CHAPTER 273: ENDLESS LIFE, CORRUPTED SCOURGE

"The devils corrupted the elves' Tree of Life? And by manipulating its bond with your people, you've lost the ability to strike at the World-Eater?"

Avia was communicating with the elven ranger Sif through the Perfect Fractal lenses that framed both their right eyes.

Perfect Fractal could even be used for communication because of its ability to project written text directly into other users' field of vision in a swift and precise manner.

"Our bond with the Tree of Life is difficult to define." Sif's reply appeared before Avia in floating script. "But it does exist, and that connection has been exploited by the devils. We never imagined any being could tamper with the Tree itself."

Sif's words illuminated the crisis facing the elves.

"Can you recover from this?" Avia asked, her tone level. "That World-Eater must be nearing a legend's strength—and with its enormous bulk and terrifying regenerative capacity, all we can do is delay it, if that."

Neither Wang Yu nor Avia were interested in hollow bravado. They would offer what help they could—but whether that help would suffice was another matter entirely.

"I can feel it. The compulsion preventing us from attacking the World-Eater is slowly ebbing," Siv responded. "We need time... but yes, we will recover."

Avia turned to Wang Yu, giving him a subtle nod.

He cracked his neck and muttered, "Alright then—time to fight. Damned devils, buzzing around like flies. Can't they ever stay dead?"

"Tch," he added with a grim smile. "Guess they'll only stop when they're all wiped out. Stay safe—I'm going to hit it with everything we've got. These alchemical war machines pack a punch. If we had a few more..."

He trailed off, turning briefly to warn Avia to stay alert, then summoned his fighting spirit. His muscles bulged, and strength surged through his body. With a thunderous crack, he blurred into motion, leaping from rooftop to rooftop as he raced toward the behemoth.

The World-Eater loomed ahead, its titanic form grotesquely reassembling itself. A bisected skull scorched black by divine lightning fused back together as a torrent of corrupted life force surged through it.

Behind Wang Yu, a formation of metal constructs and reforged starsteel blades followed in tight formation, driven by the mighty force of the Chariot.

"Mr. Ahn!" Wang Yu bellowed across the battlefield to the black cat still unleashing its barrage from afar. "If you can, slam that thing to the ground! I've got elven artillery to bury in its gut!"

His voice, backed by the lungs of a grand knight, echoed like thunder across the better half of Liaheim.

The black cat tilted its head, golden eyes gleaming as it registered the rapidly approaching storm of metal and Wang Yu's streaking form. Its tail flicked.

A terrifying surge of mana erupted from the small cat's body. A great rift in space tore open beneath the World-Eater, far larger than the weapon-portals it had summoned before. From the portal's pulsing edge, arcs of violet lightning danced—the signature of gravity magic.

Out of the rift rose a colossal sword, not forged of metal but rather of stone. It was over five meters wide, and so heavy that Ahn had to suspend it with gravity magic just to aim and fire it.

The titanic blade shot down with earth-shaking force, heading straight toward the World-Eater and the ancient elven buildings it clung to.

The sword didn't so much fly as fall. Its monstrous size made it seem slow in comparison, but its impact was devastating.

It sheared through the ancient structures as if they were nothing more than stacked twigs. The World-Eater, unable to hold on any longer, tumbled to the ground amidst the collapsing buildings.

The buildings had long been evacuated. Though the elves weren't able to attack the World-Eater, they were certainly able to run off. Wang Yu didn't hesitate. He sprinted forward, then leapt straight onto the World-Eater's armored back.

As it fell, the World-Eater began scrambling in mid-air, seeking invisible handholds as it tried to halt its descent.

But before it could do so, a bolt of searing lightning struck its torso, followed closely by a distant meteor hammer wreathed in fighting spirit. The two projectiles slammed into the beast and detonated.

The lightning, thicker and stronger than Avia's initial salvo, blasted arcs across its body. Though there seemed to be no visible damage at first, the flesh beneath its scorched shell was devastated by the current.

The meteor hammer—a gift from a beastkin grand knight—detonated with compressed fighting spirit on impact.

Blades of pure force erupted in all directions, carving into the creature's carapace and shredding its foul flesh. One gaping wound nearly split an entire segment of its body.

The injuries, though small relative to the behemoth's mass, struck close to its head and interrupted its climb.

And so, it fell.

