Chapter 51: Battle Among the Mountains

Chapter 51: Battle Among the Mountains

Roke was a pseudo-veteran enthusiast of the Cthulhu Mythos. He was fascinated by the mystery and the unknown, and even more obsessed with the sense of human insignificance among the stars.

The fear brought on by gazing into the abyss was strangely captivating!

Of course, this was all on the premise that the Cthulhu Mythos remained entirely fictional.

When a genuine Cthulhu monster stood right before him, Roke had only one thought: impale it with his bone blades, then devour it.

Merely having the thought wasn't enough, so Roke proved with his actions that he wasn't just entertaining a fantasy.

A twenty-meter super-giant spine-parasite landing on the back of a behemoth might not sound like much, but there is a saying that "though small, it is formidable," and Roke believed that concentration was the true essence.

"Woo—"

The behemoth let out a melodious, ethereal cry that echoed through the mountains. Countless living beings froze in place for several seconds upon hearing it, their minds plunging into a brief blank void.

Roke paid it no mind. Dozens of bone edges slashed desperately in unison, quickly leaving deep, severe wounds on the behemoth's body that leaked blue-black fluid.

Lacking claws, the behemoth could only control its tentacles to attack Roke.

After Roke's beastification, the tail fins on his back expanded proportionally, the five split mouthparts at their tips opening to a diameter of several meters.

He didn't need to worry about the tentacle attacks at all. He directly controlled his tail fins to bite and tear at the tentacles, shredding a large mass of tentacle fragments into bloody pulps.

However, this behemoth was no ordinary piece of trash. Once its tentacles were destroyed, they could slowly regenerate back to their original state within a minute.

Without the suppression of his devouring power, it would probably only take ten seconds!

The crucial point was that the creature didn't have just a dozen or twenty tentacles; the region around its lower body alone held no less than two or three hundred of them!

The thin ones were like an infant's arm, while the thick ones resembled a truck's cab, and every single tentacle grew insect-like compound eyes that allowed them to keenly evade and launch sneak attacks.

The behemoth was troublesome, but throughout nearly ten minutes of close combat, it had not unleashed any more formidable moves.

Its back had been battered beyond recognition by Roke, with barely any intact skin left to be seen. Blue-black blood pooled on the ground, hissing and burning out pitted hollows.

Fortunately, Roke's bone armor was tough enough to avoid being corroded.

Up to this point, this behemoth seemed to possess extremely formidable defense and vitality, making it rather difficult to breach, coupled with the fact that Roke could immune most mental pollution. In terms of other offensive methods, it was somewhat lackluster, relying primarily on its tentacles.

In fact, monsters of the Cthulhu variety usually relied most heavily on mental damage, but Roke's devouring power happened to counter all fancy tricks, so fighting it was entirely effortless with zero mental suppression.

Suddenly, Roke's heart tightened, and he instinctively took flight.

Bang!

The lower half of the behemoth suddenly exploded, exposing scenes of extreme sanity-shredding horror to the open air.

Endless bodily fluids burst outward, thoroughly eroding an entire forest and instantly turning it into withered wasteland.

Ooh-ooh-ooh...

The lower half of the behemoth was left in tatters, with numerous tentacles sprouting from those wounds. Looking out, there were easily eight or nine thousand, if not a full ten thousand of them!

They danced wildly across the sky, blotting out the sun like a swarm of earth-boring worms rising from the ground. They flung their fluids everywhere, and due to their sheer speed, emitted terrifying, mournful howls.

Myriad Tentacles—

"Now this is more like it!" Roke let out a raspy, low laugh from the back of his throat, which, paired with his terrifying appearance, sounded like the murmurs of a demon god.

A quintessential villainous image!

(Goodness me, the villain in this novel looks so terrifying... Oh wait, that's the protagonist... Well then, that monster called Mark must be the villain... Oh, wait, he counts as a protagonist too...)

Roke was excited, and he was getting serious.

Hum—

His right-arm bone blade extended bit by bit to a maximum length of about ten meters. Five cannibal-like tail fins writhed frantically, his pupils uncontrollably emitting a dark red glow, and scarlet miasma sprayed from the interlacing of bone and flesh.

Gray-white collided with scarlet, turning a radius of a kilometer into an enchanting, eerie sight resembling a manifestation of hell.

