Hyperdimensional Player

Chapter 204 Blood Sacrifice to the Demon God

With the help of the lich Kangus, the corpse monster Bert's appearance has changed drastically.

Duncan fitted him with various mechanical prosthetics taken from the mechanical monks and the Guardians, and then dressed him in the Guardians' rust-colored battle robes. As long as he wore a hood and a gas mask, he looked almost exactly like a fighter servant controlled by the mechanical monks.

By the time they left the collapsed underground ruins, the entire group had undergone a dramatic transformation.

Duncan donned the grey robes of the Insight Cult's mechanical priests, and Tasia disguised herself as a novice priest. With a cyborg servant following behind them, the three-person team, while not flawless, could at least deceive most people.

A formal mechanical monk, an apprentice following a mentor, a semi-mechanical servant, and a lich disguised as a servo skull.

Such a team can still defeat even if their identities are exposed, as long as they don't encounter an archbishop-level being.

F46 area, platform layer.

After returning to the platform level of the settlement via the underground passage, Duncan immediately sensed that something was amiss.

Because a large number of units marked with red appeared in the industrial area of ​​the settlement, while many units disguised as 'neutral' also appeared in the residential area, commercial area, temple area and other places.

Something must have happened.

Duncan gestured to Tasia beside him, and she immediately loaded her weapon. The group bypassed the abnormally gathered crowd ahead, and Tasia went to the living area, while Duncan went alone into the temple area of ​​the Cult of Machines. He didn't dare to bring the others with him yet.

Outside the temple square, Duncan saw Ian hurrying by. He grabbed the church deacon and asked in a deep voice, "What happened?"

Ian's expression was tense, but he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Duncan and said cautiously, "The Governor is dead!"

"Chaos has broken out in many of the lower districts."

"The foreman of the industrial zone, Kosov, led other workers in a strike. The city hall was unable to suppress it and is requesting the church to send out its friars to quell the unrest."

"Lord Duncan?"

"Where have you been all this time? Master Qiao has been looking for you several times."

what?
The governor is dead?

Duncan looked slightly surprised. Although this world was a theocratic political system, many of the hive cities still had administrative governors in the secular world. Their power was roughly the same as that of the colonial governors, who nominally ruled over hundreds of millions of people, equivalent to an independent king.

Of course, in reality, the great sages of the church have more power, because governors are changed from time to time, but great sages are rarely changed, perhaps only once every few centuries.

Ian said a few words and left in a hurry. If the strike in the industrial area is not dealt with quickly, it will soon lead to bigger riots.

Without the slightest hesitation, Duncan headed straight for the logistics warehouse in the temple district. After opening the door with his monk's insignia, he immediately picked up a lightweight exoskeleton armor and connected the interface to the mechanical nerve bundle on his body. Then, he picked up a fusion gun and ransacked the place, taking out all the high-level weapons stored there.

"Pastor Duncan?"

"What are you doing? This is against regulations! You must request permission!"

A female deacon in her forties or fifties rushed over, trying to stop Duncan, but the next second an electromagnetic rifle was pressed against her forehead.

This firearm uses steel needle ammunition, and one magazine can fire two hundred rounds.

"Step aside!"

Duncan, expressionless, gave the order in a deep voice: "Cultists have appeared in the industrial area."

The female deacon hesitated slightly upon hearing this, but still insisted without backing down: "A request to use a construct artifact requires the bishop's order."

thump!
Duncan didn't bother arguing with her and simply knocked the woman unconscious with the butt of his rifle.

After taking thirty magazines, totaling six thousand rounds of ammunition, Duncan took an adjustable 16x scope from a nearby shelf, adjusted it to a 4x scope by turning the gears, and then picked up an extremely heavy, silver-gray sniper rifle.

— Judgement T130 (High-Tier Artifact) (Construct Weapon) (Explosive Bullet) (Armor Piercing) (Precision) (Steel Casting Enchantment).

Compared to other firearms, its design is somewhat retro, resembling a sniper rifle from World War II, and it even uses a wooden stock. However, the moment Duncan touched it, he felt the soul of a rather ancient machine, possessing a spirituality far exceeding that of other firearms.

This thing had gone through several owners, and the mechanical soul inside tried to rebel, but was immediately suppressed by Duncan's will.

"Be good! Listen to me!"

Sparks from an electric drill appeared on the external mechanical arm behind Duncan, and after his gentle reassurance, the mechanical soul inside immediately became obedient.

"His Majesty."

At this moment, the lich Kangus's voice rang out, slowly saying, "I sense the aura of the Chaotic Ritual."

"I'm afraid a riot is about to break out here."

Duncan confirmed that something was about to happen through the red marker, while the lich Kangus was an expert in ritual magic. The Chaos Ritual he spoke of was a wide-ranging magic that affected people's minds. If ordinary people could not use their willpower to escape, they would become violent thugs.

In the mythological age, this was a dark ritual commonly used by demons. In the mystical age, some madmen also liked to use it in crowded places to achieve ulterior motives.

However, the one initiating this ritual is now a cultist hiding here.

When Duncan returned, he saw at least several hundred cultist-marked units, some of which had clearly been converted to red hostile markers.

"Give!"

Duncan tossed the electromagnetic rifle to Tasia and Bert, giving each of them ten magazines, totaling two thousand rounds of ammunition.

