Chapter 1214
Endless Bloodbath with Seria
Chapter 1214 Endless Bloodbath with Seria
When the Sword-class frigate tore through the outer layer of the crystal wall system, the pale white membrane at the bow, like a piece of thin ice sliced by a sharp blade, slowly peeled away to both sides after a brief tremor.
The next moment, the entire dimensional world below was fully reflected in Xia Xiu's perception.
It was a world of extremely dazzling colors.
The land is dominated by vast, rust-colored red sand deserts, with rolling, undulating seas of crimson sand stretching as far as the eye can see. When the wind blows, the entire surface looks like it's flowing with shattered iron filings.
Interspersed among the deserts are rugged and menacing, highly poisonous mountain ranges, with large areas of corrosive swamps scattered at their foot.
Only a few river valleys, due to the subsidence of the terrain and the existence of water sources, have managed to maintain clusters of settlements. Without exception, these settlements are all tightly surrounded by high-walled city-states with thick walls and dense towers, like iron nails driven between the desert and the poisonous mountains.
—Still the same shabby art style, still the "Lover TV World".
Xia Xiu stood at the front of the bridge, his gaze passing over the porthole, his great spirituality already spreading out before him.
In an instant, he felt the most vivid and pungent underlying color of this world—the color of blood.
Blood, an endless, pungent smell of blood.
That stuff has almost seeped into the air, the rock layers, the rivers, and the people of this world, like a layer of filth that has accumulated over a long time and has never really dissipated, dyeing the whole world a kind of crazy and inferior red.
Xia Xiu frowned slightly and said in a low voice:
"This feeling... is like the Blood God."
But this tastes far inferior to the real Blood God.
True blood divinity should be an extremely pure form of violence.
It glorifies slaughter, thirsts for battle, and sings the praises of the thrill of the strong crushing everything with blades, fists, and roars. In that kind of divinity, blood is merely proof of the battle, and heads and corpses are marks of victory and defeat. It is cruel, savage, and brutal, yet it possesses an almost dogmatic singularity and purity.
But the atmosphere right now is different.
The world is filled with bloodshed, mixed with too many impurities.
Besides the fighting itself, there is torture, abuse, wailing, amusement, cruel punishment, deliberately prolonged pain, and the sadistic pleasure that makes people sick of it at first glance.
Although the Blood God is brutal, he's purely focused on the thrill of combat and doesn't get involved in anything else.
The following is a clumsy imitation of the power of battle and blood, but it has mixed in too much dirt in the process, and the final product is a bloody mess that looks like a fake wine diluted with water. It not only has a pungent smell, but also tastes strong and disgusting.
Beyond this pervasive, vile bloodlust, Xia Xiu's great spirituality precisely locked onto two special targets in the next instant.
One of them was his offspring.
The other is the offspring of the mothers of the Great Old Ones in this world.
This time, there's no need for the black mark to be slowly screened.
Both signals were too obvious.
It was so obvious, like two flags of different colors planted in a swirling, bloody swamp, that you could recognize them at a glance.
Xia Xiu's consciousness descended rapidly along one of the lines, quickly piercing through the high-altitude clouds, crossing mountains and deserts, and landing on a highland in the north-central part of this world.
Then he saw it.
It was a mountainous wasteland surrounded by mountains.
The mountain is steep and the terrain is broken. Large areas of exposed rock layers look like wounds cleaved open by knives and axes. Scattered among the foot of the mountain and the slopes are countless corpses, broken flags and the remains of burned weapons.
The wind swept through the mountains, carrying with it the stench of blood.
Even before Xia Xiu had actually descended, the great spirituality high in the sky was enough to hear the battle cries below that were almost igniting the air itself.
The battle is ongoing, and it has reached its most intense stage.
The number of people besieging one side was extremely large, almost covering all the surrounding ridges, valley mouths and gentle slopes, looking from a distance like a shrinking iron-gray torrent.
