SEC Chapter 1327 The Evolving Parasite
Chapter 1327 The Evolving Parasite
The moment the blade pierced the ground, Su Xiao heard a sound that shouldn't have been there.
"When will these trashy mutants finally get lost?" The voice came from behind Su Xiao, with a casual, overly familiar tone, like someone casually complaining about the weather when they bump into a neighbor on a bus.
Su Xiao did not turn around.
His hand was still gripping the hilt of the Dragon Slayer Sword, the blade embedded in the soil, blood droplets trickling down the blood grooves on the blade, pooling into a small, dark red puddle where the tip of the blade touched the ground.
"Brother, aren't you tired guarding this side all by yourself? I see you've killed quite a few, at least 20,000, right? If you ask me, Paradise should send more people over here. Letting you handle one direction by yourself is just bullying an honest guy."
Su Xiao turned her head and glanced in the direction of the approaching person out of the corner of her eye.
He saw a strange man in dark gray light armor walking towards him with an inappropriate smile on his face.
His light armor was stained with blood and dust, making it look like he had been on the battlefield for some time, but his breathing was steady, his heart rate was normal, his pupils were not abnormally dilated or constricted, and his gait was natural.
Su Xiao frowned.
It wasn't because he recognized the person, but because he didn't recognize him.
Su Xiao wouldn't dare say he knew all 257 contractors in the Paradise of Reincarnation, but he had at least met them all.
He had a general impression of everyone's appearance, physique, equipment, and weapons.
This was a habit he had developed in countless war worlds. If a contractor couldn't even recognize his teammates in a short period of time, he would have been eliminated in a low-level war world long ago.
In a world at war, the only people you can trust are those around you.
But the problem now is that Su Xiao doesn't recognize the man in dark gray light armor who appears in front of him.
"Brother, why aren't you saying anything?" The stranger had already walked less than three steps behind Su Xiao, and reached out his hand, seemingly wanting to pat Su Xiao's shoulder.
The Dragon Slayer was pulled out of the soil.
The blade traced an arc in the air, the sound of it cutting through the air was very soft, like a pair of scissors slicing through a thin piece of paper.
The stranger's smile was still on his face, but his head had already been separated from his neck.
The head flipped twice in the air. During the flip, the eyes blinked and the mouth moved, like a fish thrown ashore, opening and closing in vain.
puff.
The head landed on the ground, bounced on the grass, rolled half a circle, and stopped at Su Xiao's feet.
His expression changed from a smile to confusion, like someone who was suddenly interrupted while speaking and was stunned before he could even get angry.
"why."
The head's mouth opened and closed, and the sound squeezed out of the broken throat had a kind of bubbling noise, like a person talking underwater.
Su Xiao looked down at the head, the Dragon Slayer Blade hanging by his side, blood still dripping from its tip.
"I will be the only one responsible for this section of the city wall."
"In this situation, there are only two possibilities for someone to come to my side: either they are an enemy, or they are someone who has been parasitized by the parasite."
Upon hearing Su Xiao's words, the head that had fallen to the ground paused for a moment.
Then, the pupils of that head slowly changed from their normal round shape.
Fine lines begin to radiate outward from the center of the pupil, like a blooming flower spreading from the center to the edges of the petals.
The lines on the iris become finer and denser, eventually turning the entire pupil into a radiating star.
The skin begins to shrink, like a deflated balloon, going from full to shriveled, from smooth to wrinkled.
The moisture evaporates from the skin within seconds, leaving a thin, brittle crust, like a dried snakeskin that crumbles into powder at the slightest touch.
Su Xiao lifted her foot and kicked the withered head beside her into the trench.
The head landed on the pile of alien corpses at the bottom of the trench, breaking into several grayish-white fragments, revealing a withered white worm.
Su Xiao bent down and planted the Dragon Slayer Blade back into the ground, letting the blade continue to cool in the night breeze.
Then he opened the war channel, found Lin Yi's name, and sent a message.
"The parasite has evolved, and its camouflage ability is stronger than before. Its pupils do not change when it is parasitizing, its gait is natural, its breathing is steady, and its heartbeat is normal. There is no flaw to be found. If I didn't not recognize it, I wouldn't have noticed."
