Chapter 57: Ghoul Ape
Sunny stood upon the elevated obsidian walkway, his pale face locked into a flawless, chilling mask of aristocratic apathy. Internally, however, he was entirely consumed by a profound, civilian panic. His uncultivated lungs burned with every breath of the ozone-laced air, and his eyes explicitly watered behind his terrifying gaze. He was absolutely convinced that the bubbling, volatile magma in the center of the array was seconds away from a catastrophic, subterranean detonation that would vaporize his fragile body.
He explicitly decided that he needed to be behind a very thick wall immediately.
"The fusion requires absolute observation," Sunny whispered, his voice a flat, emotionless void that completely betrayed his internal desire to sprint out of the room. He turned his glowing crimson eyes toward Grand Elder Shen He and the trembling elite breeders.
"Remain here. Ensure the biological integration does not falter."
Shen He swallowed hard, his aged face pale with sheer terror. The toxic crimson steam was already beginning to singe the edges of his dark robes, causing him to cough violently. The Grand Elder explicitly wanted to retreat to the safety of the outer corridors, but the Supreme Flesh-Crafter’s command was absolute.
"Y-yes, Supreme Patriarch!" Shen He wheezed, bowing so deeply his forehead practically touched the smoking obsidian floor. "We shall not blink! We will bind our souls to the array!"
Sunny did not offer a single word of validation. He simply turned his back, his dark-silk robes swirling ominously, and walked out of the primary chamber with slow, calculated, predatory steps. He retreated into the heavy, lead-lined observation corridor, explicitly exhaling a massive, ragged sigh of relief the moment the reinforced spirit-glass doors sealed behind him.
Back in the primary chamber, the atmosphere rapidly deteriorated.
The Abyssal Siege-Toad, fully submerged in the boiling, corrupted magma, let out a deafening, tectonic croak of pure agony. The Yin-Rot fumes thickened exponentially, completely obscuring the ceiling and plunging the chamber into a hazy, blood-red nightmare.
Suddenly, a violent, concussive boom echoed from the vat.
Thick, highly corrosive crimson steam violently expanded, instantly shattering the remaining containment wards.
Shen He and the dozen elite breeders completely abandoned their posts. Driven entirely by mortal dread, they scrambled frantically toward the observation corridor, violently shoving each other aside to escape the suffocating, acidic cloud.
They burst through the heavy doors, collapsing onto the floor around Sunny’s boots. They were explicitly coughing up streaks of black blood, their eyes bloodshot and streaming with tears.
"Supreme One!" Shen He choked out, clutching his throat and weeping in absolute terror. "The... the corruption is absolute! The fumes are melting our meridians! We beg your dark mercy for fleeing!"
The Grand Elder explicitly believed that Sunny had engineered the toxic explosion as a cruel, psychological test of their loyalty, and that they had just fatally failed. He fully expected the Young Master to command his towering Ghoul Ape to crush their skulls for abandoning the array.
"..."
Sunny maintained his freezing, statuesque silence. He simply stared down at the groveling, bleeding cultivators. Internally, he was profoundly glad he had left the room when he did, explicitly realizing that his uncultivated skin would have melted off his bones if he had stayed.
He allowed the heavy, suffocating terror to marinate for a full thirty minutes while the violent crimson steam inside the primary chamber slowly settled.
As the toxic fog finally dissipated, the interior of the containment cell was revealed.
The boiling liquid within the heavy iron cauldron had been entirely absorbed. The golden-hued, Earth-attribute behemoth was gone.
Squatting in the center of the shattered array was a horrifying, volcanic monstrosity. Its skin had mutated into jagged, cooling obsidian crust, violently illuminated by thick, pulsing veins of liquid magma flowing just beneath the surface. The massive, acidic warts on its back had transformed into glowing, semi-translucent volcanic vents, bubbling with hyper-concentrated Fire-Qi.
Sunny casually activated the Supreme Merge System, focusing his gaze through the reinforced glass.
A glowing blue data frame instantly materialized in his retinas.
[Variant Fused Evolution Successful!]
[Monster Name: Caldera Siege-Toad]
[Monster Level]: Tier 4 (Commander)
[Monster Grade]: Elite
[Monster Attribute]: Fire / Earth
[Monster Weakness]: Absolute vulnerability to deep-abyssal Water-arts.
[System Analysis]: The biological matrix has been entirely rewritten. The integration of the Kinetic Slime Core has explicitly granted absolute blunt-force immunity; the entity will no longer shatter upon kinetic impact. However, the violent corruption of the Yin-Rot Cinder has permanently burned away a significant portion of its explosive muscle-mass. Its maximum leaping altitude is permanently reduced by fifty percent.
Sunny explicitly analyzed the drawbacks. The Toad could no longer jump three hundred feet into the air, but it was now a literally indestructible, bouncing volcano. It was a highly specialized, flawed weapon, but it was explicitly perfect for incinerating a grounded swarm of Wood-attribute Carrion-Locusts.
