Void Beetle Evolution Guide

"Is it only a part?" Kaisa, with her arms crossed, tapped her fingers lightly on her nail polish.

"To be precise, it's just the tip of the iceberg. Once it breaks the seal and fully adapts to the laws, the rest will grow out in a very short time."

The Wild Hunt deliberately provides a contrast: an adult appears as insignificant as a grain of sand in the eyes of the observer. The size of their eyeballs alone is that small; the overall scale of their bodies far exceeds the imagination of the observers.

"That's not the most terrifying thing. What's terrifying is that behind it are more than a dozen even more powerful watchers... If they escape and materialize, they will all possess power comparable to that of gods, and each one is no weaker than Bervis."

The crowd fell silent. The Void Queen had almost wiped them out, and now a dozen or so ancestors no weaker than Bervis had suddenly appeared—it was indeed quite alarming.

However, the Wild Hunt would never leave them with a dead end; there must be some way to break the deadlock.

“Why keep emphasizing physical entities? Are they something strange?” Katarina asked, as Cassiopeia rested her head on her shoulder, smiling without saying a word.

"To borrow Pierre's words, the Void existed long before the first star lit up in the distant cosmos. It was perfect, unique, and silent. Then, a voice appeared. It was the voice of existence. The whispers that traveled from this world were like fire and poison to the Void, scorching it. Immersed in it, the Void gave birth to the first consciousness, the so-called Watchers."

"From the very beginning, the void has been imbued with an unspeakable hatred by existence, and it will not hesitate to bury all reality. But to do this, it must enter the game itself. And once it enters the material realm, it will be forced to change, growing into a physical form under the constraints of the laws. Only by possessing a physical form can it move in our world."

"So, our plan is to prevent them from coming out? To prevent them from turning illusion into reality?"

"As expected of someone from a military background, your tactical instincts are quite sharp." Wild Hunt praised Katarina's agility and continued, "We might be able to handle one forward, but if they all come out, then this world is just waiting to be devoured."

Wild Hunt coughed twice, preparing to speak. "Lissandra timed it perfectly back then, freezing the first Watcher before it could adapt to the material world, causing all the subsequent terrifying beings to be trapped in the interdimensional portal. Our battle plan is to take advantage of the situation created by Lissandra, use swift and decisive action to kill the first Watcher, and then close the portal to keep all the remaining Watchers out."

Seeing that the Wild Hunt didn't reveal her secrets in front of so many people and even spoke well of her, Lissandra loosened her clenched fingers slightly. She said, "What if the Watcher stops us from closing the passage? It's not a mindless monster; it certainly won't let us do as we please."

"This is another part of the plan. I will have someone use Nightfall to transfer it to the Underworld, and the rest of us will do everything we can to seal off the passage. As long as those monitors haven't materialized, suppressing them shouldn't be a problem."

A while ago, Kai'Sa, never one to sit still, went to the underground cavities of Shurima to find several regeneration pools. She dragged Syndra and Katarina, keystone holders, along with her to seal the passages and repair the barriers, thus gaining some experience. Now, they're not exactly rusty at this; if the passage isn't too large, they can seal it off on their own.

“No wonder they targeted Mordekaiser; so Nightfall has this use.” Listening attentively, LeBlanc finally realized why the Wild Hunt and Cassiopeia had been at the Well of Souls. She humbly said, “If the Watcher truly possesses power comparable to a god, surely a small underworld couldn’t contain such a mighty being?”

"The person responsible for dragging the Watcher into the underworld needs to take the rune bomb and self-destruct with it. This is the only way to save this place. Otherwise, starting from where we are standing, everything within a hundred miles will be wiped out of this world."

"Heh...hehe..." The others knew the power of the rune bomb, but LeBlanc's heart skipped a beat when she heard it. She could only laugh awkwardly, hoping that such bad luck would not happen to her. She was the only dead person here.

Then Kai'Sa stepped forward and said without hesitation, "Leave the task of killing the Watchers to me. Now I finally understand what Cassiopeia was up to. She didn't activate the rune bomb during the Purple Sea; she was planning to use it here."

"No, you don't understand. This is something I should do." Cassiopeia, who had been silent until now, suddenly retorted loudly. Her words were startling, asserting that no one else could do it.

"You?!" Everyone exclaimed in unison, their voices rising eight octaves as they all looked at Cassiopeia in utter astonishment.

This is clearly a suicide mission, so why would she, a coward who loves life so much, volunteer for it? Could it be that she's hiding some secret?