"Stay close to me and don't get separated!"

The words had barely left his mouth when... Boom!
There was a muffled sound.

hum.

Immediately following, a massive tremor came from the direction of the industrial zone, and then one by one, the lights went out. The moment darkness descended upon the entire lower district, the riot instigated by the cultists had already begun.

"They cut off the power supply!"

Tasia's expression changed, and she said with a grim look, "If the survival equipment also stops working, the oxygen here can only last for a maximum of forty-eight hours."

The entire underground nest is extremely dense. Without survival equipment and with ventilation ducts shut off, how long the oxygen can last depends entirely on luck. They are basically buried deep underground, and everything depends on survival equipment.

Click.

Duncan cocked his gun and said coldly, "That's enough."

"We'll find a way to break into the upper levels."

He finally understood.

Entering the upper levels of the hive city through normal means is far more complicated than simply attacking it.

When has he, the emperor of this mighty empire, ever felt so stifled? He's been here for almost two or three months and hasn't even seen the sun once.

Loud noises came from the direction of the industrial zone.

After the energy system of the entire F46 district was cut off, the temple district activated its emergency backup energy, but only the nearby areas had power. Accompanied by the piercing alarm, squads of the Guardians began to assemble. They were cold-faced and fully armed, and they headed towards the industrial area in groups of a hundred.

Dimensional space, projected onto the page.

A series of prompts appeared.

— "Chaotic ritual detected."

—An unknown summoning ritual has been detected.

A sharp shriek suddenly rang out.

On the right side of the wall outside the industrial zone, a hazy, ethereal banshee appeared in the darkness. She was about five meters tall and her entire body was translucent. Bullets from the battlefield passed through her body without causing any damage.

The banshee's figure spun around and rose into the air. The next second, a soul-piercing howl spread in all directions.

boom! boom! boom!
One after another, heads exploded. The Christian guards who came to suppress the riot all had their heads blown off, bleeding from all seven orifices, within a 500-meter radius. Even the mechanical cultivators mixed in with them died suddenly, their deaths extremely gruesome.

The lich Kangus's voice rang out, extremely grave: "Your Majesty! It's the Howl of Death!"

"Someone has summoned void creatures."

At this point, the Lich's reminder was unnecessary, because from Duncan's God's-eye view, life markers in the industrial zone began to die in large numbers, followed by the appearance of a unit marked with a blood-red skull.

—Pannosis, the Balancer of All Things (Void Demon God) (Ancient Hatred) (Crimson Skull Mark)!

From God's perspective.

In the center of the industrial zone, thousands of workers had died suddenly. Among them, one man stood on a high platform of steel gears, marked as foreman Kosov. He started the factory's processing equipment, and the corpses were sent directly to the assembly line, where they were crushed into a mixture of blood and bone under the pressure of the machinery.

The pooling blood seeped into the machinery, tainting the steel-cast prayers, and then washed away the holy oil smeared on the mechanical gears. Streams of blood washed the oil away completely.

Countless branches and roots entangled the machinery, and the steel machinery visibly crumbled like rotten wood. A complete cycle of life was accelerating, with black seeds absorbing nutrients from flesh and blood, taking root, sprouting, and coalescing to form a colossal entity.

In the blink of an eye, as if millions of years of vicissitudes had passed, all the steel machinery built by human civilization was buried under the roots and branches of countless plants.

Foreman Kosov walked onto the cableway formed by thorny vines. He reached out and picked a bright red fruit, put it in his mouth and chewed it. Then, laughing wildly, he jumped into the blood pool of life and death.

Rumble!
The entire industrial zone was collapsing rapidly. Countless tree roots pierced through the high walls of reinforced concrete, and magnificent steel machinery rotted and decayed like bubbles. Finally, a dark green creature entwined by countless vines and roots descended into the real world.

"This is a Void God? Then what am I?"

Under Duncan's astonished gaze, some of the cultists began to transform, including the foreman Kosoff who jumped into the pool of blood.

——Nature's Avenger (Balanced Unity) (Four-Star Silver Gray).

—Calamity Messenger (Balanced Unity) (Four-Star Silver Gray).

—The Evil Spirit of the Tree Sea (Balanced Unity) (3-Star Silver Gray).

—Spore Society (Balanced Unity) (3-Star Silver Gray).

The surging flesh and plants reshaped the bodies of the cultists, and one after another, grotesque and twisted monsters resembling primordial tree spirits appeared. In the chaos, the foreman marked 'Kosov' rushed out, and a dense hail of bullets struck his tree-like skin, sending wood chips flying everywhere.

call out!
Its ten fingers transformed into vines that shot out like arrows, piercing the bodies of six guards. The blood was instantly absorbed by the vines, as if Kosov had been saturated with blood. Kosov's body regenerated and healed at an astonishing speed, while the guards, apart from their mechanical bodies, were completely drained into dried corpses within a second or two.

Their corpses were like an incubation nest, immediately swelling after turning into mummies, and then exploding, but not with much power, instead releasing countless highly poisonous spores.

At this moment, the corpse demon Bert's suppressed voice rang out, muttering, "They are from the Avengers Cult."

"The Balancer of All Things was once one of the protectors of the nature gods, and He protected the weaker nature spirits during the mystical age..."

………………

(End of this chapter)