263: Chapter 264 "Order Wars" [Clone City]: Sacrificial Materials—The Fate of Clones

An absolute command instantly spread through the flesh-and-blood nerves across the entire [Clone City], as the giant crimson eye atop the tower shot a beam of crimson light straight into the sky.

Centered on the hundreds-of-meters-high Flesh Tower, a wave of dark red mutated flesh surged toward the entire city like a tsunami. Wherever the wave of flesh passed, there was no earth-shattering roar, only the faint, scalp-tingling sound of flesh mutating. All matter—whether superalloys or reinforced glass, concrete floors or Rock buildings—mutated in an instant into writhing flesh that emitted wet, greasy sounds.

The hard, high-resistance alloy ground was like fragile paper, disassembled and reorganized. The cold metal lattices transformed in an instant into dark red flesh fibers. Everything in [Clone City] mutated into flesh in a flash, pulsating in unison with the Flesh Tower.

The sci-fi buildings that once lined the streets had their transparent glass walls completely replaced by dark red membranes of flesh covered in blood vessels. The alloy steel frames mutated into thick flesh, sturdily supporting the giant pulsating masses of meat that the buildings had become.

The transparent glass pipes, high-voltage lines, and signal base stations that once spanned the city had already turned into thick blood vessels and hypersensory nerve bundles reaching in all directions. With every pulse, they delivered scorching blood carrying the [Power of Corruption] to every corner of [Clone City], which had been transformed into a giant altar of flesh.

In just a dozen or so breaths, Clone City—once a masterpiece of the Peak of mechanical technology—completely shed the signature mechanical tech of the Ultra-Era Tech Empire, transforming into a gargantuan city of flesh.

The once-orderly streets, rows of buildings, and open squares had all vanished, replaced by an endless, constantly writhing floor of dark red flesh.

The air was thick with a sickly sweet, nauseating smell of blood. The entire [Clone City] had completely turned into a living, breathing mass of giant flesh, and the 33 Hosts within had long since fallen from "accidental intruders" to "sacrifices" trapped in this super-giant altar of flesh.

The twenty-odd Hosts on the plaza in front of the tower, after witnessing the mutation sweeping the city, were all on guard against attacks from the omnipresent mutated flesh.

Dozens of thick flesh tentacles besieged them from the front, while a closing wave of flesh from behind compressed their space to dodge. The alloy ground beneath their feet had completely mutated into writhing flesh; the once-hard footing became soft and slippery, and countless slender nerve tendrils sprouted from the ground, attempting to wrap around their ankles.

The Hosts who controlled various elements immediately unleashed elemental slashes, severing the attacking flesh tentacles and destroying the writhing flesh spreading beneath their feet.

The Hosts who controlled concepts and Laws either etherealized their bodies to avoid entanglement or turned the incoming flesh into harmless cream. Yet even if they could block the attacks for a time, they could not withstand the continuous waves of flesh from the entire city of meat.

But the most Divine Soul-shaking horror of this city-wide mutation had only just begun.

The moment the alloy ground beneath was completely assimilated by flesh, the hundreds of thousands of Clones standing still on the streets, in pipe openings, and among building ruins all changed simultaneously. They did not scream, struggle, or show even the slightest intent to resist. The [Hive Gene - Worker Bee] segments dormant within their bodies were fully awakened by the [Beholder], and the obedience commands etched into the deepest parts of their genes destroyed their newly Awakening self-wills.

Like wax figures falling into a furnace, the bodies of hundreds of thousands of Clones began to melt at once. Bones, muscles, skin, and internal organs—all physical tissues turned into organic nutrient fluid within a few breaths, instantly merging into the earth of flesh below.

Only basketball-sized clusters of brain tissue were exposed to the air from the melting bodies, tightly wrapped by slender nerve bundles growing out of the flesh ground. Like fish returning to their nest, they moved at high speed through the thick, branching underground blood vessels toward the Mutation Tower at the center.