America: The Cremator

Chapter 212 Doesn't that look like a nuclear bomb?

The explosions on the giant devourer continued.

"Boom! Boom! Boom!"

A series of enormous tremors emanated from its body. Its chest suddenly bulged outward, and then a massive amount of flesh and blood mixed with fragments of internal organs broke through the skin and flesh, gushing out wildly.

High-yield thermobaric bombs exploded one after another on its head and shoulders, sending up huge fireballs hundreds of meters in diameter.

Under the onslaught of frenzied fire, half of the giant devourer's shoulder was sliced ​​off, emitting a mournful roar.

It waved its arms, trying to grab the fire points that exploded on its body, but because of its enormous size, it could only be used as a live target and was constantly attacked.

Every second, a new explosion erupted on the giant devourer, and large amounts of black blood rained down from the sky, crashing onto the edge of the huge plate where Surong and Elena were, corroding countless deep pits.

With the Great Devourer's main body severely damaged, the domain it used to imprison its prey also met its end.

The entire area began to shake violently with the explosion. Deep cracks appeared on the once smooth metal plate, and black fissures thousands of meters long spread in all directions like a spider web.

"Snap!"

A shattering sound exploded above their heads.

A large section of the dome in the space where the Great Devourer was located collapsed, revealing a huge hole.

Su Long looked out through the hole and saw a chaotic and distorted scene at the other end of the opening.

Countless indescribable, bizarre silhouettes appeared and disappeared in that chaos, while violent spatial turbulence and dark mist were pouring wildly into the Great Devourer's domain through the void.

Suron turned to Elena beside him: "It seems the US military's firepower is quite formidable today. All sorts of high-yield weapons are being used like water, even shattering the domain of the Great Devourer."

Elena looked up at the collapsing space above her and explained the current situation: "Actually, there's another important reason why the US military suddenly used so many high-yield weapons today."

"In order to devour the entire Jackson Federal Building, the Great Devourer dragged the entire building into the Otherworld. We are currently in a spatial rift between the real world and the Otherworld."

She then pointed to the enormous chunks of flesh constantly peeling off the monster and said, "In this state, the Great Devourer and the building itself are completely isolated from reality."

"In other words, the military doesn't need to worry about civilian casualties caused by various weapons, nor about explosions damaging the surrounding streets. The bombing that occurs here will not have any real impact."

"In theory, if the military is willing, dropping a tactical nuclear bomb into this gap is not a problem."

Upon hearing this, Su Long felt a bad premonition. He turned his head and stared intently at Elena: "Wait, you said—a nuclear bomb?"

He looked up along the ravaged body of the Great Devourer, where the light pierced through layers of orange-red fire clouds and billowing black smoke.

An unusually bright spot of light suddenly appeared in the chaotic sky.

The point of light was initially only the size of a pinhead, but then it fell straight down toward the head of the giant devourer at a terrifying speed that broke the sound barrier.

The air was forcibly torn apart by its descent, leaving a long white contrail trailing behind the point of light.

Su Long raised his hand, pointing to the increasingly bright spot of light high in the sky, his voice a little dry.

"Elena————"

"Um?"

"Look, that shiny thing, doesn't it look like a nuclear bomb?"

Elena looked in the direction Su Long was pointing and immediately saw the point of light. After seeing the trajectory and speed of the falling light, her expression changed drastically.

At the same time, the Great Devourer also sensed the deadly threat posed by that point of light.

An aura that sent shivers down its spine was locking onto its body.

The Great Devourer let out a hysterical roar, ignoring the huge, bleeding wounds on its body, and suddenly raised its head, opening its abyss-like maw to its limit.

It attempted to forcefully swallow and digest the nuclear bomb that had not yet fallen, and a gravitational vortex formed deep within its massive mouth, pulling everything around it toward its throat by this suction force.

However, it was too late.

The tactical nuclear bomb detonated at a speed far exceeding the movement of the Great Devourer.

The moment its enormous mouth formed a gravitational vortex, the nuclear bomb had already slammed into its face.

Sulong's bullet vision was triggered, and he clearly saw an extremely bright spot that exceeded his visual limits suddenly appear in the center of the giant devourer's face.

The light was so bright that even Su Long's world-destroying flames paled in comparison.

Su Long felt a sharp pain in his eyes, and his spiritual vision was forcibly interrupted.

