Chapter 266.1: Before the Storm Part 1

To be fair, Ji Jue thought everything about this exam was great. The simulation was excellent, and it had his inspiration flowing nonstop.

He did not have to spend any money, take responsibility for anything, or worry about consequences. There were monsters everywhere for him to experiment on however he pleased, no one cared what he did, and he had the resources of an entire island all to himself.

He had never had such a wonderful start before. The only regrettable part was that the exam was not PvP. Otherwise, how much fun would it have been to hunt down the other examinees?

They could have pulled everyone into the simulation without warning, dumped them on a deserted island, and then told them, “Only one of you can survive and become a craftsman.” Then they could move straight into alliances and betrayals, life-or-death struggles, scheming, backstabbing, and a gloriously brutal bloodbath.

The plan was perfect in almost every respect. It was fast, efficient, and guaranteed spectacular entertainment.

There was just one problem. It was way too fucking White Deer-coded.

If the Chief of the Wasteland Assembly heard about this, he might even give them a thumbs-up and declare that the true orthodox legacy of White Deer was actually here at Starpivot. What an excellent demonstration. Next time someone wanted to kill a bunch of craftsmen, this was exactly how they should do it.

Everybody knew that an Ember-type was extremely weak in sudden encounters. If the candidates were thrown into a survival elimination round completely unarmed, without tools or preparation, there was probably no way to see much of their actual skill.

But the exact opposite was also true. Once an Ember-type had enough time to prepare, the terrifying dominance they could exert in battle became apparent. Only someone who had actually been targeted by an Ember-type knew how miserable it felt to have a craftsman fixate on you. It was a suffocating sensation, like sinking helplessly into mud.

Every weakness was relentlessly exploited, every strength suppressed, and every trick you tried had already been anticipated and countered. Even if you possessed some mysterious trump card capable of turning the tables at the last moment, you would often accomplish very little. The entire experience was practically like being force-fed shit from beginning to end. Even those lunatics from the Swarm who lived by the creed of “Fighting is awesome!” would probably steer clear.

Fortunately, unless there was some truly irreconcilable blood feud involved, most craftsmen would never spend that much effort specifically preparing to counter someone. After all, that sort of thing cost money.

How could this compare to what Ji Jue had now? He did not have to spend a single Fedra, materials were everywhere for the taking, and the only concern was whether he could use them all before he ran out of ideas. This place was practically paradise for an Ember-type!

As for the fun he had missed out on because there were no fellow craftsmen around to fight, Ji Jue intended to make up for it with the local wild monsters.

“What a magnificent piece of material!” Ji Jue held up his binoculars and stared at the evil creature half-hidden within the forest beneath a distant hill.

It was a gaunt figure more than eight or nine meters tall. Its bluish-gray skin had the pallor of a corpse, and its form seemed somewhere between human and tree. The limbs hanging from its body had a root-like texture. At that moment, it was bending down and taking huge bites out of an aberrant that had wandered straight into its grasp. Its face was smeared with blood.

It was admittedly a little ugly, but it still had a certain charm. Watching such a fine piece of material twist and move so vividly right before Ji Jue’s eyes gave it a peculiar allure that set his heart racing. Especially when he imagined the intimate contact that would soon follow, he could hardly contain his excitement.

Unlike ordinary aberrant creatures, it had none of their usual superfluous growths. There was no rot or other visible deformity anywhere on its body. From head to toe, it was whole and consistent, as though it had been born that way. This evil creature had completed its metamorphosis!

When an ordinary being was exposed to aberration contamination, it was as though its genes and soul had both been thrown into a violent reshuffling. Creatures unable to withstand the strain usually died on the spot. The luckier ones survived, but more often than not, they were left with little sanity to speak of.

Such corrupted creatures were collectively known as aberrants. They were like cancerous monsters warped by biochemical contamination, each grotesque in its own way. Their bodies were chaotic and unstable, with conflicting structures throughout.

Growing a few extra hands or eyes was merely the most common symptom. Some would even continue deteriorating if left alone until they eventually died on their own and became food for other aberrants.

Like heavy-metal toxins, aberration contamination accumulated as it moved up the food chain. A creature either succumbed to the burden and died amid mutation, or, if it was lucky enough, or simply resilient enough, it completed metamorphosis and rebirth, “evolving” into a stable form entirely different from what they had once been. Some even gained the potential to develop further and reproduce.

If aberrants were defective scraps, then evil creatures were finished products. They were entirely new species fostered within aberrant environments, fundamentally incompatible with the ecology of the mortal world.

A lecher could drive up the price of rice simply by staying alive, but creatures like these polluted their surroundings merely by existing and breathing. That was why they were called evil creatures.

Quite a few Chosen Ones of the Vortex Path spent years venturing deep into contaminated zones for research purposes, seeking traces of such creatures. Over the years, the study of evil creatures had gradually developed into a field of its own.

