Chapter 25: Ragnarök
Ge Xiu opened his eyes.
He lowered his head and carefully examined his open fingers.
White, clean, with well-proportioned bones, intact.
From his fingertips to his palms, they were coated in a faint red mist, it was hard to tell whether it was moonlight or blood.
The sensation of touching the beating heart with the tips of his bare bones seemed to remain on his fingertips.
He tried to close his fingers and they slowly tightened over the void.
The power rushing in the blood vessels was clearer, the vitality was pumped to his limbs with the blood, making them tremble with joy.
Although the corroded and reconstructed nerves still vaguely twitched under his skin, bringing a distinct sense of pain.
But compared with that, the pain was insignificant.
His body in the last world was really weak. The poisonous water and air of the garbage star eroded the undeveloped body, causing chronic diseases and malnutrition. His body was so weak that he could hardy do any exhausting exercises, he had to spend more time every day to recover his physical strength. Even if it wasn’t for organ failure, life span of that body would still not be too long.
Now it’s different.
Ge Xiu took a deep breath slowly, the dry and cold air with a strong rust smell slashed through his throat like a knife, and poured into his chest. The slight pain brought an amazing feeling of pleasure.
A sense of strength surged in his blood vessels and his heart leaped vigorously in his chest.
Ge Xiu was fascinated by this novel and subtle feeling.
In addition, at the moment of absorption of the monster and transformation just now, Ge Xiu felt another new thing.
Some kind of broken consciousness, incomplete and broken information, flooded into his body with a rush of power, circling and jumping in his mind in flashing fragments.
Although not much, the amount of information revealed was exceptionally amazing, even far beyond his imagination.
This was completely different from the world he had last been in contact with.
It was called the Eliso continent. In addition to humans, there were elves, dwarves, demons and other intelligent creatures in this world.
There were two elements, light and darkness, on this continent, and they divided everything in two huge camps. Those two forces were led by the two main gods, the god of light and the god of darkness, with many other gods belonging to the two camps. The gods weren’t some kind of illusory idols that gave people spiritual sustenance, but they were a powerful, psychical existence. Each god had its own believers, churches, priests, idols, favoured races and followers. Believers fought each other because of different theological beliefs, and even gods could start wars with other gods.
All races in this world could master the ability to manipulate elements through learning, some become mages, some become warriors, and served their respective camps.
Ge Xiu stepped on the warm and slimy blood on the soles of his feet with his bare feet, the dark red liquid was squeezed out from between his toes, like crushed rose juice.
He stepped out of the bloody pool and soles of his feet touched the solid ground again.
Ge Xiu looked around for a while, the strange substance in the air wandered in his field of vision, gloomy and humid, even if there was no specific shape to it it seemed much cleared than before.
This should be the so-called element.
Ge Xiu looked at the elements in the air curiously, he tried to pull and touch the gloomy substances that escaped in the air, watched them condense and condense into soft, shapeless balls at his fingertips, and then tried to shape them into an idea in his mind.
There were tiny beads of sweat on his forehead, his slightly closed eyes stared into the distance without focusing and his long eyelashes trembled with the frequency of his breathing.
Once, twice, thrice.
The gray smoke gathered and dissipated at his fingertips, and then was forcibly pulled back into place again.
It doesn’t matter if he fails, just try it again.
He didn’t know how long it took, but finally, a long and sharp object slowly formed in his palm. Its pitch-black surface was smooth and hard, and it didn’t reflect the slightest light. The tip was extremely sharp and a bit of cold light was condensed on it. Coupled with the unique chill of a sharp weapon, it felt as if it could tear air like a piece of cloth.
Ge Xiu took a breath, his fingertips trembled due to the loss of strength, but the expression in his eyes was excited and bright.
He opened his eyes and placed the sharp weapon in his hand under the moonlight, the scarlet moon reflected on the tip flickered and glimmered under his eyes, like a strange light in the depths of the abyss.
A suppressed quivering smile passed over his closed lips.
——This world was very odd and interesting.
He liked it very much.
·
There is no day and night in Calvary.
At any moment, the sky here was always gloomy and dark, without a trace of light visible in the darkness, countless strange and evil creatures lurking in the shadows, waiting for the opportunity to tear each other to pieces. However, Ge Xiu gradually made up his own method for calculating time. At the bottom of the abyss, only a line of the sky not covered by darkness could be seen. Whenever the bloody crescent moon moved on this sky, it was ”night”. All the dangerous creatures in the abyss would be more powerful and bloodthirsty under the light of the blood moon – after a few losses, Ge Xiu began to avoid acting at night whenever he left the sharp rock cover that reflected red moon on the cliff’s edge.
Whenever the waning moon was in the center of the sky, it was “midnight”.
