The Era of Gods - Chapter 550

Chapter 550: Chapter 550: The Many Faces of a Low-level Demon

At this moment, Lin Xiao’s emotions were complex. The trade with the Emperor of Myriad Forms had brought him huge returns, but now the lingering repercussions were significant. If this incarnation couldn’t return to his True Body, it would be very troublesome in the future.

Speaking of which, he remembered the Emperor of Myriad Forms once mentioned that before his Divine Enthronement, he could travel to the All-Embracing Crystalline Universe, and that he would be presented with a grand gift at that time.

But at present, he didn’t even know in which world his incarnation was…

“Wait a moment!”

Lin Xiao suddenly remembered something. It seemed that the Emperor of Myriad Forms had given him the coordinates of the All Things Crystal Wall Universe in the Star Realm Battleship, as well as the permission to travel to the All-Embracing Crystalline Universe. He could enter the Myriad Manifestation Crystal Wall at any time.

He quickly communicated with his True Body, only to find that his current strength was insufficient. The Star Realm Battleship, that big fellow, could not be sent over in an instant. Once his strength improved a bit, he would be able to send the Star Realm Battleship over, and then he could directly leave by riding the battleship, capable of traversing the Void and the universe’s Crystal Wall, heading straight to the All-Embracing Crystalline Universe using the coordinates saved on the battleship.

It just so happened that the Emperor of Myriad Forms had promised him a grand gift before his Divine Enthronement, which he could just accept.

Moreover, during this period, he could do some things, settling some of the remaining entanglements of this incarnation in this life, so he could leave without any worries later.

In this life, Laine was an abandoned baby, a sight all too common in this world plagued by anomalies, where often children were left orphaned by monsters or strange entities.

Most of these orphans were sent to orphanages and raised before being adopted. Laine was adopted by a Demon Hunter organization at the age of seven, and together with other adopted orphans, trained in various combat Skills and techniques of Demon Hunters. In the eleventh year of his training, he underwent both physical and mental refinement through Magic Potions and became one of the fifteen successfully promoted Demon Hunters from twenty-seven elite apprentices, mastering the abilities of a Demon Hunter and becoming a Transcendent capable of fighting monsters and anomalies.

Fortunately, the success rate of transitioning into a Demon Hunter was higher than that of most other occupations. Had it been any other incomplete occupation sequence, maybe only one or two out of the twenty-seven elite apprentices would have succeeded.

However, correspondingly, the combat abilities of the Demon Hunter sequence were generally mediocre, ranking in the middle to lower tier among all sequences.

Nevertheless, every cloud has a silver lining. The Demon Hunter Occupation sequence was relatively complete, sporting a total of five levels, allowing one to be promoted all the way from Sequence 9 up to Sequence 5. Compared to some other minor occupations with an upper limit below Sequence 6, this was quite an advantage.

However, even if one could reach Sequence 5, the limit of the Demon Hunter profession, it was not enough to settle the entanglements this incarnation carried.

The former adopter of this incarnation, a foster father and mentor, a veteran Demon Hunter, was killed by an Evil Spirit in an accident, and the youth had vowed to kill that Evil Spirit for revenge.

But what was an Evil Spirit?

That is a very terrifying kind of evil monster, which in terms of strength is equivalent to a super monster above Sequence 3, and the one he wanted to kill was even harder to deal with being a source of pollution. Based on the Demon Hunter Occupational system the youth joined, even reaching the professional limit would not be enough to confront the Evil Spirit.

Even now, having acquired the Asura Naga Bloodline and Divinity’s Godforce, he couldn’t say for sure that he could take his revenge.

The power of the monsters in this world was simply too bizarre, with many things involving the world’s fundamental rules.

To put it more precisely, the foundational rules of this world had been twisted and polluted by an inexplicable force, making the entire world distorted and bringing about various fearsome monsters and weird phenomena at every corner, rendering it difficult for mortals to survive.

“Squeak!”

A sudden scream jolted Lin Xiao awake, and he quickly looked in the direction of the noise. A dark shadow flitted across a corner of the wall on the edge of the village. He swiftly drew his sword and leaped over twenty meters, landing on the ground.

Before, he could never jump over twenty meters in one leap. Only after merging with the bloodline and the strength of the Godforce Crystal did he achieve such prowess, which greatly boosted his confidence. He even dared to engage in battle without preparing the various potions that were essential for a Demon Hunter.

Arriving at the corner where he had heard the sound, he found a small pool of dark red blood on the ground, with remnants of a tail and a small clump of fur, looking like it was left by a mouse.

He looked around; all was quiet, with not even the sound of insects nearby.

After circling the house, he quickly approached the front door, and lightly tapped on it.

“Knock knock!”

There was no response for a long time.

With a flash of the sword, the door latch was cut, and pushing open the door, the inside was pitch black, and nothing could be seen.

He took a flint out of his chest pocket, struck it alight, and threw it into the room. The flint, spinning through the air, landed inside the house and was immediately knocked away by a dark shadow. He quickly retreated several meters as a shadow burst through the wooden door, rushing out. On closer inspection, it looked like a four-limbed creature on the ground… a human?

No, illuminated by moonlight, it could be seen that this was a creature covered in hair, its face contorted but dressed in villagers’ clothes—a mutated being.

The so-called mutants are either humans or beasts that have come into contact with the radiation of strange powers and mutated into senseless monsters as a result.

