[Virtue's Spirituality]
"Hello? Is the Death God there?"
"I want to report a bug using a hack!"
"It was just being chased around by me not long ago, losing all its territory, but now it's leveling up faster than me, the Hero? Is that reasonable?"
Unfortunately, today Virtue maintained its subpar performance—it was completely useless.
It was truly bizarre. Was Keith the protagonist of some martial arts story?
Did it jump off a cliff and learn a top-tier cultivation technique?
Setting its level aside, just look at that status panel!
[Seven Deadly Sins: Gluttony]
[Leviathan]
A new level-less skill!
Earlier, the status panel for Keith's Heart could be seen on that pillar, meaning that it was a part of its body.
Combined with this skill name, did it seem to be gigantification pushed to its absolute limit?
Lin Jun had only seen a portion of it and failed to see the whole picture, but to possess a tentacle that massive, its body size must certainly be much larger than even a Giant Puchi.
Earlier, Lin Jun was still wondering how, considering Keith had almost eaten the sea empty, there were still only so few bugs.
It turned out they had all been fed to the Heart!
That detestable Keith! It actually stole the Puchis' resources to fatten itself up, and even fed itself until it acquired a level-less skill?!
In other words, that [Leviathan]should have originally belonged to Lin Jun, but it was stolen and used by that thieving bug.
He had to find a way to take it back.
As for [Gluttony]...
It still looked quite formidable. The fact that Keith leveled up so quickly was probably all thanks to it.
But honestly, Lin Jun didn't really want it.
Considering the Death God seemed intent on giving the Great Sins and Virtues to him, Lin Jun instinctively wanted to do the exact opposite.
But when decomposing Keith's Heart, the Great Sin would probably automatically fall onto his status panel anyway...
So troubling. Could this also be part of the Death God's plan?
Guys like this, hiding in the dark like some behind-the-scenes mastermind, were truly annoying, especially when they acted like riddlers.
After marking two more 'X's next to the Death God's name, Lin Jun tossed this bit of displeasure to the back of his mind.
Currently, Keith was hiding deep in the trench, a location Lin Jun couldn't reach yet.
And the progress of spreading floating mushrooms was hindered by Keith's forces, temporarily stalling.
In short, although he knew the location of Keith's Heart, Lin Jun didn't have the time to deal with it for now.
However, it seemed Lin Jun didn't need to worry too much about it taking the opportunity to continue rapidly developing and expanding—there wasn't much left in the sea anymore.
Next, Keith would either have to continue eating some leftovers in the sea, waiting for Lin Jun to free his hands and deal with it, or it would have to go ashore.
If it went ashore, the north and the south were both Lin Jun's territories, and land battles were his forte!
And if it went to the central region, watching Keith bite the Empire's dogs would also be nice.
*Hmm*... if he could just drive Keith toward the Empire, that would be great...
In the sea, the back-and-forth battles surrounding the floating mushroom fungal mat continued, but these were merely minor skirmishes before the true storm.
"Hurry! Starboard helm, get out of this area!"
The helmsman desperately spun the wheel, veins bulging on his forehead, his entire face flushed red. The rigging cracked in the wind as the ship tilted and carved an arc, leaving a white wake along the edge of the glowing floating mushrooms.
"We're doomed! We're doomed! Why did these bugs suddenly become active? It definitely wasn't like this when we came!" In a corner, a young crew member curled up beside a barrel, hugging his head, his voice pitching out of tune. "We're all going to die! I don't want to die!"
"Don't give up!"
Bella swung her sword, cleaving a large bug that had just climbed over the ship's rail in half from head to tail.
Purple bodily fluids splashed all over her, dripping down her cheeks, but she didn't even have the time to wipe it off.
"Pick up your weapon! Hold the stern, don't let them break through!"
Another bug darted up from the stern, its six jointed limbs hooking onto the deck, its mouthparts opening to reveal rings of fine, sharp teeth inside.
Bella stepped forward, thrusting the tip of her sword up through its lower jaw, piercing entirely through its head.
The thing twitched twice and slid limply onto the deck.
Five or six bug corpses already lay at her feet.
Bella's talent clearly hadn't inherited Old Dylan's atrocious foundation.
Having been at the Gold tier when she first met the Hero, her strength had firmly stepped into the Diamond tier through the slaughter and tempering of these past few years.