The weird pain would come at this moment, as if some kind of cruel biological clock, again and again, midnight after midnight, never absent.
This is why Ge Xiu avoided “hunting” during this time.
Yes, hunting.
Ge Xiu quickly adapted to the cold-blooded ecological chain at the bottom of the abyss—it’s kill or be killed, it’s eat or be eaten.
The prerequisite for surviving in the abyss was to live on the flesh and energy of other creatures.
Therefore, ever since he condensed his first weapon, Ge Xiu began to try to hunt, and in the confrontation with monsters, he exercised and improved his skills.
He creatively used everything he could touch. The dark elements cruising in the compressed air cover every inch of his skin to achieve the effect of masking the breath. He will use the spear tip forged with the elements in beast dramas. Soaked in the poisonous blood, and then used it to poke the monster’s sticky skin relentlessly, penetrating its warm, slowly moving heart.
Of course, it didn’t go so smoothly in the beginning.
Ge Xiu also missed many times when he started hunting, but perhaps the torture he endured every night increased his nerve tolerance threshold, so no matter how sharp the monster’s claws were, how corrosive the acid in its stomach was, no matter what strength, or what terrifying paralysis and hallucinogenic ability it possessed, he could always control and command his disintegrating body with strong willpower, waiting for the moment when the opponent relaxed his vigilance – and then finally devour, absorb, assimilate into himself.
It felt very pleasant to feel the vitality of the opponent blending into his body, even the intense burning pain that went through his nerves when reconstructing the body was addictive.
But the clothes that had gotten destroyed every time were really a headache.
After each fight, he had to waste time and energy to make new clothes for himself, which was simply an unnecessary waste of time.
However, as his abilities grew, Ge Xiu could feel his eyesight becoming clearer.
He could see the density changes and active levels of the elements in the air to estimate the ability and distance of the hunted object, and then decide whether to avoid or attack. So, soon after, the situation of standing naked and embarrassed in a pool of blood on the other side rarely happened again.
Ge Xiu advanced at an extremely terrifying speed, like a creature born to plunder and war, quickly passing by at the bottom of the abyss.
And the more creatures he swallowed, the more he knew about the world. The amount of scattered information poured into his body again and again, gradually constructing the whole world in his mind.
His current location was the opposite of the Chaos Continent.
Thirty thousand years ago, the two main gods of the Chaos Continent broke out in a war, and all the gods and creatures on the continent were involved. A protracted and tragic war broke out between the two factions of light and dark. No matter how long the war is, it will come to an end. Finally, the God of Light finally defeated the God of Darkness and expelled all the believers and followers of the Dark Camp, and sealed his godhead and the dark races that worshipped him to the opposite side of the mainland with the bones of the Dark God, ensuring that no creatures from the Dark Camp could be able to. Leave.
After this, the god of light and the other victorious gods retreated to the realm of God.
At this point, the era of gods is over, and the era of mankind begins.
As the burial place of the dark god, the opposite of the mainland is also called Calvary.
This is the city of eternal night, the domain of sin karma, and the malicious wandering place of all things and all souls.
The dark races that feed on darkness and malice are lingering on Calvary, vying for a scarce living space, hibernating secretly, waiting for their gods to come again, releasing his faithful followers from the back of the barren and cold continent and leading them Plunder and seize the victory and glory that should belong to them.
The reverse side of the mainland is full of rivers of blood and abyss. The ground is occupied by high-level demons. They have established a harsh and cruel city-state, while the abyss of blindness is full of low-end monsters whose minds are swallowed by darkness, struggling to survive.
Where Ge Xiu was, it was the bottom of one of the abyss.
The monster composed of blood and bones that tried to eat him that day was one of the dark races that feed on fear, named Ariyust.
The name was so complicated that Ge Xiu was too lazy to remember, so he simply called this creature jelly.
The blood moon climbed over the cliff again.
The faint dark red moonlight fell on the rugged stone surface on the summit, slowly climbing towards the bottom of the abyss, with a vague sense of uncertainty.
Ge Xiu shook the sticky stinking blood on the tip of the spear, raised his foot and stepped on the jelly’s corpse on the ground, walking straight to the center of the dense blood swamp, and reached in with an unchanged face.
The bottom of the quiet and windless cliff was filled with the smell of copper and salt, and the bloody body made of condensed blood made a greasy sound when it was stirred.
Finally, Ge Xiu took back his hand, and a bright red heart was slowly beating in his white palm, dyed into a pitch-black oily colour by the moonlight.
This jelly was stronger and more ferocious than the ones he had encountered before, which resulted in him taking longer than expected.
He threw his heart into his backpack.
With this one, there were four hearts in the bag, squeezed and lying next to each other, beating in a regular rhythm together.
This hunt was quite successful.