Immediately afterwards, the super-bright spot of light expanded rapidly, transforming into a giant fireball with a diameter of over a kilometer.

The temperature at the center of the nuclear explosion rapidly soared to tens of millions of degrees. Faced with this intense heat, the giant devourer had absolutely no chance of resistance.

Its head was vaporized the instant it came into contact with the fireball, and its massive body began to melt from top to bottom. Its grayish-brown skin, thick blood vessels, and hard bones rapidly disintegrated in the nuclear explosion.

Then, a blinding white light swept outwards from the nuclear blast point in all directions.

Suron turned around and hugged Elena tightly in his arms. With his back to the rapidly expanding nuclear fireball, he quickly pulled out Uriel, which had been almost destroyed in the process of blocking the attack of the Great Devourer.

"Get up!"

Sulong gritted his teeth and poured all the remaining spiritual energy in his body into the broken Uriel without reservation.

"Buzz"

At this moment, Uriel had barely regained his approximate appearance, but under the spiritual drain of Suron, the sacred object forcibly erected a light barrier around the two of them.

The light curtain had just formed, enveloping Surong and Elena, when the next second, the shockwave from the nuclear explosion, mixed with the heat of radiation, crashed into the remaining territory of the Great Devourer.

"Boom—!"

The entire Devouring Domain was completely shattered, followed by a devastating gust of wind that swept across the land.

Uriel's shield deformed violently as soon as it came into contact with the shockwave, and cracks began to spread across the shield.

The immense thrust acted directly on the shield, shoving Suron and Elena away.

Su Long held Elena tightly around the waist, letting the terrifying force carry them tumbling rapidly through the collapsing space.

Outside the shield, the remains of the Great Devourer were completely annihilated in the white light.

Inside the shield, Surong could only hear extremely frantic howling sounds in his ears, followed by a brief period of deafness.

The intense white light that followed robbed us of our vision, leaving the entire world a pure, stark white.

All Su Long could feel was the shockwave, mixed with deadly nuclear radiation, slamming heavily against the edge of the shield; it was as if they had fallen into a tsunami.

The light shield that Uriel activated trembled violently in the face of this power, and ripples on the surface of the light barrier surged outwards, on the verge of collapse.

Outside the shield, the Great Devourer's domain emitted a series of dense cracking sounds, and black cracks thousands of meters long expanded wildly before completely disintegrating.

The radiation from a nuclear explosion is devastating to any spiritual structure.

While the supernatural can certainly evade nuclear strikes in reality by expanding its own domain and hiding its true form in the inner world or crevice spaces.

However, if a nuclear bomb detonates directly inside the domain, the nuclear radiation will burn through the domain and the strange entity itself, leaving no chance for reorganization.

That's the situation right now.

After the Great Devourer's domain collapsed, the residual power of the nuclear explosion swept in.

Surong's domain was the first to be hit, and was flattened by this overwhelming power. Elena's Temple of Light was not spared either, and was instantly turned into dust.

Both sides' territories were simultaneously declared dissolved.

"Snap!"

The last line of defense, the light shield erected by Uriel, also let out a mournful cry of being overwhelmed. The surface of the light barrier was covered with dense cracks, and then it exploded into countless scattered light spots.

With all protection gone, the raging hurricane swept the two of them up and threw them into the spatial rifts created by the collapse of the domain.

A strong feeling of weightlessness enveloped the two of them.

All around them were chaotic light and shadow and distorted fragments of space. The gale swept them through the gap between reality and the other world.

A few dozen seconds later, the chaotic storm came to an abrupt end.

Su Long's vision suddenly cleared, and when the white light dissipated, he saw a dark and gloomy sky.

The strong airflow felt like knives slicing across the face, making it impossible to open one's eyes.

Su Long squinted his eyes and looked down. They were high in the sky, falling rapidly downwards in a freefall.

Just a hundred meters away from them lay a vast expanse of urban ruins.

Su Long immediately understood his current predicament.

The spatial coordinates of the real world, the crevice space, and the inner world are one-to-one. When he rushed into the building and fought his way to the thirty-eighth floor, he deliberately jumped into the domain of the Great Devourer.

Therefore, when they were thrown out of the collapsed realm and fell into the inner world, their coordinates still corresponded to the thirty-eighth floor of the real building.

The problem is that the building in the Otherworld has long been devoured by the Great Devourer, so at the corresponding coordinates in the Otherworld, there is only a ruin.

