Nightmare Despair

Chapter 129 Insect Blade Bloodstains

boom! boom! boom!
With each step Zhou Kai took, the entire dungeon passage trembled. And when he took his seventh step...

A series of terrifying roars erupted, filling the entire dungeon in the blink of an eye.

Amidst the deafening clamor, Zhou Kai charged forward with his longsword at full speed, his destructive power almost comparable to a fully charged Yun.

Indeed, the blind spider wielded its pair of chitinous blades with absurd speed. Zhou Kai's eyes could barely catch the afterimages of the blades, but his body had no time to react.

So what?! Go ahead and try to take over the victorious charge if you dare!
The moment the broad blade of the Dragon Slayer Sword touched the blind spider's two bladed arms, Zhou Kai roared, "Die!"

boom!
The stalemate lasted so shortly as to be barely a moment.

Zhou Kai only felt the sword tip pause slightly before it completely crushed the monster, killing it on the spot.

The blind spider's bladed arms are sharp and swift, making it extremely powerful in attack; however, its body is as fragile as glass, shattering at the slightest touch.

A typical glass cannon, comparable to a superhuman.

As long as Zhou Kai survives the first sneak attack and seizes the initiative in the second attack, the scales of victory will naturally tip in his favor.

Zhou Kai grinned, forcing out a ferocious smile, and unleashed all his strength at that moment.

Click!Click!
...A series of crisp, cracking sounds rang out.

Zhou Kai was like a speedboat that had just hit a speed bump; after a slight jolt, it plunged into the darkness ahead.

Behind them, all that remained were shattered fragments of the carapace.

The Jingguan blind spiders exploded into a chaotic mess! Grayish-brown, foul-smelling bodily fluids, mixed with fragments of mottled carapace, splattered everywhere, staining half the tunnel. Zhou Kai was the first to be affected, his entire body a heavily damaged area.

This sticky, smelly liquid drenched Zhou Kai from head to toe.

laugh……

Under the corrosive effects of the acid, white smoke rose from Zhou Kai's skin and hair, and signs of decay and peeling began to appear.

Damn, I completely forgot about this monster's acidic bodily fluids... That's disgusting.

It burned my eyelids so badly.

Zhou Kai raised his hand and wiped his body and sword, sweeping away the pieces of debris and broken head stuck to them.

Seeing that the expected kill barrage had not appeared, Zhou Kai gritted his teeth and endured the pain, crushing the larger pieces of flesh and blood around him once more.

Until he shattered the enormous, fleshy skull atop the mound of human heads into dust.

This sudden battle has finally come to an end.

[Charging recklessly, seeking victory amidst danger, the Marked Chariot gains +1 exclusive experience point]

You have killed the 'Envy-Inducing Blind Spider' and gained 33 general experience points.

[Due to your Occult skill, you have gained the following bonus: Insect Blade*4]

"33 points? Not bad."

Seeing his experience points surge by 33, Zhou Kai suddenly felt that the slight corrosive pain all over his body was completely acceptable.

After all, a single monster provides 33 experience points, which is second only to the reward of defeating [Elizabeth the Wolf of Hatred] before.

"Speaking of which, these two monsters have rather similar names... Anger and Jealousy, Resentment and Hatred."

Just from their names, one could probably tell that these two monsters were unusual. But Zhou Kai didn't have time to delve into that right now.

The nightmare goggles hanging on his lower back suddenly started beeping; it was an alarm that Zhou Kai had set up beforehand.

The alarm sounding means that there are less than ten minutes left before the blood tide begins.

"It's time to leave."

The blind spider's carcass was smashed to pieces, making it impossible for Zhou Kai to collect, so he had no choice but to abandon his hunt.

Zhou Kai, dragging his sword, leaped into the deep water beside him before the manor guards could open the entrance above the dungeon.

Just before diving, he glanced back a few times at the figure rushing towards him, his eyes filled with extreme malice and longing.

"So...it wasn't a heavily armored knight after all?"

The horde of monsters that surged into half the dungeon was not the heavily armored knights Zhou Kai had imagined.

Instead, it was the kind of hook-shield guard he had seen several times in fragments of his memory.