"Interesting." Even Syndra smiled, a rare occurrence.

Chapter 798 The Side Effects of Rune Bombs

"Cassiopeia! Are you crazy or have you taken the wrong medicine? Don't you want to listen to what you're saying?" Katarina dragged the outspoken Cassiopeia to the front, her chest heaving with anger, wishing she could kick her in the butt. She was a woman with a sharp tongue but a soft heart; no one cared about her sister more than she did.

"What are you up to now?" Kai'Sa squinted at Cassiopeia, her eyes filled with suspicion. "I can resurrect, but you can't. Under the rune bomb, all beings are equal. If your body is destroyed, I won't be able to resurrect you even if I wanted to afterwards."

Seeing everyone questioning her, Cassiopeia's lips never left her mouth in a smile. The Wild Hunt offered no explanation, so she had to reveal her plan herself.

“I’ve thought about all of this already.” She countered, “Have you considered what the consequences would be if the Runestone were detonated in the Underworld?”

"Haven't we already said that within a hundred miles, no one will be spared?"

Cassiopeia shook her head, feigning profundity: "It's not that simple. If the runes cannot return to the main world for an extended period, it will trigger a series of chain reactions. The corresponding laws will shatter, causing a crisis no less severe than the end of the world."

"Without perseverance, all things wither and life and death are unpredictable; newborns cannot be born, and the dead cannot rest in peace; without magic, the sky collapses and the earth crumbles, disasters rage, the sky burns and the earth is flooded; without precision, people cannot develop their wisdom and civilization cannot continue, and will soon decline back to the primitive era."

"If we want to minimize the impact, only I can do this. I took Nightfall from Mordekaiser, so it is only right that I do this. Fate is inherently elusive and beyond our control; whether it is present or not will not have any effect."

Seeing Cassiopeia's serious expression, Kasha pondered for a moment, her eyes flickering. "I didn't expect you to have this kind of consideration. But how do you plan to survive?"

"Are you looking at me with new respect? Don't worry, I have a way to deal with that. I may not be able to come back for a while, but I believe we will meet again someday."

"Judging from your tone, are you saying goodbye to us?" Kasha asked. Katarina, standing to the side, was already impatient, constantly glaring at Cassiopeia, trying to use her bloodline to suppress her unruly younger sister.

But Cassiopeia was a very opinionated person, and she completely ignored her, continuing to joke, "What? You can't bear to part with me already?"

Kaisa rolled her eyes at her; that smug look was anything but touching. She simply changed the subject: "Voliber is coming soon, and we'll need to send some people to stop him."

With Lissandra having absorbed Anivia's power, there was no room for negotiation. Kai'Sa believed the situation was beyond repair and someone had to stop Volibear.

"The plan cannot be affected, and the main force should be deployed to the front lines."

Lissandra understood his meaning and said, "Let the Frostguards stop the Bearmen."

"Without demigod-level combat power, how can they stop Volibear? No matter how strong the walls of Frostguard Fortress are, they will be shattered by a single impact from a demigod."

Wild Hunt nodded in deep agreement: "Then let LeBlanc go."

"What?! Send me?!" LeBlanc wondered if she'd misheard. Even if she was being used as cannon fodder, this was unacceptable. What could she possibly do? She hadn't even solved her cold resistance problem, and now she was being sent to deal with the bear army? She'd probably be struck dead by Volibear's lightning the moment she saw them, not even lasting a minute.

Wild Hunt looked into her eyes, smiled meaningfully, and said, "Aren't you best at impersonating others? It's your turn to perform."

As soon as the words were spoken, a violent tremor suddenly struck beneath their feet. The creature beneath them let out a deafening murmur, and its momentary thud caused the fortress to tremble violently. Looking around, one could see glaciers collapsing, and the entire fortress was plunged into chaos.

"The Watcher is about to wake up, so this is settled. Kasha, you and the others move the Ice Egg to the Bridge of Sorrow. Act immediately, there's no room for error!" Wild Hunt ordered the others, then added, "Cassiopeia, you stay here, I have something to say to you."

“Okay.” Kasha readily agreed, then had Portil reveal his true form as an ice dragon and airlift the ice egg to the bridge. LeBlanc, meanwhile, guessed at the Wild Hunt’s intentions and dashed towards the city gate.

In the blink of an eye, only two people remained in the spire.

"Are you really going to do this?" the Wild Hunt asked.

Cassiopeia was still playing with her nails, looking nonchalant: "I was hoping to elicit some tears, but knowing Kasha's personality, if I lied to her and said I was never coming back, she would never agree to let me go."