Without a building to support them, the two people who suddenly appeared at the height of the 38th floor could only begin a free fall from a height of more than 100 meters.

If no measures are taken, within seconds, the two will be turned into two puddles of flesh stuck to the floor tiles due to the hard landing caused by the altitude.

The wind howled in my ears.

Elena clung tightly to Sulong, and as she realized what was happening, she cried out in panic, "Sulong! We're falling!"

Su Long yelled back, "I know! Hold on tight! Don't let go! I'll figure something out!"

Without hesitation, Elena entrusted her life to him, stretching out her arms to tightly hug Sulong's neck and burying her face in his chest.

To stay as close to Su Long as possible and prevent being blown away by the strong airflow during the fall, she lifted her legs and wrapped them tightly around Su Long's waist.

It was an extremely ambiguous and intimate position, with the two tightly entwined, feeling each other's frantic heartbeats, and Elena's scent wafting straight into Suron's nostrils.

Normally, Su Long might have been inclined to make a few teasing remarks, but now, he couldn't even muster the slightest thought of such a thing.

The speed of the fall increased, and the strong wind pressure made the clothes flutter loudly.

Su Long gritted his teeth and forcibly twisted his body's center of gravity in mid-air.

Without any foothold, he could only rely on the explosive power of his abdominal muscles to force Elena to tumble half a circle in the air.

The two changed from falling horizontally to Sulong being facing the ground with his back to the sky.

The sharp steel bars and broken concrete blocks in the ruins magnified rapidly in view.

Su Long turned his head and stared intently at the ground below, gathering the spiritual energy that had just subsided within him and pressing it all down into his hands.

Without a parachute and the ability to fly, the only way to survive is to create a reverse thrust sufficient to counteract the kinetic energy of falling.

When he was less than eighty meters from the ground, Su Long looked up and faced the ever-expanding ground below.

"Domain Impact!"

A massive wave of air suddenly formed in front of Su Long's brow and slammed down into the air below.

"Thump!"

A muffled sonic boom exploded in mid-air.

The high-pressure corrugations collide violently with the air, generating an extremely strong reaction force.

The force traveled from his forehead to Su Long's entire body. He groaned, and the bones in his neck cracked under the strain.

The effect is immediate.

The force abruptly halted their rapid descent, slowing their speed by one-fifth in an instant.

Elena, who was wrapped around Su Long's waist, was pulled down a little by inertia. She gritted her teeth and held Su Long's neck tightly with both arms to prevent herself from slipping away.

Su Long looked at the ground, which was still expanding, and was only sixty meters away.

This slowdown is far from enough. Even if they are physically strong, they will still be smashed to pieces. We can't worry about that now. We must use every possible means of slowing them down.

"Stop right there!"

Su Long roared and unleashed another wave of sound.

"Thump!"

The second shockwave erupted, and the powerful recoil slammed into Su Long again, simultaneously slowing their descent.

Su Long felt a surge of blood rushing to his chest, and a metallic taste rose in his throat.

Releasing such a high-intensity attack twice in the air without any point of leverage caused him considerable discomfort due to the recoil.

Forty meters above the ground.

It's still too fast.

Su Long stared intently at a rusty steel bar standing below, his eyes bloodshot, and released sound waves once more.

"Thump—Boom!"

The final domain impact detonated less than twenty meters above the ground. This time, the purplish-gold ripples slammed directly onto the ruins below, sending rubble flying and clearing a space on the ground.

Using this last and strongest recoil force, the speed at which the two fell was reduced again, but it was still not enough!

In the final fifteen meters, the ruins of buildings and the foul-smelling black mud filled Su Long's entire field of vision.

Fifteen meters is a height that, for a free fall, wouldn't even last for a fraction of a second.

The rough concrete road surface filled Su Long's entire field of vision; Death had already placed its scythe against the necks of the two men.

Bullet vision, full power enabled!

The world slowed down instantly in Su Long's perception; the rapidly magnifying ground before him transformed into a slowly zooming-in freeze-frame image.

Su Long's brain went into overdrive, frantically scrolling through the skills and entries on the panel in his mind. He had to find a way to save their lives in less than a fraction of a second.

What skills can slow down a fall?

He scanned the entries he knew by heart, most of which were combat and recovery skills.

A cure entry? Useless.