"By the blood of the ancients..." Shen He whispered, slowly pulling himself up to peer through the glass, his eyes wide with absolute, paralyzed awe. "The elemental dissonance was completely bypassed. It is a living incarnation of the abyss!"
The Grand Elder turned toward Sunny, his face smeared with black blood, explicitly radiating a terrifying, fanatical reverence.
"Supreme Patriarch, your architectural genius is beyond the comprehension of mortal flesh!" Shen He babbled frantically. "You have forged a deity of destruction! We must explicitly title this calamity... the Hellfire Emperor Toad!"
Sunny’s left eye twitched imperceptibly. He explicitly hated overly dramatic demonic titles. They gave him a headache.
"Caldera," Sunny rasped coldly, cutting off the Grand Elder’s sycophantic rambling with a single, freezing word.
He explicitly utilized the name provided by the System, refusing to indulge the Elder’s theatrical naming conventions.
"C-Caldera! Yes! An absolute, perfect designation!" Shen He rapidly agreed, entirely terrified of contradicting the Young Master.
Inside the chamber, the newly ascended Caldera Siege-Toad shifted its massive bulk. The beast explicitly felt a profound, uncomfortable pressure building within its mutated throat. It squatted low, inflating its glowing, magma-veined vocal sac.
It let out a low, rumbling croak that sounded explicitly like grinding tectonic plates.
Suddenly, the Toad unhinged its cavernous maw and violently belched a massive, concentrated sphere of dark-red, demonic magma.
The molten projectile arched across the chamber and slammed directly onto the primary obsidian alchemy altar.
The heat was instantaneous and apocalyptic. The heavy obsidian instantly hissed, violently bubbling as it melted into a pool of glowing slag.
The dozen elite breeders gathered in the observation corridor let out a collective, muffled gasp of pure despair.
Resting upon that specific altar were decades of irreplaceable, meticulously recorded blood-scrolls, rare soul-jades, and their personal flesh-mending formulas. The magma entirely incinerated their life’s work in a fraction of a second, leaving nothing but white ash.
One of the lead breeders dropped to his knees, his hands trembling violently. "My... my ancestral marrow-treatise..." he whispered, his soul completely shattered.
Another breeder explicitly bit his own lip so hard it bled, forcefully silencing a sob of agony.
They explicitly dared not complain. They dared not weep openly. The Supreme Flesh-Crafter was standing mere inches away, projecting an aura of bottomless, calculated evil. They entirely believed that if they showed attachment to mere scrolls over the birth of his supreme creation, Sunny would instantly throw them into the cell to be melted next.
"The... the fire-attribute is stabilized, Supreme One," Shen He stammered, explicitly ignoring the devastated breeders behind him. "The Vanguard’s defensive lines are saved. The military mandate is fulfilled."
"..."
Sunny maintained his flawless, statuesque silence. He did not move. He did not turn to leave. He simply stood in the corridor, his glowing crimson eyes boring directly into the side of the Grand Elder’s head.
Internally, Sunny was exhausted, stressed, and profoundly irritated. The job was done. He had literally created a living volcano to save their pathetic staging camp from a bug invasion. He explicitly wanted his payment. He wanted his Calamity-grade Abyssal Thunder Core so he could upgrade his Scorpion and finally go to sleep.
However, explicitly demanding payment felt entirely out of character for an unfathomable, god-like warlord. So, he simply stared, letting his innate villainous aura rapidly pressurize the corridor.
To Grand Elder Shen He, this unbroken, heavy silence was the ultimate psychological execution.
The Elder’s mind raced frantically. Why was the Supreme Patriarch staring at him with such intense, murderous intent? The mission was a success. What had he forgotten?
Shen He explicitly interpreted the chilling silence as a silent calculation of his own execution. The Grand Elder firmly believed that Sunny was deciding whether to feed him to the newly ascended Toad for wasting his time with trivial laboratory tasks.
Suddenly, a cold spike of absolute horror pierced Shen He’s paranoid mind. The tribute.
"Supreme Patriarch!" Shen He shrieked, throwing himself back onto the obsidian floor, his forehead impacting the stone with a sickening crack. "I am a senile, worthless insect! The tribute! The Abyssal Thunder Core!"
Sunny explicitly did not blink, though his civilian heart leapt with relief.
"The courier unit is explicitly extracting it from the deepest quarantine vaults as we speak!" Shen He babbled frantically, weeping tears of pure dread. "The containment seals require multiple Grandmasters to disengage! I swear upon my rotting bloodline, the Calamity-grade core will be delivered to your pavilion before the breaking of the dawn!"
"..."
Sunny allowed the suffocating silence to stretch for three final, agonizing seconds.
He slowly turned away from the groveling Elder. His dark-silk robes billowed ominously in the stale air.
He walked toward the heavy bone-carriage waiting to transport him back to his pavilion, explicitly projecting the image of a sovereign entirely disgusted by the incompetence of his subordinates, while his internal monologue wept tears of joy at the prospect of a nap.
