There can't be a Harvest Moon in the RimWorld.

Chapter 169 Poachers

The enormous chunks of flesh emitted a burnt, foul stench. Scorched by the flames, countless bodies writhed, twisted, and spasmed as they died. Petroleum-like liquid gushed from their bodies, attempting to extinguish the flames that swirled around them.

Like the filthy vomit of a drunken giant, it barely suppressed the external high-temperature erosion, but the greater damage came from the tungsten-titanium alloy giant pillar that pierced through the core of the giant monster.

The journey through the atmosphere is rugged and arduous; even the sharpest column cannot truly overcome friction. High-speed friction with the atmosphere carries away some external matter while simultaneously imbuing the column with temperatures of several thousand degrees Celsius, quietly escalating within the seemingly unperturbed tungsten-titanium alloy.

The giant struggled to wave its tentacles, trying to escape the burning of the pillar, but each time it failed. Instead, more of its tentacles were roasted by the high temperature and completely lost their vitality.

The bizarre and terrifying sound, along with the killing power of the "Rod of God," transformed into a supernatural sound wave, like a prisoner trapped in jail, weakly complaining about the injustice of fate.

Harris drew closer and saw that this large mass had no head, no face, no eyes, only an insatiable mouth that opened and closed constantly, emitting silent hisses.

"Damn monster..."

Harris cursed. Looking at the monster's disgusting appearance, he felt his sanity draining away. If he continued to look, he feared he would never even be able to touch the door to the real world and would be trapped in this mad world forever.

"I never imagined that a severely injured giant would emit such a powerful aura of madness..."

Harris's mind trembled as he thought of the "ultimate calamity" imprisoned deep within the mine, at the edge of time and space. If that thing were exposed to this world, even a casual glance would likely plunge it into endless chaos.

That colossal figure, as vast as a mountain and as expansive as the sea, spanning the galaxy and the universe, became an unbearable weight on his heart. What had his ancestors done to provoke such a terrifying being?!

Even a fraction of the "ultimate calamity's" aura, less than one in a billion, followed Harris, yet it was enough to corrupt this space and create such a terrifying behemoth. Harris almost exhausted the pinnacle of human technology to barely repel the behemoth's further invasion.

What consequences will this corruption lead to if it continues?

He couldn't help but wonder even more: what efforts did Old Man Hook, in his old age, make to achieve the feat of twice stopping such monsters with his mortal body...

As the intense heat evaporated, the monster grew increasingly lifeless, with only irregular, malevolent cracks opening and closing weakly, yet it remained firmly pinned to the ground by the "Staff of God." This powerful suppression, likely aided by the Holy Seal, caused the tungsten-titanium alloy pillar to break through spatial limitations, brutally anchoring it to the temporal coordinates of this corrupted land.

Harris fired two shots at the troll, but only a few splashes of water appeared on the surface of its rotting, fat limbs. More black water flowed down the wounds and evaporated into a dark mist on the ground.

"Corrupted Space... Why is this troll, which is almost evaporated into a void, still releasing black water to corrupt the space?"

A warning bell rang in Harris's mind; the unease felt almost tangible, pressing down on him!

There must be something wrong with my thinking...

Harris frantically grabbed his hair, piercing the wound on his head with his fingers, and blood instantly flowed down. At that moment, in his blind spot, a deep red core in the rotting flesh extended countless linear tentacles, each end bearing a sucker. These suckers opened and closed with a "ghoul-like greed," writhing in an unknown rhythm.

Suddenly, a cold laugh rang out from the void. Before Harris could react, he caught a glimpse of something blurry out of the corner of his eye, followed by a sharp pain.

An invisible creature from the stars took form after drinking his blood. It was entirely red, with drops of blood still dripping from its tentacles.

And those tentacles had already gripped his throat tightly...

…………

My emotions are becoming increasingly indifferent.

When did it start...?

Perhaps it started from the day I lived in the forest, yet was attacked and bitten by the vicious dogs of the world.

My hometown is on the edge of the forest in the Mars region, possessing forests and lakes that were legally inherited from tribal times. If nothing unexpected happens, I will, like my ancestors, spend my remaining years in the mountains.

Until the trust group included this woodland in the urban planning scope of "Dongdu" and tried to forcibly buy the land from me, I fled into the forest and, using the unspeakable methods of a forest hunter, killed several of them and destroyed all traces.

But things took an unexpected turn for the better. Soon, federal officials arrived and declared my land ownership invalid, requiring me to move out of the Mars region immediately. Subsequently, I was arrested and imprisoned by the police for poaching, and completely lost my freedom.

Soon, I was transferred from one prison to another, further and further away from my hometown, and eventually I was sold into the mining industry, becoming a miner at the very bottom of the social ladder.

