Chapter 133: 133
The fifty giant volcanic beasts charged across the cracked stone floorboards like a massive avalanche of dark bone and muscle. Their heavy claws slammed against the petrified rocks, creating a deafening rhythm that vibrated through the entire valley. The thick sulfur air was completely pushed aside by their collective physical pressure. The glowing purple lava streams splashed violently into the air as the prehistoric monsters trampled everything in their path.
They were all staring directly at the tiny blue slime floating on the high rock. Their red eyes were filled with an ancient, untamed hunger. To them, Ayla was a foreign entity invading their absolute territory. They wanted to crush her soft body into the dirt and swallow her liquid mass whole.
Ayla did not feel any fear. She floated calmly on the edge of the jagged rock, her golden-ringed pupils tracking the movements of the fastest beasts in the front row.
"The big bony panthers are incredibly fast," Ayla muttered in her mind, her multi-layered voice completely steady. "But their movement patterns are very simple. They just run in a straight line."
"That is the flaw of true primitive monsters," Nexus laughed brightly inside her head, locking fifty green targeting boxes over Ayla’s right holographic lens. "They have massive physical strength and absolute anti-magic armor, but they do not use strategy. They just rely on pure brute force. Show them that your force is much heavier, little monster!"
The first volcanic panther reached the base of Ayla’s rock. It was forty feet long, its body covered in sharp, jagged black spikes. It opened its massive jaws and leaped straight up into the air, aiming to bite Ayla completely in half.
Ayla did not dodge. She activated her Gale Acceleration trait, turning her blue jelly body into a high-speed projectile. She launched herself directly into the open mouth of the leaping beast.
Right before the massive teeth could snap shut around her, Ayla extended her five pitch-black claws. Her Rend of the World-Order trait flared with a brilliant golden light. The intricate runes on her claws absorbed the wild mana in the air, making the tips incredibly sharp.
With a simple, lazy swipe of her fluid arm, she dragged her black claws across the roof of the panther’s mouth and straight up through its skull.
The heavy volcanic bone armor did not offer any resistance at all. The black claws sliced cleanly through the solid bone, ripping a massive hole straight through the top of the beast’s head. The permanent bleeding effect instantly latched onto the creature’s soul container. A thick fountain of glowing purple blood erupted from its skull, raining down onto the hot rocks below.
The giant panther died instantly in mid-air. Its massive body crashed heavily onto the stone floorboards, sliding violently into a nearby lava trench.
Ayla bounced smoothly off the falling corpse and landed right in the middle of the charging horde. She did not stop moving. She was surrounded by dozens of towering, multi-legged reptilian giants and heavy volcanic panthers, but she looked completely comfortable.
Three massive reptiles lunged at her from the left side, their heavy tails swinging like iron whips.
Ayla dropped her round body flat against the ground, dodging the heavy tails by a single inch. She immediately bounced back up and shot forward like a blue cannonball. She drove her black claws straight into the chest of the first reptile, slicing through its thick anti-magic scales. She grabbed its glowing purple core and forcefully ripped it out of its body.
Without pausing, she threw the hot core straight into her own center and spun around in the air. She used the momentum to slice the legs off the second reptile, sending the massive beast crashing face-first into the dirt. The third reptile tried to stomp on her, but Ayla easily sliced its massive foot into three neat pieces, causing the monster to scream in absolute agony.
"This physical combat is very fun," Ayla whispered, her fluid body dodging a stream of boiling acid spit from another beast. "The black claws are very sharp. But there are too many of them to cut one by one. I am getting too hungry to wait."
"Then use your area tools, little monster," Nexus suggested happily. "They do not have soul-shielding traits like the senior students at the academy. Their primitive brains are completely unprotected against your conceptual data."
Ayla’s golden eyes widened with a dark, predatory light. She landed on top of a dead beast and looked at the remaining forty monsters swarming toward her.
She focused her Twin Lens of the Weaver onto the entire front wave of the horde. She locked her golden pupils onto twenty giant multi-legged reptiles at the exact same moment.
"Combination," Ayla commanded silently.
She forcefully grabbed the concepts of hysterical joy and suicidal despair and jammed them directly into the primitive brains of the twenty giant monsters.
The massive conceptual collision hit their unprotected nervous systems like a falling meteor. The results were instantaneous and completely brutal. The twenty towering reptiles did not even have time to roar. Their red eyes instantly rolled backward into their scaled skulls. Their massive jaws snapped shut, and their thick legs buckled beneath them.
The twenty giants fell into immediate, violent muscular seizures. They crashed heavily into each other, rolling wildly across the jagged rocks and splashing into the deep pools of purple lava. Their primitive hearts stopped beating within a fraction of a second due to the sheer neurological overload.
The sudden, silent death of twenty massive predators instantly broke the momentum of the charging horde. The remaining twenty beasts skidded to a halt, their heavy claws tearing deep grooves into the petrified stone. They looked at their fallen pack members in pure confusion. They could not understand how the tiny blue droplet had killed half of their family without even touching them.
