71: Chapter 71 The Frenzy of Crystal Armored Flying Bugs and the Instant Kill of the First Floor
God Ascension Tower, First Floor Trial Space.
The dizziness from the spatial displacement vanished in a flash, and Su Chen's consciousness descended into a brand-new plane.
This was a Gobi desert ruled by death and solitude.
As far as the eye could see, there was endless desolation. The gale whipped up yellow sand, emitting a howl like ghosts crying; every grain of sand carried a bone-chilling sharpness, scraping against non-existent skin. The air was filled with an extremely dry scent, a mixture of sulfur and dust.
Su Chen was still draped in that black God Robe that isolated all perception, standing quietly at the center where the teleportation's white light had dissipated. He did not reveal his true face; the darkness beneath his hood was deep as an abyss.
"Is this the first floor?"
His divine sense swept across the surroundings, carrying a trace of imperceptible scrutiny.
He had applied to challenge the third floor, yet he was teleported directly to the first. Was it a rule restriction of the God Ascension Tower? Must one start from the beginning and clear it floor by floor?
No ripples stirred in Su Chen's consciousness.
It didn't matter.
It was just a matter of crushing a few more ants and wasting a few more seconds.
He calmly surveyed this space; even for the lowest difficulty trial, the opponents were genuine Epic-Tier creatures. For those demigods outside, this was already a challenge that required serious preparation.
Just then, the earth issued a dull protest.
Boom— Rumble—
It was not an earthquake, but a more rhythmic, heavier pulsation. It was as if a giant's heart was awakening, pounding deep within the crust of the Gobi.
The ground beneath Su Chen's feet began to tremble violently, and countless gravel stones were tossed high into the air.
A hundred meters ahead, the hard rocky ground cracked inch by inch, and massive rifts tore open. Immediately after, giant hands made of pure rock pried open the surface's blockade and climbed out from deep underground!
Dozens of behemoths, up to a hundred meters tall, rose from the ground.
Elemental Giants!
They were the guardians of this plane, formed by the purest rock and earth elemental cores. Their bodies were indestructible, and their surfaces flowed with visible, thick, slurry-like earthy-yellow magical radiance.
Every step they took on the ground triggered a small-scale, violent earthquake, whipping up sandstorms that filled the sky.
...
Meanwhile, at the spectator area outside the God Ascension Tower.
Hundreds of massive divine power projection screens were broadcasting everything happening in the first-floor space in real-time. All the images focused on that lone black-robed figure standing in place.
"Heh, it has begun."
Maggie crossed her arms, a sneer of expectation curling on her delicate face.
"The guardians of the first floor, Elemental Giants. They have up to 50% physical immunity and extremely strong resistance to attacks other than elemental magic. Their weakness is their elemental core, but it is wrapped in thick rocky bodies, making it extremely difficult to hit."
Her voice was not loud, but it clearly reached the ears of the few demigods nearby, carrying a condescending tone of instruction.
"This newcomer is still too arrogant. Looking at him, his followers don't seem to be skilled in high-tier evocation magic. Thinking of grinding these big guys to death with physical attacks is simply a pipe dream."
The surrounding demigods nodded in deep agreement, and their gazes toward the screen already carried a playful sense of watching a show.
In their view, this arrogant newcomer would soon pay the price for his ignorance.
...
Inside the trial space.
Su Chen naturally could not hear those self-righteous discussions from the outside.
His attention did not even linger for more than a second on those dozens of roaring Elemental Giants closing in step by step.
He just coldly raised his right hand.
That hand, shrouded in the shadow of his black robe, lightly swiped across the void in front of him.
Rip!
The space, like a fragile curtain, was forcibly torn open by an invisible force, creating a long, narrow rift.
The interior of the rift was not void, nor chaos, but a deep, heart-palpitating purple, as if it led to some forbidden zone of life.
Zerg Swarm passage!
"To deal with these clumsy, slow rocks, there is no need for even my saints to act."
A cold command was quietly issued within Su Chen's consciousness.
"Go."
"Let them witness what true ultimate speed is."
His voice seemed to unlatch the gates of hell.
"Hiss hiss hiss hiss hiss——!!"
The next moment, a sharp screech that made the soul tremble and the scalp tingle erupted violently from that deep purple rift!
Following closely behind was a black torrent.
Five thousand Zerglings that had just completed their latest genetic iteration, like a black tide breaking through a dam, surged madly out of the Zerg Swarm passage!
They were already completely different from the Zerglings in Su Chen's memory, or even those ordinary Zerglings in the Divine Kingdom.
