PGVCW 75

 

Playing God in Various Catastrophic Worlds

Chapter 75

The Rampage

Xia Wang'an brought none of the other members of the Five Tongs Squad.

She allowed her corruption value to skyrocket unchecked; the alert chimes on her wrist were practically merging into a continuous battle cadence.

You Mo had just managed to crawl laboriously out from the bottom of the crater when he witnessed white-robed figures raining down across the sky, alongside the figure of a young maiden who remained completely uncompromised despite being surrounded by dozens of white robes.

Her dark blade practically threatened to tear the firmament asunder, every strike accompanied by the wholesale slaughter of numerous Corrupters.

These Corrupters, who in so many worlds assumed an exalted posture and viewed native populations as mere primitives, were now being reduced to the very "bugs" they so often spoke of, ruthlessly mowed down in massive batches.

You Mo could not suppress an involuntary exclamation: "Divine justice materialized!"

From the depths of the pit came the violent, ground-shaking roars of the imprisoned beast; You Mo hurried to murmur downward:

"Your Highness, do not worry, these ones are on our side."

Though he had no idea who Xia Wang'an was, anyone standing in direct opposition to the Corrupters was, at the very least, not their enemy.

You Mo struggled out of the giant crater, his gaze locking onto an A-rank white-robed operative who was frantically attempting to stagger to his feet among the ruins.

Click.

The neck collar worn by the white-robed operative emitted an alarm tone before tightening abruptly.

It seemed he heard some external command; an expression of terror and struggle crossed his features. Ultimately, he retrieved a black box and slammed his fist down onto the activation button.

"Not good!"

You Mo's complexion shifted drastically.

The Awakening of the Mutated Abominations

A low, reverberating drone—

Like an acoustic sonic wave, the sound penetrated directly into the ears, spreading outward with terrifying velocity.

The earth began to quake and shudder violently.

It was not an earthquake, but rather the result of distinct movements stirring within those bottomless giant craters one after another.

Anyone gazing upon them would instantly have the word "monster" flash across their mind.

Pincer limbs from the deep sea were pierced with lethal steel nails, while octopus tentacles sprouted serpentine scales; the paws of feline beasts were entirely devoid of fur, yet dense clusters of injection puncture marks remained faintly visible across their surfaces.

Deformed combinations of diverse biological species morphed into sprawling, bizarre limbs. When these "monsters" finally exposed their complete forms, it became apparent that the cranial leadership position atop each gargantuan aberrant creature was occupied by a human visage.

Though perhaps no one could bring themselves to acknowledge them as humans any longer.

Their faces contorted in frenzied rage, their eyes clouded with chaotic, absolute lunacy, entirely devoid of sentience, they dragged massive chains as they clawed their way upward.

Along the path, any Corrupters unfortunate enough to be caught fleeing or wounded were treated without exception by these intellectual mutants; every living organism entering their field of vision was either smashed flat or torn apart by bites.

Once they slaughtered the Corrupters, they consumed their remains as fodder, and fierce turf battles even erupted amongst the mutants themselves.

The A-rank Corrupter whom Xia Wang'an had previously battered into critical condition knelt on one knee; despite retaining a human outline, his eyes were completely stripped of human emotion, reflecting only an instinctive terror of absolute power.

At this juncture, he resembled a panicked wild beast waiting out its execution far more than a human being.

A low, reverberating drone—

The operative slowly collapsed onto the earth, listening to the acoustic waves summoning the mutants, his physical frame vibrating involuntarily in resonance with the seismic tremors of the ground.

Perhaps facing death, the wild beast instincts within his eyes receded slightly, allowing fragments of human sentiment to resurface.

"They all must die."

The A-rank Corrupter gazed upward toward the heavens; the raven-haired maiden above moved with peerless agility, shining with such dazzling brilliance amidst her one-man assault that she resembled a savior deity.

Yet in his vision, that radiance was unbearably harsh.

"When my world was destroyed, why did you not come?"

He drifted into brief confusion before his expression curdled into bitter hatred. Driven by the tightening constraint of his neck collar, his features twisted ferociously as he rolled over and depressed a secondary toggle.

—Clack! —Clack! —Clack!

The restraining chains snapped simultaneously; freed from all confinement, the unchained mutants roared as they surged forward.

The heavens and earth shifted hue—this was an authentic apocalypse.

"If you intend to rescue them, then perish together."

The A-rank operative suddenly burst into laughter, his mirth escalating into unrestrained, manic hysteria.

He permitted the earth beneath him to heave violently, vomiting mouthfuls of fresh blood while his eye sockets hemorrhaged crimson under the collar's activation, streaming droplets that genuinely resembled bloody tears.

As death approached, his thoughts drifted back to his past.

Once, he too had been a struggling survivor grappling with world-ending ruin; trapped between the binary of life and death, he had chosen life.

He betrayed his companions, abandoned his native world, and transitioned from a victim into an executioner.

He chose to pledge allegiance to that divinity; even when initial faith faltered, he repeated compulsive self-indoctrination hour after hour, because without that belief, crushing guilt would surge upward from the depths of his soul to crush him completely.

Spurt after spurt of uncontrollable blood surged from his throat; his vision blurred into obscurity, and respiration grew labored.

Divine entity...

The A-rank Corrupter forced out a strained articulation: "You claimed everything we undertook was directed toward establishing a novel, beautiful sanctuary."

"Was that an outright falsehood?"

"My family, my friends, my neighbors, my colleagues, my adversaries—shall we truly congregate within that magnificent paradise?"

The Last Words of Guan Ping'an

The divine entity offered no response.