For the first time since they were born, a deep, primal fear entered the hearts of the unmanaged cosmic entities. They began to slowly back away, their red eyes staring at Ayla with absolute terror.
"You cannot run away," Ayla muttered flatly. "I am already eating."
She did not let a single one escape. Ayla activated her Gale Acceleration again, rushing forward into the retreating pack. She used her Removal function to completely erase the survival instincts of ten beasts at once. The massive monsters instantly froze in place, their minds turning completely hollow and blank as they surrendered their physical parameters to her control.
Ayla rolled past them smoothly, extending sharp fluid tendrils from her blue mass. She pierced their chests and harvested their glowing purple cores in one fluid motion.
The last ten beasts turned around and tried to run toward the safety of the dark mountains, but Ayla chased them down relentlessly. She used her pitch-black claws to slice their heavy legs, letting the permanent bleeding effect drain their souls before she ripped out their energy centers.
Within less than ten minutes, the chaotic, deafening roar of the battlefield had completely vanished. The vast volcanic valley fell into a deep, eerie silence.
Fifty massive, broken corpses were scattered across the cracked stone floorboards. Thick purple blood flowed like small rivers, mixing with the glowing lava streams. The entire sector smelled strongly of burnt bone and raw primitive mana.
Ayla floated in the center of the massacre, her translucent blue body expanding and contracting with a deep, heavy rhythm.
She had just swallowed fifty authentic, unmanaged cosmic cores in a matter of minutes. The massive influx of real world authority was flooding her biological framework like a raging ocean. Her Apocalypse Gold Metal Core spun at a terrifying velocity, glowing so brightly that her entire jelly body looked like a solid sphere of pure golden light.
"System notice: Regional threat neutralized," Nexus announced, her digital voice filled with pure awe. "Fifty primitive volcanic cores successfully digested. Your internal mana pool capacity has increased by a massive forty percent. Your golden foundation is now completely saturated with high-tier primitive laws. You are officially pushing the boundary of a peak Gold Crusader right now."
Ayla closed her golden eyes, letting the intense heat of digestion settle down. The purple-tinted golden energy inside her core was incredibly dense. She felt heavier, faster, and infinitely stronger than she did at the academy orientation just an hour ago.
"The meals here are extremely high quality," Ayla communicated, her mental voice vibrating with absolute satisfaction. "The students at the academy are truly worthless compared to these real beasts. I want to hunt here every single day."
"I am glad you are enjoying your private token," Nexus chuckled. "But you might want to open your eyes, little monster. The buffet is not officially closed yet."
Ayla opened her golden-ringed pupils and looked around. The ground beneath her was vibrating.
It was not a small tremor. The entire petrified valley was shaking violently. The jagged black mountains in the distance were cracking apart, and the thick sulfur clouds in the red sky were swirling into a massive, unnatural vortex.
The heat in the air suddenly multiplied by ten times. The pools of purple lava began to bubble frantically, rising higher and higher until they flooded the stone floorboards.
"The massive death toll and the heavy smell of purple blood have successfully triggered the regional boss algorithm," Nexus explained, her voice dropping into a serious, highly focused tone. "Something very big is waking up under the crust. The energy signature is completely off the charts, Ayla. It is bypassing the standard Gold Rank parameters completely."
Ayla did not move away from the rising lava. She stayed exactly where she was, her pitch-black claws extending slightly as she stared at a massive volcano located at the far end of the valley.
The top of the volcano suddenly exploded.
A massive pillar of purple fire shot thousands of feet into the blood-red sky, scattering giant boulders across the horizon. From the center of the eruption, a truly colossal entity slowly emerged.
It was a giant, wingless Magma Wyrm. The creature was over three hundred feet long, its long serpentine body entirely composed of dark, indestructible volcanic rock and flowing purple magma. Its head was shaped like a jagged arrowhead, featuring six burning red eyes and a mouth filled with hundreds of glowing hot teeth.
The Wyrm let out a deep, booming roar that sounded like a continuous thunderclap. The sheer physical pressure of its voice completely vaporized the purple blood on the battlefield, turning it into thick, toxic smoke.
"Target confirmed," Nexus stated quickly, projecting a bright red warning interface over Ayla’s eye. "That is an Ancient Abyss Wyrm. It is a true apex predator of this primitive world. Its core density is equivalent to a peak Gold Crusader, but its physical body carries the weight of a pseudo-Crown entity. Its armor is completely forged by the core of the planet."
The massive Wyrm lowered its giant head, its six burning eyes locking directly onto the small blue slime standing among the dead bodies of its subjects. It opened its jaws, gathering a terrifying sphere of condensed purple lava in its throat.
Ayla did not feel intimidated by the massive size difference. She looked up at the three-hundred-foot monster, her golden-ringed pupils expanding with a dark, manic joy. Her newly saturated gold core throbbed with endless energy, eager to test its absolute limits against a true apex predator.
"Nexus," Ayla whispered into the burning wind, her fluid body sinking slightly as she prepared to launch herself into the sky. "That core is going to be my lunch."
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