Chapter Ninety-Four: Lilith, the Spider Mother

When the tangle of vines divided the thirty giant human-faced spiders into separate pockets, Ye Hai was finally able to confirm that the fleeting mutant he had glimpsed in the darkness was indeed Liana.

“What happened to that girl? What is that strange form?”

“Can Veronica still mutate into other shapes?”

Because the exterior of the mech was wrapped in a thick layer of muscle tissue, Ye Hai mistakenly assumed that the Veronica virus had mutated once again.

He never once considered the possibility of a bio-mechanical exosuit.

After all, such a thing had never appeared in the Leviathan Galaxy.

And how many days had Liana even been studying under Donald?

Building a bio-mech? Not a chance.

When it came to knowledge, Liana was not even as capable as that illiterate Javier.

As a child, Liana had been stranded on the Zombie Star when the outbreak of the zombie virus erupted.

After that, she had drifted from place to place, never receiving any systematic education.

Javier, at least after rising to the rank of legion commander, had been forced to make up for a little of his cultural deficiencies.

For all these reasons, Ye Hai could not possibly have imagined that thing was a mech.

The idea was simply too fantastical.

Yet fate was fickle, and Liana had stumbled onto success by accident.

She had created the first bio-mech in the Leviathan Galaxy.

What was more, because Raiden, the mech warrior, had preserved his brain during the fabrication process, Liana's otherwise pitiful lack of combat experience had been vastly compensated for.

Raiden, the mech knight under Kobayashi's command, was a seasoned veteran who had survived countless battles.

In the chaotic world where a skirmish came every three days and a major battle every five, he had accumulated extraordinarily rich combat experience.

That experience was not even inferior to Javier's.

As one of the first generation of mech pilots, he also had his own deep understanding of how to fight in a mech.

This headlong charge had been entirely guided by Raiden's will.

After Liana linked the nerves of her brain to the mech, the two of them were practically able to share a single mind.

Liana provided the power; Raiden provided the experience and battle doctrine.

The two of them fused into one, complementing each other perfectly.

Once Liana had summoned a mass of vines to split the giant human-faced spiders apart and blind them, her body began releasing vast quantities of Veronica-derived virus.

It started vying for control of the smaller human-faced spiders.

Unlike those mindless mutants, these human-faced spiders, transformed from human beings, not only retained a certain degree of thought, but also possessed psionic abilities born from their fusion with ART-2 genes.

This made the Veronica virus's invasion of the smaller spiders proceed at a very slow pace.

Even so, the small human-faced spiders that came into contact with the Veronica virus all fell into a state of stagnation, and this change made Ye Hai's rescue plan much smoother.

Some of the human-faced spiders infected by the Veronica virus could not withstand the destructive force of two viruses clashing inside their flesh.

In an instant, they turned into pools of blood, seeping into the soil beneath the trees...

The air filled with a nauseating, fishy stench.

“Queen, there is a giant mutant seven meters ahead and to your left. Its vision is completely blocked.”

“You can use the vines to launch a fierce attack from behind.”

“Draw its attention to the rear!”

“That gives us a very high chance of killing it with one strike!”

After hearing Raiden's advice, Liana immediately shifted the focus of the vine assault onto the designated target.

Then she quietly crept toward it.

Parting the vines, Liana saw a giant human-faced spider grappling with the vines, its back turned to her.

“Queen, you can take advantage of the enemy's distracted state and attack from below...”

Liana naturally obeyed Raiden's every word.

She moved stealthily, trying her best not to make a sound.

Using the cover of the vines, she slipped to the giant human-faced spider's lower abdomen.

Then she raised the great axe in her hands and leaped.

The mech's power surged to full output.

With thunderous force, before the human-faced spider had time to react, she split the enemy cleanly in two.

Then Raiden gave another prompt.

“Queen, you can use your great axe and the mouthparts on your shoulders to devour this mutant...”

“From certain gene fragments, I can extract part of its abilities and graft them onto the mech...”

“Although I am a mech generated on the basis of the Veronica virus...”

“I can still imitate some mutant abilities through appropriate mimicry, though their power will be somewhat reduced!”

“But having more abilities will greatly enrich our methods of attack...”

After Liana had created the bio-mech, her mind still felt a little dazed.

All the fighting had been controlled by Raiden.

She was inside the mech, yet she felt like nothing more than a spectator.

She merely carried out Raiden's orders mechanically.

As a battle-hardened old soldier, Raiden's every choice was beyond reproach.

After devouring one giant mutant, they again used the vines to obscure the giant human-faced spiders' vision.

In a very short time, more than thirty giant human-faced spiders were cut down, and nearly half of them were killed by Liana with effortless ease, without even having a chance to unleash their psionic power.