With a thunderous crash, its monstrous form hit the ground, gouging a deep trench in the earth. Wang Yu landed atop its back.

His four metal constructs vibrated under the force of the Chariot. Power hummed within each.

The World-Eater didn't understand what Wang Yu was doing. It acted on instinct upon noticing a morsel of food filled with vibrant life force.

Its limbs dripped with a thick, yellowish ooze as they shot toward Wang Yu—concentrated corruption. If Wang Yu were to so much as touch it, he'd be finished.

Silver blades flashed in the air. Wang Yu sliced off the limbs reaching out toward him with his shattered starsteel blades.

They danced, vanished, and reappeared—monstrously agile under the Chariot's control. They sliced through limb after limb before they could reach Wang Yu.

A creature without armor or a hardened carapace had no defense against Wang Yu's blades. Meat, however massive, was still meat. And meat could be carved.

"Let's see how you like this!"

Raising both arms, Wang Yu summoned the full force of the Chariot, then brought his hands down.

The elven constructs responded. Four colossal drills slammed downward, piercing the Devourer's armor with a roar.

With mechanical precision, the constructs locked into place. A hidden trigger activated as they struck home, unleashing the energy they'd been charging.

Explosions rippled through the beast's body. Fire and shockwaves churned within its flesh, focused by alchemical channels into a singular point: the drills now acted as conduits for impending destruction.

Scarlet fire erupted from their tips, the force balanced by a precise recoil mechanism that caused them to burrow deeper into flesh and bone.

These weren't just drills. They were bombs—four bombs filled with implosive charges and the most advanced dwarf-gnome alchemical fuels to date.

Wang Yu hurriedly leapt clear—he certainly didn't want to be caught in the range of the explosions to come.

Behind him, a quartet of internal detonations ripped through the World-Eater.

Its flesh was atomized, the corruption boiled away to nothing. The resulting shockwave hurled Wang Yu end over end through the air.

He twisted, landed hard, skidded to a stop—and then raised a hand. From the smoke, four metal constructs returned, wholly intact.

"Hah... Say what you will about dwarves." Wang Yu chuckled as he stacked the devices. "But their craftsmanship is impeccable."

These weren't disposable weapons. Each construct had three segments. The first two carried the payload; the third was reusable.

A fresh torrent of corrupted life erupted from the World-Eater's body, drowning the battlefield in its tide. Even from a distance, Wang Yu could feel the flood of concentrated life force, so much hat he could almost reach out and siphon off a little of it.

"Endless, boundless life..."

Wang Yu stood still, gaze heavy, as he watched the writhing form of the World-Eater begin to stir once more. Its sundered flesh had already knit itself back together by the time the flames died down. That surge of unreasonable vitality coursing through it rendered the explosions moot, as if they had never happened at all.

His initial assumption that Liaheim's outer defenses alone could bring down this colossal worm had clearly been a grave miscalculation. What the creature had demonstrated in the past wasn't even a tenth of its true regenerative power.

Its armor and offensive capability, while intimidating, were relatively weak for a being of its magnitude. In fact, given its size and strength, one might even call its defenses frail.

But its regeneration... It was all but immortal. The vast reserves of life force it had accumulated over decades was like an unending health bar. Wang Yu could think of no way to truly kill such a being.

"You're even harder to kill than that cockroach, Erphine!"

With a low curse, Wang Yu summoned the power of the Chariot and his own strength. The four pieces of overlapping metallic constructs he'd just assembled groaned as a monstrous weapon took form in his hands.

It was a titanic hammer, twice or thrice as tall as he was. In a stance suited for a heavy swing, Wang Yu flipped a switch on its hilt.

The hammer roared. Flames burst forth from hidden vents. The magical runes carved along its surface flared as the mana crystals embedded within fed them energy. Wang Yu aimed at the oncoming World-Eater, its monstrous head newly restored, and loosed.

All he needed to do was hold it steady. The weapon would do the rest.

The hammer ignited with searing blue flames, then shot forward with terrifying force. Under Wang Yu's guidance, it struck the World-Eater square in the head just as it surged forward.

An odd sound rang out—an explosion of force. The runes along the hammer's surface had converted all the weapon's momentum into a singular, devastating impact.

