Broadcasting Live From Inside An Eldritch Horror Game

Chapter 86: The Versatile Blood Magic. Part-2.

While Zephyr and Xinran were busy talking, another massive arrow came flying towards them, but this time Zephyr was able to sense it beforehand because he had focused his mind in one direction.

Just when Zephyr was about to step forward and shatter the arrow with his indomitable fists, Xinran stopped him and used her magic shield to stop the arrow once again.

*BOOOOM!!!*

Seeing the arrow shatter on impact once again, Zephyr glanced towards Xinran and asked in confusion,

"Why not let me deal with it? Weren’t you supposed to be saving your mana for the big battle ahead?"

If they were going to fight the Vessel of Corrosion, they needed Xinran to be in her best state as the main ’DPS’ of the team.

Zephyr had the incredibly powerful defensive capabilities of a tank, but he didn’t have powerful single-target offensive capabilities like Xinran, so it was better if she saved her strength for later and let him do the less important work.

Hearing Zephyr’s words, Xinran shook her head.

"If it was some other monster, I would certainly let you fight it, but I know this mana fluctuation all too well, and my mana detection is definitely not wrong..."

"What we are up against is a bad match for you; let me deal with it. Follow me."

Without explaining any further, Xinran opened her bat wings and flew straight towards the opponent with explosive speed!

Seeing her fly away without explaining, Zephyr shook his head and immediately used his own skills to keep up with her face.

[Cloud Step Movement Art: First Form: Air Walk!]

*BOOOM!!*

Zephyr launched himself forward like a bullet and used air as his foothold to further boost his speed and caught up with Xinran in just a matter of seconds!

Although Xinran was not using her full strength to fly as fast as possible, she was still taken aback that Zephyr had already mastered the Cloud Step Art to the point that he could somewhat keep up with her pace.

’In terms of physical skills and techniques... he’s insanely talented... he will likely surpass even Layla in terms of pure martial skills in the future with his current pace...’

’As I thought... that body of his... it’s fascinating and extremely tempting...’

Shaking her head, Xinran stopped those distracting thoughts from messing up her mind and spoke,

"If any arrow comes your way, try not to get hit by it and make sure to not touch it with your body..."

"It would be better to cover your body with that armor of yours... including fists, of course... that is if you really want to fight, though; otherwise, just stay behind me, I will take care of it."

Hearing those words, Zephyr nodded and brought out the gloves of the Jauregia armor set from his space ring.

Zephyr’s main combat style revolved around using his fists, and since the durability of these gloves was limited, Zephyr had been avoiding using them.

If not for Xinran’s words, he wasn’t willing to let these gloves see the light of day just for a random fight; his fists alone were more powerful and durable than any glove or gauntlet-type artifact.

’It’s not attacking me... it’s only targeting Xinran and is completely ignoring me? How weird...’

As the duo moved forward, they got attacked by arrows several times, but each of those attacks was aimed at Xinran for some reason, and none of them came his way.

Thankfully those arrows weren’t strong enough and would shatter on impact once colliding with Xinran’s crimson magic barrier.

Zephyr also did not sit idle and used his gloves to cover his fists and then fight.

[Shattered Firmament Martial Art: Wind Type: Compressed Wind Blast!]

By compressing wind elementals in front of his fist and using wind elementals to boost the forward attack speed of his punch, Zephyr hit the arrowhead from the side and made it fly away in a different direction before it could hit Xinran’s shield!

The arrow collided with a wall, and instead of breaking apart like before, it suddenly transformed into a slimy black liquid!

The liquid substance started swaying on its own as black tentacles rose from it.

The wall suddenly became corrupted and started to break down bit by bit due to corrosive miasma from the black liquid.

"What in the f*ck is that thing!? Is that really an arrow!? How did solid metal transform into liquid so suddenly like that!?"

Zephyr could not make sense of this bizarre situation, and a familiar feeling of being shocked by the weirdness of this world appeared in his mind.

