Chapter 769 Heracles

Almost at the same moment that Vivian's voice fell, a shriek that completely exceeded all the sounds of madness in the world, almost capable of tearing the sky, suddenly came from afar. The sealed prison, already melted into a lake of lava by the starship's artillery, vibrated once again. Circles of dark red ripples churned the fiery lava, and black shadows, as if spreading from hell, began to spread outward from the center of the lava lake.

The black-red beam of light reappeared, eroding the alien space's firmament at an even faster rate than before.

"What the hell?!" Even Hao Ren couldn't help but exclaim in shock. He had never imagined that Nolan's bombardment would be ineffective one day. "What the heck is that thing?! It actually survived the starship's artillery! Even the First Born would be instantly killed by a single shot!"

"Then there's only one answer: this thing cannot be destroyed by conventional means," the data terminal said, "or it is more powerful than the First Born."

"Nolan, prepare the main cannon!" Hao Ren immediately connected to the starship's main computer. "Authorize the main cannon to fire on the ground in an emergency situation."

Nolan immediately reminded, "The main cannon uses high-frequency psionic energy attacks, which will have a chance to directly destroy the local alien space structure, and even cause slight leakage to the main material world outside. Please confirm the firing order again."

Hao Ren's face was gloomy. He pondered, made a decision, but finally nodded. "Confirm again. Charge the main cannon, but don't fire yet—wait, stop charging for now!"

He interrupted Nolan's actions because something unusual suddenly appeared at the bottom of the black-red beam of light in the distance.

A swaying, huge black figure stood up from the lava and shadows.

At first, he thought it was a humanoid monster like the black tide just now. However, he quickly realized that the figure was a true main material world creature, a living person—or at least, was once a living person.

A third of his body was covered in darkness. Some kind of negative force had completely disfigured this person. Even from such a distance, Hao Ren could still use his extraordinary eyesight to see how terrifying the distortion and mutation of that burly figure was: his body was covered with strange structures resembling bone spurs. The left half of his body was twisted and swollen as if deformed. His skin was cracked, and what flowed from the cracks was not blood but scalding venom. His heart, like an enlarged basketball, was exposed, and almost all the arteries were throbbing outside the skin.

This distorted creature stood up from the fire and shadows, and then even more terrifying mutations began to appear on his body. Some invisible force was constantly injected into his body, causing his body to rapidly increase in size at a speed visible to the naked eye. In just a few breaths, he had become a giant over ten meters tall, and an even more terrifying energy fluctuation emanated from his body.

The giant completed his transformation. He turned his head and stared intently in Hao Ren's direction. No reason or thought could be seen in those swollen, distorted dark eyes. He raised his head and let out a mad howl, and the lava beneath his feet immediately solidified, only to be torn into pieces.

Hesperides murmured, "Heracles..."

"Look at his body!" Vivian flew high and saw more clearly. She instantly noticed something that caught her attention on the black giant. "At the chest, could that be the scepter?!"

Hao Ren concentrated his gaze, and sure enough, he saw that object at the black giant's chest. It was a scepter that had been twisted and deformed. It was embedded in the giant's flesh, and the exposed part was jet black. The end of the scepter was inlaid with a large red crystal. At this moment, the red crystal was broken, and a piece of black stuff seemed to be surging vaguely inside the cracked crystal.

Hao Ren judged the position and embedding direction of the scepter and realized that this thing was originally nailed to Heracles' chest—and now, as Heracles turned into a giant, the scepter embedded in the other party's body looked like an inconspicuous nail.

"Two centuries ago, we used the scepter to nail Heracles to the sealing stone at the bottom of the cage," Hathaway said quickly. "He volunteered to do so—in order to seal the power of the artifact."

"It seems he has been completely corrupted in these two centuries," Vivian took a breath. "Your sealing methods are simply ridiculous!"

"This ship's main cannon is ready and can fire at any time," Nolan's voice came again. "Captain, do you want to order an attack?"

The giant in the distance strode forward, and behind him, like leading an army, rose a tidal wave of darkness like a giant wall. He raised his right hand and roared, his howl causing the lava to retreat and the earth to crack. The heroic hero of the past now showed no trace of humanity.