Wang Yu didn't even try to hold on after releasing it—he'd have pulverized his arms from the recoil. This wasn't a weapon made for humans. It had likely been forged for one of the elven champions of old, perhaps even a legend.

The blow sent out a shockwave visible to the naked eye. The ground, the ruins, and even Wang Yu himself were flung back by the blast.

And yet, the hammer—perhaps as small to the World-Eater as a spoon to a human—didn't embed itself in its flesh. Instead, the force was discharged cleanly across its skull. Its magical circuits ensured every ounce of energy spread through the point of impact.

As he was flung through the air, Wang Yu saw the World-Eater's head split apart like a rotten watermelon. It burst open in a torrent of blood and viscera, raining foul-smelling gore in all directions.

"What amazing pow—damn it, this is never going to end, is it?!"

He'd barely begun to marvel at the hammer's destructive might when more life force rippled out like a wave.

The World-Eater's pulped head emerged whole and unblemished from ruined flesh.

Its obscene regenerative capacity nearly made Wang Yu retch. Except for vaporizing the whole thing in one go with an extinction-level attack, he truly had no idea how to kill it.

And then, to his horror, the World-Eater shifted direction. It ignored Wang Yu. It ignored Ahn and the other non-humans. It turned unerringly toward the Tree of Life.

Wang Yu didn't know what it was going to do, but it was surely nothing good.

In the void beyond reality, a devil's voice whispered to the World-Eater: "Enough playing with them. Don't forget your real task—corrupt the Tree of Life. Once it falls, it'll tear Ironforge Bastion apart from within. Let those two clueless races tear each other apart.

"And once you claim that item, you won't need brute force to crush these little insects anymore."

Whether or not the World-Eater truly understood the devil's commands, the result was the same. Empowered by the devil's magic, it surged forward—straight toward the Tree.

"Stop it!" Wang Yu roared.

From every direction, the non-humans unleashed their fury upon the monster.

Lightning bolts fell like spears from the heavens. Blades of fighting spirit sliced through the air. Alchemical bombs erupted in fiery blossoms. Raging torrents of magic dissolved worm-flesh at an alarming rate.

All the combatants poured their full strength into the assault. It was a storm of destruction that would have obliterated any ordinary legend.

And even the World-Eater couldn't withstand it fully. Its flesh, not particularly sturdy to begin with, was stripped away. Shell and sinew alike vaporized under the bombardment. Within seconds, its entire form visibly shrank.

But it did not slow. It plowed ahead regardless, gushing life force like it cost nothing. In fact, so much overflowed from its wounds that plants began to sprout where corruption should have blighted the land.

The life force that it had hoarded for decades was simply too vast in quantity. No matter the power of the attacks, the World-Eater healed faster than it could be harmed.

Slowly but surely, despite the best efforts of Liaheim's defenders, the beast reached the Tree of Life.

"Damn it... What is it trying to do?!"

The sight of it rearing up, its limbs clawing into the Tree's trunk, filled Wang Yu with dread.

The World-Eater's limbs twisted grotesquely to form a single, monstrous arm.

Then, without hesitation, it plunged that arm into the Tree of Life. There was no resistance. The bark split as the World-Eater reached deep, found what it sought—and ripped it free.

It held in its grip a massive wooden spear adorned with lush leaves, its spiral haft radiating elegance and grace—the Primeval Lance Kasimir.

The sacred spear of the elves, now in the hands of corruption incarnate.

Yellow sludge writhed up the World-Eater's limb, coating the lance. The devil's taint mixed with the World-Eater's own corruption and seeped into the sacred weapon.

Leaves withered. Wood blackened. Rot spread. The beautiful craftsmanship gave way to diseased flesh.

Deprived of consciousness, the Origin Lance could offer no resistance. It had been distorted, defiled.

This was no longer the Primeval Lance. It was a monstrous parody, a weapon of decay—the Blighted Warspike.

The World-Eater raised the Blighted Warspike and aimed it at Liaheim. Endless life force flooded into the weapon.

Despite its corruption, one trait of the sacred spear remained: it demanded a vast offering of life force to unleash its power. And the World-Eater had far more than enough.

"Move!" Wang Yu roared in warning.

The devil had spoken true. With this weapon, the World-Eater no longer needed to rely on brute force. The Warspike unleashed its wrath. A beam of blood-red light tore through the heavens, sweeping across Liaheim.

Everything it touched was erased.