179: Chapter 177 Void Tide
Inside the surviving bridge of the star destroyer, Second Lieutenant Gu Ya stood beside the main console, his voice heavy.
"Commander, the energy level of Reactor No. 7 has dropped below forty percent."
"Every second the Absolute Annihilation Field remains active, it consumes a massive amount of energy."
"We can last at most one more hour before our energy is completely depleted!"
Commander Gu Yuan stood with his hands behind his back in front of the holographic screen.
On the screen, Lin Mo wore an expression of watching a show, gazing at them across the pitch-black Sea of Worlds.
Commander Gu Yuan's back teeth ground together with a clicking sound.
After a long moment, he squeezed two words through his teeth: "Retreat."
Commander Gu Yuan slammed his palm onto the alloy control console, leaving a clear handprint.
Humiliation. Resentment. Both were buried deep in his eyes.
"Activate the spatial jump device and escape from the current coordinates!"
Second Lieutenant Gu Ya hesitated for a moment.
"But the Primordial World..."
"That brat is guarding the entrance; there's no need for us to fight him to the death."
Commander Gu Yuan's eyes were fierce.
"But in three days! Just wait three more days. Once the World-Eater Behemoth sent by headquarters arrives, it will swallow this entire Sea of Worlds and his native world in one gulp!"
Second Lieutenant Gu Ya perked up and immediately turned to push the control lever.
"Understood! Main engine warming up, ten-second countdown, preparing for jump!"
The nine reactors emitted a low rumble.
The thirty-six pairs of giant metal wings behind the mechanical god began to retract, tearing open a vast stretch of space as a deep blue jump tunnel slowly took shape.
Just then, a "Hum—" sound echoed.
A wave that made one's scalp tingle swept in from all directions.
The next second, all the radar screens on the bridge instantly turned a blinding crimson.
The alarm sirens blared, causing ear pain.
Second Lieutenant Gu Ya looked up abruptly, his eyes wide.
The starry sky of the Sea of Worlds ahead had originally only featured a pitch-black background and shattered meteorites.
But now, countless dark gray rifts had split open in the Sea of Worlds without warning.
From deep within the rifts, vast clouds of gray mist surged out.
"What is that?" Second Lieutenant Gu Ya's voice trembled.
Commander Gu Yuan stared at the screen, his pupils constricting sharply.
The gray mist dispersed.
The things that crawled out from within caused the entire bridge to fall silent for a moment.
Hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of bizarre creatures were pouring out of the rifts.
They had no fixed form.
Some looked like piles of flesh covered in eyeballs, some like giant beasts pieced together from bones, and others were just masses of constantly writhing gray shadows.
Even the smallest were hundreds of meters in size.
The largest were almost comparable to a heavy cruiser.
They radiated an aura of decay, rot, and nothingness.
Void Creatures from the depths of the Sea of Worlds!
After a moment of shock, Commander Gu Yuan quickly understood what had happened.
The intense energy output from the battle between the mechanical god and Lin Mo must have affected the nearby Void rifts.
These monsters had been attracted by the aftermath of the battle!
"Commander!" Second Lieutenant Gu Ya was sweating profusely in his anxiety.
"The jump tunnel is being interfered with by Void Laws, and it's becoming unstable!"
"Should we force the jump?"
"Force it, my ass! Stop!" Commander Gu Yuan's expression suddenly changed.
The previous dejection was swept away, and the corners of his mouth even began to curl up.
Finally, he laughed out loud in the bridge.
"Heaven helps me! Truly, Heaven helps me!"
Second Lieutenant Gu Ya was completely bewildered.
The monster tide was about to engulf them; how could his commander still laugh?
"What do you know!" Commander Gu Yuan pointed at the gray tide of monsters on the screen, his eyes reigniting with fanaticism.
"These are Void Creatures!"
"They love devouring the energy and Laws of True World living beings. If you get entangled by them, even just touching their aura will force your experience points to be reduced. If your level regresses, your origin will be weakened!"
Speaking of this, Commander Gu Yuan sat back in the main control chair.
His tone steadied.
"Lin Mo is an Extraterrestrial Demon. For an Extraterrestrial Demon, the most important thing for resurrection is their origin. If he dares to stay in this pile of Void monsters, his origin will be affected by the Void Creatures, and his strength will inevitably regress."
Second Lieutenant Gu Ya finally realized.
"You mean... this monster tide can help us deal with him?"
"Exactly." Commander Gu Yuan sneered.
"We are hiding inside the super-strong armor and Annihilation Field of the Level 4 mechanical god; ordinary Void Creatures cannot affect us at all. But Lin Mo is different. He can only rely on his physical body to resist."
Commander Gu Yuan picked up his wine glass, his eyes filled with the joy of revenge.