Just like the first time he saw a rain of laser beams, Zephyr found himself shocked when seeing this sudden weird transformation of metal into miasmic liquid.

"As I said, the creature firing these is not a golem... It’s a rare, corrupted and bizarre monstrosity."

"Just like those ’Photon Worms’ in the Sea of Ash that rain down from the sky every morning, this is another similar incomprehensible organism."

Making sense of the existence of this kind of bizarre eldritch horror was pointless, as the ’Laws’ of the ’World’ that applied to normal beings acted in a completely different manner for them!

"Let me deal with this monster; you stay back from this fight."

Although Zephyr felt a bit unwilling to just sit back and watch, he had no other choice at the moment.

Unlike Xinran, he had no prior experience in fighting this strange creature, and taking unnecessary risks was not a wise choice at the moment.

*BOOOOM!!!* *BOOOOM!!!*

As if enraged by Zephyr’s attempt to misdirect the arrow before, the monster launched a relentless high-speed assault and fired dozens of arrows at Xinran in a single second!

But of course, Xinran was a mage of the highest caliber; her mana shield was nothing to scoff at. It could withstand even Layla Jauregia’s full-powered blows for a while, let alone the attacks from a measly monster.

Soon enough, the duo crossed the long corridor and finally managed to get close to the attacker who had been harassing them for so long with its arrows!

The moment Zephyr saw the creature, he finally understood why Xinran was so certain that it was not a golem or any other creature from the mines.

The creature was simply too bizarre and out of place for it to be something that should be existing in these mines.

In front of Zephyr stood a massive blob of circular biomass.

The creature had massive tentacles that seemed to be flailing around restlessly as if in constant pain; they twitched, twisted, and sometimes even attacked each other while crawling around the ground and the walls.

The main body was a mass of fat and muscles shaped like a dumpling hanging in the middle of the corridor, using its tentacles to hold onto the walls and ground.

Its entire body had massive cannon-like cylindrical pipes that were constantly leaking black pus.

In the centre of the circular body was a massive eye constantly crying tears of dark blood.

The entire ground was covered in its dark bloody tears and corroded so thoroughly that if someone even stepped inside of that area of black liquid, their legs would melt away in a matter of just a few seconds!

Right below the cannon pipes were humanoid mouths that kept producing strange sounds laced with mental corruption waves!

*ORRRMMMMM* *OAHHHHHHHH* *KEHHHHHEEHHHHHHHE*

Just listening to those strange noises was enough to make both Xinran and Zephyr feel uncomfortable.

"What in the fu-"

Before Zephyr could even recover from the visual shock of seeing that creature, one of the cannon pipes aimed at Xinran and fired a dark black arrow-shaped liquid, which solidified in midair and formed a metallic arrow!

*BOOOM!!*

Once again, the arrow collided with Xinran’s shield and shattered, but since it had only been launched just a second ago,

It hadn’t had time to completely turn into metal, due to which a lot of the black liquid splattered over the shield and evaporated into nothingness due to Xinran’s potent mana.

A disgusted look appeared on Xinran’s face as she spoke.

"What it’s firing is not arrows; that’s its own contagious corrupted blood. It disguises itself as a metallic arrow to deceive others..."

"If you treat it like a normal arrow and try to stop it with a sword or normal shields, it would shatter itself and turn into liquid form."

"Once touched by it, you would get parasitised and eventually turn into a similar blob of mass like this creature here..."

"By the way... this creature primarily targets women; that’s why it has been aiming at me the entire time. It’s basically trying to use these blood arrows to reproduce."

Only after that explanation did Zephyr finally realize the bizarre and twisted nature of this horrific monstrosity.

Xinran was a powerful mage, so it was easy for her to avoid this monster’s attack, but if it was someone else in her place, without prior knowledge, they would have been directly hit by this monster and corrupted!

’Just a single touch is enough to transform you into a twisted and rotten blob of mass filled with endless pain and mutations... how horrifying.’