Ge Xiu closed his backpack, looked up at the sky, estimated the position of the moon in his heart, and walked quickly toward the area where he temporarily lived.
If he went back now, he should have enough time.
His steps were light and agile, walking through the darkness that cannot be illuminated by moonlight, his slender figure is subtly integrated into it, and it looks like a shadow passing between the rock peaks, covered by compressed and condensed gray-black elements. Every inch of skin exposed on his body covered his body’s vitality that was not deadly.
Suddenly, Ge Xiu paused.
As if he felt something, he turned his head and looked not far away.
The dense dark matter rippled there, heavy and cold, like a thick wall, which Ge Xiu was very familiar with.
It was not darkness that caught his attention.
It’s something strange inside the darkness.
It seemed to be some kind of a pale mist, faint, but vivid, mixed in the dense shadow particles, like the only bright colour in the night. It seemed to be struggling, but it is pulled down and crushed by the dense darkness around it, bit by bit, it became weaker and weaker, but it was still very clear.
Ge Xiu closed his eyes.
Yes, it was still there.
In his broad field of vision, the surrounding area was deep black and dark like an ocean, and only that one place was shining with faint light.
Ge Xiu opened his eyes, his gaze quickly swept across the blood moon that was slowly shifting position to above his head, and then changed directions, rushing to the direction of the fluorescent light.
The whistling of air friction passed by his ears, and the road ahead was bumpy and far away, he could barely see his fingers.
But Ge Xiu’s actions were still undeterred, swimming like fish in the shadows, skilfully avoiding sharp rocks protruding on the stone walls and deep pools of blood on the ground, as if the darkness couldn’t hinder him at all.
His nose could smell more and more bloody smell, it was still fresh, as if it has just dripped from the wound, and it also carried warmth of the body, which was completely different from the pungent and unpleasant smell of the monster at the bottom of the abyss.
The fluorescent light got closer.
The darkness around it trying to devour it seemed to perceive the approach of other creatures, and began to grow restless.
Ge Xiu quietly held the spear in his hand. After getting close enough, his muscles tensed up and then he threw it quickly and accurately—
The nearest monster was stabbed in the soft abdomen by the spear with tip smeared with poison. Then it came out on the side of its body, and it only had time to make a hoarse and sharp cry before it fell to the ground. In an instant, hundreds of bright and vicious eyes looked at the place where Ge Xiu was standing, making an angry roar.
The schistosomes were about half a meter long, had an armoured back, and sharp chelated feet that could dig through rocks.
They were extremely sensitive to the smell of blood. When they hunted for food, they would go out of nest, hundreds of thousands of them, like a black tsunami, leaving no bones left behind an Ariyust big like a hill. Ge Xiu had suffered from some losses from them, most of his body would get gnawed clean by them, only the weird totem protecting his most important organs and heart was left. Facts have proved that even schistosomiasis can’t eat through the barrier that firmly protects Ge Xiu’s source of life.
The sound of the hard clawfeet crawling over was dense, reverberating in the dark crevices, making one’s scalp feel numb.
Numerous ugly crawling worms rushed towards Ge Xiu like a tide, blood-red eyes flashed with bloodthirsty hunger and their mouthparts made a sharp, ear-piercing scream.
Ge Xiu skilfully condensed a barrier in front of him.
The schistosomiasis gnawed, digging at the wall created by the elements with its sharp chelated feet, piled on top of each other, and the barrier scraped and cracked in an instant.
Ge Xiu calmly watched the countless tiny cracks spreading and expanding rapidly in front of his eyes, silent in the darkness, coldly observing and waiting.
A shadow entered his line of sight.
It was a big and huge iron gray, slowly crawling into the edge his vision-
right now!
Ge Xiu’s eyes sharpened, he inserted fingertips into a heart in the backpack almost at the same time, and the vigorous energy was quickly absorbed into his body.
In the next second, the monstrous scorching firelight quickly rose, like a burning fire cloud that illuminated the entire cave as bright as the day, and the violent red flames drove the shadows into the cracks, the deep caverns were all visible.
Under the sudden burst of light and heat, the schistosomes wailed sharply, as if tormented by some invisible pain, its chelated feet trembled, and its worm-like body was getting distorted and deformed.
As if it had been accurately calculated, the cracked barrier in front of him shattered at the same time.
At the moment of shattering, Ge Xiu’s body that was already ready to go jumped up, flying like a cheetah under the slowly extinguishing cloud of fire, pulling out the spear that had just been thrown out of the corpse nailed to the ground with one hand, and rushed forward like a swift and silent shadow.
The sharp tip of the spear pierced into an extremely swollen worm body, and it was deeply trapped between the shell and abdomen at a right angle, and then it was struck down harshly!
