Chapter 401: Abnormal Movement of the Cocoon
Yuma felt the tremor first—a subtle, violent vibration beneath the soles of his boots. An instant later, an ice-cold, bone-deep dread spiked from the base of his spine straight to the crown of his head. His body's survival instincts screamed, yet his muscles were paralyzed, completely unable to keep pace with his brain's frantic realization of imminent death.
Just as a venomous stinger the size of a javelin lunged to impale him from behind—
"Paimon's Star—!!!"
A high-pitched shriek, vibrating with equal parts sheer terror and furious resolve, completely shattered the chaotic din of the battlefield.
"—Za Warudo!"
The very instant that iconic phrase tore from her throat, the fabric of reality was violently wrenched into an absolute standstill.
Suspended mid-air, clouds of debris and ash hung motionless. Bursting blooms of crimson flame solidified into jagged sculptures of fire. Leaping Ethereals were trapped in mid-pounce, their snarling jaws locked in silent roars. Yanagi's pink hair fanned out in a frozen halo as she turned in horror, while Sōkaku's wide, panicked eyes were locked in place. Yuma's pupils remained dilated, forever anticipating a fatal strike.
And there, hovering a mere ten centimeters from Yuma's spine, was the venomous scorpion tail—its malicious, metallic sheen caught in an eerie, breathless still-life painting.
In this monochrome world utterly drained of color and the flow of time, only two entities remained unbound. Paimon, and the towering, muscular manifestation of "Paimon's Star" that had materialized behind her in a burst of golden energy.
The little fairy's face was chalk-white. She was visibly trembling, terrified out of her wits by the sudden ambush, yet her actions didn't betray a single ounce of hesitation.
Thrusting a tiny, accusatory finger toward the suspended stinger, she issued her silent command. Paimon's Star instantly blurred into a golden afterimage, diving straight toward the earth.
Massive hands, possessing enough raw kinetic force to crumple solid titanium, clamped down viciously around the thickest segment of the scorpion tail. The carapace was cold, slick with a repulsive layer of slime, and gave off a sickening, wriggling sensation even in stopped time. But the brute strength of Paimon's Star was absolute.
Paimon gritted her teeth, letting out an uncharacteristic, furious growl. "Get—out of there!"
The spectral giant's biceps bulged to absurd proportions. Channeling immense torque from its waist, Paimon's Star heaved upward. With a violent, devastating tear, it uprooted not just the tail, but the entire monstrous main body buried deep beneath the concrete. Slabs of asphalt and packed soil erupted upward as the beast was yanked from the ground as effortlessly as a farmer pulling a radish.
Suspended in the frozen air, the ambusher's true form was finally laid bare. It boasted a two-meter-long torso heavily armored in a grotesque, mottled carapace of sickly pale white and dark, coagulated red. It looked like a nightmarish hybrid between a colossal desert scorpion and a stag beetle. Flanking its bloated body were several pairs of shorter, razor-sharp appendages, twitching menacingly even in their petrified state.
Yanked forcefully from its subterranean burrow, the creature remained locked in its upward-thrusting, predatory posture, utterly helpless against the time-stop.
Staring down this hideous, insectoid Ethereal hovering right in front of her face, Paimon felt a cold shiver race down her spine. Even knowing that time itself was chained to her will, she couldn't suppress a shudder, subconsciously shrinking back behind her Stand.
But Paimon's Star felt no such fear. It was the pure, unadulterated manifestation of a will forged for battle. Confronted with the despicable coward that had dared to threaten its tiny master's friend, the golden giant's response was brutally, beautifully simple.
"ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA—!!!"
A torrential storm of iron fists rained down upon the beast. The phantom strikes blurred into a golden wall of violence, mercilessly targeting the relatively fragile joints of the Spine King Worm's carapace and the thick base of its hideous tail.
Every single punch carried the weight of a freight train, erupting in a rapid-fire staccato of dull, earth-shaking thuds that threatened to rupture eardrums. Within the absolute vacuum of static space-time, the kinetic energy of these strikes was infinitely magnified, stacking upon itself. The creature's hardened, pale armor fractured, spiderweb-like fissures racing across its surface under the relentless bombardment. The scorpion tail suffered the worst of the onslaught; Paimon's Star paid special, vindictive attention to the joint connecting it to the main body, literally pummeling the thick cartilage until it was hanging by a mere thread of mangled tissue.
Then, time resumed its march.
To the eyes of Yanagi, Yuma, Sōkaku, and the rest of the battlefield, the sequence of events was entirely beyond understanding.
One microsecond, a lethal stinger was a hair's breadth from impaling Yuma's heart.
The very next microsecond, a bizarre, inexplicable "skipped frame" glitched across their retinas. It felt like a sudden, nauseating gap in their perception of reality, akin to blinking during a moment of intense vertigo.
When their vision cleared, the insidious, terrifying Spine King Worm was already airborne. Launched like a discarded, broken toy by an invisible, cataclysmic force, the monster shrieked as it sailed dozens of meters through the air. It slammed violently into a stack of steel shipping containers, the deafening boom echoing across the ruined landscape.
