Swish—crack!!
"SKREE—!!"
The Thousand-Handed Centipede's pleas meant nothing to Adrian Vale.
It was like he hadn't heard a single word.
His voice stayed ice-cold.
"Keep subtracting."
Despair swallowed the centipede.
It finally understood—
begging was pointless.
Adrian wasn't negotiating.
He wasn't testing anything.
He simply wanted to torture it to death.
Demon… this is a demon…
Adrian let out a low snort.
Impatience.
The centipede had no choice but to keep answering.
The livestream chat short-circuited.
"Treasure vault! An A-rank treasure vault! A thousand-year vault and he doesn't care?!"
"Why torture it? Ask where the vault is!"
"Does Adrian even need that?"
"Wait—did it say 'my clan'?"
"So Thousand-Handed Centipedes have a whole tribe… a colony?!"
Adrian didn't care about any of it.
But right as he continued—
his gaze shifted.
Like he'd sensed something.
He looked toward the distance.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
A massive vibration thundered from far away.
The ground bulged—then split.
That momentum…
was even bigger than when the A-rank centipede first appeared.
Cracks raced through the earth.
Trees snapped.
Boulders toppled.
Forest creatures either got crushed—
or fled in a blind panic.
The quake was moving.
And it was getting closer fast.
Adrian narrowed his eyes, voice low.
"Looks like I'm getting extra food today…"
Inside the I Came to Watch the Divine Domain, the guests were stunned.
Nobody cared about Derek Vaughn anymore.
Compared to what was happening out there—
he was irrelevant.
Sienna Blake looked genuinely rattled.
"My god… what is that?! It feels even scarier than the A-rank's entrance!"
Captain Ryan Cole's face tightened.
"Don't tell me… don't tell me it's the A-rank's elder…"
"An A+ Thousand-Handed Centipede?!"
The room fell silent.
So that's how it worked?
Beat the small one… and the big one shows up?
At the same time—
the battered A-rank centipede pinned beneath Adrian's Kagune suddenly looked like it had found salvation.
It started laughing, warped and unstable.
"Hahahaha!! Human!! Now let's see you act tough!!"
"Die! Just die!! 530! DIE!! Hahahahahaha!!"
It had been tortured to the edge of madness.
With the quake approaching, something in its brain snapped completely.
Adrian didn't care.
No panic.
No fear.
If anything—
his eyes held a rare flicker of interest.
"Interesting."
Boom!! Boom!! Boom!!
The quake arrived.
The impact hit right in front of Adrian.
The livestream audience's hearts jumped.
"Holy—IT'S HERE!! Something even worse than an A-rank?!"
"Why is Adrian's side like Raven's—one wave after another?!"
"Should he retreat? Tactical withdrawal—"
"Retreat my ass! Ask it 1000 minus 7 again!!"
As if answering them—
the tremors converged.
Then the centipede beneath him shrieked again, manic.
"Hahahaha!! Come out!! My kin!! Tear this human to pieces!!"
"I want him dead! I want him worse than dead!!"
BOOM!!
BOOM!!
Dozens of shadows burst up from the ground, shooting into the air.
In a blink, they formed a ring around Adrian.
And then—
Blue Star Will spoke.
[Congratulations! Dragonia contestant Adrian Vale has encountered Divine Domain lifeforms! Analyzing… analysis complete!]
[Name: Thousand-Handed Centipede (C!)]
[Analyzing… analysis complete!]
[Name: Thousand-Handed Centipede (C+!)]
[Analyzing… analysis complete!]
[Name: Thousand-Handed Centipede (B-!!)]
The announcements kept firing.
No doubt about it—
the creatures surrounding Adrian were a swarm of Thousand-Handed Centipedes.
C-rank.
C+.
B-.
And mixed into the mass—
one or two B-rank presences.
The same tier as the centipede's pre-evolution Devourer…
except now they were showing up in multiples.
Below that, there were dozens more.
A swarm.
A centipede colony.
If the earlier A-rank monster created invisible pressure—
this time it was suffocating.
Even through a screen, viewers felt their breathing go tight.
"Jesus… there are so many!"
"I thought it'd be one A+… it's an army!"
"This is worse than A+—a swarm like this is terrifying!"
"Lowest is C-rank! Even A+ might not be enough—"
"My scalp is crawling just looking at it…"
"So this is the 'clan' it mentioned…"
The swarm sealed Adrian in from all sides.
Clack—clack—clack!
Countless legs scraped and trembled, producing a skin-crawling, nauseating sound.
With that many bodies moving at once, the discomfort became almost physical.
And beneath Adrian, the A-rank centipede wasn't despairing anymore.
It was drunk on arrogance.
"Hahahaha!! See that, human?! That's my clan!!"
"Your confidence ends here! I'm going to shred you into paste!!"
It had snapped completely—whiplash from helplessness to hope had broken its mind.
But Adrian didn't answer.
He simply reached up—
and removed the Ghoul-Eyed Oni Mask.
He let it hang at his neck.
And revealed a face that was still handsome…
but with madness carved into it.
Blood-stained white hair fluttered without wind, as if even it carried the scent of slaughter.
His features had turned sharper, more predatory.
His left eye burned black-red—a vicious ghoul eye.
His right eye was still human-black.
And when he pulled the mask down, blood smeared near his mouth.
In the stunned gaze of the livestream—
Adrian parted his lips and casually licked it clean.
The chat detonated.
"Holy—he's insanely handsome!"
"Husband!!"
"Bro what is wrong with you?!"
"Not gonna lie… Adrian's visuals are illegal."
"I'm a grown man and I can't handle this."
But Adrian wasn't performing for them.
He was excited.
Because to him, this wasn't a disaster.
It was a buffet.
