The surprising connection with the MDT was undoubtedly a turning point—Hao Ren needed help badly.
Sleeping in the underground mausoleum of the Basilica Icon were the most outstanding church leaders from the past 10,000 years. They included the popes, saints, and cardinals of the past who had won awards for various reasons. Except for the few who died in the War against Chaos, and whose bones were not suitable for burial in the sacred land, the most powerful mortals in the history of Collow were in this mausoleum. These eternal sleepers were invincible when in life, and equally powerful in death.
The leaked energy of Lockmarton had infested and transformed these sacred souls into dark monsters. It did so by destroying their original divine powers and giving them psychic powers of incredible strength. At first, the psychic attacks had little effect on Hao Ren, who was a demigod. Plus, his mental resistance had been fortified by Raven 12345. But the advantage in numbers always got the upper hand. As more Shadows of Nightmares woke up underground, Hao Ren began to find it hard to cope.
Not only did he have to keep his mental defenses up, but he also needed to find a way to increase the range of his mind power to shield those people around him from the psychic attacks.
Like other ordinary knights, monks, and abhumans, Calaxus had also lost his combat ability. He struggled to keep himself awake amid the waves of psychic attack. He was barely hanging on with Hao Ren’s protective mental shield. Without his assistance, these people, including Calaxus, would have become victims of the Nightmares.
“Calibration of coordinates in progress. Physical transfer will begin in three minutes.”
The MDT’s slightly robotic voice resounded in Hao Ren’s mind. He was using his psionic gun to defend against the attacks of the Shadows of Nightmares, which kept crawling out from the ground and appearing out of thin air. Hao Ren was also keeping an eye on the situation of others while talking to the MDT in his mind. “How many people can you send?”
The ideal situation was, of course, to send all the people onboard the spacecraft. Or better still, letting Nolan enter the battlefield with the overwhelming firepower of the Petrachelys. But obviously, he knew that would be unrealistic given the current conditions. The MDT mentioned before that the physical object transfer was only a test, and it was only sending objects in small quantities to Collow through the small cracks in the barrier. Nonetheless, he still hoped that things could be better.
The MDT’s answer was not surprising. “Only one or two persons per teleportation. The passage is unstable; we can’t take the risk.”
The number was disappointing, but it was better than nothing. As monsters continuously crept up, Hao Ren considered abandoning the route. Once reinforcements arrived, he would leave a small nuke, get out, blow the entire Basilica Icon up, and find another way to enter the sacred mountain. It was the best option at the moment—a plan that he had envisaged from the beginning. Hao Ren would never leave himself without a way out.
The only change to his original plan now was the fact that he would have reinforcements, which was much better than the worst case scenario he had anticipated.
“I need the strongest person,” Hao Ren repeated his request. “Someone whose mental strength is tough enough. Preferably Y’zaks because he’s a demon; he has strong will power. If he’s too large for the teleportation, let Vivian come.”
The MDT’s concentration seemed to be straying as it was directing most of its computing power into the portal. “Understood. The transfer is about to begin. Get ready on your side. The countdown starts now: ten, nine, eight…”
Suddenly, Hao Ren felt a stinging sensation in his mind.
He was stunned for a moment before he realized that those nightmare monsters were directing all their attacks at him.
Those monsters—who used to be clergies but were then infected by Lockmarton—seemed to be situationally aware. After the battle fell into a stalemate, they found out why those humans could hold on for such a long time: Hao Ren, like an indestructible reef in the storm, stood between the nightmare monsters and the ordinary humans, taking most of the hits from the psychic attacks.
These psychic attacks even burst into sparks and halos around him before they rippled outwards.
The monsters began to talk to each other through some unexplained spiritual exchange, and they aimed their strength towards Hao Ren, the indestructible “reef.”
The enormous amount of mental energy gathered and formed a continuous blue lightwave in the air. The blue light waves increased in strength and intensity before turning into a single light beam.
Hao Ren watched as the light transcended the boundary of illusion as well as reality, and pointed itself at him. He heard the MDT’s countdown in his mind. “Five, four…”
He quietly called out Raven 12345’s name and gathered all his mental strength. The teleportation was in progress and could not be interrupted, but the joint attack of the monsters was a bit of a surprise to him. He had no choice but to meet the impending attack head-on so that when Y’zaks or Vivian arrived, they would not be caught off guard and be injured.
