43: Chapter 43 The Flaw Has Been Revealed

"Move!" Fang Che's voice echoed repeatedly throughout the Greenhouse, instantly igniting a desperate, last-stand resolve in everyone.

"Smash it to death! Go to hell!"

The will to survive completely suppressed their fear. Bricks, scrap metal, blood-stained pipes… every heavy object they could grab turned into the girls' pent-up fury, driven to the edge, as they hurled everything madly at the behemoth in the center of the plaza.

Such laughable attacks weren't even enough to tickle it, but they successfully drew all of the Rotting Gardener's aggro.

Roar—!

Provoked repeatedly by ants, the BOSS was completely enraged! It twisted its deformed body, stitched together from corpses and vines. Its massive, dilapidated pruning shears flailed wildly through the air, creating cruel, blood-colored afterimages that violently shredded the incoming debris along with the surrounding air!

Now is the time!

"Brother Che, wait for my good news! I'm heading out first, I'm going in!"

Jiang Ning let out a roar mixed with excitement and madness. The blood spilling from the corner of her mouth made her heroic face look eerie and resolute. The muscles on her long legs bulged and swelled, and she charged into that churning, black mire of death with a reckless, fierce momentum, completely disregarding everything else!

Splat!

The moment her right foot stepped in, half her lower leg was completely swallowed by the black mud. Beneath the sludge, a cold, eerie strangling force tore madly at her flesh, trying to swallow her alive, brutally dragging her skin and bones into the dark, pitch-black abyss.

"Get lost!"

The bone-chilling pain didn't make her retreat; instead, it stirred the ruthless streak in her bones! With bloodshot eyes, she roared, her military knife backhanding and slicing through the dozen poisonous vines wrapped around her ankles, one by one. Foul-smelling green sap splattered everywhere, covering her.

She didn't even glance at the terrifying, bone-deep wound on her leg. Stepping on an exposed, thick lateral root, she scrambled forward with hands and feet, charging madly toward the direction of the big BOSS's core, disregarding her own life!

The pressure of decay crushed in from all sides. Every breath made her lungs ache terribly, the air she inhaled was scorching hot, and every gasp tortured her nerves.

Rumble—

The entire black mud plaza erupted into chaos! Hundreds, thousands of massive roots as thick as buckets burst through the soil. This dense, deadly thicket of wooden spikes formed a suffocating net, blotting out the sky as it violently closed in to strangle her!

"Coordinates! Mu Waner! I'm about to be turned into a sieve!" Jiang Ning roared into the communication channel, her voice trembling from the intense pain.

In the rear, Mu Waner bit her lower lip hard, letting two lines of hot nosebleed drip down her chin. Her [Eye of Analysis] was running at extreme overload. The entire world in her eyes turned into a complex network of crisscrossing, blinding energy beams, her eyeballs covered in a dense, frightening web of blood vessels.

"Cut it! Jiang Ning! Three meters to the front left, that little mound of rising black mud! Half a meter beneath it is the energy knot for all the roots!" She screamed with all her might, her throat completely torn.

"Received!"

Jiang Ning's eyes were blood-red. In her field of vision, three massive tree roots, several times thicker than telephone poles, had completely sealed off all paths of retreat, descending with a terrifying weight capable of crushing her flat!

She didn't dodge or evade at all, pouring all her remaining strength into her legs and leaping without hesitation toward the location Mu Waner had called out!

"Hold it, Teacher Qin!" On the other side, Fang Che shouted at the top of his lungs, the veins on his forehead bulging violently.

Teacher Qin Bing's face was deathly pale. She suddenly opened her eyes, and at that moment, she forcibly drained and completely ignited every last bit of her LV3 mental power! She materialized all her power into an extremely sharp and vicious mental spike, surpassing the speed of sound and light, driving it fiercely into the flashing scarlet core of the Rotting Gardener!

Hum—!

A visible ripple of transparent air instantly spread through the atmosphere.

Teacher Qin Bing let out a grunt of extreme pain, falling backward onto the ground, blood pouring from all seven orifices. At the final moment before her consciousness plunged into endless darkness, she saw, through a blur, those three giant roots about to crush Jiang Ning, miraculously frozen in mid-air for a full second!

That's enough!

That one second was enough!

"Break—break for me!"

Leveraging the massive weight and momentum from her high-altitude descent, Jiang Ning slammed herself with all her might onto that small mound of rising black mud. Gripping her military knife with both hands, she twisted her waist and abdomen violently, combining her entire body weight and all her strength. With a scream that cracked her voice, she drove the entire knife, along with half her arm, deep into the black mud!

The blade then violently churned!

Crack—!!!

A terrifying sound, as if it were going to tear the entire underground apart, came dull and muffled from the deepest cracks in the earth.

Time fell into a state of dead, silent suspension.

Those hundreds and thousands of wildly dancing giant roots all froze in mid-air, completely losing all vitality, and fell limp and lifeless, crashing heavily onto the surface of the mud.

Roar... Urgh...