Lin Yi replied to his messages almost instantly.
"The pupils no longer change?"
"The one I killed didn't change; it only changed after I killed it."
The channel was quiet for a moment. A typing prompt appeared next to Lin Yi's avatar, flashed a few times, stopped, and then flashed a few more times.
This hesitant input rhythm made Su Xiao realize that the situation was much more troublesome than she had expected.
A minute later, Lin Yi finally sent out his message.
"Understood, I'll think of a way."
After reading the message, Su Xiao closed the war channel.
His gaze returned to the direction of the alien group.
The ground-dwelling creatures regrouped two hundred meters away from him, forming a loose, arc-shaped formation.
They awaited their commander's next instructions, unaware that their parasitic accomplices, sent by their commander, had already been exposed.
Su Xiao stood there, his hand on the hilt of his sword, like a boundary marker standing in the center of a battlefield.
Inside the medical tent, Lin Yi paced back and forth a few times after reading Su Xiao's message.
The parasites' camouflage abilities have evolved, meaning that the previous method of judging whether someone has been parasitized by observing their pupils is no longer effective.
You never know whether the person standing in front of you is your teammate or a shell controlled by insects.
This lack of knowledge is fatal on the battlefield.
The parasite doesn't need to kill everyone; it only needs to kill the key people.
It only needs to be in the right place at the right time and do the right thing—like stabbing King Kong in the back when he charges, or passing on the wrong information when the Dean gives the order to retreat.
Lin Yi stopped and stood at the entrance of the tent, lifting the curtain to look towards the city wall.
"There's no other way," Lin Yi said in a low voice, his tone carrying a sense of helplessness, as if he had been forced into a corner and had no choice but to overturn the table.
Parasitic species are too dangerous.
Lin Yi opened the detailed introduction of the aura in the skill bar, scrolled down, and found a function that was turned off.
Halo/Punishment.
This is an offensive aura that deals continuous lightning damage to enemies within its coverage area.
The damage is very low, so low that it is almost negligible for a sixth-tier contractor.
It deals 0.5 to 1.5 points of lightning damage per second, a number that is barely a mosquito bite on the battlefield of a Tier 2 Contractor, let alone on a Tier 6 battlefield.
However, its visual effects are extremely noticeable. Lightning damage creates electric sparks on the target's body surface, clearly visible on the battlefield.
Lin Yi's finger hovered above the line of small print, without pressing it down.
The cost of Aura of Retribution is much higher than the aura he currently maintains, because it is not passive but an active attack.
Every second, the aura performs a mini attack check on all enemies.
However, each judgment requires the consumption of Abyss Power.
According to Lin Yi's calculations, the aura that could originally last for six hours could only last for a little over three hours after the punishment effect was activated.
In a little over three hours, his abyssal power will be exhausted, and he won't even be able to maintain his basic aura.
The halo of 100,000 students will disappear, and the buffs on everyone on the city wall will disappear.
At that time, the combat power of the Paradise of Reincarnation will plummet.
But if it's not open.
If it is not opened, the parasitic species will tear apart the defenses of the Paradise of Reincarnation from within.
Which one would you choose?
Will we be defeated head-on by external enemies, or stabbed in the back by internal parasites?
After some thought, Lin Yi pressed down with his finger.
hum.
An invisible ripple spread outwards from the center of the medical tent, and the halo covered the entire Paradise of Reincarnation fortress in 0.3 seconds. It then expanded outwards by nearly 200 meters, including the bloody battlefield below the city wall.
The next second, the aliens at the edge of the city wall simultaneously began to emit sparks.
First came a few ground creatures climbing the city wall, their claws scraping against the steel plates with a harsh metallic scraping sound, and suddenly fine blue arcs of electricity shot out from the gaps in the scales on their backs.
The electric arc was short, only two or three centimeters long, jumping and flashing on the surface of the scales, as if someone were spot welding on their backs with a miniature welding torch.
Then came the ground-dwelling creatures charging forward, every conductive part of their bodies sparking with electricity from the thorns on their heads to the bone spurs at the ends of their tails, blue arcs of electricity weaving a fine net across their bodies.