Just as this happened, the MDT suddenly stopped its countdown; something had seemingly interrupted it.
Hao Ren was startled, and he began to lose concentration. It was at this moment that the monsters fired powerful psychic energy at him.
The illusion and dream that Hao Ren was anticipating did not materialize. Instead, he heard a soft voice. “Ghsss!”
A small figure was swaying around in the air, firing energy arrows the size of a match while going “biubiubiu!”
It was Noobie.
The MDT’s panicked voice came soon after. “Buddy, we have a problem here! Buddy, are you still there? Have you been terminated?”
“Why is Noobie here?”
“I knew you’d be fine.” The MDT let out a long sigh as if Hao Ren had scared him this time. “There was an accident just now. We don’t know how but the little thing came out of nowhere and climbed onto the focal point of the teleportation crystal.”
“Something strange is happening here too.”
As he said this, Hao Ren saw Noobie fly around the waves of psychic attack.
Coincidentally, the strange mistake seemed so right. The Shadows of Nightmares rained their psychic attacks on the mini version of Vivian, who seemed unaffected as it continued to roar. “Ghsss.”
The nightmare monsters were a little stupefied. Nevertheless, they launched another wave of attack.
“Ghsss!” Noobie saw the monsters and sensed their psychic energy in the air. But her confused mind could not produce a logical response, and her only reaction was “Ghsss!”
Like punching a pillow, the psychic assaults were muted and neutralized. Noobie fired her energy bolts aimlessly as if she was unaware of the attacks. The tiny bolts dissipated after they flew a few meters in the air. But Noobie seemed to be happy with them as she went, “Biu, biubiubiu, biubiubiu…”
It may seem strange and absurd, even ridiculous. But Hao Ren began to notice that the nightmare monsters had slowed down.
As if trapped by their own nightmares and illusions, the nightmare monsters became sluggish. A few of them even had smoke billowing from their bodies, and they began to vaporize.
Hao Ren had no idea what was going on, but he knew one thing…
He had to take advantage of this situation.
There were dissipating monsters on one side, and a bombing maniac on the other. The battle quickly came to an end.
Hao Ren had finished off all the enemies, along with the battlefield. The garden became a field of craters, and the structure of the crypt could be seen at the bottom of a few large holes.
As the energy of Chaos dispersed, the power of nightmares began to fade from those affected by it. Calaxus and the others shook their heads as they regained their consciousness. They were struggling to remember the incident and their identities.
Some of them had already lived through their entire lives in the illusion, some had acquired a few lifetimes of false memories, while some even lived for a thousand years in a peaceful Collow, almost forgetting what it was like in the real world.
The clash of illusion and reality hurt. Some of the people buried their heads in their hands as they moaned in pain.
It took Hao Ren a while to catch Noobie, who was running loose like a dog. Lily quickly came up to him. “Mr. Landlord, let me take a look!”
The husky maiden had also experienced a psychic attack during the second half of the battle. However, her mental resistance was relatively good, and she was only feeling a little dizzy. She shook her head and looked curiously at the tiny version of Vivian in Hao Ren’s hands.
“What happened to her?”
“She came here by accident,” Hao Ren briefly explained. “It should have been Y’zaks or Vivian. This tiny thing has stolen the precious opportunity of experiencing the first teleportation. But it turned out to be a good thing.”
Lily looked at Noobie, who growled in a threatening manner, “Ghsss!”
“She looks perfectly fine.” The husky maiden poked Noobie’s head with her finger. “She even defeated the monsters all by herself.”
Initially, Hao Ren could not wrap his brain around how Noobie pulled it off, but a thought crossed his mind when he stared at the tiny Malevolence. “Perhaps, it’s because her brain is already like a bowl of glue in the first place.”
“Huh?”
“She has a brain that’s thick like a mixture of cornstarch and water.” Hao Ren shook Noobie. “Either that or she has no brain at all. So after those nightmare monsters fired psychic assaults at her, their magic bit back.”
Noobie looked up and raised her hand at Hao Ren. “Biubiubiu!”