The abundant and viscous yellow fluid spurted out instantly, the dirty and foul internal organs dripped down instantly, the schistosome in front of him wailed and rolled among the rocks, and then it was killed by the sharp weapon that passed through its skull in the next second.
When the mother worm died, the nest was ruined.
The remaining schistosomes were like flies that have lost their heads, rampaging in panic and chaos. They begin to cannibalize on their own kind, run away, or start to eat their own stomachs.
The flame above his head slowly dimmed, and the bright red colour was once again covered by the heavy darkness.
Ge Xiu stood calmly under the extinguishing flame.
He watched indifferently the disintegrating insect swarm in front of him, and the broken insect body he held in his hand was slowly dripping with yellow, green and verdant liquid.
The cave gradually darkened, leaving only a some red ashes whirling in mid-air, and the light of fire reflected in his eyes, as if a corner of the sky after a sunset, with still remaining temperature of the sun’s flames. The next second, a blood-red sunset was swallowed by ice-cold water.
Darkness fell back in the cave.
Most abyssal creatures were afraid of light and heat. Schistosomes without strong body protection were even more so, because heat would burn their bodies, and light will blind them, so they hate flames twice as much.
The mother worm was their absolute ruler and backbone. It combined the entire insect swarm in a rigorous structure and operated it like an efficient machine. Once the mother worm dies, the entire insect swarm will be like scattered sand.
Ge Xiu encountered the schistosome swarms three times before finding out their habits and weaknesses.
The first two times he just barely survived, and the third time he dragged his bitten and tattered body to find the location of the worm mother and tried his best to tear off its neck, and almost died with the entire worm swarm.
——And the fourth time, it was not him who encountered the insect swarm, but the insect swarm that encountered him.
Ge Xiu casually tossed the corpse of the worm mother aside, never looking at it again.
The fluorescent light that attracted his attention was not far away.
Bright, fragile and a bit weaker than before.
Ge Xiu sped up his feet and walked quickly towards the light. At a depth of fifty meters in the cave, he saw a thin translucent barrier barely held in mid-air, with remaining schistosomes gnawing on it. The bite marks and cracked lines spread across the entire elemental barrier. Several breaches have been chewed out and left incomplete in the air. Through the enchantment, several schistosome corpses could be seen lying inside.
He bent down and got in through one of the holes in the barrier.
A weird animal laid in the depths of the barrier.
Like a wolf, but not exactly.
On its back were huge, smooth and pitch-black wings, the bones in the wings seemed to be broken and they curled up behind it in a strange posture.
The soft gray fur was soaked with blood and stuck into strands, which were cut open from the chest to the abdomen by a sharp incision, and the blood slowly leaked out with its breath.
However, this wasn’t the scariest scar on it.
The horrible, intersecting wounds were like a bloody net, covering its thick furry spine, tearing the strong skin and faintly exposing the dense white bones under it.
The wound exuded a strong dark and poisonous aura. The dense dark element at the bottom of the abyss seemed to double its arrogance, causing it to spread at an uncomfortable speed.
It smelled sweet and moist, like an animal carcass slowly rotting under the soil.
This sinister and ominous feeling almost covered the aura emitted by the giant wolf itself – clean, noble, and grand.
However, even if injured, this animal still looked extremely dangerous.
The giant wolf stared coldly at Ge Xiu who got in. The cold-blooded golden eyes were full of fierce hatred and killing intent, and the sharp white canine teeth slowly dripped blood.
Lying next to it was the schistosome corpse torn into pieces. Obviously, the schistosome was close to an indestructible crustacean, but it was as thin as a piece of paper under the sharp claws of a wolf, countless soft internal organs that had lost their shelter scattered on the ground. Traces of splashed internal liquids could be seen on the stone walls in the distance.
-Lethal, powerful, and extremely destructive.
But at the same time, approaching its limit.
The scarred spine of the giant wolf arched up, its fangs showed, and the throat let out a menacing low growl.
Ge Xiu blinked without moving.
Time passed between them every minute and every second.
The giant wolf obviously became anxious, and its huge paws clawed on the ground. It obviously knew that its state could not withstand prolonged confrontation, so it decided to take the initiative to attack-
but in the next second, the weird coloured scars on his back suddenly deepened.
There was a depressed howling in the wolf’s throat, as if it was experiencing agonising pain.
The hind paws that struggled to support it suddenly softened, and then the wolf fell heavily to the ground.
The smell of blood in the air has become stronger.
The giant wolf finally couldn’t hold back and fainted.
Outside the cave, the half-curved blood moon hanging in the sky slowly climbed onto the narrow sky, slowly approaching the topmost position.
Ge Xiu exhaled.
It was too late to leave now.
———————————————–
Little Theater:
Ge Xiu: went out for a walk, adopted a puppy
A 6 feet tall wolf: What ◎ܫ◎
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