Ordinary bugs, she could hack down a whole swath of them alone.
However, such strength was still insufficient to change the current situation; it was far from enough.
Over the edge of the deck, even more jointed limbs were climbing up...
At first, a swarm of bugs had simply appeared out of nowhere, frantically devouring the glowing floating mushrooms.
Large swaths of floating mushrooms vanished, and the night sea was once again reclaimed by darkness.
But soon, the bugs locked onto the ship Bella was riding on and swarmed toward it.
There were more and more bugs. The speed at which the crew killed them couldn't keep up with the speed at which they climbed aboard.
Bella saw a young crew member get hooked by three jointed limbs simultaneously, hoisted up from the deck, and suspended in midair.
He struggled desperately, reaching out his hand to grab something, but his fingertips only touched air.
Then he disappeared over the ship's rail.
The sound of the splash was drowned out by the hissing of the bug swarm.
Then came the second, the third, the fourth.
Someone roared, exhausting their final ounce of strength to swing a sword, before being pounced on and taken down by more bugs.
Someone cried, huddled in a corner hugging their head, still crying out for their mother as they were dragged away.
There were also those who, when hooked and dragged away, didn't utter a single sound, silently accepting their fate.
Bella's sword didn't stop.
She didn't know how many she had killed. Thirty? Fifty? A hundred?
Her arms were already numb, her vision almost entirely obscured by the purple liquid splashed into her eyes, and the deck beneath her feet was so slippery she could barely stand firm.
She merely swung her sword mechanically, hacking, slashing, and piercing, cleaving everything that approached in half.
But the people around her were growing fewer and fewer.
The defensive line retreated from the deck to the stern. From the stern, it retreated to the cabin entrance.
From the cabin entrance, it retreated into that long, narrow corridor.
The corridor was very narrow, so narrow that it could only accommodate two or three people standing side-by-side at a time.
This was originally a bad thing, but now it had become their final barrier. The bugs' numerical advantage was suppressed here, forcing them to squeeze in one by one.
But no one rejoiced because of this. Everyone knew that this was merely their dying struggle, delaying the inevitable death that was bound to come.
*Clang—*
After another swing, Bella's longsword, which had long been full of notches, finally snapped in two.
The blade was stuck between the carapace of the bug in front of her, and the bug had already raised its sharp limbs high!
The companions behind her roared, trying to pull Bella back, but it was already too late.
Looking at the descending bug limb, Bella's nose felt a bit sour.
Not for herself.
She was going to disappoint the Hero. Failing to complete the task entrusted to her would probably cause Lady Sophia quite a bit of trouble, right?
And her father...
They had finally reunited with such difficulty. Before she left, she had even boasted that she would cure the mycelium on her father's body, only to turn around and die at sea. Her father would probably be very sad, right?
At this point, she no longer expected a Hero to descend from the heavens and save her. However, thinking about how she now had a little sister, and that her sister could take care of their father in her place, Bella felt a tiny bit better in her heart.
She closed her eyes: "Little sister whose name I don't even know yet, I'm leaving Father in your care..."
*Craaack—*
The bug's sharp blade didn't fall. Instead, a harsh tearing sound echoed in front of her.
Opening her eyes again, Bella saw a bug currently being dragged outward by *something*.
It struggled desperately, driving the sharp blades on its limbs into the floorboards, digging in tight, yet it was still dragged out bit by bit.
Then came the sound of tearing, and a severed bug limb dropped outside the door, but was quickly swept away by a few tentacles.
At the same time, the ship also began to tilt, as if suddenly encountering a storm.
"Wh-what happened?" someone asked, trembling, but no one could answer him.
Gripping her broken short sword, Bella mustered her courage and was the first to walk out.
There were no traces of bugs left on the deck, only trails of purple drag marks.
And in the distance, at the edge of the floating mushroom fungal mat, an incredibly massive Giant Puchi—standing in the sea with half its mushroom body exposed above the water—was violently churning the ocean with its spinning tentacles.
Within the turbulent currents, large numbers of bugs could faintly be seen struggling in endless despair.
"Is this... a Puchi too?"
After a brief moment of shock, Bella suddenly snapped back to reality and roared at the people behind her!
"Hurry! Hard to port! Otherwise, we'll get swept in too!"
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