Eldritch Horror Theatre

Wielding absolute power over life and death and commanding Calamity, the Mechanical Tyrant descended in an instant to direct matters within the fungi-transformed Transcendent Academy.

In truth, given their previous experience with Akons, both sides were playing some of their cards face up; there was no point in guarding their secrets.

For instance, the opponent locking people behind glass, or his own Mythical Form manifesting as the King of the Abandoned Prison.

The reason he hadn’t rushed to use this move was simple: playing with open cards required far more skill.

If he could crush them one by one, why rush to drop a bomb?

His Mythical Form came with restrictions. It was only natural to drag them all together before unleashing his ultimate.

Of course, given their bond as conjugate inner demons, the opponent would certainly have no trouble guessing his intentions. But that was precisely the power of an open scheme.

The imagined Higher Existence was powerful precisely because it wasn’t a puppet of Master Yuhun, but something truly akin to the original entity descending in person.

So even if the opponent knew what he was planning, they had no way to smoothly maneuver it into evading.

As long as he had the energy to make a racket, the Fungal Emperor would definitely wake up.Having completely transformed into an ancient higher entity, draped in the Four Rings and utterly invincible, Fu Qian now scrutinized his current situation from a far more transcendent perspective.

It was easy to confirm that, just like his encounter with Akons, he had been banished into a burn-after-reading temporary file.

However, if he could see it... then he could break it.

That was the entire point of ascending to a higher vantage point.

But there were two problems now. First, the temporary file before his eyes was far more resilient than the one he had encountered with Akons, because it was in a ”real” state.

The addition of a special authority, along with its interpretation and reconstruction in the form of mycelium, had granted it an astonishing degree of toughness.

Furthermore, the awakening of the will behind that power had made this reconstruction even more absolute, leaving him no loopholes to exploit.

Clearly, the violently awakened Fungal Emperor had a terrible temper.

Second, Master Yuhun was not present in the real-world Academy behind the glass.

...

That was right. Although it was only a fleeting glimpse, the deathmatch chain currently tethering them together made it significantly easier for Fu Qian to confirm a few things.

Master Yuhun wasn’t in the Academy. Everything happening there was being accomplished through an alternative channel—such as his favorite pastime of wandering through the Mind World.

So a risk he had to consider right now was that the opponent he needed to kill wasn’t just hiding behind bulletproof glass, but operating via remote control over a phone line.

And as everyone knew, he was deeply unwelcome in the Mind World of this place.

Therefore, even if he spent the effort to shatter this cage, he likely wouldn’t find anyone in the Academy, and continuing the pursuit would only present more obstacles.

It was a perfect defense with zero blind spots, reducing the significance of brute-force cracking to an absolute minimum—but he still had to crack it.

The world trembled.

Pale gray threads were casually torn from the Body of the Tyrant that no one dared look at directly, disintegrating into ash the instant they left his flesh.

Enjoying the process wasn’t just some empty boast to make himself sound good. The outcome of cracking this cage might be an unknown, but didn’t he still have the violent process itself?

His earlier relief that Master Yuhun had chosen this visceral, fist-to-fist approach had never been mere politeness.

As for what he was tearing from his body?

Simple. That was the source of the Damage Transfer’s power.

By reconstructing the world through the structure and connections of mycelium and making him a part of that chain, they had achieved that previous effect.

It was just that in his Tier 2 state, he could neither sense this connection nor destroy it—Crack!

In truth, the ordinary concept of sound no longer existed here. This audio effect was perceived solely as a rhythm surging through the mycelium.

And what triggered this rhythm was the trapezius muscle of the Female Sword Saint.

He had been talking about the benefits of puppets earlier, but now their downside was apparent—even when facing a tyrant in the flesh, they still couldn’t compute the option of running away.

But they really should have run.

Charging at the very front, the Female Sword Saint was punched straight through in the next instant.

Because he was an utterly unyielding stone within this mycelial world, the Damage Transfer had completely lost its effect.

Fu Qian’s movements didn’t stop. He tore her body apart right down the middle.

Riiip—

In that moment, it was hard not to draw a comparison to tearing apart a king oyster mushroom by hand.

Unfortunately, the Female Sword Saint didn’t seem to possess the ability to continue differentiating. Her body instantly lost all vitality, fluttering to the ground like dandruff.

At the exact same time, a sharp blade plunged into Fu Qian’s lower back.

The wound was so deep that even with his giant body, a segment of the blade pierced all the way through.

A mere Flirtatious Glance Sword Technique shouldn’t have been able to achieve this, even if the wielder had sacrificed their partner.

On the tip of the blade protruding from his body, he could clearly see the glimmer he had commented on earlier—one completely foreign to the attacker’s own body.

And at this moment, its brilliance was even greater than before the split, condensing into a power capable of eroding everything.

It wasn’t particularly pure, but it was ancient and exalted.

He could even feel the section still buried inside him frantically sprouting bizarre mycelium—

Good. This was exactly what he wanted.

An awakened higher will, descending into a top-tier puppet and perfectly condensing its own authority within it to turn the latter into an even madder weapon... It was the most logical choice.

But what Fu Qian looked forward to even more was this brilliance.

Although it was mycelium, it shone like a crystal—he hadn’t been mistaken earlier. It really was crystallized.

Just as Professor Claudora had mentioned, this special form of power was completing the Transcendent Tier, elevating the Transcendent Tier... Even the briefly recreated ancient higher entity had been patched up by it.

Just what kind of project had that Academy Exploration Team discovered?

Riiip—

Paying no mind to the murder weapon thrust through his body, Fu Qian directly ripped apart the figure behind him with the Sword Three Short of One in his hand.

But it wasn’t her true body.

Just like the sword still stuck in his back, that body quickly devolved into ordinary pale gray mycelium and scattered across the ground. The attacker, however, hadn’t weakened in the slightest, instead hiding herself within this strange world in any form, whether concrete or abstract...

After the Fungal Emperor descended in person, that remaining sword saint seemed to have achieved complete unity of heaven and humanity with her surroundings. Perhaps she ought to be called a Sword God now?

Even with the Eye of Calamity, rooting her out wouldn’t be easy. And if she landed a few more sneak attacks, even the divine body of the King of the Abandoned Prison wouldn’t avoid being eroded by that top-tier authority—but why bother looking for her?

Amidst another worldly tremor, the Mechanical Tyrant’s Fist punched straight through the ground beneath his feet.

The premise behind the unity of heaven and humanity being flawless was that the ”heaven” couldn’t shatter.

In contrast to that, there was another phrase: swatting everything dead all at once.

This seat had never minded an opponent doing such things—enjoying the shade beneath a great tree, as they say, or joining an organization to seek protection.

Ignoring the attack that appeared behind him once more, he clawed outward with a Visceral Attack of the King of the Abandoned Prison, pairing it with a Calamity Curse that directly locked onto the Fungal Emperor’s entire divine realm and bearing fangs condensed from the power of Dimensional Poison.