So many Divine Domain beasts…
If he devoured all of them—
how much would his Acting Sync rise?
Half-Kakuja: Centipede was already this terrifying.
So the next evolution…?
Full Kakuja?
Something even higher?
"Heh…"
The thought alone made his smile turn cruel.
The centipede beneath him still didn't notice.
It was drowning in its fantasy of turning the tables.
"Hahahaha!! What's wrong, human—scared?!"
"1000 minus 7?! In a second I'll make it 7 minus 1000!! Hahahahaha!!"
Crack.
Adrian cracked his fingers.
Then looked down at it—silent.
Cold.
Like he was already looking at a corpse.
That gaze made the centipede twitch.
It screamed again.
"What are you staring at?! You still don't understand?! You're surrounded!! In less than half a—"
Swish!!
PSHHK!!
"SKREEEE—!!"
It didn't finish.
Adrian's Kagune pierced straight through its head.
No armor.
No protection.
The A-rank centipede's skull collapsed like rotten fruit—
then burst.
Pulp. Blood. Shattered flesh.
It died.
Just like that.
So abrupt the entire livestream froze.
BOOM…
Its forty-to-fifty-meter body finally crashed to the ground, shaking the earth.
Adrian didn't waste a word.
Under his control, the Kagune moved with terrifying precision, hooking out a massive chunk of flesh from the corpse.
The swarm went stiff.
No one could tell what they were thinking—
but they didn't move.
Adrian didn't care.
He bit down.
Chomp.
Hot blood seeped out, thick and fresh.
It stained his fingers and clothes completely red.
Surrounded by dozens of centipedes brimming with killing intent—
Adrian Vale looked like something that shouldn't exist.
A thing born from a nightmare.
He chewed.
Swallowed.
Chomp—gulp.
In a few bites, the entire chunk was gone.
Only then did the audience breathe again.
"WHAT?! That's it?! He just… killed it?!"
"It was talking one second, dead the next!"
"Wait—he killed their leader… then ATE it in front of them…"
"This man has zero fear…"
And it wasn't just the viewers.
The swarm finally erupted.
"SKREE!!"
"HSSS!!"
They couldn't speak human language like the A-rank had.
But their furious hissing made the meaning obvious.
Rage.
Pure rage.
Even so, Adrian didn't treat them seriously.
Their threats were powerless noise.
Even C- to B-rank creatures could sense the violent aura rolling off him.
Their leader had been butchered.
Their leader had been eaten.
What did that say about the "human" standing in front of them?
That fear was why, when they first appeared—
they hadn't attacked immediately.
Fear had delayed them.
The A-rank never noticed.
Even at death, it believed Adrian would be torn apart.
Then—
Blue Star Will spoke again.
[Congratulations! Dragonia contestant Adrian Vale has slain an A-rank Divine Domain lifeform! Points awarded: 27,000!]
[Points doubled! Total points gained: 54,000!]
[Leaderboard change detected!]
[Updated ranks:]
[Rank 1: Dragonia — 88,400]
[Rank 2: Miracle Nation — 4,200]
[Rank 3: Northern Bear Nation — 3,600]
[Rank 4: Ocean Pouch Nation — 2,400]
[Rank 5: Eastern Isles — 2,300]
[Further ranks omitted.]
Inside the Divine Domain, the foreign contestants watching were numb.
Dragonia's points could jump as much as they wanted—
no one was catching them.
But Dragonia's stream wasn't about the leaderboard anymore.
Because Adrian…
changed again.
That handsome face that had stunned everyone—
was suddenly covered by a new mask.
Not the Ghoul-Eyed Oni Mask.
This one was deep purple, with a long, sharp protrusion at the bottom—
more grotesque.
More vicious.
More wrong.
And the worst part—
no one saw where it came from.
It didn't look like Adrian put it on.
It looked like it grew out of his face.
The mask fused to his skin, as if it was part of his flesh.
Unlike the Ghoul-Eyed Oni Mask that covered his human side—
this Centipede Mask covered the ghoul side.
His black-red ghoul eye vanished.
But on the center of the mask—
another black-red ghoul eye opened.
Right in the middle.
Staring.
Unblinking.
Making Adrian's presence feel unreal.
"Hah…"
As Adrian sank deeper into Half-Kakuja: Centipede, the madness thickened.
He exhaled once.
Then tilted his head at a twisted, inhuman angle.
"Kik… kik… kik…"
A strange sound cracked from his throat.
And before the swarm moved—
Adrian moved first.
One moment he stood on the A-rank corpse.
The next—
he vanished.
The swarm panicked.
They hissed and spun—
searching, turning in place—
but couldn't find him.
Then—
Swish!!
A shadow dropped from above.
At first it was small—
a black dot.
Then it expanded, swelling fast.
A spider-like silhouette hanging in the air.
Adrian Vale.
Six Kagune spread wide.
Under the night sky, faint dark-red streams of light ran along the Kagune like veins.
Clack—clack—clack!!
They extended.
Longer.
Wider.
The shape suggested something worse with every second—
a cage.
A net.
A closing ring.
No one could see Adrian's full face from below.
They didn't need to.
"Heh… heh… heh…"
That cold, crazed laugh drifted into every centipede's ears.
And the swarm finally—
finally—
felt fear.
Some of the lower-ranked ones even showed signs of retreat.
But Adrian didn't allow it.
His shadow dropped lower.
Clack—clack—clack!!
Whoosh—whoosh—whoosh!!
The sound of stretching Kagune mixed with violent wind.
And Adrian's "human" right eye—
wasn't human anymore.
The pupil was gone.
Only white remained.
A blank stare worse than the ghoul eye.
In the dark, his voice sounded like death itself.
"Since you're here…"
"Let me eat until I'm full."
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