The shadow bug was a scrapped-design monster of only a few levels, yet on Lin Jun's side of the ledger it had a shockingly good combat record, including one confirmed one-for-one trade against a diamond-rank expert.
Nearly all of that came down to the one and only skill it possessed: [Shadow Melt].
With it, a shadow bug could create a mobile pool of shadow, hide inside, and steer that shadow along the ground or up a wall.
The trick worked something like opening a private spatial rift, except that what lay behind it was the dead stillness of the shadow space. Apart from elemental beings, nothing could survive inside it.
The shadow bug itself had no attacks whatsoever. It fed purely by drowning its prey in that shadow environment.
Being caught by the shadow wasn't an automatic death sentence. The inside couldn't be attacked from the outside, but the space a shadow bug could open wasn't large. If you were only half sunk, and you could somehow kill the lurking bug from within, the space would snap shut and spit out anyone not yet fully swallowed.
But if the prey had already gone completely under, then even killing the shadow bug before the shadow space claimed your life meant only one outcome: bug and prey vanishing from the world together.
Puchis were actually a hard counter to shadow bugs. Get caught, self-destruct; that little pocket of shadow left the bug no room at all to ride out the blast.
All of that, however, rested on one premise: that the thing carrying [Shadow Melt] was a fragile little shadow bug.
And the "bug" Norris and the others faced now had nothing to do with the word fragile.
The Abyss Beast took a single step, and shadow raced out from under its foot, devouring the road, the trees, and the charging Puchis alike.
The ground went black beneath the Puchis, and they began to sink as if into a bog, struggling all the way down. They fired mushroom cannons, they lashed out with blade-whips, they self-destructed, and every last one of them disappeared into the shadow without a sound.
"All forces, fall back!" After losing an entire Puchi assault wave, Louisa gave the order to withdraw without a moment's hesitation.
But no matter how fast the soldiers' legs moved, they could not outrun that accelerating tide of darkness. The shadow caught up, swallowed the fat otaku Puchis and Heavy Armor Puchis at the tail of the column one by one, and then came on after the rest.
"Blood Sis, get airborne!" shouted Norris over the mycelial network, running for his life along with everyone else.
Having been put through far more of the Boss's experiments, he actually knew more than Louisa did about irregular Abyss monsters like the shadow bug.
And Louisa needed only the one pointer. Prompt in hand, current situation before her eyes, she worked out the reason almost instantly.
She immediately recalled the flying Puchis that had been striking the Abyss Beast from above: "Flight group, all members! Get the soldiers into the sky!"
In short order the soldiers were being carried aloft, two flying Puchis to a man.
Sure enough, the shadow clung to the earth as it spread, drinking the forest, crawling up the cliff faces, turning everything below into an ocean of darkness. But it stayed pressed flat against the ground; unlike a true sea, it could not throw up waves to strike the targets hanging in the air.
The Puchis left below, though, were swallowed to the last one, their connections to the soldiers all severed.
The Abyss Beast's scorpion tail whipped around, and several flying Puchis still clawing for altitude were swatted to pieces, mycelium drifting down like snow.
A few Puchi Masters, still wrapped in their carry-tentacles, fell screaming into the shadow and were drunk down by the black tide.
"Ahahaha... The invincible Puchi army? Why are you running away?"
Velariss stood on the dragon head, hands clasped over her heart, head tilted, her voice sugary enough to rot teeth. "Don't end it so quickly. Do it like that time at Dragon Roar Valley! Summon the stronger Puchi! Our love is only beginning!"
Velariss gazed up at the Puchis in the sky, loudly professing her hopes.
Louisa ignored the taunts entirely. At her command, the flying Puchis beat their wings for all they were worth and pulled the army out of the Abyss Beast's reach.
The good news: though the Abyss Beast wore a pair of ruined wings, it could not fly.
And while it did own a ranged option in its abyss cannon, using that against scattered flying Puchis all over the sky was cannon-fire against mosquitoes, close to meaningless. No one but a lunatic would bother.
Boom!
A pillar of pitch-black energy erupted from the beast's dragon mouth, and a dozen unlucky souls vanished inside the sudden blast.
"Lunatic!" Little Pig couldn't help swearing under its breath, then took command: "All forces, hear me. Break into small units, scatter, and withdraw. Regroup at the designated point!"
It wasn't that Louisa had lost her nerve. The First Legion's current loadout was simply a bad matchup against Velariss, this oversized shadow bug, and the army needed to be rebuilt for it.
Later, either they refitted the whole Puchi complement to flying Puchis and Jidas, or they waited to join up with the Second Legion and let No. 4 deal with Velariss.
However huge the Abyss Beast might be, next to No. 4 it would look like a puppy. That puddle of shadow was never swallowing No. 4.
And the worst case was merely No. 4 delivering the most spectacular self-destruct in history. Louisa refused to believe Velariss could live through the self-destruct of No. 4 at its present size.
Boom!
Another abyss cannon shot roared out. This one claimed only two soldiers.
Velariss leaned against a dragon horn, weeping into her hands, long hair spilling between her fingers, voice hitching with hurt: "Don't go... Stay... Stay and feel my love..."
As if she truly were an abandoned girl standing in the rain, watching her lover walk away.
At that moment, two long dragon-cries rolled in from the horizon.
Two great dragons, locked in battle, tumbled into view at the sky's edge, closing at ferocious speed.
Lightning boiled in the thunder dragon's throat, and a pale bolt split toward the black dragon; the black dragon rolled aside, and the lightning struck a distant peak instead, the entire summit erased in the blast.
The black dragon answered with a gout of corrosive breath, engulfing the blue dragon and the forest below together.
Within the black fog, light flashed. The blue dragon burst free on beating wings, no worse off than a few darkened scales, but when the fog cleared, the swath of forest it had touched was nothing but withered wreckage.
The two immense dragons traded passes over and over in the span of moments, at speeds absurd for bodies that size, leaving trails of afterimages.
Then, in one instant, two blurred shapes became one.
Tangled together, the two dragons plunged out of the sky and, with an earthshaking roar, slammed into the city at Velariss's back.
Within the towering dust, thunder cracked again!
The black dragon was hurled out by a savage burst of lightning, smashing down in another quarter of the city.
The blue dragon Azla beat his wings once, fanning the dust away. He was wounded all over, but his eyes burned with fierce joy.
He watched the black dragon pull itself back up across the ruins, raised his head high, and called: "Well, Da Long? Regretting that you didn't finish me off when you had the chance?"
Da Long hooked a claw and flicked away a few shattered scales on his chest. "Spare me the chatter. If you can kill me, it only proves you were better suited to become the Ancient Dragon. Nothing more."
"Hahahaha! Yes. Exactly so!"
The two dragons locked eyes, and the will to battle kindled anew!
Then, shadow came flooding rapidly in from the side.
With it came Velariss's shriek: "You two stay as well! Share in my love!"
(End of Chapter)
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