Chapter 104: The Altar of Blood

The thick, ink-like darkness dissipated, and Xu Xiaolong awoke from a terrifying nightmare, a look of lingering horror still etched upon his face.

The moment he opened his eyes, he realized he was hanging from a large tree.

A faint light flickered within the dark lair, and only then did he notice that what held him was not a tree, but a massive hand made of white bone.

This skeletal hand protruded from the ground like a giant tree, standing about five meters tall. Its five ivory fingers hung down like willow branches, with one person suspended from each.

By the dim light, Xu Xiaolong saw that the other four people hanging from the bone fingers were Thor, Wei Ge, Kojima, and Green Arrow.

"Even Brother Qiang was captured; this is a total wipeout," Xu Xiaolong thought, cold sweat pouring down his body. He hadn't expected that even a professional player as formidable as Thor would be caught and hung up here. The difficulty of this dungeon was higher than anticipated.

"Hey, what's with the 'Brother Qiang' thing? Don't go giving people nicknames. Besides, other than being bald, where do I look like Bald Qiang?" Thor had regained consciousness five minutes earlier. By now, the other players were also waking up one by one. Upon realizing their situation, their hearts sank to the bottom of their feet.

Xu Xiaolong broke into a sweat and apologized, "Sorry, I didn't know you watched 'Boonie Bears' too."

"Is that really what you need to apologize for?" the man retorted, while observing the surroundings.

Before them stood an altar built of stones, with thirteen human-fat candles lit along its edges.

Most horrifyingly, five bone spears stood at the corners of the altar, each impaling a human body. Fresh blood flowed continuously down the spears, forming a massive magic circle in the center of the altar.

The victims used as sacrifices were not yet dead, but their injuries were severe; it was unlikely they would last long.

"Hey, hey, these aren't the missing members of the Rat Extermination Squad, are they? This is looking bad."

Seeing the blood-soaked magic circle, the awakened players felt a chill spread through their hearts.

Surrounding the altar were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of mutant rat-men. Bizarrely, they were not rushing to devour the humans on the altar, but were kneeling in the direction of the altar like devout believers.

Among the rat-men, one gray-furred rat-man holding a skull staff in its left hand and an ancient bronze book in its right walked to the center of the altar, appearing to initiate some sort of cult ritual.

"Can someone tell me what is going on?" Zhang Wei woke up in a state of confusion, his head feeling as if it were splitting apart and his memories in disarray.

"We've been captured by a bunch of cultist rat-men. Do you remember what happened before?" Thor turned his head to ask his teammates.

Kojima recalled the moments before he lost consciousness, a flicker of fear deep in his eyes. "I had a stomach ache and went to a cesspit to relieve myself. Halfway through, a hand suddenly reached out from below and dragged me in. I don't remember anything after that."

"Ugh!" Hearing this, the other players' expressions changed drastically, as if to say, "Don't come near me."

"Wei Ge, how were you captured?"

Zhang Wei wore a look of reminiscence and slowly exhaled. He looked up, gazing at the sky at a forty-five-degree angle.

"I was hypnotized by a monster. I dreamt that my ex-girlfriend, who had cheated on me, came back asking to get back together. Just as I was about to forgive her, she turned into a mother rat and gave birth to a litter of baby rats."

Hearing Wei Ge's tragic experience, everyone fell silent, filled with sympathy.

"Arrow, you..."

The aloof boy's expression shifted; he snorted and turned his head away, clearly unwilling to share his own encounter.

It was evident that these players had encountered mutant rat-men with psychic control abilities, and everything they had seen was merely an illusion created by the monster.

Just then, a strange, whispered incantation drifted from the altar.

The gray-furred prophet standing at the center of the altar brandished its skull staff, pressed its left hand onto the bronze book, and chanted a spell in a unique language.

The system translated the prophet's chant into a language the players could understand, projecting it into their minds:

[Oh, mighty existence from the Chaos Barrens!]
[The Fourth Knight under the Lord of Chaos, the Blood Knight known as the Abyss of Terror.]
[I offer you this blood as a sacrifice, and use Chaos to guide you.]
[I beseech you to descend upon this realm!]

"This guy is summoning a Chaos entity!" Thor and the others looked grim. Judging by the chant, the prophet wasn't summoning mere cannon fodder, but a Blood Knight under the Lord of Chaos.

As a high-ranking general under the Lord of Chaos, even a projection would cause devastating destruction to the human world. This level of Chaos entity was beyond the capability of ordinary professional players.

"Mission updated..."
"Objective: Stop the Blood Knight's descent and destroy the blood sacrifice."
"Mission reward: 5,000 game points, one random active skill card."

There was no penalty for failure mentioned this time, but everyone knew that if they failed, they would be mercilessly slaughtered by the summoned Blood Knight.

However, they were currently suspended and unable to move; escaping the rat-men's lair seemed impossible, let alone completing the mission.

The gray-furred prophet's blood-red eyes surged with madness. As the chant continued, a massive black vortex appeared in the center of the blood altar.

"Humble rat-man, are you the one summoning me?"

A deep, heavy voice echoed through the rat-man lair. A blood-red arm reached out from the vortex, and a terrifying aura spread outward like a surging black tide.

"This is bad. The monster's true form hasn't even fully descended, yet just a trace of its aura is this terrifying," Thor said, sweat beading on his forehead, his eyes filled with fear.

Suddenly, an unexpected turn of events occurred.

A large hole was abruptly dug into the ceiling directly above the altar. A man wearing a long blade at his waist and gopher-patterned gauntlets jumped down.

Su Cheng had received the mission update while he was digging.

After landing safely, Su Cheng immediately drew his 98K sniper rifle, raised the muzzle toward the gray-furred prophet's head from a hundred meters away, and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

The prophet, standing within the blood altar, was bound by an invisible force and unable to move; deep fear surfaced in its eyes.

There is great terror between life and death; even monsters fear the end.

Bang!

The moment the gunshot rang out, a psionic bullet shot from the barrel, transforming into a streak of cyan light that instantly pierced the prophet's skull.

The 98K's headshot effect triggered. The prophet's massive rat head exploded like a watermelon, scattering gray brains and blood across the floor.

In truth, the gray-furred prophet was a mini-boss-level monster; under normal circumstances, Su Cheng would not have found it so easy to kill.

However, having exhausted much of its power to initiate the summoning circle, the prophet had no strength left to resist. Su Cheng took it out in one shot, years of planning flushed away.

With the prophet dead, the power maintaining the summoning circle suddenly vanished.

The black vortex in the center of the altar began to shrink. The Blood Knight, having squeezed half its body out of the demon gate, let out an angry hiss.

"Mortal, Chaos will not let you go; you will pay the price for this!"

Accompanying the angry roar, a massive, blood-red hand descended, shrouding Su Cheng from above.