They clearly came from different city-states, yet at this moment they were forcibly molded into a single entity. Behind the formation were heavy artillery arrays and projection platforms, while further away, tracked heavy armored vehicles slowly advanced along the outer edge of the high ground, their cannons raised in rows. In the air, formations of flying weapons hovered, with large-caliber bomb bays and armor-piercing weapons suspended beneath their bellies.
This was a complete encirclement and annihilation operation; they left no way out for the enemy in the mountains.
The roads outside the mountains have been blocked, the valley entrance has been repeatedly covered by heavy artillery fire, and all possible gaps for escape are crowded with armored vehicles and armed troops.
The number of people surrounded in the center is already small.
Xia Xiu glanced at them briefly and judged that the enemy had less than two thousand men left.
Many members of this team were seriously injured, their armor was torn, their weapons were dulled, and their bandages were soaked through with blood again, yet none of them retreated.
Everyone huddled in the most advantageous high ground in the center of the mountain, forming the last line of defense with dilapidated fortifications, rock walls, and overturned tanks.
They were like a pack of wild beasts driven to the edge of a cliff.
Behind them lay a dead end, and ahead stood enemy troops several times their number.
Despite being suppressed by aerial fire overhead, bombarded by heavy artillery in the distance, and with the mountainside constantly being soaked in blood, every single member of this remnant army still possessed an extremely strong fighting spirit.
Xia Xiu could sense that they knew they couldn't get out, but they were still fighting, still shouting battle cries, still charging fiercely at every enemy that rushed at them with their broken weapons and mutilated bodies.
Xia Xiu's great spirituality then descended upon the very center of that remnant army.
There stood a tall, conspicuous figure.
Even from high above, even surrounded by smoke, blood, and the firelight left by the explosion, Xia Xiu spotted the person at a glance.
He was too conspicuous.
It was a monstrous, imposing body, bare-chested, with muscles bulging like cast iron, its surface covered with old and new scars and bloodstains, and large, freshly torn wounds visible on its waist, abdomen, shoulders, and back, with blood flowing continuously down its body.
He held a heavy weapon in each hand, the blades riddled with nicks and chips, the edges curled, flesh and bone smeared on them, making it almost impossible to see the original sharpness.
What truly caught Xia Xiu's attention wasn't this person's physique, but rather the aura of a perfect embryo emanating from him.
This is the ninth perfect embryo, and he is even more brutal than his brothers. Like a ferocious beast forged by chains, instruments of torture, and countless hardships, he has been driven to the brink of complete madness. Yet, deep within that madness lies an extremely clear will.
Under Xia Xiu's great spiritual gaze, the battle below continued.
……
……
The world of Seria.
One barrage of artillery fire after another pounded into the mountains, the rust-colored rock layers constantly cracking, and rubble mixed with limbs and blood splattering in all directions. The entire remote mountain plain resembled a wild beast being repeatedly dissected, revealing its bones inch by inch amidst the roar.
In the center of this dead zone, surrounded by heavy artillery, tanks, and aerial firepower, the leader of the rebels, the Blood Angel—Angola—is leading the last of the insurgents in a desperate defense of the high ground.
His left shoulder had collapsed, where his collarbone and muscles should have been connected. Now, all that remained was a blackened, scalded wound. Blood flowed down his arm, dripping onto the red sand, where it was immediately trampled into the mud by the blood of many others.
pain.
That fucking hurts!
Angolan felt like his head was going to split open.
For him, the horrifying wounds on his body were never the source of his pain. They were just minor fatal injuries, and he could heal himself quickly with a rest and a few sit-ups.
It comes from deep within the skull, from the nerves, from memory, from some command forcibly nailed into the soul.
If he stops, if he catches his breath, if he slows down his knife even a fraction of a second, those blood nails will immediately fill his head with excruciating pain, let him hear the cheers from the stands, the sharp sound of iron hooks dragging across the stone ground, and the clatter of countless spectators banging on the railings, urging him to keep killing, keep bleeding, and keep turning himself into the most valuable animal in the gladiatorial pit.
