Hyperdimensional Player

Chapter 205 The Great Purge

The battle was more brutal than Duncan had anticipated.

The steel jungle-like industrial zone had begun to collapse on a large scale. The cultists who rushed to the front were as fast as cheetahs, and were in no way inferior to the mechanically modified religious guards.

The leading Natural Avengers formed three battle echelons, each possessing a strange shape-shifting ability.

This ability is very similar to that of a Druid.

However, contrary to Duncan's expectations, the creatures that the Avengers transformed into were no longer ordinary natural animals.

—Mutant Claw Monster (Radiation Mutant)!
—The Ripper Worm (genetic mutation)!
—Two-headed radiated snake-skinned beast (genetic mutation)!

One by one, grotesque and terrifying monsters with obviously mutated organs emerged. Their bodies even showed signs of ulceration and were radiating disease, yet they were contained by a tenacious life force. Their thick keratin layer seemed to be infused with industrial waste, and their skin had the color of asphalt.

This is indeed a druid's ability, but the transformed creature is now a post-apocalyptic monster.

This group of cultists was completely different from the ones Duncan had encountered initially. They were more organized and disciplined, and their combat coordination was excellent. A small number of burst units used shapeshifting to traverse the gradually collapsing steel jungle, while the chanters in the rear scattered flesh and spores, and the gray dust took root and sprouted as soon as it landed.

Countless spores expanded, split, and aggregated, overwhelming the machinery in the industrial area.

They can take root and sprout even in the gaps of steel-forged machinery. Countless vines entwine gears, pistons, levers, and bearings. Inside the collapsed walls, cement and steel bars are mixed together, with countless vine roots intertwining to form human-shaped silhouettes that are four or five meters tall.

Click!

The steel bars on the ground were uprooted, and these steel and cement became the skeleton and veins. The entwined vines turned into muscles and skin, and finally, plant-like structures appeared on the battlefield.

"Take care of those steel-cast guards first!"

Avenger Kosoff's appearance changed again. It looked like a werewolf with festering skin as if infected with a plague. It roared and used all four limbs to leap and scale the steel jungle. With a single pounce, it knocked a member of the Guardians to the ground. Even the bionic spine forged from steel could not stop its sharp teeth.

Mars explodes!

It bit through the enemy's neck, and the poison seeped into the brain, killing the guards in an instant.

Rusty claws.

Kosov's claws were marked with gray-black marks. It braved a hail of bullets, its body covered in blood. Its claws sliced ​​through the air, cutting through the guns in the hands of the religious guards as if they were tofu. Its simple external mechanical skeleton became loose and hollow, easily pierced as if it were foam plastic.

The werewolf, whose body was infected with the plague, killed more than ten people. His hunched figure climbed up the tall buildings and then leaped down from a height of tens of meters.

puff!

The claws, imbued with the magic of rust, sliced ​​through the mechanical monk's steel armor. Amidst the flying blood and flesh, it was like a ravenous wolf, its claws flashing so much that only countless afterimages remained. It ripped out the mechanical priest's heart and lungs, completely emptying his chest cavity.

The next second, its claws pierced directly into the mechanical priest's skull, using the mechanical monk in front of it as a shield. Its figure continued to charge forward, roared, and transformed into a three- or four-meter-tall, festering bear-man.

"The taste of blood!..."

"How tempting!... Have you already begun to enjoy the feast?"

Just as the Mechanicus's army was urgently mobilizing manpower to support the werewolf attack, a strange, soft laugh rang out, revealing a pair of scarlet eyes and a pale, alluring woman's face in the darkness.

—Blood Drinker-Liba (Sage of the Blood Cult) (Five-Star Silver Gray)!
This woman's speed was truly ghostly.

She weaved through a hail of bullets, her movements so fluid that she could almost instinctively dodge their trajectories. As her dark claws and sharp fangs emerged, she instantly transformed into a ferocious, bloodthirsty humanoid monster. Her mouthful of fine, sharp teeth triggered trypophobia in anyone who tried to bite her, and each bite felt like being crushed by countless sharp spikes, shattering flesh and bones into powder.

A feast of blood!
As her figure suddenly leaped into the air, countless streams of blood turned into threads and converged on her body. All the nearby members of the Mechanicus were drained of their life force. Then, the surging blood turned into a misty blood fog that spread in all directions, and in an instant, all living beings with flesh and blood began to dissolve.

—Beast Mutant (Beast Cult) (Plague) (3-Star Silver Gray).

—Cult follower (beastification syndrome) (two stars).

—Cult follower (zombie) (one star).

The entire industrial zone was collapsing at a speed visible to the naked eye. The plague of flesh and blood spread in all directions, and the infected humans quickly showed signs of bestiality. Some of them even transformed into half-human, half-zombie monsters.

"Feel the world's pain! ...Feel nature's lament!..."

"A natural disaster has struck!..."

At this moment, the messengers of calamity on both sides of the battlefield emerged from the sea of ​​blood. They were half-human and half-demon. The moment they raised their hands, the ground in front of them trembled, and large-scale earthquakes and collapses began to occur on the platform. Hurricanes, flames, thunderstorms, and other forms of magic went berserk on a large scale, slaughtering all living beings in a rampaging manner.