Besides mining, my greatest hobby every day is to use ores to carve all sorts of bizarre and strange sculptures, immersing myself in my own cold and cruel aesthetics, completely isolated from the world.

But it was precisely this indifferent and cold state that filled me with immense fear.

I feel that since leaving my hometown, I'm rapidly losing my human emotions. If this continues, I fear that slaughtering humans and killing wild animals will be the same thing in my eyes, without any sense of guilt.

With my companions by my side, I can barely find a sliver of support, preventing me from crossing that final hurdle. But I don't know when I will completely lose my right to be human.

So I moved to the woods far from the town, watching over everything. Every day, like a child, I wandered through the forest and along the edge of the cold pool, trying to rely on the harmony of nature to delay the arrival of the day of my passing.

But I was wrong.

While I thought I was the biggest calamity in the town and was running away from everything, the real disaster had already quietly descended. The town had been subjected to a supernatural and terrifying influence by some horrific entity. Little Hook had already faced the disaster head-on. Even across Mount Mads, I could feel the terrifying aura of that entity…

"The ultimate calamity."

That was the code name that old Yorkson and I gave to that being.

As the only person who knew about my special circumstances, old Yorkson helped me conceal many of my abnormalities and encouraged me to struggle with myself for a long time. But today, he came to me alone, needing my help.

I know the time has come.

Because only the bizarre can fight the bizarre...

From this day forward, I will lose my right to be human, and completely allow myself to transform into something else. The cruel and eternal nature that lies dormant in my blood will soon be revealed, and the cold, deep abyss will become my only dream for the rest of my life.

"Come on... a sweet death..."

Chapter 170 The Interplay of Light and Shadow

"Uh... ah..."

Harris twisted and turned in mid-air, trying to break free from the monster's tentacle grip. The exoskeleton armor was at full power, its nanoscale hydraulic system transmitting immense force, and he punched the surface of the scarlet tentacle!

The edges of the tentacles rippled like water being disturbed, and super power was transmitted layer upon layer to the fat-like limbs, finally slowing down the pace of tightening the throat with a tremor.

But the next second, a huge suction cup-shaped mouthpart turned around from the end of the tentacle, as if it were looking at this villain who dared to offend Chaos with eyes that did not exist on the tentacle.

The moment Harris and the manta veiled each other felt like an eternity. An eerie energy emanated from the monster's core, amplifying the previously subsided shadows of madness and the blasphemous sounds to an unprecedented level!

A dizzying sensation overcame the effects of the exoskeleton armor's life support medication and struck again. But this time, Harris knew exactly why.

The blood flowing from his body was uncontrollably gathering into a winding blood serpent, crawling out from his body and rushing towards the monster's tentacles without hesitation, absorbing it all and disappearing into the writhing monster's body.

Nourished by the blood, the monster finally broke free from its blurry outline and revealed its form. It was entirely red, with drops of blood still dripping from its tentacles. Countless tentacles, each uniquely shaped, pulsated across its deep red body. But without a doubt, they all shared the same thirst for blood!

"Ruined……"

In the split second before his death, Harris understood the crux of the matter. The dark behemoths that had been generated by the corruption of space were merely sentinels of this erosion, using their malevolent bodies to touch and assimilate space, much like the creep that the Zerg laid to solidify their foundation for invasion.

He risked his life by using the "Rod of God" and successfully interrupted the process. The seeds of destruction had been sown and were bound to sprout and grow.

If Harris's tactics were the culmination of the pinnacle of human technological advancement, then the creatures that appeared later transcended the limits achievable by any individual human being…

The staggering monster was born from the ashes of the black behemoth, transformed from decaying corpses, and granted immortality in death. Though a full size smaller than the towering tentacle behemoth, it was still four or five meters tall, and had transcended its indeterminate form, exuding a thick aura of greed. It thirsted for the essence of life, craved the nourishment of blood, and came instinctively drawn by the scent of Harris's blood.

The tentacles, accompanied by grotesque and terrifying laughter, gripped Harris's throat, as if trying to squeeze every last drop of blood out of him to savor its sweet taste. But his resistance attracted the monster's attention, which was probably planning to devour its trapped prey in a more efficient way.

As the oxygen in his blood gradually depleted, the loss of blood also left Harris increasingly weak. The calibration and launch of space-based weapons required lengthy preparation times, and even with the badge as a locator, he couldn't launch another attack in a short period. He struggled to close his eyes, awaiting his final fate.

"hiss………"

A hoarse, shrill sound rang out in the night, like someone straining to blow a cheap whistle, echoing throughout the entire lake area.

A towering spray of water erupted from the lake, transforming into a curtain of water that stretched wildly along the edge of the raging mine. Cold and heat, water and fire, the innate battle between sworn enemies manifested as countless water droplets, enveloping this scarred land.

Harris suddenly felt a release in his throat, and he was freed from the restraints, landing heavily on his back.