If he were to fall from that height, he would instantly turn into a pile of mud, and the speed at which his body heals simply cannot keep up with the speed of his collapse.

Unless you use the "American Dream".

Sulong immediately rejected the idea. The American Dream could indeed forcibly resurrect himself, but this ability did not apply to Elena. He could be reborn in a state of flesh and blood, but Elena would certainly die.

That's absolutely unacceptable.

Next, let's look at defensive skills.

The shield that Uriel had erected had completely exhausted its spiritual power while resisting the shockwave of the nuclear explosion, and now it had no shield left to use as a buffer.

Expand the area to reset the falling status and altitude?

That won't work either. This is the inner world corresponding to the Great Devourer's Lair, and the underlying rules of the inner world are extremely exclusive.

To forcibly establish a domain here requires a lot of time to lay the groundwork for spirituality, and time is what we lack most right now.

Time ticked by, millisecond by millisecond, and the ground drew ever closer.

Su Long's gaze was fixed on another entry.

[The Realm of Stagnation].

The Stasis Zone can instantly slow down the flow of time in the surrounding area. Previously encountered monsters that charged at high speed would immediately slow down to a snail's pace once they entered the Stasis Zone.

And when he raised his fist and smashed it into those monsters, he did not feel any backlash from the high-speed impact.

This shows that the stagnation zone can not only slow down time, but also consume the target's kinetic energy.

If this skill is applied to Elena, her falling speed will instantly slow down, and she will not die from the fall after her kinetic energy is depleted.

But problems arose.

The rules of the Delayed Realm are ineffective for Suron himself; he is the liberator and is not bound by the rules.

This means that even if Elena is suspended in mid-air, Suron himself will still crash headfirst into the concrete ruins below.

We must find a way to eliminate the kinetic energy within ourselves.

Su Long continued scanning the list of entries and saw [Instant Shadow], and began to quickly review his experience using Instant Shadow.

In the past, every time he activated Shadow Step, he would become a blur while moving at high speed, instantly appearing in front of the monster.

The key is the moment the flash ends. Every time he re-forms, he stands firmly in place, without any momentum from the previous sprint.

The teleportation mechanism of Shadow Strike resets the caster's movement state, clearing all kinetic energy to zero.

The solution to this impasse has been found!

Su Long quickly arranged the order of operations.

First, get Elena to let go, separating the two of them. Then, release the Stasis Domain to freeze Elena's downward momentum.

Finally, he activated Shadow Step towards the ground to reset his freefall kinetic energy.

This combo has an extremely low margin for error; if they're not careful, the two of them will turn into meat patties one after the other.

It was only ten meters from the ground.

Bullet vision deactivated!

Time returned to normal, and the gale roared in my ears once more.

"Let go!"

Su Long roared at Elena, who was in his arms.

Elena had no idea what Su Long was up to, but she had absolute trust in him and believed he would never harm her.

Upon hearing the command, Elena loosened her arms and decisively pulled away from Sulong's waist, separating their bodies in mid-air.

At the very moment she let go.

"The Domain of Stagnation! Open!"

The spiritual energy within Su Long exploded, and an invisible pressure spread out from him instantly, sealing off the space within a ten-meter radius.

As soon as Elena broke free from Sulong's embrace, she crashed directly into the rules of the Slow Zone. Her body, which was falling rapidly, suddenly stopped, and she was put in slow motion, hovering about seven or eight meters above the ground, slowly drifting downwards.

Meanwhile, Sulong himself continued to crash into the ground at an alarming speed.

Seven meters, six meters, five meters.

The sharp steel bars on the ground were almost piercing his body.

"Snapshot!"

Just before Su Long made contact with the ground, he transformed into a scattered cloud of black smoke. The enormous kinetic energy he carried lost its carrier and acted directly on the air, creating a small air wave.

next moment.

The black smoke re-condensed on the smooth concrete slab, and Su Long's feet firmly planted on the hard tiles. His kinetic energy was perfectly reduced to zero, and he was unharmed.

Su Long straightened up and looked up.

The stagnation zone is lifted.

As the field dissipated, Elena, who had been hovering five meters in the air, fell down at a normal speed.

Sulong opened his arms and caught Elena as she fell, holding her tightly in his embrace.

"Okay, problem solved!"

Su Long let out a long breath, his voice filled with the relief of surviving a disaster.

Elena was held in Sulong's arms, her heart still pounding wildly in her chest.

