Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Without a head, it was difficult to associate the thin body to a human. Even though it walked away on its legs, missing a head, Meme’s body seemed to be in the process of adapting to the lighter weight and balance.
Lin Sanjiu watched him go further away and unconsciously rubbed her eyes. She did not know if it was her mistake, but Meme seemed to cross a great distance in the blink of an eye, disappearing beyond the equipment box.
Before she accepted the doubts in her heart, Silvan spoke, “The hippocampus doesn’t just regulate memories, but also helps us position ourselves and recognize directions. Are you starting to have spatial illusions?”
Lin Sanjiu did not mention the hippocampus in the tape recording, so Silvan must have come up with the result after grasping the situation.
Right after his voice subsided, gunshots came from behind them, tearing the dead silence to pieces. Following the wails of the queen, the ground trembled again. Muzzle flashes shone across the empty space, shaking the shadows in the area.
“You too?”
“My vision got tricked for a second, but it returned to normal. I guess our hippocampuses aren’t too heavily damaged.
“This can’t go on. If Meme gets sucked in again and we can’t even discern positions, then…” Lin Sanjiu quickly steadied her body and ordered the artist to draw the fight that was happening behind them.
‘I cannot suffer any damage now!’
The queen’s voice quivered in her mind and interrupted her. ‘Now? What’s so special about it?’ Right after the question arose in her mind, Lin Sanjiu’s memory went blank again.
When she recovered her memories, Silvan tapped her shoulder and pointed towards half of the canvas in front of them.
A headless figure fired guns, forcing the big maroon brain further back. A crevice opened upon its body and endless waves of purplish-black worms gushed out. As they listened closely, a concentrated rustling gushed towards them like a tide.
“Strange, why is the queen letting them out now?” Silvan asked softly.
Lin Sanjiu was perplexed for a moment then immediately understood his doubt. The purplish-black worms might be dangerous to humans, but to a headless body, they were not threatening at all. Even if the body was sucked dry, a controlled puppet would still be able to carry the guns and fire them.
The gunshots oscillated their eardrums and the muzzle flashes shook before their sight, never pausing. It was obvious that the purplish-black worms did not affect Meme at all. The rustling from the crawling got clearer, sounding as if it was everywhere. She lifted her head for a glance and said loudly, “They’re not going for Meme!”
Both on the canvas and the scene before their eyes, the waves of wriggling purplish-black tides crawled up the walls of the empty space. In the blink of an eye, the entire space was dyed purplish-black as if freshly painted.
“They are crawling to the surface. The queen might be going after those on the surface who still haven’t gotten their brains sucked out, but why would it be in such a hurry to replenish nutrients now?” Silvan muttered, looking up.
The brain was withstanding a storm-like attack. On the canvas, it appeared to be heavily injured, the outer softshell even having shed off a lot. No matter what, the queen’s priority would be dealing with them and Meme.
“No matter what, we must stop the worms.” Lin Sanjiu immediately summoned the [Tornado Whip].
Amid the sharp wind whistles, countless chunks of dirt and clouds of dust, along with fields of purplish-black worms were caught in the tornado then flung to the ground. Before the worms could reach the ground, several silver crescent lights rose from the ground like giant scythes slicing through the air. Wherever the light swept, worms were shredded and they rained down on the ground like vapor.
Even though they lost their memories in the process, the two of them did not stop attacking. Whenever one of them did not understand what was happening amid their absent-minded state, when he or she saw the other still fighting, it would be a good enough reason for them to continue fighting.
With their cooperation, the purple-black worms could barely stick to the wall. Wave after wave, they fell down, and the wall was soon freed of their occupancy.
‘Nutrients! My nutrients!’
The queen’s burdensome voice sounded heavier, a silent tremble shaking them mentally, and it even started to hurt their minds.
‘I will not be interrupted at this crucial moment!’
The scream of the previous sentence was heavy and loud, and almost snapped Lin Sanjiu’s nerves. Stars flickered before her eyes, and they only faded away a few seconds later. She shook her head and raised her eyes, fixating her gaze precisely on the artist.
The humanoid Special Item could not speak. He was unfolding a painting in front of his chest; who knew how long he had been maintaining the posture. Lin Sanjiu glanced at the painting and turned back.
“Look! In the painting, does the queen have something extra on its body?” she said softly.
