Chương 163: Reborn as the Dragon — Chapter 163 - The Conception of Co-evolution

It was a bizarre, indescribable feeling. With pain perception switched off, the sensation became even more horrifying without agony to mask it. Just the raw, unfiltered experience of what was happening inside him. A swarm of insects, chirping as they stretched open your skin. Burrowing into your flesh. Crawling upward through blood vessels, muscle, fatty tissue, gnawing a little at a time. Greedy worms, shuttling back and forth inside your body. Numbness spread steadily across David Jones's body.

The spider silk that had bound him was no longer necessary. His body was completely paralyzed, and the rapidly hatching hatchlings had already eaten the silk themselves. His massive, corpulent frame was now fully exposed. Pale, plump skin, covered from head to toe in pinky-finger-sized holes. And the spider hatchlings, while feeding, secreted a mucus that sealed off the capillaries as they went. Which meant David Jones's obese body, now resembling a block of honeycomb briquette, still hadn't bled a single drop.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. David Jones could see them clearly. Countless unidentified shapes wriggling beneath his skin, moving under the surface like something alive.

"You! What did you do?!" David Jones panicked. Compared to being force-fed feces, watching thousands of insects tunnel through his own body in real time was a whole new tier of psychological destruction. This was a nightmare.

"These are, spider, larvae." Banana Wolf spread his hands.

"Don't worry."

"They, won't, eat, vital organs. So, you can, live, a very, long time."

"Oh! God! No! Please, no! Just kill me!" David Jones screamed, a wretched, cracking sound, because a spider the size of a baby's fist had just crawled out of a small hole in his chest. It waved its legs aggressively, its body smeared with pale yellow fatty tissue. It crawled up his neck. Then onto his face. Shrieking, it sank its venomous fangs into David Jones's sausage lips, then plunged straight for his nostril.

"Oh God, let me go! No, no, no — get it off, get it off me!" David Jones was on the verge of total collapse. No matter how frantically he shook his fat head, the spider didn't budge. Completely single-minded. Absolutely committed to going up his nose. The sensation of his nasal cavity filling with something foreign spread through his skull. The spider's screeching came through clearer now. Louder. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

"Please, please let me go — whatever you want to know, oh God, just make them stop, I'll tell you everything!" He was sobbing now, tears and snot and blood-flecked mucus erupting from his other, still-open nostril. Two spider legs dangled out of it, twitching wildly in the open air. His body was packed full of spiders. Every inch. David Jones looked like a ragdoll being dismantled from the inside.

But because the spiders had been careful to avoid vital organs, he still had more than half his HP left, even after losing blood for this long. It didn't matter. David Jones couldn't hold on any longer regardless. He had finally experienced something worse than death. The bladder, the intestines, his manhood, his backdoor, none of those qualified as vital organs. But spiders gnawing through them and burrowing around in there? That was a category of horror that went beyond what any sane mind could process.

Some time passed. David Jones's obese body had begun to visibly shrink. Many areas now showed only loose, sagging skin hanging slack from the frame beneath, the whole man resembling a melted wax figure. A strange smell had settled over the torture chamber. As much as Banana Wolf would have loved to keep watching, he remembered his actual job. Interrogation. Intelligence. Seeing the human was ready to break, Banana Wolf patted the large spider sitting beneath him. The spider chirped twice, obediently.

Passing along the message. A moment later, an ettercap came sliding down a silk thread from somewhere in the cave ceiling, swaying loosely as it descended. It looked down at the obese human covered head to toe in bluish-purple lumps. In its bean-sized crimson compound eyes, something that looked a lot like bloodlust and satisfaction flickered.

"Sssss, bzzz—" Its mouthparts vibrated rapidly. A strange pulse of sound rippled out. Every lump writhing across David Jones's body went instantly still, like soldiers receiving a halt command.

"Now, I ask, you answer."

"Don't lie. We can, tell." Banana Wolf grinned, showing teeth. He leaned down and patted David Jones's fat cheek. The threat didn't need further explanation.... Half an hour later. A piece of intelligence, recorded on a hide scroll, was placed on the table in front of Su Nian. The scroll still carried Banana Wolf's distinctive scent. Pungent. Sharp. Unmistakably him.

"Players from America, operating near the Anlius Empire? That far away..."

"Their beginner village has over two thousand people too, close to three thousand. And the ones we captured all had hidden classes." Su Nian's expression was grave. Inwardly, he felt nothing but relief. Thank god the System had warned him not to keep attacking beginner villages. If he'd pushed ahead anyway, his entire dragon lair would probably be rubble by now.

"And this gun..." He prodded Medraco's bolt-action rifle with his dragon claw. Anna's Fireblast had reduced it to something roughly equivalent to a fire poker. The sight of it set off alarms in the back of his mind. Another advantage for the players. If they started combining the tech trees of both worlds, what kind of war potential were they looking at? Guns had already arrived. There was only one, for now. But were grenades really so far behind? Missiles? As a dragon, he could handle firearms.

His subordinates couldn't. Anna currently couldn't either. Dragon Tongue [Disarm] could render bullets inert, yes. But he couldn't chant [Disarm] non-stop twenty-four hours a day. Firearms were a serious long-term problem.

"System. Is there any modification that lets my subordinates strengthen alongside me? Meaning, when I evolve, they evolve too?" He wasn't expecting much. The idea was honestly kind of absurd. But the System gave him a positive answer anyway. [Ding! A modification matching the host's requirements has been found. Located on page 67 of the Neural Modifications section. Modification: Swarm Will.] [Primary Swarm Will costs 100, 000 System Points. When the host loads the Swarm Will modification, up to 1, 000 units with a life level below the host's will evolve alongside the host.]"Swarm Will... Is this really something you're supposed to put on a dragon?" Su Nian didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He was just venting. He knew the ability was absurd. An entire swarm evolving in lockstep with their Overmind, that was practically a cheat-tier existence. But right now, he had nowhere near enough System Points to afford it.

And his body was still badly weakened. He wasn't about to go bulldoze another beginner village. Did he have a death wish? [Ding! Detected that the host's Exposure Level has decreased for unknown reasons. The host must investigate independently to determine the cause.] [Tip: Decreases in Exposure Level may be related to the appearance of heroic figures, epic-tier monsters, or similar events.] They all say harpies are ugly, but pair one with something better-looking, pair it with a dragon-form Anna...

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