Angolan gritted his teeth, suddenly raised his head, and slashed out with his sword.
The city guards who rushed at him were cleaved in two from the chest, their armor and bodies splattered all over his face with hot blood.
The moment the blood splattered, the blood nail inside his skull emitted an almost pleasurable tremor, as if poisonous insects were sucking fresh flesh. The excruciating pain that had almost ripped his brain apart immediately subsided.
Angolan's gaze grew even colder; he was all too familiar with this feeling.
In the utterly rotten world of Seria, from within the city walls to beyond the desert, from the high-walled city-states to the gladiatorial pits, all order revolves around one thing.
【Kasagra】—The Crimson Crowned Fighter, the Father of the Blood Nails, the Heir to the Holy Grail in the Gladiator's Pit, the Drinker of the Endless Holy Grail, and the Thirsty One Below the Stand.
[Casagra]'s favorite thing is watching the bloody battles in the stands.
A group of people were driven into a stone pit and, under the rules, shame, coronation, and public gaze, chopped each other to pieces.
Everything in Seria was built around this thirsty man, and the entire province was filled with countless arenas.
At the heart of every high-walled city-state stands a colossal pit of blood-soaked gladiatorial combat, its stone bricks perpetually submerged in blood. Deep within its foundation lie blood goblets and bones. The losers are dragged out and hung on iron hooks, while the victors are forced into the blood pool, crowned with crimson, and forced to drink wine mixed with sacrificial blood, transforming from mortals into kings of the next gladiatorial contest.
Those fighters nailed with bloody nails are like a pack of mad dogs hanging on a slaughterhouse. If they don't fight, they will be driven mad by the bloody nails.
Only by voluntarily stepping into the holy pit of the gladiatorial arena and seeing blood will their suffering disappear.
As the pain disappeared, it was replaced by excitement, ecstasy, and frenzy.
In the arena, the more severe and faster the injury, the more blood the better, because only in that way can the gladiators be freed from endless pain and experience the pleasure of bloody combat.
Angolans were born hating all of this.
He loathed the rulers of the high-walled city-state, the red-crowned priests who treated slaves like livestock, the cheers from every stand, and even more so, the blood-stained nails in his mind that, when they flared up, urged him to kill.
But the blood nail had already entered his head, and [Kasagra] had long since set his sights on him.
Thus, he fought his way out of the biggest gladiatorial pit in Desaiah, from a slave fighter for people to bet on, to the Blood Angel who struck fear into the hearts of all of Seria.
He had already conquered more than a dozen city-states, smashed the stone gates of the gladiatorial pits, dragged those high-ranking rulers down from their thrones and stands, and shoved them into his favorite blood pit.
Angola beheaded them in front of everyone, and along the way, more and more slaves were freed by him: miners, serfs, gladiators, madmen with blood-stained nails, and children who hadn't yet been sent to the stands—all followed him.
This force grew from a few hundred to several thousand men, like a line of fire burning into the red sand desert. Wherever it passed, high walls collapsed, altars caught fire, and the blood in the sacred pits drowned those who worshipped it.
The ruling class of Seria was terrified and thus truly united.
That's why we have today, with a regular army several times larger than ours surrounding us from all directions, forcing the rebels step by step to the remote corners of the mountains, to this barren, water-scarce, and indefensible land.
"Commander-in-Chief!!!"
An old soldier, his face covered in blood, staggered to his side.
"The right flank high ground has fallen! They've brought in new heavy artillery, and the troops' morale is already depleted. We..." Angola turned and glanced over there.
Sure enough, gray and white flags had already been raised on the high ground to the right, and several heavy cannons were being recalibrated. In the rear, a large siege vehicle could even be seen slowly being pushed out, its surface covered with the blood flags and iron hooks of the Crimson Crown Fighter.
The hunters are preparing to close their trap.
The veteran wiped the blood from his mouth and asked, panting heavily:
"Give it a shot?"
Angolan did not reply immediately. He stood amidst the blood and smoke, looking around. As far as he could see, there were less than two thousand people left.