Mutations in mutants have no pattern, even humans exposed to the same strange source mutate in different directions, but one thing is certain: mutation is irreversible. Hence, this villager had turned into a bloodthirsty monster.

Fortunately, this mutant was not powerful, and even before receiving the power from his True Body, he could have handled it, let alone now.

As the mutant leapt towards him, he swung his sword and, with a flash of bright blade light, cleanly bisected it into two halves.

The two halves of the corpse fell to the ground and twitched, not fully dead for a short while.

After killing the monster, Laine was about to sheathe his sword when his action suddenly froze, and he looked around in surprise as a rustling sound followed, and one by one, the villagers with twisted faces and deformed bodies came out of the houses in the village, staggering toward him.

“Interesting!”

He grinned, his gaze shifting to the center of the village, where the headman resided.

With a flash, he leapt to the rooftop and then jumped to the chief’s residence, only to find the chief mutated as well, which surprised him since he had suspected the chief to be the source of the mutations. Now it seemed there was something else at play.

He pulled a bottle labeled “Fire” from his waist and uncorked it, but before throwing it, he leaped off the rooftop.

“Boom!”

A burst of force shattered the roof as he landed and saw a tentacle, as thick as a strong man’s arm, smashing through the roof and walls to seize Lin Xiao. The immense force sent bricks flying.

He threw the bottle into the opened doorway, and with a whoosh, a ball of fire exploded rapidly, filling the entire room. Thanks to the fiery light, he saw a large hole in the center of the village’s houses, inside which lay a mountain of flesh, with over a dozen anguished faces on its surface and eight muscular arms of varying lengths.

Multiface, a lower-level demon.

The previous mutants were gradeless demons, not quite significant.

Honestly, these mutants and the Multiface reminded Lin Xiao of the various mutated monsters that had been corrupted by the ancient gods. In a way, those transcendent and higher level monsters and evil spirits were not much different from the ancient gods.

He couldn’t help feeling fortunate that he had come to his senses in time. Otherwise, as a newly promoted Demon Hunter, he would certainly not have been able to defeat the Multiface.

Having its True Body discovered, the Multiface pushed the house walls apart with its multiple flesh arms. One of the faces shrieked, causing all the mutated villagers in the entire village to surge towards him.

Lin Xiao was fearless, even having the leisure to draw a milky potion from a small bag at his waist and pour it on his sword. The blade immediately glowed with a holy light-like radiance, quickly turning the entire sword into a blaze of glowing flame.

Throwing the bottle aside, he swung his sword and sliced off a mutant’s head, which instantly caught fire with the milky white flame, quickly spreading and consuming the body.

Sacred Potion, specifically deadly to these evil creatures.

The overpowering strength and speed enabled him to clear out these monsters quickly, and the Sacred Potion prevented them from regenerating. The Multiface roared, tearing down the house to reveal its True Body. Its muscular tentacles stretched out rapidly towards Lin Xiao, while other tentacles bent down to form legs, propping up its mountainous body and charging towards him with speed.

At the same time, one of the faces on the meat mountain opened its mouth, revealing layers of fine teeth and transforming into a fearsome maw large enough to consume a head, as an intangible wave spread outward.

Lin Xiao only felt a moment of vertigo before the divine golden light in his pupils flickered, and he snapped back to reality:

“Fear?”

He took out a Hand Crossbow from behind him and pulled the trigger; a Fine Steel Crossbow Arrow shot into the gaping maw, which quickly closed with a pained expression. The other faces glared at him while howling, charging with both hands and feet.

However, it was neither speedy nor agile enough to match Lin Xiao, who kited it while continuously killing the mutated creatures.

In less than ten minutes, the last mutant was slain and burned to ashes, and he turned to face the monstrous Multiface.

“Next time, bring a few javelins!”

The Hand Crossbow had penetration to spare, but was not destructive enough against a creature like the Multiface, which had thick skin, strong regenerative abilities, and was difficult to kill.

Without hesitating, Lin Xiao threw all sorts of potions he carried at the creature, including Frost, Corrosive, Poison, Fire, and more, charing the Multiface until even its muscular tentacles were severed. However, it was still not enough to end its life.

Fortunately, he had burned all the mutant corpses with Sacred Potion, otherwise, the Multiface could have devoured them all, assimilating them into itself, and then he would have to face an enormous flesh mountain made of hundreds of villagers’ corpses—a truly hard-to-kill enemy.

After nearly half an hour of wear and tear, the size of the Multiface shrank until with one last sword strike he cut out the still-beating heart at the center of the flesh mass. The broken flesh mountain collapsed, while the heart, sprouting many small tentacles, tried to escape. He quickly bagged it in a special material pouch and secured it tight.

This core was the heart of the Multiface, which could be used to concoct Magic Potions, and was worth thousands of gold.

He used the last bottle of Fire Potion to burn the Multiface’s remains. As he had been taught by the Demon Hunter Organization, even when these creatures are killed, one must destroy the carcass to prevent the high chance of them mutating and resurrecting. This trait was common among most demons in the world, making them exceedingly troublesome.

Essentially, the entire village was dead. It had been infected by the Multiface prior to his arrival. The creature likely intended to trap weaker Professionals like him using this method, but it hadn’t counted on Lin Xiao being too strong, resulting in its own death instead.