When Zhou Ning walked into the sacrificial chamber, even he, accustomed to grand scenes, was thoroughly disgusted by the sight before him.
It was eerie, dim, and filthy. The floor and walls were covered in flesh, blood, and purple membrane, like a slaughterhouse, and the air was thick with a choking smell of blood.
On the altar in the center of the room, a huge, bloated female figure was coiled, enveloped in an ominous black mist. Around her, Curse God Cult members stood, each connected to her by a red line, clearly engaged in a sacrifice.
The upper body of this female figure was visibly female, at least her female characteristics were present, but her face had completely transformed into a monster, with dense compound eyes and sharp mouthparts. Her lower body was a gigantic spider.
As the three Curse God Cult members shoved Zhou Ning and Little Fatty Alan into the sacrificial chamber, the monster raised her head and looked at Zhou Ning with her numerous compound eyes, her gaze filled with greed, even describable as drooling.
As her mouth spread open, revealing a deep cavity and two rows of sharp teeth, Zhou Ning, who met her gaze, felt the hairs on his body stand on end. This was not about his mental state, but purely the hierarchical suppression of a transcendent being over a normal person.
He recognized this monster; he hadn't expected the demon summoned by these Curse God Cult members through the 'Book of Ithsenwe' to be her… Yuying Marien.
The first transcendent being to appear in players' sight in 'Apocalypse,' a low-level demon, and also a tragic Yuying.
In the storyline, Marien was once the beauty queen of a small country in the eastern part of the continent. Seduced by the prosperity of the big city, she came to Daklan, and thus began her tragic fate.
As in many stories, the naive young girl was deceived by a scoundrel, who, after swindling all her money, abandoned her. Penniless, she was forced to become a Yuying. Five years later, the physically and mentally exhausted Marien finally found a second love. She fell in love with a small-time thug from the streets of Daklan, spent all her savings to buy him a house, and bore him a lovely son.
But this second love also lasted less than ten years. The aging and faded Marien could no longer keep her lover. As her lover started to leave earlier and return later, and his coldness became more apparent, a panicked Marien began to seek out black witches, using black magic to try and reclaim her youth.
However, her attempt failed. The out-of-control black magic completely destroyed her appearance, making her face hideous and terrifying.
So, on a rainy night, Marien was thrown out of her own home by her lover. He left her with only four cold words: 'Get out, monster.'
A completely broken Marien disappeared into the rainy night. Six months later, when she reappeared, she had pledged allegiance to an Old God, transforming into a spider-like monster. She cruelly devoured her lover and son, and turned her former home into a nest. Occasionally, when she felt hungry, she would hunt humans, though this only made her more evil and twisted.
In the early stages of the game, Marien, as a boss, was infamous, wandering around Daklan City and preying on countless new players. New players below level ten who encountered this spider monster were essentially committing suicide.
Due to her 'exquisite' appearance and mouthparts with two rows of sharp teeth, in his previous life, some tough guys on the game forums even expressed, 'I have a special idea.' But now, looking at Marien in reality, Zhou Ning could only express his admiration for that brave brother.
Lowering his head, no longer meeting Marien's gaze, Zhou Ning let out a soft sigh. If the opponent was truly Marien, then he still had a tiny sliver of a chance. He was very familiar with Marien's skills, and nascent low-level demons often needed to devour a large amount of flesh and blood to replenish their strength, with madness outweighing reason, making them not so difficult to deal with.
"Priest Niam, the sacrifices have been brought."
"Offer them to the Evil God. May the Evil God accept their souls, ma-do-ra-mo-ra-di-na..." a man wearing a black hood and black priestly robes said in a low voice.
"ma-do-ra-mo-ra-di-na..."
The leading cultist chanted along, then exerted force with both hands, pushing Zhou Ning towards Marien.
Zhou Ning stumbled forward, a few more steps would have him dancing a face-to-face dance with Marien, even clearly smelling the bad breath from her gaping maw.
It stank quite a bit.
Zhou Ning silently took a breath, and the ropes binding his hands and feet quietly fell away.
Immediately after, a delicate revolver silently appeared in his palm. He raised the gun, aimed it at Marien, and pulled the trigger.
The trigger bar pushed the hammer back, the pawl rotated the cylinder, the chamber spun, the firing pin struck, hitting the primer, gunpowder ignited in the barrel, emitting a thick smell of gunpowder, and with a loud bang, a golden bullet, spinning intensely, whistled out of the muzzle!
-253!
Everyone present was stunned, their gazes simultaneously fixed on the altar. The next moment, the bullet, spinning intensely, pierced Marien's compound eye, drawing a string of green blood beads.
"Ah!"
Marien let out a painful shriek, her eight legs twitching restlessly on the ground, and her two scythe-like twisted forelegs lunged towards Zhou Ning.
"Kill him! I will tear him to shreds and offer his flesh and blood to the great True God Nyastora," the man in the black one-star priestly robe immediately fell into a furious rage, exclaiming furiously.
"Yes, Priest Niam!"
On that side, several black-robed cultists with greatswords charged over with stomping footsteps. Priest Niam, having finished the sacrifice, retreated a few steps and began to chant.
The sense of crisis grew more intense, but Zhou Ning remained calm. After firing one bullet, he slapped the revolver's hammer with his left hand, the cylinder quietly rotated, and he reloaded. Simultaneously, he pushed off the ground with his right foot and lunged forward to the right.
Bang! Bang!
Basic Shooting Mastery gave him extremely stable shooting accuracy. Even while lunging, two consecutive shots precisely hit Marien's compound eyes, splattering a burst of greenish-blue mucus.
This series of swift actions left Little Fatty, who had been scared half to death just moments before, dumbfounded.
In his sight, in the dim room filled with the smell of blood, the atmosphere was suffocating. A familiar figure in a black academic robe fired his gun while lunging to the right, hitting the target repeatedly, and landing just in time to dodge Marien's heavily striking forelegs.
Boom! Obvious cracks appeared on the ground.
Light and shadows flickered, figures swayed. The black figure showed no sign of stopping, instead sprinting forward. Little Fatty considered himself a formidable warrior and naturally knew that a charge covered 25 yards. The figure ahead clearly knew this too, always timing his movements to stay just within the charge's blind spot. Then, as he sprinted, his gun muzzle erupted with astonishing muzzle flash. In an instant, two more bullets whistled out. One bullet precisely struck a cultist's throat, blood spurting amidst the sparks. The other bullet precisely interrupted the black-robed priest's chant. A blazing fireball still hovered above the priest's right hand, which he could only hastily throw towards the figure, only for it to be dodged by another lunge, instead striking the lunging Marien.
The fireball exploded on Marien, and the person landed in a half-crouch, his black robes slightly billowing.
"Awesome!" The commentator, Little Fatty's eyes lit up. He decided that if he managed to escape alive this time, this big brother—no, once a brother, forever a father—this dad, he would acknowledge him.
But just then, Marien, who had three compound eyes shot blind and had taken a fireball, finally became completely enraged. She took a deep breath, and her abdomen began to swell.
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"So, this is it! I hope you enjoy this book. Please support me by leaving a review—it would mean a lot!"
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