The ground-dwelling species that were gathering in the distance were not spared either; electric arcs leaped across their bodies, from one to another, like a silent electronic storm spreading through the alien population.
The entire alien army's charging formation lit up at that moment.
From a distance, it looks like a layer of blue phosphorescence suddenly rising from a black tide, eerie and magnificent.
The students of Kivotos on the city wall were the first to notice this change.
Their fingers paused on the trigger, their eyes lifted from the scope to look at the sparking alien creatures below the city wall, their expressions shifting from focused to confused.
A girl with a ponytail put down her energy rifle, rubbed her eyes, picked up the gun again, and glanced at it through the scope.
Through the scope, a ground-dwelling creature was charging toward the city wall with its mouth agape. Sparks flew from its three rows of sharp teeth, and arcs of electricity crackled across its tongue, making it look like an electrocuted snake.
"What's wrong?" she whispered, her voice carrying an indescribable emotion, somewhere between confusion and amusement.
The student next to her shook her head. She was also looking at the alien creature that was crackling with electricity. Her lips twitched slightly, as if she was trying hard not to laugh.
"I don't know, maybe it's a new ability of the alien species?"
"The new ability is to make yourself shine? That's such a stupid ability."
The contractors of the Reincarnation Paradise above the city wall were more confused than the students because their perception of energy was much more acute.
They could clearly sense that the energy source of these electric sparks was not the alien species itself, but rather something that appeared out of thin air.
In other words, something is attacking these alien species.
A contractor wearing dark leather armor peeked out from the battlements, looking down at the alien creatures whose bodies were crackling with electricity, his brow furrowing.
"What's going on? Why is this trash suddenly glowing? Is it about to evolve?"
A fat man next to him, who was changing his ammunition belt, didn't even look up.
"Evolve my ass! Didn't you feel it? This is aura damage. Someone has activated an attack aura."
"Who opened it?"
"you guess."
The man was silent for two seconds before speaking.
"Doctor?"
"Otherwise what? Is there anyone else in our group who can unleash such a wide-ranging aura?"
"Stop talking nonsense. Look at what the doctor said in the channel. Anyone with sparks on their body is an enemy. It seems that the doctor was also driven to desperation by the parasites, which is why he came up with this plan."
"That's good, it saves me from having to look at other people's eyes everywhere."
Below the city wall, King Kong was preparing to charge into the alien horde to continue the battle.
He was still holding the hind leg of a Groundling in his right hand. The Groundling was dead, and he used its corpse as a weapon, swinging it around and knocking down several Groundlings that tried to approach.
He flung the corpse of the earth-walker onto a gathering alien species in the distance. The two alien species rolled around in a heap, tumbling several times on the ground before coming to a stop.
King Kong shook the blood off his hands and was about to take a step.
stab.
A faint electrical hum came from his left side.
The sound was very soft, like someone gently scratching sandpaper with their fingernail, but it was unusually clear amidst the gunfire and shouts of the battlefield.
King Kong stopped and turned to look in the direction from which the sound came.
A man wearing dark light armor stood less than three meters to his left.
The electrical sparks on the man's body were exceptionally dense, more so than those on any of the other alien species around him.
Blue arcs of electricity danced across the surface of his light armor, like a shrinking electric grid enveloping his entire body.
King Kong knew this person.
His name is Zha Hu, and he fought alongside King Kong on the northern section of the city wall.
Two hours ago, the two were drinking at the same firing point, and Zha Hu was still bragging to King Kong about his achievements in the lower-level world.
King Kong looked down at the sparks of electricity on the other person's body.
Erhu also noticed the abnormality in his own body.
He looked down at the dense arcs of electricity on his chest and patted them off.
He looked up at King Kong, his expression one of innocent confusion, like a primary school student wrongly accused by his teacher, his eyes wide open, his mouth slightly agape, wanting to say something but not knowing what to say.
"Old Jin, what's going on?" Erhu's voice carried a hint of unease.
King Kong looked at him but did not answer.
The two stared at each other in silence for two seconds. (End of Chapter)