely entangled, forcing a desperate crash landing toward the nuclear crater.

It was the only flat ground left.

Two centuries ago, the nuclear blast had erased every obstacle in the area.

He was seconds from touchdown when his peripheral vision caught a flash of motion, a black shadow sweeping toward him.

It was a tentacle.

Just like the mouth, it had been waiting beneath the soil for him to fall into its reach. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

Acting on pure instinct, Falling Feather stomped the rudder.

The tentacle whipped past the canopy, smashing hard into the fighter’s left wing.

But this time, goblin engineering’s one advantage shone through them all. The stainless-steel forward-swept wing sliced the tentacle clean in half like a razor blade.