Many of them had lost even their complete armor, and whatever they held in their hands could be considered a weapon. Their faces were covered in ash, blood, and wounds, but their eyes still burned with fire.
They were all watching him.
Looking at this man who led them out of the gladiatorial pit, then led them through more than a dozen city-states, and finally turned the whole of Seria upside down.
The wind blew through the mountains, carrying with it a fishy smell.
Deeper beneath the earth's veins, a low, inaudible drumbeat resounded, one after another.
That's the pulse of Casagra.
It's excited.
It likes this kind of scene.
I love the besieged fighters, I love the final bloodbath, I love the overflowing hunger in the stands when the outcome is about to be revealed.
So it lowered its red crown.
That was no ordinary crown.
It was a crimson monarchy forcibly formed from blood, nails, broken bones, cheers, and madness. It slowly descended from the sky, like a blood tumor that had just risen from the depths of the sacred pit, carrying a strong, almost sweet, pungent stench, directly enveloping the gladiator in the center of the battlefield who was killing the most fiercely and laughing the wildest.
The latter's knees trembled, and he knelt down on the spot.
But it wasn't submission; it was ecstasy.
His entire body was soaked in blood, and his exposed skin was covered with bloody nails. His spine, collarbone, sternum, and back of the neck were almost entirely covered with flesh torn apart by strange iron nails.
At that moment, as the crimson crown fell, the blood nails simultaneously emitted a low, trembling sound, like a pack of wild dogs that had finally waited for their master, wagging their tails desperately inside the bones.
The next moment, a red crown was added.
boom--
The gladiator suddenly raised his head, letting out a roar that was not human, followed by a blood-red halo exploding behind him.
The halo was not perfect; its edges looked as if they had been gnawed by countless sharp teeth, and the jagged, blood-red light spread outwards in concentric circles, making the entire mountain area look as if it had been soaked in scarlet wine.
As the crimson halo lit up, the thirsty followers who were still attacking on the battlefield all stopped what they were doing.
They raised their heads, raised their weapons, their eyes filled with fanaticism and madness, and then chanted loudly:
"The sacred pit is full, and the stone ground has drunk its fill!"
"Today, those who stand atop the blood of the masses are no longer mortals, no longer warriors, no longer merely victors!"
"With bloodstained nails as the mark—"
"By the Infinite Holy Grail—"
"Using the roar of the stands and the corpses of the defeated as stepping stones—"
"Now I bestow upon this man a red crown, and establish him as the Blood King—!!!"
The sounds rose in waves, resonating throughout the entire mountain area.
Blood surged and cheers rose like a tide. What was originally a besieged dead zone was forcibly rewritten by that will at this moment, temporarily transforming into a huge gladiator pit covering the mountain ridge and barren slope.
At the very center of that crimson halo, a will that did not belong to the mortal realm finally descended.
The newly crowned bloodthirsty king slowly turned his face and looked toward Angola, who still stood in the center of the mountains.
Its mouth slowly parted, and it was no longer the mouth that a human should have.
Beneath the red crown, his mouth was split open to his ears, revealing layers upon layers of sharp teeth that crisscrossed like saw teeth, with undried blood and bits of flesh still hanging between them, like a torture device specially made to tear apart living things.
It stared at Angola, its smile growing increasingly ferocious.
"It's so beautiful."
“Angola, you are the most beautiful offering I have seen today.”
Its sound wasn't loud, but it seemed to emanate simultaneously from beneath every blood-drinking stone, creeping up everyone's spine from the soles of their feet.
"You bring me joy, Angola, right? I'll probably never forget you for the rest of my life."
"After I beat you to a pulp, nail you to the ground, pin you to the ground, and watch you slowly breathe your last breath—"
It licked its row of serrated fangs, its eyes filled with wicked pleasure.
“I will personally place this red crown on your head.”
“I will preserve your body, preserve your soul, and then I will use your hands to kill all the followers behind you.”