The surface of every Zergling was covered in a layer of translucent Refractive Crystal Carapace that shone like perfectly cut black diamonds. Under the dim yellow sunlight of the Gobi, this carapace shimmered with an eerie and gorgeous ghostly light, twisting and refracting the light to form an unreal, hazy area.
And at the location of their hideous dorsal glands, clusters of blinding red biological light were flashing frantically and rhythmically, like hearts about to explode.
Su Chen's will became the final trigger.
"Metabolic Overload, activate."
The moment the command was issued, it was like lighting five thousand powder kegs.
In an instant!
The eyes of the five thousand Zerglings turned blood-red with bloodlust at the same moment! The biological glands within their bodies pumped frantically, and a massive amount of genetically optimized super-adrenaline was injected into every corner of their bodies within 0.01 seconds.
The muscle fibers all over their bodies instantly expanded and bulged, and beneath their hard crystal carapaces came the "creaking" sound of being unable to bear the load.
Boom!!
A loud bang, not from one, but from five thousand Zerglings exerting force simultaneously!
The ground beneath their feet instantly collapsed and shattered, forming a massive circular impact crater.
The figures of the five thousand Zerglings disappeared.
No, not disappeared.
It was that their speed had become so fast that it exceeded the limits of most creatures' neural reaction thresholds!
The air was torn apart, emitting ear-piercing sonic booms. Five thousand red afterimages, created by the friction and combustion with the air due to extreme speed, suddenly lit up the desolate Gobi.
That was not creatures running.
That was five thousand streaks of red lightning flying close to the ground!
They instantly crossed a distance of a thousand meters; from appearing to approaching, the entire process took less than a second!
"Roar——!!"
The Elemental Giants finally reacted to this sudden turn of events; they were shocked and furious, their slow minds unable to comprehend the speed of these tiny creatures.
They instinctively raised their mountain-like giant arms, and violent earth-type magical energy instantly gathered.
The next second, covering the sky and earth, magical rocks, dragging long tails of flame like a dense meteor shower, smashed fiercely toward that patch of red "lightning"!
However, a scene occurred that made all the demigods in the spectator area nearly pop their eyes out.
Those magical rocks, containing the force of ten thousand jun, enough to raze a small hill to the ground, smashed heavily onto the eerie crystal carapaces of the Zergling swarm.
There was no scene of flesh flying or carapaces shattering as expected.
The surface of the crystal carapaces merely rippled with strange halos of light.
All the magical energy, the moment it touched the carapace, was instantly refracted, decomposed, and scattered by that eerie crystal structure. The vast majority of the impact and elemental damage was dissipated into nothingness during this process.
"This is the magic resistance of crystallization!"
A trace of satisfaction flashed through Su Chen's consciousness.
The next second, the torrent of the Zerg Swarm and the giants collided with a boom.
This was not a battle at all.
This was a one-sided, coldly efficient slow execution.
The Zerglings that had activated Metabolic Overload had an attack frequency so fast that even the dynamic-capturing divine power projections could only see a blur of afterimages.
Their incomparably sharp bone scythes turned into five thousand ceaseless meat grinders at this moment, frantically cutting through the Elemental Giants' proud rocky bodies.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The teeth-gritting sounds of shattering densely merged into one.
Those rocks, which in the eyes of the demigods were indestructible and required high-tier magic to shake, were as fragile as dried tofu in front of the Zerglings' bone scythes.
Large chunks of rock were stripped away, severed, and pulverized.
Only a dozen seconds or so.
In the sky, the Elemental Giants hadn't even managed to complete their second round of magical chanting.
On the ground, their fate was already sealed.
Rumble——
Accompanied by the last unwilling cry of grief, the body of the last Elemental Giant collapsed, falling to the ground and turning into a pile of lifeless, cold rubble.
The battle was over.
Five thousand Zerglings stood quietly atop the dozens of piles of rubble. In their scarlet eyes, the violent desire for slaughter was still burning, but under the supreme will of the Overlord, they obeyed orders strictly and remained motionless.
The entire spectator area outside the God Ascension Tower was deathly silent.
You could hear a pin drop.
All the demigods seemed to have their throats throttled, their bodies stiff, their faces filled with disbelief.
After a long while, sounds of gasping for air rose one after another.
Maggie's pretty face, which had originally worn a look of mockery and coldness, was now completely drained of color, deathly pale. Her pupils contracted violently, staring fixedly at that group of black killing machines on the screen.
"This... what kind of monster race is this?!"
"That speed... that speed is completely beyond even my dynamic vision to keep up with!"
"That is pure physical violence! How did they do... how can they even be immune to magic?!"