"Are you so sure you'll come back alive?" (Your Mei, you Kong, you Lin Zai Zai, are you...?)

Cassiopeia curled her lips into a smile, placed her hands on Wild Hunt's shoulders, and offered her lips with a seductive smile: "Thank you for your concern, Master. That's also... part of the plan."

"You're just being mysterious again," Wild Hunt thought, not wanting to waste time, and simply handed Nightfall to Cassiopeia. "You'd better watch yourself."

After the kiss goodbye, and once Wild Hunt had left the ice chamber, Cassiopeia touched her crimson lips with her finger, unable to contain her excitement as she murmured to herself, "Master, don't blame Cassiopeia for being greedy; this is all to occupy a special place in your heart."

……

Frostguard Fortress is a city built inside a glacier. Its internal structure is hidden within the glacier, and from the outside, only towering spires can be seen. Those who have never been inside have no way of knowing its full extent, unaware that those tall spires are just the tip of the iceberg of a huge fortress.

The fortress walls were built halfway up a mountain, so steep as to be almost vertical, that they were impossible to climb. The only way to reach the cold and deep interior of the main fortress was by crossing a drawbridge that connected to another iceberg.

Just before the great battle, the wind and snow became unusually fierce, as if Anivia were flapping her wings incessantly above Frostguard Fortress, blowing out fierce winds and setting up an ice storm to cover the battlefield.

The cold here can brittle steel and freeze a person's upper and lower eyelids together, making even blinking a painful tearing sensation at the corner of the eye.

But the army assembled here today is a terrifying legion of humans, bears, and half-bear monsters, led by an unyielding bear spirit. They would never yield to the harsh weather, nor would it hinder their advance. On the contrary, their arrival exacerbated the abnormal weather; the morning light could never penetrate the churning, raging clouds, with only lightning piercing through them, occasionally illuminating the dark, icy storm.

A violent ice storm obscured the view, but a few mottled figures could be vaguely seen in the direction of the drawbridge. A group of Frost Guards gathered at the bridgehead, anxiously awaiting the bear-men's approach to the city gate. Not far away on the city wall, a dense mass of figures stood, more than half of the Frost Guards gathered there, their undying vows faintly echoing in the wind and snow.

Chapter 799 Interception

The aged guardian, Frostfather, was giving a pre-battle pep talk, dipping sacred black ice in ink and applying it to the faces of every warrior.

“You will not fight alone. We, the Children of Shadows, never fight alone, whether in the darkest winter plains or the deepest hidden ravines, the Eye of Lissandra is watching us, never abandoning us.”

"We are born of ice, and we will return to ice." The members of the assembly chanted the same prayer in unison.

Dark clouds approached, looming over the fortress. The white snowfield and the somber clouds met at a stark black-and-white boundary, a testament to the surging tide of war.

A sudden silence swept in with the storm, burying all sound beneath the black tide. The wind, thunder, and vows vanished in an instant, and deathly stillness enveloped everything.

"Voliber is here!"

They felt its power even before they saw it appear.

The air was thick with electrical charge, lightning bolts pierced the clouds, and tiny sparks of static began to appear on the warriors' armor, swords, and battle axes. They were bewildered by this strange phenomenon. The arcs of electricity continued to leap and dance between their weapons, and Kahn smelled fear. (The last sentence appears to be unrelated and possibly a fragment from another text.)

The fierce wind, carrying snowflakes, lashed against our faces. Ahead, at the pass of the glacier, appeared the figures of bear-men, like a black tide overflowing a dam. The dark army, emerging from the almost solidified frost, spread out on the frosty slope, limping, crawling, and swaying as they advanced.

Trapped in a distorted state, the beast spirit walker's lower jaw extended and became a gigantic maw filled with sharp teeth. Its fingernails gradually turned black and became claws. It was neither human nor bear, but something entirely different. There were also long-haired giant bears with two lower jaws, their tongues longer than an adult's arm, dripping a brown, filthy slime that never froze.

This scene was like a nightmare, this nightmarish legion controlled by the unquestionable True Beast Spirit, each mouth uttering thunderous language in unison. The Bear Spirit would accept any being who craved power, the price of which was the offering of their soul. Then, all soulless bodies would be transformed into the Lost, becoming tireless and painless walking corpses, joining the terrifying legion of death.

Like the silent eye of a storm approaching, the bear-men's advance was utterly silent. They reached the mountaintop, where they had to cross a suspension bridge to reach Frostguard Fortress. This was an excellent defensive position for the Frostguards if they wanted to engage in battle; the few Frostguards guarding the bridgehead were definitely not just sentries on reconnaissance.