Ji Jue decided that when he got the chance, he should find someone to teach him more about it. After all, he could not possibly have valuable materials sitting right under his nose without even knowing what they were called, could he? What if his ignorance caused him to waste perfectly good materials?!

Atop the hill, the massive, menacing suit of powered armor lay concealed beneath a thick camouflage of fallen leaves and dead branches.

Ji Jue crouched on the powered armor’s shoulder with a notebook and pen in hand, busy scribbling and calculating something. From time to time, he raised a crude, makeshift anemometer to take another reading and estimate the distance. Since he only needed a rough set of coordinates for the target area, he could ignore humidity and the effects of planetary rotation for the time being. Gravity and gravitational acceleration were unchanged in the simulation as well.

It was just a simple calculation, hardly troublesome at all. He tapped the tip of his pen against the notebook.

Judging by its mass, the evil creature should have weighed somewhere around nine to ten tons. Its spirit matter fluctuations were intense. If he had to rate it, it was probably somewhat above Disaster-Class. In other words, if he faced it head-on without any preparation, it could probably crush him to death without much effort.

Its reaction speed was absurd, even faster than that of an ordinary Chosen One. That was likely the result of some neurological mutation and metamorphosis. Its regenerative ability was still unknown.

For something that size...

“Let’s start with three rounds of blanket bombing.”

Ji Jue counted on his fingers the ammunition and different shell types stored in the warehouse, then decided he might as well test them all. After confirming that his calculations were correct, he decisively pressed the button on the radio controller.

The radio signal did not seem to alert the evil creature in the forest. After all, it had once been nothing more than a wild animal or perhaps a dead Chosen One. It was unlikely to have evolved any sensory organ capable of detecting radio waves.

But the low rumble rising from the distance seemed to catch its attention. Standing over the carcass it had stripped down to the bones, it suddenly turned its head warily toward the source of the sound.

And then, it no longer had a head. Like a smashed persimmon, flesh and fluid sprayed everywhere.

From the flash of the explosion, metal fragments burst out like a rainstorm. One of them just happened to punch straight through its skull.

A thunderous boom and a howling wind followed with a delay. In the distance, a crude cannon barrel protruded from the mountainside, its surface completely nonreflective and glowing red-hot.

Inside a hollow behind the emplacement, mechanical arms made primarily of mercury were adjusting their angles once more under Ji Jue’s command. Then they reloaded and fired!

In an instant, the shell crossed several kilometers, leaving behind a silver trail of vaporized mercury. Guided manually through Ji Jue’s observations and minute adjustments from the mercury hands within, it came hurtling toward the target once more.

Snap!

The shell stopped in midair. The combustible detonated, and flames erupted.

A muffled boom followed as a violent blast swept the area, snapping dozens of trees, yet the metal fragments spraying from the explosion seemed to strike an invisible wall. They ricocheted, scattering in every direction.

In the blink of an eye, a blood-slick head had already regenerated atop the severed neck. Its single, pitch-black eye looked up. Within it, the intricate compound structures, packed together like a honeycomb, contracted and expanded as they locked onto the incoming shell.

The creature merely raised a limb and pointed from afar, and the shell slowed before stopping completely. Even the blast wave and flames from the explosion were held at bay.

Static Zone of the Ruins Path? Or some form of mental interference from the Ascension Path?

“No, that’s not it. It’s more like Origin-style force-field interference!”

Ji Jue clicked his tongue. He had not expected an evil creature to possess such a troublesome ability. More importantly, that shot he had just fired hadn’t damaged any of the important materials, had it?!

When he shot, the evil creature had clearly generated a temporary repulsion field, forcing away everything that approached it at high speed. The moment it detected the direction of the attack, the evil creature’s figure vanished.

Using the same force field, it launched itself forward. Almost too fast for the naked eye to follow, it smashed through everything in its path and raced toward the direction the artillery fire had come from. It was way too fast!

“Ah...” Ji Jue peered through the binoculars and chuckled softly. “Took the bait.”

BOOM!!!

The evil creature was blasted backward. At several times its original speed, it was hurled into the air by the explosion’s shockwave, nearly torn apart. The explosives Ji Jue had planted along the creature’s predicted route detonated with a series of loud blasts.

After he had recklessly forced an enormous amount of combustible into the mixture without regard for safety limits, the already unstable nitroglycerin had congealed into a grease-like solid. Forget a minor impact; even breathing too loudly near it could have been enough to make the whole thing explode in your face.

Now, as the handmade detonator triggered, blazing red flames ripped through the earth and surged skyward, swallowing the evil creature whole in an instant.

Shrapnel swept through the area like a torrential downpour, only to be blocked by the repulsion field. The fierce shift in air pressure tore the force field apart. Caught in the raging blast wave, the man-tree creature’s limbs twisted and buckled before being torn apart piece by piece.