The beast slumped against the crumpled steel, its body a ruin of fresh, crater-like dents and shattered armor. Its most lethal weapon—the massive scorpion tail—now hung limply at a sickening angle, the joint completely pulverized. The thick, protective plating over its core was caved in, oozing a foul, dark-red mucus and flickering with unstable, dying light. In the span of a literal non-second, the apex predator had been reduced to a critically wounded mess.
It hadn't even been given the chance to initiate its parasitic enhancement on the surrounding Ethereals before being utterly dismantled by an attack it couldn't even perceive.
"What the...?!" Yuma whipped around, his breath hitching. He stared at the twitching, mangled Spine King Worm in the distance, then patted his own chest, finding himself completely unharmed. A delayed wave of adrenaline hit him, instantly drenching his back in a layer of cold sweat.
Yanagi's shock ran the deepest. Her knuckles turned a stark, bloodless white as she gripped the shaft of her naginata.
She possessed her own ultimate technique—Eclipse: Instant Blossom. By pushing her physical limits and triggering her energy to the absolute maximum, she could execute high-speed slashes that completely outpaced the naked eye. To an outside observer, her technique looked exactly like she had vanished and reappeared, leaving her enemies instantly bisected in her wake.
But what she had just witnessed... was fundamentally different.
That wasn't "speed." Her honed perception told her that there was no lightning-fast trajectory, no physical movement bridging point A to point B. It was a literal, instantaneous switch in the state of reality.
The danger existed. Then, the danger was eradicated.
The entire process in between had simply been erased.
That chilling sense of absence froze her blood in a way mere speed never could. It touched upon a divine, untouchable domain that she couldn't even begin to comprehend, let alone fight against.
Beside her, Sōkaku stood completely dumbfounded. The blue oni girl's mouth hung slightly open, her gaze darting back and forth between the tiny, floating Paimon and the devastated King Worm. Her brain was visibly short-circuiting, entirely unable to process the sheer absurdity of the situation.
Paimon patted her tiny chest, letting out a long, exaggerated exhale. She placed her hands on her hips, looking down her nose at the struggling Spine King Worm with a deeply satisfied, smug expression. "That's what you get for trying to pull a dirty sneak attack! Serves you right, you big ugly bug!"
Paimon's Star hovered loyally at her back, its massive, golden fists clenched tight. It vibrated with kinetic energy, fully prepared to rush forward and deliver the final, crushing blow to wipe the threat from existence.
However, the reality-bending commotion on Paimon's side of the battlefield—specifically the blatant, abnormal violation of the laws of time—had not gone unnoticed. It was clearly and accurately detected by a far more ominous presence looming on the opposite side of the warzone.
Just as Paimon opened her mouth to order the execution, and just as her Star leaned forward to charge—
Screech.
The jagged spatial rift hovering closest to the Pale Cocoon violently tore open, expanding to twice its size.
A colossal, sickly pale hand erupted from the void. Embedded directly in the center of its massive palm was a single, unblinking eye that coldly surveyed the battlefield. Moving at a speed that defied its immense bulk, the hand shot forward. It completely ignored Paimon, Yanagi, and the rest of the group, instead plunging its grasping fingers directly toward the crippled Spine King Worm.
"Huh?!" Paimon yelped, startled by the sudden intrusion.
Sensing the overwhelming threat, Paimon's Star instantly abandoned its offensive pursuit. It snapped back to its master's side, manifesting in front of the little fairy like an impenetrable golden shield, its glowing eyes locked warily onto the pale giant hand.
But the giant hand had zero interest in a fight. Its objective was singular. Sweeping over the rubble, the massive fingers clamped down around the defenseless Spine King Worm, locking it in an inescapable vice grip.
The monstrous insect let out a weak, desperate hiss, its shattered legs thrashing against the pale flesh, but it was completely powerless to break free.
Then, as the group watched in mounting horror, the colossal hand violently retracted. With a sickening display of brute force, it shoved the thrashing King Worm directly into the slowly pulsating mass of the Pale Cocoon that currently enveloped Bringer.
Gurgle... squelch...
A horrific, tooth-aching display of snapping carapace and tearing flesh echoed from within the cocoon. The muffled sounds of the insect being forcibly crushed, liquefied, and then aggressively fused together by a viscous, fleshy substance made the surrounding air feel heavy and nauseating.
The rhythmic pulsations on the cocoon's surface instantly spiked into a frantic, erratic heartbeat. Its sickly white exterior rapidly darkened, shifting into a murky, bruised mixture of pale flesh and coagulated crimson. A wave of chaotic, violently unstable energy erupted from the structure, washing over the battlefield like a physical pressure.
"It's forcibly fusing that insect... with Bringer?!" Dan Heng's eyes narrowed, his calm demeanor fracturing as he instantly deduced the grim reality. He gripped his spear tighter, finally understanding the true intention of the Primordial One.
It was hijacking the parasitic, biological traits of the Spine King Worm to force a final, grotesque evolution upon Bringer's physical body.
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