She looked at Su Long's face so close to hers, then looked down at the hard ruins beneath her feet, and realized that they had really survived.

She then jumped down from Su Long's arms, her feet landing firmly on the ground. She straightened her wind-blown hair, looked at Su Long, and exclaimed in amazement, "Su, how did you do that? I felt like I was frozen in mid-air."

"It's just a little trick. It's good that you survived." Su Long shook his arm, which was sore from catching the person, and without explaining further, looked around at his surroundings.

This is a vast urban ruin, filled with broken concrete blocks, twisted metal skeletons, and large swaths of black sludge emitting a pungent stench.

The sky was a sickly, deathly gray, with a dark mist swirling above the ruins.

In the real world, the Jackson Federal Building, at its corresponding coordinates in the Otherworld, has been completely devoured by the Great Devourer, leaving only this desolate flat land.

Su Long's gaze swept over the distant ruins, and his brows gradually furrowed.

A sense of unreality arose in his heart: was the Great Devourer really dead?

The nuclear bomb hit the giant devourer directly in the face, and the temperature at the center of the explosion did indeed reach tens of millions of degrees.

However, judging from the expansion volume of the nuclear fireball and the intensity of the shock wave they experienced, this nuclear bomb did not have a large yield and was more like a tactical nuclear bomb.

The tactical nuclear bomb did indeed burn its head and upper body to ashes, but could its power really completely destroy its entire body buried deep in the underworld?

The Great Devourer is very likely not completely dead yet.

Thinking of this, Su Long's muscles tensed instantly, and his gaze swept across the surrounding ruins like a blade.

Quiet.

It's too quiet.

The ruins after the nuclear explosion were like a place where all sound had been sucked out, and even the flow of air had stopped.

Suddenly, Su Long's ears twitched; he caught an extremely faint sound.

The sound came from the deepest part of the underground ruins, as if something was being cut open. The sound was so faint that Su Long would not have been able to detect it if his senses had not been enhanced.

A deadly sense of crisis rushed straight to the top of my head.

This sense of crisis was several times stronger than when they faced the Great Devourer in the Devouring Domain.

Before Su Long could warn him, his body's instincts kicked in, and he slammed into Elena's chest, pushing forward with both arms.

Before Elena could even react to what was happening, she was sent flying by the immense force.

She flew through the air for more than ten meters before crashing heavily into a pile of rubble in the distance, tumbling several times before coming to a stop.

The moment Sulong pushed Elena away, the ruins below exploded without warning.

A dark gray thread emerged from the ground.

The silk thread silently sliced ​​through the thick concrete and the twisted steel bars, heading straight for the spot where Su Long had originally stood.

After Su Long pushed Elena away, his body was momentarily stunned by the reaction force.

Meanwhile, the silk thread arrived.

Su Long felt as if everything in front of him had suddenly shifted.

He saw his waist, and then his knees.

The excruciating pain erupted like a tsunami.

The dark gray silk thread struck Su Long's body without any resistance, neatly slicing him into twenty pieces from head to toe.

The cross-section is as smooth as a mirror.

He was sliced ​​as easily as a carrot on a cutting board.

Hard bones, pulsating internal organs, and supple muscles all separated in that instant.

Su Long's upper body was scattered into several pieces, which crashed straight onto the hard floor tiles. Then his gaze began to roll uncontrollably.

In this swirling vision, he saw his own body scattered all over the ground.

In the distant ruins, Elena was clutching her chest as she got up. When she saw what was happening here, the expression on her face instantly changed from astonishment to terror, as if she was screaming something at the top of her lungs.

But Surong couldn't hear.

His vocal cords were severed, his trachea was cut open, and a large amount of thick, viscous blood foam gushed out from the cut throat.

As the intense pain began to numb, a bone-chilling cold enveloped his soul.

This coldness seeped into his consciousness from all directions, and the images he saw began to fade and become blurry.

The scattered limbs and the figure of Elena running towards them were all stripped of their color.

Consciousness is rapidly dissipating.

Surong felt himself falling continuously, into an endless abyss, where darkness completely swallowed all his senses.

In this boundless, deathly silence, a line of dazzling golden text suddenly lit up in the void.

Immediately afterwards, the system notification sounded loudly in the depths of Su Long's fading consciousness.

[Host vital signs detected as absent.]

The term "American Dream" has been triggered!