The bear-men stood in a disorderly row on the edge of the cliff. After searching for a while in the ice storm and finding no other way to the fortress, they began to surge onto the bridge.

The suspension bridge, which had been swaying violently in the storm, was firmly held in place after the bear-man legion stepped onto it. The bridge seemed to bear a weight it had never experienced before, creaking and groaning in the storm, but the bear spirit also suppressed the sound.

The hunter lords at the forefront did not notice the Frost Guards waiting at the bridgehead. The ice storm suppressed their vision to within ten yards. They were controlled by the bear spirits and only knew how to move forward, ever forward.

A squad of Frost Guards stood in neat rows at the bridgehead, having been waiting there for some time. The Frost Guards were uniformly dressed in sharply angled black armor, covering their entire bodies, including their mouths and noses, completely. Their helmets had a pair of sharp, parallel angles, and the armor covered in white frost exuded a chilling aura.

This group of Frost Guards was about to encounter the Bearmen on the bridge. They should have known what they were facing, but their hands, gripping swords and bows, showed no tremor, and their legs showed no sign of retreat, as if they were standing still statues.

Until the Hunter Lord appeared before them, the leading Winter Arbitrator slung his greatsword over his shoulder with one arm and shouted across the distance, "The losers are not welcome here!"

The bearmen stopped in their tracks, and the Hunting Lord, dressed only in a huge raven feather hood and a bearskin cloak, proclaimed loudly: "I am a bearman, our lord walks with us, Son of Ice, offer your sacrifice, offer your life to us!"

The unyielding, bone-severing spirit of the bear was quietly creeping into the minds of everyone around her, but those whom Lissandra sent here as a suicide squad were her most steadfast loyalists, whose faith in Black Ice was not easily shaken.

"Don't even think about it, Volibear! Take your half-bear monster and get back to your island." The leading Winter Arbitrator spat on the ground, the spittle instantly freezing into ice crystals.

Anger appeared on the Hunter Lord's face, but it wasn't that he was angry; rather, it was that the Bear Spirit was provoked.

His eyes rolled back, then turned into pools of black water. He tilted his head back and let out a roaring battle cry with an avalanche-like sound, as if a thunderstorm had seized his throat, and a cracking sound surged from the depths of his throat. This sound echoed in the mouths of every bear-man and every beast spirit walker on this land.

"vol kau fera!" Their roar made the sky tremble.

Perhaps the meaning of the ancient German word "Volrega" has been completely forgotten, but its power remains undiminished, and its roar, uttered by the bear-man, is still so awe-inspiring.

The bear-men launched a simultaneous charge, as powerful as an avalanche. They charged forward on all fours, causing the bridge to shake violently.

Faced with the overwhelming army of bearmen, the Winter Arbitrator stood calmly at the bridgehead, displaying an air of unyielding strength.

She raised her massive, door-sized sword high, held her breath, and slammed it down hard on the suspension bridge!

A deadly frost erupted from the True Ice weapon, and the bone-chilling cold of True Ice spread along the suspension bridge to the other side, freezing the entire bridge in an instant and encasing it in rapidly growing ice crystals.

The extreme cold of Zhenbing can even make steel brittle, and the suspension bridge inevitably became much more brittle after freezing, not to mention that so many bear-men were standing on it. The weight that it could barely bear before had now completely exceeded its load limit.

In an instant, multiple problems arose in the bridge. The iron chains broke one by one, the wooden planks shattered, and the suspension bridge, like a long snake with a broken spine, began to collapse after emitting a rapid wail. The fierce battle roar of the bear-men also collapsed.

All the bear-men on the bridge, including the hunter lord who was relaying the message to Volibear, fell off the cliff. The only passage was cut off, and the remaining bear-men could only stand helplessly on the edge of the cliff.

Watching this scene, the arbitrator slowly removed her helmet with her only remaining arm. Her face was weathered, the sides of her hair shaved off, the rest of her white hair braided into a plait in the middle of her head. In addition to losing an arm, she was also blind in one eye; her left eye was cloudy white and she could not see anything.

Chapter 800 Siege

"There are quite a few bear-men this time. Fortunately, they can neither swim nor fly. Destroying the bridge has at least stopped them." The speaker was a Frost Guard, who thought the matter was settled and his tone revealed a hint of relief.