The Rotting Gardener let out an extremely shrill and painful cry. Its massive body swayed uncontrollably, and the black mud beneath its feet cracked inch by inch. Right in the center of its strange face, stitched together from weeds and corpses, its scarlet energy core was exposed to the air for the first time without any cover!

"Beautiful! That was fucking beautiful!"

Fang Che, who had been half-crouched on the flank, adjusting his rapid breathing and gathering his strength, saw a brilliant, intense light explode in his eyes after being suppressed to the limit. He stared fixedly at the target ahead.

What he had been waiting for was precisely this moment of absolute vulnerability!

"Size Manipulation!"

Without any hesitation, Fang Che roared madly in his heart.

Boom!

Under the terrified gazes of the surviving girls, his right arm began its second, and most insane and thorough, burst of enhancement amidst a teeth-grinding sound of popping bones!

The muscle fibers on his arm tore, swelled, twisted, and forcibly reorganized at a speed visible to the naked eye! Extremely thick veins bulged violently from beneath his skin, wrapping tightly and densely around his arm muscles! This local enhancement of extreme, overwhelming power even made his right shoulder blade emit a grating, cracking sound as if it were about to snap. His entire right arm had transformed into a terrifying muscle weapon filled with horrifying destructive power!

He gripped the broken metal rod tightly, the cold sensation of the metal merging completely with his scorching palm.

"This strike…" Fang Che grinned widely, revealing a blood-stained, wildly excited, and insane smile, "is called a killing blow! It must be a killing blow!"

Boom—!!!

He slammed his feet down violently. The concrete floor beneath him could no longer withstand this terrifying, explosive power, and two huge, obvious craters shattered into existence on the spot!

There was no charge, no extra running start.

His figure simply vanished from where he stood, and with a flash, he appeared abruptly a dozen meters away, right in front of the BOSS's core!

Straight, violent, and completely unreasonable!

He poured every ounce of his body weight, the extreme speed of the impact, and the full, violent force of [Size Manipulation] pushed to his limit, without holding anything back, into the very tip of the unremarkable metal rod in his hand!

Time was infinitely stretched and slowed at this moment.

Pfft—!

The moment the metal rod violently pierced the core, there was no deafening roar; instead, it emitted an extremely eerie, faint tearing sound.

The world before his eyes lost all its bright colors, turning into a stark, dead-silent black and white.

The only stunning, dazzling color came from the deepest part of his soul.

An intense, rainbow-colored light, impossible to describe in words, erupted forcibly from within his body, surging wildly along his enlarged arm and pouring into the metal rod!

[Ding! You have made a logical decision to deliver a fatal strike to the Elite BOSS core during the absolute opening created by your teammates!]

[Talent: Absolute Critical Hit... Triggered!]

[Judgment 1: Weak Point Broken! Triggering 8x base Critical Hit!]

[Judgment 2: Fatal Strike! Triggering stacked Critical Hit!]

[Multiple judgments fused... Final damage calculated...]

[—64x Critical Hit damage!!!]

Fang Che's pupils contracted violently to their absolute limit.

The fragile core region did not explode on the spot, but instead forcibly collapsed inward within a split second, followed by turning into a terrifying, extremely powerful shockwave and blast of air, mixed with foul-smelling green sap splattering everywhere, violently and completely expanding outward!

Bang!

Fang Che was slammed directly in the center of his chest by the violent, massive shockwave. He was instantly and uncontrollably sent flying into the air, tracing a long, uncontrollable parabola before crashing heavily dozens of meters away, rolling wildly on the ground a dozen times before finally, and quite pathetically, coming to a stop.

"Cough... cough!"

He lay on the ground, coughing violently. His right arm, which had just been extremely enlarged, had now completely lost all sensation, appearing in a terrifying, purplish-red state, with dense, horrifying, forcibly torn blood marks beneath the skin.

But he lay on the dilapidated concrete floor without a care, gazing up at the night sky through the broken Greenhouse roof, quietly feeling the intense heartbeat of someone who had just escaped death. Suddenly, he grinned with his cracked mouth, letting out a hoarse, yet incredibly satisfying, unbridled, cathartic laugh.

"Haha... ha..."

At the end of his distant gaze, that arrogant LV5 Elite BOSS, the Rotting Gardener, had its massive, terrifying body silently twitching and convulsing. Then, its torso began to collapse, shatter, and fall apart from the huge hole where its core had been, rapidly turning, inch by inch, into billions of glowing light particles that dissipated, vanishing completely into the foul-smelling air.

Ding—

A crisp, melodious, and echoing chime resounded directly in the center of the empty plaza.

Once all the tiny, fluttering light particles had completely dissipated, above the messy, chaotic black mud, a magnificent, heavy treasure chest, perfectly wrapped in brilliant, iridescent light, sat motionlessly in the mud, emitting a dazzling, beautiful glow that was intoxicating to behold.

Unfortunately, that eye-catching layer of iridescent light on the chest's surface was gradually and slowly dimming at a speed clearly visible to the naked eye.