The hook-shield guards were clearly far less intimidating to Zhou Kai than the heavily armored knights.

This means... "I will be back."

Zhou Kai licked his lips, as if bidding farewell to the monsters he had already priced as his prey.

Pfft!
Due to the weight of the Dragon-Slaying Sword, Zhou Kai sank to the bottom of the water at an extremely fast speed.

The numerous long hooks and javelins shooting towards Zhou Kai at high speed were quickly slowed down by the water's resistance and eventually came to a standstill.

……

When Zhou Kai emerged from the lake, the rain overhead had turned into a light drizzle.

Zhou Kai gripped the bank with both hands, keenly sensing a subtle tremor coming from the soil.

The beetles were surging upwards and would soon break through the soil and crawl onto the ground.

Zhou Kai didn't dare linger for even a second. He quickly put on his nightmare goggles and sprinted towards the higher ground of the town.

The heavily armored knights were still bombarding him from a distance with their lances, but Zhou Kai had already withstood several of these ranged attacks, and their power was much weaker than before, making them unlikely to pose a fatal threat to him anymore.

The power of the blood tide grew stronger with each wave. This time, before the rain had completely cleared, the dark swarms of insects had already burst from the soil and surged onto the surface.

Some of the insects sensed Zhou Kai's presence and chased after him, hissing as they did so.

A dense swarm of insects followed closely behind Zhou Kai, frantically piling up and climbing, looking from a distance like a writhing tentacle extending from the darkness.

However, these insects are far slower than Zhou Kai.

The moment the wriggling tentacles emerged, he had already plunged into the shelter's doorway.

Because his eyelids had been corroded by acid, Zhou Kai's exposed eyeballs were peeking out through the crack in the door.

The woodlice relentlessly pursued the insects all the way to within a meter of the entrance to Shelter No. 777.

They even moved forward another ten centimeters, bathed in the faint glow of the moonshine orchid.

Only when they were fully exposed to the glow and their shapes were clearly illuminated did they painfully shrink back, emitting white smoke.

"Since we're here, let's leave a few behind!"

Zhou Kai's muscular, dark hand, with only half of its skin recovered, suddenly reached out from the crack in the door.

The giant hand plunged into the surging swarm of insects.

With a snap of its thick, iron-like fingers, it grabbed three blood beetles the size of an infant's fist and scooped them back into the shelter.

boom!
The next moment, the door slammed shut.

The lessons learned from this successful escape came a little late, almost after Zhou Kai discovered that the changes in the blood beetles were even more terrifying than he had anticipated...

[Successfully escaped danger, the Marked Chariot's exclusive experience points +1]

……

Beside the fireplace, under the combined influence of the candlelight, the aroma of gastrodia elata, and the fireplace flames, Zhou Kai's skin and hair began to regrow at a visible rate. Before long, the previous signs of corrosion had completely disappeared.

Zhou Kai, shirtless, sat cross-legged in front of the fireplace and slowly spread his palms.

The blood beetles in his palm were already half-dead under the influence of the Moonshine Orchid's aura, barely able to move. Judging from the white smoke that occasionally rose from their bodies, they would all die soon.

After all, the scent of Moonshine Orchid is like poison to these woodlice.

"But the potency of this poison is irreversibly weakening..."

Zhou Kai flipped his palm over and carefully examined the blood beetle in his palm under the firelight, his expression gradually becoming serious.

"This thing... is different from before?"

The beetle, which was originally the size of a fingertip and was black with a reddish tinge, has now grown much larger, its shell has become thicker and heavier, and cracks have appeared on its surface.

Zhou Kai pried open its shell and saw several deformed young wings inside.

Its mouthparts also became larger and sharper. Zhou Kai stretched out his finger and pressed it lightly, personally experiencing the level of threat this thing posed.

"This is bad! If Black Hand hadn't further strengthened the defenses of my hands, this insect's mandibles could have easily torn my skin apart!"

However, even more noteworthy changes were yet to come than these terrifying mouthparts.

Zhou Kai stared intently at the blood beetle. A bright red bloodstain ran from its head to its tail.

He was certain that the bloodstain was a new feature that had appeared during this blood tide.

(End of this chapter)