"We've stopped so many bear-men this time. Go back and tell the chieftain. We'll become legends." Everyone else laughed in relief, except for the Winter Arbitrator, who stared with a stern face at the storm-obscured opposite bank with his single eye.

"No! Back off!" she shouted a warning. Before they could take more than a few steps back, a bolt of lightning struck the footprints they had just made.

The world around them lit up instantly, followed by a deafening explosion. A massive mountain collided head-on with the cliff, the earth trembling and the ground shattering as they were thrown to the ground. The snow curtain that rose from the impact was as high as a city wall, and before the Frost Guards could react, they were slammed to the ground by the towering snow wall, completely engulfing them in a deadly white mist.

A deathly silence engulfed everything.

After a while, the disheveled Frost Guards emerged one after another from the icy hill, like frozen corpses crawling out of a cold graveyard, their movements clumsy and stiff. The icy bloodline within them saved their lives; if they were ordinary warm-blooded people, they would probably have had their body heat drained by the extreme cold long ago, and would not have had the strength to crawl out of the snow alive.

The dark clouds were still churning overhead, and the tranquil eye of the storm had somehow enveloped them.

"Damn it! They're coming!"

The Frostguard who was closest to the cliff was the first to discover the situation at the edge of the cliff. The top of another mountain had tilted over and leaned against the cliff where they were, forming a passage between the two mountains, which was a hundred times wider than the previous suspension bridge.

A deep rumble echoed through the storm, the footsteps of the bear-men grew louder and louder, and a terrible tremor came from the ground beneath their feet. Thousands of bear-men rushed out of the storm, climbed to their mountaintop, and unleashed a dark, overwhelming tide of death.

But that wasn't the worst of it. What they should fear most was the colossal creature looming in the eye of the storm, towering like a mountain and casting a massive shadow across the pale earth. They couldn't make out its entire form, only the enormous silhouette of a bear-like creature standing amidst the blizzard, arcs of electricity leaping through its milky-white fur and bursting from its gaping maw!

The Bear God descended, and the Frost Guards looked at the Bear Spirit's incarnation with awe and fear, while the Arbitrator had already picked up his weapon and turned to flee.

"Return to the city walls immediately to defend!" At her command, the Frost Guards turned around and followed her as they ran desperately toward the Frost Guard Fortress, each of them racing against death with all their might.

The half-bear monsters pursued relentlessly behind them with the force of an avalanche, but no matter how brutal and ferocious they were, their master was a thousand times more terrifying.

The turning point on the battlefield was witnessed by Frost Father on the city wall. In the bright moment when a bolt of lightning struck, he noticed that Volibear turned his gaze to him, his eyes overflowing with endless lightning.

The city walls were lined with fully armed Frost Guards and Frost Priests, their black armor radiating a chilling aura, resembling a giant black iron python coiled on the walls. Behind the walls, thousands more warriors stood in deep, well-defined infantry formations.

Every crenellation reflected the cold gleam of steel, appearing from afar like the scales of a giant python, but upon closer inspection, they were revealed to be arrowheads protruding from heavy siege crossbows. The Frost Guards abandoned handheld hunting bows in favor of crossbows to counter the besieging bear-men, not only because the strong winds would affect the trajectory of ordinary arrows, but also because the bear-men's superhuman strength would render ordinary arrows ineffective.

The ice storm obscured visibility, reducing it to only ten yards. The Frostguards were forced to adapt to the harsh weather. In addition to heavy crossbows, dozens of catapults were positioned on the walls, loaded with massive ice stones, and the mage towers were ready to fire.

Suddenly, the Frostguards' silence was broken by shouts coming from below the city walls. Hearing their comrades' cries for help, the leader of the Assembly Hall Guardians immediately leaned over to look outside the walls.

The Frost Guards sent to guard the bridge have returned; it's unclear whether their mission failed or they returned successfully.

"Frost Guardian, what's the situation?" Guardian Frost Father shouted down.

The answer appeared immediately: the war roars of the bearmen, accompanied by an avalanche-like force, swept into the mortal realm. A mottled tide of war surged across the pale earth, closely following the returning Frost Guards, crashing against the cold city walls.

"We destroyed the suspension bridge, but Volibear pushed the mountain at the end of the bridge onto the main peak, letting the bearmen charge!" the Arbitrator responded urgently, while retaliating with his weapons along with the other Frostguards.

The bear-man's sharp teeth and claws were almost within reach, and the dried blood clinging to his fur was clearly visible. They were so close that they could even hear the bear-man's heavy breathing. (The last sentence appears to be a nonsensical string of characters and doesn't translate directly.)