Chapter 1089: Chapter 604: Formless Flesh
"They actually link together. If I hadn’t gone to the Bay first, I probably wouldn’t have thought of this; and if I hadn’t found the manuscript, even if I knew, I’d be powerless to do anything."
Lance felt a strange sort of sensation, like a math problem he’d racked his brains over and still couldn’t solve, only to suddenly realize he’d already seen the answer somewhere.
Exploration and research really do have a special kind of fun to them, especially that surprise when some past harvest you’d forgotten about suddenly becomes useful.
Once he figured it out, Lance’s mood began to lighten, and he refocused his attention on the Beast Lair.
What had been a sweep-and-clear perspective turned into an exploratory, research mindset, and his attitude shifted along with it.
The Beast Lair definitely hid the old ancestor’s research results; he might very well stumble upon even more interesting things.
If there was already a lead on the red bottle, then what about the blue bottle?
Besides the long preparation time, what limited Spellcasters’ strength was also the agitation and consumption of Spiritual Essence.
The first two could be compensated for with rituals and equipment—for example, Alhazred using the [Purification Coral] to suppress the negative side effects.
But if your Spiritual Essence isn’t enough, it just isn’t enough, so over-expenditure happens easily. Like Amanda before, who overdrafted herself to counter the Deep Diver’s storm and ended up grievously wounded and unconscious.
If they could create a blue bottle, one swig and a Spellcaster’s strength would no longer be constrained by these conditions, just like Lance himself, Casting Spells with a constant flow of Spiritual Essence.
That old bastard of an ancestor did so much research, he’s bound to have more good stuff.
Harboring this fantasy, Lance continued to go deeper, though he probably never imagined he was about to run into an even more terrifying scene ahead...
As he walked through the empty, deserted passage, the air was no longer that fermented excrement and rotting corpses blended with some indescribably bizarre stench.
Instead, it carried a distinct stale odor, like when a long-sealed basement that hadn’t had fresh air in ages suddenly gets opened one day.
Logically speaking, this was what an abandoned ancient sewer should smell like, but after being "nurtured" by the Beast Lair’s intense funk, Lance actually felt this was abnormal.
As the torchlight pushed forward, the same scene repeated over and over before his eyes; that hollow, deathly silence could probably mess with a person’s psyche.
But he was Lance, the guy who walked into the Bay alone—what kind of scene hadn’t he seen? As long as he had solid ground beneath his feet, he was never afraid.
Only, when he turned the corner and the torchlight shone into a new space, he was completely dumbfounded.
This, fuck, I really haven’t seen before!
What met his eyes were... mouthparts, limbs, connective tissue and bones—huge heaps of mountain-like, endlessly twitching, mutated remnants of bodies, fused together in the horrifying darkness...
They carpeted the entire passage like a rug, stretching in a continuous line into the darkness, to the point where he couldn’t see the end. In front of this, even the bulk of the God of Pigmen suddenly seemed like a bad joke.
Only a few of the less severely mutated ones barely retained a recognizable shape.
There were enormous pig heads which, in reality, had already undergone severe mutations and merged into the mass.
Irregular purple-black eyeballs grew all over them; when the pig mouths opened, they exposed sharp teeth that had grown in chaotic, overlapping patterns, with a long, shocking tongue drooping down like a tentacle.
There wasn’t even such a thing as a torso underneath; what connected to the pig heads was a fusion of Flesh, where eyeballs, mouths, ears, and all sorts of inexplicable parts had been kneaded together into a lump.
Besides pig heads, there were those exaggerated erect spines, with Flesh clinging to them while stark white bone was exposed. It was hard to imagine how they could stay alive, but there was no doubt they were.
Because the spine was swaying in time with the wriggling Flesh, its joints working almost like a normal one’s.
Connected to the spine as well was that wildly proliferating, deformed and twisted Flesh.
Blood vessels thicker than a thigh, presenting a tempting bright red, with finer veins bulging on them like cords under the skin.
And of course, on them there were those endlessly recurring, grotesque eyeballs.
The thick blood vessels extended into the Flesh before and behind, rhythmically pumping scalding blood, supplying the Flesh with nutrients.
Even more bizarre was that inverted pig body, its head buried in the mass of chaotic Flesh, while its rear half had become extremely strange.
On its ass had grown a ring of tentacles like the "head" of a sea anemone; somehow, the weird sight made Lance think of a sea anemone standing upright, swaying slightly with the flow of the sea—because this damn thing really was writhing.
He knew Flesh was just a form for them, essentially meaningless, but this thing really was like someone had mounted a sea anemone’s head onto a pig’s butt—an asshole flung wide open.
And the next scene was so horrifying that even Lance, who wielded the Power of Flesh and Blood, found it utterly uncanny.
Because that Flesh wasn’t bound by shape; what was a pig head in that spot one second would become a tail in the next, as the Flesh shifted.
If you had to describe it with one phrase, it would be "flowing water"—it moved, and it was constantly changing, as if it had no form at all.
Large numbers of human and pig organs, limbs, and bones had mutated and twisted into unnamable parts; those limbs twitched, mouths kept opening and closing, eyeballs even blinked...
Those layers upon layers of meat kept jerking, writhing, shrieking, snorting; practically every deformed piece of Flesh seemed to be flaunting its vitality.
Compared to the rot-reeking God of Pigmen, the surging vitality this monster displayed was downright astounding.