Hao Ren didn't know how Heracles survived the first artillery bombardment, but he believed that the main cannon of the Petrified Turtle Rock could destroy the opponent in one fell swoop this time. He had read the instructions and knew that the main cannon and secondary cannons of his starship were completely different levels of attack. However, looking at the giant's mad howling appearance, some kind of intuition suddenly made him suppress the urge to order the firing.

"Do not fire," Hao Ren took a step forward. "... Cover me."

Vivian was stunned. "What do you want to do?"

"Don't you think this giant has a lot of secrets?" Hao Ren said as he prepared, "And that artifact, that 'boundary' that I don't understand what it is... One shot and everything will be gone. I have to at least bring the artifact back."

The black giant strode forward, angrily rushing towards the most conspicuous living beings in this world. The pitch-black shadows covering his body twisted and rose, burning like flames, and the mutated and swollen half of his body not only did not affect his speed in the slightest, but the black venom dripping from the cracks in his skin turned into small black devils when it landed, charging with the giant like a legion.

This terrifying enemy staggered but rushed swiftly, each footstep causing the earth to shake.

The lower armor of the Petrified Turtle Rock contracted inward, and after a series of mechanisms deformed, an ejection channel was exposed. More than a dozen silver-white unmanned attack aircraft roared out of the mothership and began to madly strafe the enemies on the ground.

Carrying some armed drones was indeed a wise move.

A dazzling lightning bolt crossed a thousand meters and split into dozens of small forked lightning bolts in the air, completely covering the black giant's body. The black giant was struck by this lightning, but only swayed slightly, and then continued to charge as if he felt nothing.

Hao Ren held a plasma spear in one hand and the Inspector's pistol in the other, and with the double cover of the drones and Vivian, he met this weird and horrifying opponent.

A single giant was only one of the troubles. Another trouble was the "legion" that was constantly expanding around him.

Beside the giant, large patches of darkness were appearing out of thin air, and the monsters gushing out of these dark cracks—or boundaries—were increasing in number, the formation being like the prelude to the black tide that had emerged not long ago. However, it was probably because the attack of the starship's artillery had more or less damaged the core of the artifact that these shadows did not expand at a nightmare speed like the black tide just now. The monster group only continued to gather around the giant, and their expansion could be suppressed somewhat by the armed drones flying in the sky.

The giant advanced forward, leading the ever-expanding shadow legion, while the armed drones used firepower in the air to suppress those dark legions that were spreading everywhere. Vivian's lightning and bat storms also began to restrain the giant's movements. In this chaos, a blue light burst, and Hao Ren fired his pistol.

He believed that the distance was close enough. At this position, the psionic energy pistol with infinite attack power was enough to cause fatal damage to the enemy, and the fact was indeed so—after a shot, the giant's entire arm, most of his shoulder, and a third of his head were blown away!

"Aww—"

However, the black giant still raised his head and let out a frantic roar after losing a third of his head, and then endless shadows burst out from his wound like a storm.

What happened next left Hao Ren dumbfounded.

The giant's blown-off limbs quickly regenerated in a cloud of smoke, and the flesh and smoke that fell from his wound actually turned into a group of raging shadow monsters with every piece of debris.

"Boom boom boom!"

The drone's automatic cannons immediately swept away the newly born monsters, but none of them hit the giant. These autonomous combat machines had excellent AI. They had just judged from the results of Hao Ren's attack that the giant would not only not die after being attacked, but would immediately split into countless new individuals.

The shield on Hao Ren's body emitted bursts of light. He had been attacked by the dark aura around the giant, and the surrounding dark minions had also begun to launch attacks on him with various strange powers. He quickly retreated a distance, and then, while fighting back with his pistol and spear, he looked at the incomparably brave black giant.

Try another shot to see the effect? Directly destroy the giant's entire body with a larger-scale attack? Or try to find some weakness?

All the plans were rejected by him one by one. Finally, his gaze fell on the scepter on the giant's chest.

The best solution was indeed this: separate the scepter from the giant first.

Although according to Hathaway, there would still be energy flow between the scepter and Heracles after they were separated, it was because they did not have more advanced isolation technology.

It didn't matter. Hao Ren didn't lack high technology.