By this time, the steel jungle of the industrial zone had completely collapsed, replaced by a dark forest composed of countless vines, roots, and spores.

Pannosis, the Balancer of All Things, has awakened and descended!

"balanced!"

"Purify!" "Purge humanity!"

This colossal being was a human vessel composed of plants, flesh, rocks, and steel. Its blood-red pupils held only endless hatred. The moment it took a step, the entire ground surged like a wave, the earth undulating like waves. All the buildings within sight were deformed and compressed. The majestic steel statue in the plaza was also deformed by the surging waves of magic, and finally collapsed completely.

"Get out of the way!"

Duncan grabbed Tasia beside him and jumped towards the area beyond the waves. He leaped down the dozens of meters high stairs, and with a creaking sound, the entire steel staircase was completely deformed, sparks flew everywhere. The mechanical arm behind him grabbed an iron pillar, and Tasia reacted quickly as well, hooking the other mechanical arm onto the tilted pipe. The two of them barely managed to keep their balance and slid hundreds of meters to the ground.

As for the corpse demon Bert, he wasn't so lucky. However, since he was already dead, he wasn't so easy to kill. He quickly crawled out from under the rubble, his right mechanical arm crackling with sparks.

"Humph!"

"Remnants of the old era!"

Just as Duncan and the others were dodging the waves rising from the earth, a rumbling sound came from the direction of the Temple of Mechanics. Steel-cast structures emerged from the ground, with mechanical inscriptions appearing on their thick armor. Servos were suspended on both sides, and thousands of mechanized Guardians surged out. Some units even set up artillery positions directly towards the industrial area.

—Steel-cast angel (construct incarnation) (golden skull mark).

The entire mechanical temple was operating at high speed, with countless gears meshing together, and silver-white Eyes of Insight rising into the sky, taking the entire battlefield into a holographic image.

When the construct of the steel-cast angel appeared.

The heavy gates on both sides opened, and amidst the waves of steam, steel-cast mechs, each over ten meters tall, emerged. Inside the cockpit, one could even see semi-mechanized mechanical priests.

At the far end of the temple plaza, a data sage's rusty robes fluttered in the wind. Along his spine, more than a dozen mechanical nerve bundles, like wildly dancing mechanical snakes, were precisely linked to the data interface of the Mechanical Temple. Then, his vast computing power transformed into a temporary network, bringing all the surrounding members of the Mechanical God Cult into the computational domain of the source power he had activated.

"Loading the mechanized mental domain!..."

"Blessings and prayers!...Activate the Iron Will!...Mechanical Guardians transform into Killer Form!..."

"Area F46 is highly contaminated!"

"Execute the purge agreement!"

At this moment, the data sage was like a ruthless commander. As he raised a mechanical finger, thousands of mechanical cultists in the right hall of the temple area began to chant prayers. The solemn chanting, combined with the roar of the rotating piston gears, transformed everything in front of them into a deadly battlefield.

An invisible electromagnetic wave spread in all directions.

Thousands of mechanical guardians advanced in a disciplined, geometrically-like formation, forming three echelons that stood guard alongside the steel-cast mechs, mechanical monks, and data priests.

Dark cannon barrels rose from below the Mechanicus, and as the infantry and armored vehicles advanced in unison, the Mechanicus began a massive, indiscriminate bombing campaign.

Once the purge agreement is activated, it means that the entire population of over 800,000 in District F46 can be treated as expendable resources.

To cleanse a region of millions of lives, thus preventing the spread of a magically brewing plague.

At this moment, behind the army of the Cult of Machines, Master Qiao, who had been cultivating in seclusion in the underground chamber, also appeared. He was like a humanoid machine that was constantly discharging electricity, and even the source power network of the Data Sage was isolated from him. He formed a static electric field on his own, which made the surrounding members of the Cult of Machines dare not approach.

—Mechanical Electric Monk (Four-star Silver Gray).

— Steel Cast Iron Man (3-star silver-gray).

In contrast, the church in a lower district had significantly fewer high-ranking members, but thanks to heavy firepower and a large number of mechanical apostles, they still held a clear advantage.

Especially the mechanical avatar of the steel-cast angel, who had now spread its blade-like wings, was like a sweeping metal storm, crushing all living things in its path.

"His Majesty!"

Just then, the lich Kangus spoke, his voice slightly excited: "So many souls!..."

"There are hundreds of thousands of dead souls here!..."

This was unimaginable in the mythical era, because a country at that time only had a population of a few hundred thousand. Even in the later Mystic Age, when the population exploded, cities with a population of a million were still not very common.

However, in the lower levels of the hive, a single lower district has a population of nearly one million. The lower levels of the entire hive are home to approximately 140 million people, while less than 20 million people live in the middle and upper levels of the hive.

Duncan turned his attention away from the battlefield and looked at the lich skull beside him with a puzzled expression.

The lich Kangus's voice trembled as he slowly said, "Hundreds of thousands of souls..."

"It's already enough to gather a bit of the laws of the Death Domain!..."

………………

(End of this chapter)