"I want to see how much longer he can be arrogant. Pass the order: stop the retreat. Everyone stay in position, lower the field power by half to save energy."
Commander Gu Yuan leaned back in the main control chair and crossed his legs.
"Today, I will sit here and enjoy watching how this native Extraterrestrial Demon is sucked dry and exhausted to death by the monster tide."
...
In the Sea of Worlds, the gray monster tide surged toward Lin Mo and the nine Law Manifestations like an endless tsunami.
A few extremely fast Level 8000 Void Predators had already rushed to within a hundred meters of Lin Mo.
Their sickle-like forelimbs slashed fiercely toward his neck.
Lin Mo stood in place, unmoving.
He looked at the dense, sky-covering Void Creatures all around him, stunned for a moment.
Then, his eyes began to brighten, bit by bit. They grew terrifyingly bright.
"Good fellow." Lin Mo muttered to himself, but the corners of his mouth couldn't stop curling upward.
He had been worried!
To achieve the sixth rank, he had to raise his world fusion rate to 100%!
Because the higher the fusion rate, the harder it was to improve, the amount of void matter required for every point of increase was now massive!
The nine Law Manifestations acted in unison.
Their giant palms descended like the firmament, carrying world-destroying power, and slammed violently into the gray mist monster tide.
"Boom!" The space of the Sea of Worlds collapsed over a large area.
Tens of thousands of Void Creatures were instantly smashed to pieces, turning into a sky full of gray mist, and countless gray diamond-shaped crystals exploded in the vacuum.
But at the moment of impact, a sudden change occurred.
The edges of the Law Manifestations that touched the monster tide emitted a harsh "hissing" sound.
The surface of the originally solid dark-gold manifestations looked like a projection interfered with by a strong magnetic field, flickering crazily between reality and illusion.
Inside the surviving bridge of the star destroyer, Commander Gu Yuan stared at the holographic screen and laughed out loud in the empty command cabin.
"Lin Mo, do you see it!"
He pressed the full-frequency broadcast key, and his voice spread throughout the Sea of Worlds via the ship's body.
"Void monsters are the natural nemesis of True World Laws! So what if your level is high?"
"The more you kill, the thicker the Void Laws you become contaminated with; they will follow your attacks and devour your origin in reverse!"
"Don't struggle in vain! No True World creature can escape unscathed from this many Void beasts. If you roll back now, you might still save half your life!"
In the Sea of Worlds, Lin Mo stood quietly.
In his ears, the system notification sounds were indeed flooding his screen like a waterfall.
[Warning! Suffering erosion from Void Rules!]
[Experience points - 100 billion!]
[Experience points - 350 billion!]
[Experience points - 800 billion!]
The numbers jumped frantically.
Lin Mo felt his origin power slowly decreasing as well.
But soon, he laughed again.
This rate of loss might be very fast for others, but for Lin Mo, it was only a tiny bit.
Killing a few Tali Tribe members would make up for it.
"Only this much deducted?"
He was currently Level 20,000.
His experience multiplier was an incomprehensible 2 trillion times!
Killing just one monster, the overflow of the remainder could fill this tiny loss thousands of times over.
Moreover, what these monsters dropped was exactly what he craved most right now!
Lin Mo didn't waste words; he slammed his hands forward.
The nine Law Manifestations followed his motion, like nine violent meat grinders, diving headfirst into the area where the gray mist was thickest.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!" The muffled, thunderous explosions merged into one.
The Void Creatures fell in swathes like wheat, and high-purity void matter rained down in the Sea of Worlds.
Lin Mo opened the Law World tunnel, sucking in all the void matter like a storm.
[Absorbed 500,000 void matter! Fusion rate between physical body and Inner World increased!]
[Current fusion rate: 60%!]
Lin Mo sighed in comfort.
This feeling of not having to look everywhere, with prey lining up to deliver themselves and keep him full, was too satisfying.
...
Inside the bridge.
Commander Gu Yuan's smile died completely on his face, his two eyes staring fixedly at the screen.
"How is this possible?"
Second Lieutenant Gu Ya's voice was even drifting, his hand pointing at the screen shaking like a sieve:
"Commander... his energy level reading hasn't dropped; it's skyrocketing!"
"His Law Avatar... is about to break through to Level 4 Transcendent!"
On the screen, Lin Mo's energy evaluation curve was no longer just climbing; it was taking off vertically like a straight line!
In the Sea of Worlds, those nine Law Manifestations had originally stalled at a size of several hundred million meters.
At this moment, as Lin Mo's Inner World fusion rate surged, the bodies of the manifestations swelled rapidly again like balloons.
Three hundred million meters!
Four hundred million meters!
Five hundred million meters!