The surprising connection with the MDT was undoubtedly a turning point—Hao Ren needed help badly.
Sleeping in the underground mausoleum of the Basilica Icon were the most outstanding church leaders from the past 10,000 years. They included the popes, saints, and cardinals of the past who had won awards for various reasons. Except for the few who died in the War against Chaos, and whose bones were not suitable for burial in the sacred land, the most powerful mortals in the history of Collow were in this mausoleum. These eternal sleepers were invincible when in life, and equally powerful in death.
The leaked energy of Lockmarton had infested and transformed these sacred souls into dark monsters. It did so by destroying their original divine powers and giving them psychic powers of incredible strength. At first, the psychic attacks had little effect on Hao Ren, who was a demigod. Plus, his mental resistance had been fortified by Raven 12345. But the advantage in numbers always got the upper hand. As more Shadows of Nightmares woke up underground, Hao Ren began to find it hard to cope.
Not only did he have to keep his mental defenses up, but he also needed to find a way to increase the range of his mind power to shield those people around him from the psychic attacks.
Like other ordinary knights, monks, and abhumans, Calaxus had also lost his combat ability. He struggled to keep himself awake amid the waves of psychic attack. He was barely hanging on with Hao Ren’s protective mental shield. Without his assistance, these people, including Calaxus, would have become victims of the Nightmares.
“Calibration of coordinates in progress. Physical transfer will begin in three minutes.”
The MDT’s slightly robotic voice resounded in Hao Ren’s mind. He was using his psionic gun to defend against the attacks of the Shadows of Nightmares, which kept crawling out from the ground and appearing out of thin air. Hao Ren was also keeping an eye on the situation of others while talking to the MDT in his mind. “How many people can you send?”
The ideal situation was, of course, to send all the people onboard the spacecraft. Or better still, letting Nolan enter the battlefield with the overwhelming firepower of the Petrachelys. But obviously, he knew that would be unrealistic given the current conditions. The MDT mentioned before that the physical object transfer was only a test, and it was only sending objects in small quantities to Collow through the small cracks in the barrier. Nonetheless, he still hoped that things could be better.
The MDT’s answer was not surprising. “Only one or two persons per teleportation. The passage is unstable; we can’t take the risk.”
The number was disappointing, but it was better than nothing. As monsters continuously crept up, Hao Ren considered abandoning the route. Once reinforcements arrived, he would leave a small nuke, get out, blow the entire Basilica Icon up, and find another way to enter the sacred mountain. It was the best option at the moment—a plan that he had envisaged from the beginning. Hao Ren would never leave himself without a way out.
The only change to his original plan now was the fact that he would have reinforcements, which was much better than the worst case scenario he had anticipated.
“I need the strongest person,” Hao Ren repeated his request. “Someone whose mental strength is tough enough. Preferably Y’zaks because he’s a demon; he has strong will power. If he’s too large for the teleportation, let Vivian come.”
The MDT’s concentration seemed to be straying as it was directing most of its computing power into the portal. “Understood. The transfer is about to begin. Get ready on your side. The countdown starts now: ten, nine, eight…”
Suddenly, Hao Ren felt a stinging sensation in his mind.
He was stunned for a moment before he realized that those nightmare monsters were directing all their attacks at him.
Those monsters—who used to be clergies but were then infected by Lockmarton—seemed to be situationally aware. After the battle fell into a stalemate, they found out why those humans could hold on for such a long time: Hao Ren, like an indestructible reef in the storm, stood between the nightmare monsters and the ordinary humans, taking most of the hits from the psychic attacks.
These psychic attacks even burst into sparks and halos around him before they rippled outwards.
The monsters began to talk to each other through some unexplained spiritual exchange, and they aimed their strength towards Hao Ren, the indestructible “reef.”
The enormous amount of mental energy gathered and formed a continuous blue lightwave in the air. The blue light waves increased in strength and intensity before turning into a single light beam.
Hao Ren watched as the light transcended the boundary of illusion as well as reality, and pointed itself at him. He heard the MDT’s countdown in his mind. “Five, four…”
He quietly called out Raven 12345’s name and gathered all his mental strength. The teleportation was in progress and could not be interrupted, but the joint attack of the monsters was a bit of a surprise to him. He had no choice but to meet the impending attack head-on so that when Y’zaks or Vivian arrived, they would not be caught off guard and be injured.