"Your family, your brothers, your worthless friends who'd rather die with you—"
“I will make you chop them up one by one with your own hands, and you can only listen inside your own body as they call your name and beg you to stop.”
Angola remained silent.
He simply stood there, head down, letting the blood-stained nails on his forehead and temples throb with each stroke.
The wind blew by, lifting his blood-stained hair.
Then he raised his hand.
An extremely heavy will slowly rose behind him.
That was a towering incarnation.
It emerged slowly from the air behind Angola, its entire body displaying a blend of dark red and iron black, like an ancient statue of a war god just unearthed from a pile of corpses on an execution ground or battlefield.
It was covered in a tattered cloak, and its shoulder and breastplates looked as if they had been repeatedly hacked and chiseled by countless weapons, with cracks crisscrossing them and rough edges.
The head has a cold, hard profile, and the face is covered by half of a broken ancient war helmet. Beneath the helmet, there is only a pair of eyes burning with a scorching red light.
—【Spartacus, the Avatar of the Overlord】.
The moment this incarnation appeared, Angola spat a mouthful of bloody saliva onto the ground.
Then, he raised his eyes and looked at the venerable hunchback clad in red before him. His voice was hoarse, but his tone was as blunt as an unsharpened but heavy iron hammer:
"You bastard."
"I've been putting up with you for so long, damn it."
As the words fell, a virtual halo slowly appeared behind Angola.
That was not a blood-red coronation bestowed by Casagra.
It is something that belongs to him.
The halo was not magnificent; in fact, it had a rough and unfinished outline. It was like a rudimentary crown forcibly formed by broken spears, shattered chains, blood-soaked battle flags, and the will of countless who had never knelt.
Yes, Angola is a figurehead who is infinitely close to being crowned.
In the endless bloodbath, in the gladiatorial pits, the high walls of city-states, the mountain wastelands, and in one endless siege after another, he had already touched the edge of the crown.
Seeing this, the ravenous avatar's eyes were practically overflowing with excitement.
It even opens its arms as if welcoming a truly worthwhile feast.
"Oh?"
"You want to fight me in a ring?"
It raised a hand and gently waved it at the surrounding believers who were already trembling with madness.
"Don't move. No one is allowed to kill these disrespecters again. I said, this man's body will be mine, and I will use it to execute these disrespecters."
“I want him to see it with his own eyes, hear it with his own ears, and let his soul howl in his bones like a nailed dog.”
Upon hearing the thirsty man's words, Angola merely twitched the corner of his mouth.
There was not a trace of hesitation in his smile. He raised his cleaver, pointing it at the red crown opposite him, and began to hurl profanities:
“You bastard, I’m going to smash that shit-covered rag of yours down your throat, then drag you out of the pit, pin you to the ground and punch you a few times until you beg for mercy.”
Angola responded to the thirsty man with extreme foul language, but the thirsty man's alter ego laughed even harder, its sharp teeth grinding against each other with a fine, grating sound.
"Very good. I hope your skills are half as good as your ability to curse."
As they spoke, the ground beneath their feet subtly changed.
On the side of the thirsty, the stone ground began to suck blood, and the surface of the rocks appeared with patterns like blood cups, iron hooks, and nail marks, as if the entire battlefield was collapsing downwards, to become a deeper, more complete, and more suitable ceremonial court for sacrifice and coronation.
Meanwhile, in Angola, the ground cracked under a different will.
The cracks did not extend downwards, but forwards, like countless spears growing backwards from the ground. Blood flowed from the cracks, but did not flow towards the holy pit. Instead, it spread out along six thousand unseen paths, towards a farther, straighter, and more like a path leading to the end of the deadly battle.
Both sides' territories took shape at this moment.
Then, the two voices rang out almost at the same time.
"Domain—Expand—!"
[The Crown Unfolds, the Court of Blood Crown Ceremony, the Bitter Realm of Crowning—]
[The Unveiled Crown, Six Thousand Rebellious Spears, Appia's Weeping Road—]