Only the relentless tightening of the life-accelerating collar represented the deity's definitive verdict.

"Heh, hehehe..."

Though asphyxiating, he emitted a faint, deranged chuckle.

Struggling to lift his head, he stared upward toward Xia Wang'an hovering above.

"Can you possibly defeat Her?"

The deity remained silent.

The Corrupter ceased his questioning, instead clawing desperately at the collar around his throat; the piercing shriek of the warning alarm grew deafening, yet he remained entirely unresponsive.

—Boom— —Boom—

The heavy tread of the advancing mutants reverberated across the terrain.

At long last, he forcibly wrenched the collar free from his flesh; the instant it detonated in a concussive blast, he whispered his final words into the void.

"My designation is not A04."

"My name is Guan Ping'an."

"Divine entity... I genuinely hope you taste defeat."

—Boom—

A mutant's massive foot crushed downward, terminating his existence milliseconds before the collar's thermal detonation fully consumed him.

Click.

The fractured housing of the device rolled away through the bloody mud.

The Overload

Following the total eradication of all Corrupter personnel, the mindless mutants redirected their single-minded gaze toward Xia Wang'an hovering conspicuously above.

Bereft of sentience, driven exclusively by primordial slaughter instincts, they lunged toward the maiden without a moment's hesitation.

Xia Wang'an had slipped entirely into a crimson haze of absolute bloodlust.

The sonic disruption assaulted the mutants, yet simultaneously battered her own cognitive thresholds.

Slaughter, slaughter, slaughter—

[Host, preserve your cognitive stability.] 007 issued repeated warnings: [Host, you require immediate rest.]

Xia Wang'an maintained iron determination: [Negative. This presents an optimal tactical window.]

007 refrained from questioning the definition of optimal opportunity; engineered explicitly to serve its host, it intuitively comprehended her operational calculus.

"——Your corruption value has reached 875,643——"

The raven-haired maiden collided head-on with an aberrant, winged leviathan, locking gazes with the chaotic, multifaceted eyes crowning its skull.

A blade strike; a Reincarnation Talisman deployed.

"——Your corruption value has reached 904,575——" Sidestepping a razor-sharp giant talon, she pivoted into a secondary spinning slash.

"Corruption value has achieved 948,922——"

The landscape lay drowned in desolate silence; blood pooled into rivers, flowing quietly across the terrain.

Mutant after mutant collapsed in continuous succession.

Yet fresh waves surged forward unceasingly, mimicking an endless, recursive tide.

007 sounded the alarm once more: [Corruption value is approaching one million, Host. Does this not represent excessive hazard?]

Splattered with fresh gore, Xia Wang'an's half-visible profile caught the stark reflection of flashing steel, her features locked in a mask of tranquil madness.

[007, you are well aware—whatever I resolve to accomplish, I invariably achieve.]

"——Bzzzt——Static——Corruption value... 1,024,368——Screech——"

The regulatory bracer—engineered painstakingly by the Xia Kingdom's research division—proved incapable of sustaining structural integrity against a corruption threshold exceeding one million units; after brief thermal resistance, it underwent automatic structural disassembly, detaching from her wrist to plummet earthward.

Mid-descent, the chassis detonated violently.

This incorporated a fail-safe self-detonation protocol designed explicitly to prevent user feedback trauma; while researchers had never anticipated operational thresholds breaching seven figures, the defensive redundancy had been meticulously integrated to safeguard her person.

Observing the scattering debris of the exploded terminal, a fleeting softness flickered across Xia Wang'an's gaze.

The Fragmented Memories

Yet instantly, as she jerked her head back upward, her eyes mirrored raw, unadulterated hostility devoid of residual sentience.

She felt as though she had stepped into a pitch-black, windowless chamber devoid of egress, leaving only primordial slaughter as her functional baseline.

Dear gods, Your Highness, she's gone berserk!

You Mo, who had barely emerged from his crater refuge, recoiled in absolute terror, scrambling frantically backward to escape Xia Wang'an's indiscriminate execution sweep.

From the cavern depths, the colossal beast rumbled in severe displeasure, executing a slow rotation that induced fresh seismic tremors across the terrain before finally receding back into the subterranean tunnel under You Mo's nerve-wracking supervision, terrified that she might charge directly inside.

You Mo expelled a ragged breath, retreating into the shadows.

If his initial impression framed Xia Wang'an as a divine entity descending from the heavens, her current martial aura resembled an apocalyptic force obliterating gods and Buddhas alike.

Prudence dictated maintaining a low profile.

The Loss of 007

A cascade of overlapping auditory echoes flooded Xia Wang's consciousness.

Fragments of memories she had deliberately suppressed resurfaced.

[Host, time to wake up!] 

[007, what a brilliant designation, I adore it! Thank you, Host!] 

[Host, I shall accompany you continuously from this moment onward!] [Host, do not grieve, humpf! Those individuals lacked discernment; let us charge forward and break their legs!] 

[Splendid, Host!! That cranium is genuinely pristine enough for collection!] 

[Advance, advance! Host, press the offensive! Splendid! We've successfully leveled another enemy burial mound!] 

[Host, this white pagoda is aberrant—it is interfering with your cognitive stability——] 

[Host——maintain clarity——I——static——am dissolving——preserve stability——Wang'an——static——stay anchored—even if 007 fails—bzzzt—Host must awaken herself——] 

[ Static——weep not——Wang'an——sobs——we shall return home——]

Indeed.

Within the suffocating void, Xia Wang'an closed her eyes.

007 was gone.

It had been murdered.

The Corrupters calculated that stripping her of her sole companion would drive her into total insanity.

They had succeeded; she was entirely insane.

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