Before she had obtained Raiden, Liana would have been utterly incapable of doing this.

For someone as formidable as Liana, the mech's boosts to defense and offense were significant, but by no means indispensable.

Her greatest weakness now was her lack of combat experience.

After all, such things are accumulated through battle after battle.

Gaining powerful abilities does not mean you have gained powerful combat strength.

And the crucial link in that chain is combat experience.

Now, this shortcoming in Liana had been greatly compensated for by the bio-mech.

Veronica's battle power had been fully unleashed.

When Ye Hai and Zero approached those sky-darkening vines, they could not see a single human-faced spider.

In the mere dozen or so seconds it had taken Ye Hai and Zero to travel there, a large number of giant human-faced spiders had already been slain and devoured.

Those that could not be devoured were dragged underground by Liana's vines, ready to be taken away...

Ye Hai and Zero could not help exchanging a glance.

“It looks like that headless black thing is extremely powerful...”

“In such a short time, it has already killed off most of the human-faced spiders gathered here!”

“Who is it? One of our six corpse-catchers?”

“A girl named Liana?”

“With strength this terrifying...”

“I'm afraid only you and Lister in the whole organization could outclass her!”

“She is simply too strong.”

Ye Hai's head was buzzing too.

Was this really the Liana he knew?

To split the battlefield like this, taking her ability to control a certain area’s ecosystem and developing it to the extreme...

It left Ye Hai entirely at a loss.

Could a person really change so dramatically in just a few days?

It was simply unbelievable.

Only after they had penetrated deeply into the center of the vines did Ye Hai and Zero hear the sounds of battle ahead.

The two of them immediately quickened their pace and moved toward the source of the noise.

After pushing aside a large mass of vines, they finally saw clearly what kind of creature it was.

Nearly four meters tall.

It stood a full head and a half taller than Ye Hai in his G3 form.

Shield in the left hand, axe in the right.

Under the cover of the sky-darkening vines, it moved nimbly through the attacks of several giant human-faced spiders.

Whenever it struck, it was often a killing blow.

As for the troublesome psionic force of the giant human-faced spiders... after being blocked layer upon layer by thick vines, even if it could not be fully resisted, its power was greatly diminished.

Protected by the mech's heavy shell, Liana's speed in slaughtering the giant human-faced spiders was almost as effortless and graceful as Ye Hai and Zero slaughtering the smaller ones.

Ye Hai and Zero, who had already fought the giant human-faced spiders several times, were filled with shock.

No one knew better than they did just how hard to deal with those terrifying psionic creatures truly were.

After easily cutting down the thirty-odd giant human-faced spiders divided by the vines, Raiden landed before Ye Hai and Zero.

A pressure radiated from the pitch-black bio-mech that made both of them feel a chill in their hearts.

If the other side had seemed at all inclined to attack them, Ye Hai might very well have struck first, just to disperse the suffocating force of that overwhelming presence.

With a trace of doubt, Ye Hai asked, “Liana?”

“Is that you?”

At Ye Hai's call, Liana hurriedly opened the mech's hatch.

“Yes, Mr. Ye Hai, it's me!”

Only then did Ye Hai realize with astonishment that the remaining formidable “mutant” was actually a mech.

“How did you do this?”

His mind was now brimming with shock and questions.

Because he could already confirm that Liana was piloting a genuine bio-mech at this very moment.

Just as Liana was preparing to explain everything in detail, all three of them abruptly changed expression.

Ye Hai and Zero could already feel the gravity around them changing at an alarming rate.

Their bodies became immensely heavy in an instant.

As for Liana, Raiden told her that terrifying changes were taking place in this area, and that she had to leave at once... otherwise even the mech could not guarantee her safety.

The three were perfectly in sync, and all shouted at once, “Run!”

Then they burst out with their fastest speed, trying to escape the area.

Liana reacted even faster.

In an instant, she ordered the vines to coil around the three of them and hurl them away with all their force.

The very moment they escaped, the ground where they had just stood was twisted and compressed by a tremendous gravitational force.

Everything within that area was crushed and annihilated by the overwhelming gravity.

The moment Zero hit the ground, he cried out, “This is the same strange force that took Lister's legs before!”

Ye Hai was even more shaken.

“Psionic power! Controlling gravity...”

“What terrifying psionic might this is...”

At that very moment, a sudden rain began to fall from the moon-bright, star-scattered sky.

Ye Hai faintly heard a strange voice drifting down from above.

“Last time, I failed to lock onto your position...”

“This time, you have nowhere left to hide!”

“Spider Mother Lilith!”

“It is time... to return to the embrace of the Psionic Union.”

The missing installment has been added.