Just as this happened, the MDT suddenly stopped its countdown; something had seemingly interrupted it.
Hao Ren was startled, and he began to lose concentration. It was at this moment that the monsters fired powerful psychic energy at him.
The illusion and dream that Hao Ren was anticipating did not materialize. Instead, he heard a soft voice. “Ghsss!”
A small figure was swaying around in the air, firing energy arrows the size of a match while going “biubiubiu!”
It was Noobie.
The MDT’s panicked voice came soon after. “Buddy, we have a problem here! Buddy, are you still there? Have you been terminated?”
“Why is Noobie here?”
“I knew you’d be fine.” The MDT let out a long sigh as if Hao Ren had scared him this time. “There was an accident just now. We don’t know how but the little thing came out of nowhere and climbed onto the focal point of the teleportation crystal.”
“Something strange is happening here too.”
As he said this, Hao Ren saw Noobie fly around the waves of psychic attack.
Coincidentally, the strange mistake seemed so right. The Shadows of Nightmares rained their psychic attacks on the mini version of Vivian, who seemed unaffected as it continued to roar. “Ghsss.”
The nightmare monsters were a little stupefied. Nevertheless, they launched another wave of attack.
“Ghsss!” Noobie saw the monsters and sensed their psychic energy in the air. But her confused mind could not produce a logical response, and her only reaction was “Ghsss!”
Like punching a pillow, the psychic assaults were muted and neutralized. Noobie fired her energy bolts aimlessly as if she was unaware of the attacks. The tiny bolts dissipated after they flew a few meters in the air. But Noobie seemed to be happy with them as she went, “Biu, biubiubiu, biubiubiu…”
It may seem strange and absurd, even ridiculous. But Hao Ren began to notice that the nightmare monsters had slowed down.
As if trapped by their own nightmares and illusions, the nightmare monsters became sluggish. A few of them even had smoke billowing from their bodies, and they began to vaporize.
Hao Ren had no idea what was going on, but he knew one thing…
He had to take advantage of this situation.
There were dissipating monsters on one side, and a bombing maniac on the other. The battle quickly came to an end.
Hao Ren had finished off all the enemies, along with the battlefield. The garden became a field of craters, and the structure of the crypt could be seen at the bottom of a few large holes.
As the energy of Chaos dispersed, the power of nightmares began to fade from those affected by it. Calaxus and the others shook their heads as they regained their consciousness. They were struggling to remember the incident and their identities.
Some of them had already lived through their entire lives in the illusion, some had acquired a few lifetimes of false memories, while some even lived for a thousand years in a peaceful Collow, almost forgetting what it was like in the real world.
The clash of illusion and reality hurt. Some of the people buried their heads in their hands as they moaned in pain.
It took Hao Ren a while to catch Noobie, who was running loose like a dog. Lily quickly came up to him. “Mr. Landlord, let me take a look!”
The husky maiden had also experienced a psychic attack during the second half of the battle. However, her mental resistance was relatively good, and she was only feeling a little dizzy. She shook her head and looked curiously at the tiny version of Vivian in Hao Ren’s hands.
“What happened to her?”
“She came here by accident,” Hao Ren briefly explained. “It should have been Y’zaks or Vivian. This tiny thing has stolen the precious opportunity of experiencing the first teleportation. But it turned out to be a good thing.”
Lily looked at Noobie, who growled in a threatening manner, “Ghsss!”
“She looks perfectly fine.” The husky maiden poked Noobie’s head with her finger. “She even defeated the monsters all by herself.”
Initially, Hao Ren could not wrap his brain around how Noobie pulled it off, but a thought crossed his mind when he stared at the tiny Malevolence. “Perhaps, it’s because her brain is already like a bowl of glue in the first place.”
“Huh?”
“She has a brain that’s thick like a mixture of cornstarch and water.” Hao Ren shook Noobie. “Either that or she has no brain at all. So after those nightmare monsters fired psychic assaults at her, their magic bit back.”
Noobie looked up and raised her hand at Hao Ren. “Biubiubiu!”
