Nightmare Despair

Chapter 130 Colonization
What will happen when this bloodstain completely stains the blood beetle's carapace bright red?
Zhou Kai couldn't help but feel a chill run down his spine.

"Blood Tide..."

"Perhaps, only when all these insects have turned crimson will I face a true tide of blood."

Zhou Kai clenched his fist, crushed the three blood beetles in his palm, and threw them into the fireplace flames... Strangely, however, he did not gain any experience points.

He watched as the corpses of the blood beetles turned to ashes in the firelight.

After a moment of contemplation, Zhou Kai made up his mind to put his previous idea into practice.

Faced with the boundless swarm of insects, even if Zhou Kai filled the shelter with Moonlit Orchid, he dared not guarantee that everything would be foolproof.

He needed to bathe the entire town in the glow of Moonlight Orchid before he could feel a little more at ease.

"Furthermore, the Moonlit Orchid itself should be improved and strengthened, and this should be put on the agenda."

In addition to winning by sheer numbers, Zhou Kai also plans to use universal experience points to upgrade Moonlit Orchid, directly leading to a qualitative change.

With a two-pronged approach, as long as he acts quickly enough, he can hopefully establish a relatively complete defensive force before the blood beetles fully develop.

Upgrading the fireplace, expanding the nursery, strengthening the Moonlit Orchid, cultivating True Martial Arts... There were too many things in front of Zhou Kai, each seemingly urging him to focus on them.

However, Zhou Kai remained calm and composed, showing no signs of panic.

After all, for him, no matter how many problems arise, regardless of their difficulty or strength...

Each one can be overcome through hard work.

"Besides, no matter what, planting Moonlight Orchids in a small town is equivalent to technically colonizing the town."

……

The blind spider seems to be a monster of the same level as Elizabeth, but the items it drops are far less useful than the wolf hair.

For Zhou Kai, this trophy was not even as valuable as the curled claws that had fallen from the mist.

After all, claws can be used to strengthen the body, while insect blades can only serve as a light longsword.

However, Zhou Kai had neither studied swordsmanship nor was he accustomed to using a greatsword, so he did not intend to add another secondary weapon to his collection.

Therefore, these insect blades had to be temporarily stored away, to see how they could be used later.

He couldn't go out during his period of high blood pressure, but Zhou Kai didn't immediately return to the real world. No matter what, he had to get through this period, whether it was today or tomorrow.

The execution of Pippen's ceremony significantly slowed down Zhou Kai's erosion progress, and his current healthy progress bar allows him to stay in the Nightmare World longer. So, Zhou Kai decides to stay a little longer today.

"Let's keep going until the erosion reaches an unacceptable level..."

……

The blood tide surged like waves, relentlessly churning through the town, and almost no force could stop it.

Only Shelter 777 and the white mist enveloping the manor could withstand the insect swarm. The white mist would sometimes dissipate and sometimes condense.

At the lowest visibility times, figures could be vaguely seen in the fog, but the specifics remained unknown.

Perhaps it was just a group of monsters that couldn't be seen due to the thick fog, or perhaps, beneath the white fog, lurked creatures of light who still retained their reason...

After observing the blood tide two or three times and confirming that his Moonlit Orchid defense line could currently withstand the insect swarm, Zhou Kai devoted all his energy to improving his own strength.

Aside from intermittently practicing Tiger Fist and Black Wolf Fist, his focus was on deciphering the remaining encrypted pages.

The effects of Pippen's ceremonies were truly astonishing, and Zhou Kai hoped to deduce from those interlocking pages the advanced rituals of Pippen's ceremonies, or other entirely new ceremonies.

Once he's fully absorbed in something, Zhou Kai has no time to notice what's happening around him, and time seems to fly by in his mind.

Zhou Kai felt that he had been busy for a short time when, after several thunderous explosions, this round of blood surge ended.

"Three hours and forty-five minutes? This time it's so short?" Zhou Kai put down his work, realizing that this was obviously the shortest blood tide he had ever experienced.

According to the Morning Star's Journal, blood tides usually last between three and six hours. However, almost every blood tide Zhou Kai had experienced before lasted more than four hours, and some even approached a full six hours.

In the past, if the period of blood flow had been as short as it is today, Zhou Kai might have been laughing out loud with joy.

But now, witnessing the mutation of the blood beetles, Zhou Kai could no longer laugh. On the contrary, he wished the blood tide would last as long as possible.

“Each blood tide ends, which means the start of a new round of strengthening... Twelve hours later, these blood beetles will be even stronger.”

Zhou Kai took a deep breath of the increasingly humid air, then turned his gaze back to the pages of the journal in his hand.

Having gained previous experience in deciphering, he was much more efficient this time. In just three hours, he deciphered three pages of content.

And as expected, Zhou Kai actually managed to get a valuable SSR card from it.

The first two pages he deciphered contained excerpts from unknown religious texts. Zhou Kai saw no use for them and, as before, folded them up and stuffed them into the lining of his heat-resistant gauntlet.

As for the third insert, the content on it is quite remarkable.

[Akr Ritual: The bones and blood, skin and sinews of the enemy, chanting incantations...]

This insert actually records a brand new ceremony called the Yak Ceremony.

It is much easier to hold than the Pippen ceremony.

The ritual is very simple; all that is required is to chant an incantation and offer the enemy's complete corpse as a sacrifice.

As for the effects of the ritual, the insert does not explain them; we can only find out after Zhou Kai personally experiments with it.

……

Speaking of offerings, Zhou Kai went down to the basement and looked at the mountain of corpses in front of him, and couldn't help but chuckle: "I knew there were other uses for them..."

The corpses in the basement can be roughly divided into four categories: chain-hammer armored warriors, decaying swordsmen, wanderers, and parasitic corpses.

In addition, there are some rare individuals, such as Black Hand, but Zhou Kai does not intend to use them.

The least valuable are those isolated parasites that live in incomplete bodies within corpses.

Zhou Kai reached into the pile of corpses and rummaged through it. After finding a parasitic corpse, he forcefully ripped the Diablo parasite out of its chest cavity.

"Let's test the waters with the least valuable corpse first, and then decide whether to continue using other corpses for the ritual after seeing the effect."

One interesting aspect of the Arceur is that the ritual can be reused entirely. This is even specifically mentioned in the intercalary notes.

Zhou Kai held the parasite, which was about the size of a human head, his eyes suddenly narrowed, and his mind instantly became highly focused.

He then focused intently on chanting the incantation that clearly belonged to a foreign language.

"..."

As the last syllable fell, the parasite in his palm suddenly melted, turning into a sticky, warm liquid that slipped between Zhou Kai's fingers and dripped to the ground.

Zhou Kai clearly felt that there was some kind of hard object mixed in the liquid, and he subconsciously reached out to grab it.

Two fingers firmly held the prismatic gray-white crystal mixed in with the mucus.

At the same time, information about the Arcane Ritual that was not recorded in the interlocking pages also flooded into Zhou Kai's mind.

As Zhou Kai gradually grasped this information, his gaze toward the crystal in his hand also began to change.

With a slight exertion of his fingers, Zhou Kai caused the crystal core in his hand to explode, scattering into a cloud of gray mist.

Immediately afterwards, a strange scene appeared.

(End of this chapter)