At this moment, this place no longer seemed to belong to the mortal world.

The ten-meter great blade slashed down, colliding with the countless tentacles and producing a dull, thunderous roar as blood splattered in all directions.

Boom—

The behemoth strode forward on its six long legs, its hooves leaving deep prints in the ground.

The earth shook violently, and mountain rocks collapsed.

Wherever the sweeping tentacles passed, towering mountains were fractured and soil was overturned.

Bang—

On Roke's skeletal skull, which combined the traits of a fiend and a demonic dragon, a mouth filled with sharp teeth suddenly widened, spewing a raging torrent of fire.

Blazing flames exploded, blowing dozens of tentacles to pieces. Over a thousand sparks adhered to its body, and under the suppression of the scorching inferno, the behemoth's offensive momentum slowed.

Thud!

Seizing the opportunity, Roke jetted forward in a dive, finding a gap amidst the thousands of encircling tentacles. He immediately broke out of the kill zone and plummeted toward the creature's head.

"Woo..."

The behemoth panicked slightly, galloping at high speed among the mountains while driving its tentacles to intercept Roke.

...

By this time, the rescue troops from the military base had already arrived at the supermarket, rescuing countless survivors.

"Was that an earthquake?"

"Seems like it. Why is there another earthquake?"

"Hey, this tremor feels a bit off. Holy crap, that's intense!"

Tremors of extreme intensity surged violently. Cars swayed from side to side on the roads, building after building collapsed, and people tumbled to the ground, panicked and uneasy.

Billy, held tightly in David's arms, suddenly pointed into the distance. "A monster!"

Everyone was startled and looked over.

They stared in absolute dumbfounded silence at the behemoth striding across the side of the town, as well as the bone-plated flying bug in hot pursuit in the sky.

"All units, alert! Prepare to open fire!" The officer felt as though a bone was stuck in his throat.

The soldiers stood frozen in place, and an adjutant stammered in response, "Sir, will firing even do any good?"

The officer cursed angrily, "Are those damn scientists' brains rusted? Why study other worlds when they've got nothing better to do! And who knows when that gateway can even be closed!"

"They seem to be fighting each other. Hold your fire for now, get the civilians out first." Calming down, the officer issued the most rational order.

David held his son and boarded a military truck along with the others, and soon the convoy drove out of the mist's perimeter.

...

The tentacle behemoth appeared to be fleeing toward the mountain where the military base was located, seemingly intending to escape back to its own world.

It quickly cleared the town and entered the wilderness. Not far ahead lay a wide lake, and beyond the lake stood towering mountains.

The fog here was thickest, particularly in a corner obscured by the mountain forest.

Splash! Splash! Splash!

The behemoth stepped into the lake water, kicking up thousands of waves and startling a cluster of plump fish and shrimp.

Roke executed a speed boost and turned around, confronting the creature head-on from a commanding height, and raised his left arm.

Hum...

A bone arrow condensed, firing at a blistering speed.

This was a bone arrow two meters in length!

Sensing the gale-force wind, the behemoth immediately thrust its tentacles forward, constructing a defensive wall.

A flash of white light pierced into the tentacle wall in the blink of an eye.

The bone arrow struggled to pierce through the tens of meters of thick flesh wall, but this was merely a feint to scatter its attention.

Taking advantage of the moment, Roke ascended into the sky, vanishing from the behemoth's perception.

When dealing with a hard-to-kill entity like this, grinding it down slowly consumed too much time and easily bred variables. Only a devastating, heavy blow could achieve massive results.

And so, Roke began charging his power.

He ascended all the way to an altitude of ten thousand meters, relying on the sheer hardness of his bone armor to withstand the pressure of rapid descent while his tail fins blasted furiously.

The ten-meter bone blade was held above his head, and his remaining bone edges folded neatly into a streamlined shape to minimize air resistance.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!

The raging gale seemed intent on tearing him apart.

The dense fog was forcefully parted as Roke plummeted from the sky, white air currents scattering outward from the tip of his bone blade.

"Woo..."

Terrified, the behemoth raised its irregular head, only to realize the distance between them had closed to a mere dozen meters.

Clang—

The bone blade pierced into the behemoth's spine, cutting through it like withered weeds and dry wood.