On the canvas, beneath Meme’s headless body was a thick layer of dead purplish-black worms. It seemed like the queen did not forget attacking him. Meme swapped for a new weapon, and the shots fired like countless sharp teeth, gorging a large area of the maroon external shell into shreds, but what caught her attention was the several white lines on top of the queen’s body.
She quickly spared a glance at the previous painting, which was on the ground. It did not show white lines on the queen’s body.
The white lines were in pairs, and there were around four to five of them. She could not tell what they were from looking at the painting, all she saw was that the white lines were extending into the air through various angles and directions, except towards where Meme was.
“What are those? They look as if they are trying to climb up?” she said faintly with surprise.
The queen said something about a crucial moment, what could the moment be? What did the white lines have to do with the crucial moment?
As doubts rose in their minds, the empty space slowly quieted down. Other than some worms that they missed that made it to the dome ceiling, most of the purplish-black worms were swept clean. Strangely, the queen did not recall the worms, but allowed them to fall on the ground, piling up into an expanse of a mushy meat swamp.Visit on our NovelFull
In the final few minutes of Meme’s life on this earth as a puppet, he continued firing the guns at the queen. The weapon he was using had to be reloaded constantly, hence the firing would pause at intervals before continuing.
Gunshots and blasts echoed away in the empty space. For a moment there, it felt like only the headless boy was left in his unwavering battle.
Once the duration of the [Pygmalion Choker] was up, he would welcome his true end, falling down to the ground to become a real corpse.
“Why isn’t it doing anything?” Silvan asked, furrowing his brows.
“I have a feeling that this situation happened before. This bad feeling, it’s… familiar,” Lin Sanjiu answered while rubbing her temples.
“Tell your artist to draw again. Let’s find out what is happening behind us.”
The artist quickly presented a new painting. He probably assumed that his master and Silvan were close, as he did not even need an order from Lin Sanjiu to start. This time around, other than the white lines getting longer and the queen retreating further away, there was not much of a difference from the previous painting.
After a few more pauses, Meme’s gunshots stopped completely. Silvan looked baffled but did not say anything. He turned around and went silent as he fixed his gaze on the new painting.
Lin Sanjiu gulped, moistening her throat, which was so dry it could smoke up. They had only been in Shambhala for half a day’s time, yet it felt as if they had spent half their lives here. Before she recorded her voice to get prepared for the next memory loss, she looked up and listened carefully.
Above the empty space, there seemed to be a shallow but rhythmic noise.
She glanced at Silvan. His gaze was fixed on the canvas; perhaps he was too focused that he did not hear it. Lin Sanjiu slowly straightened her body and summoned [Tornado Whip] into her hand. She stared into the darkness in front of her.
She found a pale face in the darkness. The face’s eyes were dull, the lower jaw was melted away by the purplish-black worms, and its mouth’s skin and muscles were sagging beneath the cheekbone, flapping along with its footsteps.
Even though half of the face had lost its original shape, Lin Sanjiu recognized him. It was a member of the Munitions factory that she once met him in the airbus. Behind him was another person she recognized—the singer who sucked on Silvan’s finger. She was still wearing that shiny silk dress. Just like that, blank faces, one after another, came afloat from the darkness, filing up in a strange line and walking into the empty underground space.
The people that were crawling on the surface were all summoned down here!
“Silvan!” she called out suddenly.
Right when she turned around, he interrupted her, “I got it!”
“What?”
“I know the crucial moment the queen was talking about, and I understand why these people are down here.” He glanced over at the long line coming into the empty space and said in a hurry, “I will lose my memory soon, so you must remember what I say and also record it.”
Lin Sanjiu quickly grabbed her tape recorder and pressed the record button. He immediately said, “The queen’s biggest goal is to connect with its body, which is this planet. So as a brain, how can it connect with its body?”
Silvan squatted down and pointed at the white lines on the painting. “Like us, the answer is the nerves!”
Lin Sanjiu gasped in shock.
No wonder the queen was not in a hurry to deal with Meme; there was a limit to how much damage he could inflict on its body. It’d rather sustain a little damage to save all its energy for the nerves to grow. As long as the nerves connected to the planet, the two of them might not live longer than a breath’s time. No matter how powerful they were as posthumans, they could not survive being buried alive by a million tons of dirt.
“The purplish-black worms must have been sent out by the queen to suck the brains of these people, but we beat them off. So in order to use them as nutrients to feed its nerves, the queen summoned them down here instead,” Silvan said quickly, uttering every word clearly.
“Our next action will be the key. I have an idea on how to take out the queen once and for all!”