As the mist gradually dissipated, he witnessed a nightmare replaying itself. The absurd feeling made him wonder if the past twenty years had all been a dream, and if he had actually never truly left behind the time from many years ago…

A colossal figure stood before him, its body a dark, grayish-green, though its belly was white. Most of its body was smooth and glossy, but its back was covered in scaly ridges. The monster was draped in mud and seaweed, like a deformed child born from a lagoon halfway up the mountain, a nightmare emerging from the lakebed.

The body had vague human-like features, but its head was fish-like, with huge, protruding eyes that never closed. On either side of its neck were constantly trembling gills, panting heavily, a mixture of inhuman emotions: madness and coldness.

Its long limbs were covered with inverted bone spurs, and its sharp teeth and claws reflected a cold light, mirroring the nightmare Harris had encountered at the same spot twenty years ago.

Hooker's father and Gots remained tight-lipped about what happened that year, never mentioning the existence of that creature, but they also never cared about the danger it posed.

Harris initially thought it was just a strange creature living in the lake. It was his unintentional actions that offended Old Man Hook's ritual for worshipping the creature, which led to the attack.

After all, the mystery surrounding Old Man Hook far exceeded Harris's imagination. In his father's description, only this old man survived the town's apocalypse, taking root in the land like a tenacious weed, and persevering for decades.

But there was one detail that Harris remembered vividly. Whenever the celestial bodies were out of alignment and the breath of the "ultimate calamity" stirred up an invisible storm, while everyone came to the lake mine to drive it away, Harris could see traces of the lake monster's activities near the lagoon halfway up the mountain.

Therefore, when Marcus reported the anomaly to him, he subconsciously associated it with the awakening of the "final calamity" and prepared for this year's battle.

But in the past twenty years, there has never been a time when he was facing this nightmare monster head-on like this.

Harris pressed the emergency button on his exoskeleton armor again, and more needles pierced his veins, releasing overdose of life-sustaining drugs. Blood instantly flowed from his seven orifices, but Harris regained consciousness.

But before him, the giant water monster's claws had already severed the vampire monster's tentacles, digging deep into the flesh where its mouthparts were. Its eyes, flashing with a ferocious light, turned around along with its head.

Under the moonlight, Harris's nightmare and reality slowly overlapped. Both had huge, bulging eyes that never closed, the bloody yellow, beast-shaped pupils shrank to pinpoints, and the irises were covered with irregular dark green veins.

The monstrous aquatic creature exhaled a foul stench that assaulted his face, making him want to vomit. But what came from its fanged mouth was a sticky, nauseating sound, like a hiccup mixed with vomiting, emanating from deep within its stomach, uttering a short word.

At that moment, the actions of the two monstrous figures from memory and reality completely overlapped once again, uttering that unforgettable sentence in Harris's ear.

"Harris (Browning)..."

"You're back..."

Chapter 171 Prologue: Interstellar Vampires

Harris stared wide-eyed, straining to find any discernible features on the monster's body. But neither its smooth, slimy exterior, towering, scaly, sail-like dorsal fin, buzzing gills, nor bulging, protruding eyes possessed a single human characteristic.

Even his voice carried the hidden, somber quality of the deep sea, his words concealing all the darkest emotions...

"Gotz... is that you?"

Harris couldn't believe it, but everything he saw was beyond his imagination. In this bizarre environment, once he confirmed that the terrifying vampire monster in front of him was real, accepting another monster as his friend wasn't such a big deal.

"Yes……"

The giant monster in the lake spat out a mouthful of corrosive black water onto the ground and spoke in as clear a voice as possible.

"That's a terrifying being that appeared after Mount Mads was corrupted; it's an alien monster known as the Interstellar Vampire. It's also called the Interstellar Stagger."

Gotz's voice rose and fell, but it reached Harris's ears completely.

"The interstellar vampire has no head, no face, and no eyes, unlike the vampires of folklore. But this monster will grab and tear its prey with huge claws and suck the blood of its victims with its suckers."

Harris stammered, "Could this monster have been summoned by that black giant from before? Why is it here...?"

The giant fish-like creature that Gotz had transformed into had withdrawn from the vicinity of the interstellar vampire and stood beside Harris, warily watching the alien creature ahead. Although he was also over two meters tall, he still posed no absolute threat compared to the enormous, bloated interstellar vampire.

"The monster ahead is the embodiment of nightmares, used to corrode and weaken the spatial barrier of this world, making ample preparations for the drowsy evil master to descend."

"I don't know why... Maybe our repeated attempts to drive it away piqued its curiosity, or maybe someone did something outrageous that caused it to turn its gaze here during its long period of being neither alive nor dead..."

Gots' enormous head shook, and he casually tore off some seaweed that was wrapped around his body and put it in his mouth to chew.