The newly awakened Grave-Matrix did not crawl like a standard arachnid. Although its bloated, central mass looked cumbersome, its speed was horrifyingly unnatural.
Mercenary fiends that were too slow to retreat were casually obliterated. Some unlucky cultivators were speared straight through their defensive arrays, hanging from the jagged barbs of the Matrix's legs like gruesome, bleeding ornaments on a pale tree.
...
Outside the quarantine zone of the Rotting Marrow Swamp, a blur of obsidian and jade-green aura violently breached the perimeter arrays from afar.
"The assassination was executed quicker than anticipated," Executioner Mian smiled, his heavily scarred face twisting into a cruel grin.
But Captain Kael, standing by his side near the spirit-cannon batteries, showed a completely different reaction. He frowned tightly, his hand instantly flying to the hilt of his halberd, staring intensely at the approaching Four-Armed Abyssal Mantis.
Then he suddenly realized the sheer panic radiating from the rider and immediately changed his expression.
He raised his armored arm, channeling his voice through the Vanguard ranks. "Raise the blood-wards! Artillery, prime for a defensive barrage!"
Riding on the back of his frantically scuttling Abyssal Mantis, Captain Vane saw the glowing muzzles of the spirit-cannons pivoting directly toward him and felt his cold heart plummet into his boots. He immediately abandoned any pretense of dignity, throwing his hands over his head and screaming, "Hold the arrays! Hold the fire! I am Abyssal Vanguard!"
The volatile crimson light of the cannons held steady, but did not fire. The Four-Armed Abyssal Mantis crashed heavily onto the obsidian staging ground in front of the Vanguard command tent, its legs buckling from exhaustion.
Captain Vane slid off the carapace, his legs trembling violently; he didn't know whether he was more terrified of the Grave-Matrix he had just fled, the primed artillery aimed at his face, or the inevitable wrath of the Executioner.
"That entity in the catacombs is not a dormant incubator; no, the Matrix was in the final stages of ascension! It is an absolute, Calamity-tier apex predator!" Captain Vane babbled incoherently.
"Silence your pathetic whimpering. Consume this," Captain Kael stepped forward, his face a mask of disgust, and tossed a glowing, bitter Soul-Calming Pill directly at Vane's chest.
Vane caught the pill and swallowed it dry, the freezing dark Qi finally suppressing the worst of his physical tremors.
He took a ragged breath and rapidly detailed the massacre occurring within the tomb.
After hearing Vane's frantic account, the gathered commanders showed drastically different expressions.
Captain Kael turned his cold gaze toward Executioner Mian and stated flatly, "This is the flawless intelligence from your vaunted shadow-scouts."
Executioner Mian's face darkened, but he offered no defense. The catastrophic failure of intelligence was undeniably on the High Command's shoulders.
"Does the Elder Council realize they just sacrificed the premier mercenary bands for absolutely nothing?" Vane hissed in a low, bitter voice, having regained enough composure to feel angry.
"The casualty count will cripple the Vanguard's pushing power for moons. The cost in high-grade fiends alone is an astronomical loss."
Only he had escaped the initial awakening; how many of his hand-picked elites could possibly outrun a Calamity fiend?
"Hold the perimeter, we have survivors breaching the ash-line." A sentry on the outer wall pointed his spear toward the swamp, where several battered, bleeding shadows were desperately flying or limping toward the barricades.
"Where is the Grave-Matrix?" Captain Kael demanded, scanning the dark treeline behind the fleeing survivors. He didn't sense the suffocating pressure of a Calamity Lord approaching.
"Unknown. It... it seemed to turn its wrath upon the Crimson Lotus cohort. They were the deepest in the chamber. We shattered our escape talismans the moment the ceiling caved in," one of the survivors replied, collapsing as he crossed the ward-line.
His words conveyed a selfish rejoicing, but he quickly realized demonstrating such blatant cowardice in front of the Executioner was a death sentence, so he slammed his mouth shut.
"Is the Matrix pursuing them toward our defensive line?" Mian demanded.
"No, Lord Executioner."
The command staff fell into a tense, heavy silence. They were primed to unleash a desperate, full-scale artillery barrage, but the apocalyptic threat hadn't followed the bait.
They weren't sure whether to offer a blood-sacrifice in thanks or prepare for a flank attack.
If I had known that the Matrix was merely a hair's breadth from the Calamity tier... Captain Kael gripped his halberd tightly, his knuckles white. He was profoundly regretful.
He would never have allowed the mercenary fodder to engage it.
After all, if the Vanguard could have captured a newly ascended Calamity fiend, it would have guaranteed their absolute victory against the Radiant Peak!
"Do not concern yourselves with the Matrix's current location. The ancient Lord of the Rotting Marrow will never tolerate an usurper in its domain. Two Calamity-tier apex predators cannot coexist in the same corrupted swamp," Mian finally spoke,
"If it were merely a Commander-tier threat, the Lord would ignore it. But this Matrix is a direct challenge to the throne; it will inevitably be hunted and consumed by the Behemoth."
His words carried a heavy, unspoken disappointment.
If the High Command could have somehow restrained the Matrix and dragged it back to the inner mountain, it would have been a supreme asset.
However, the Matrix's ascension was interrupted and violently corrupted by the mercenaries' attack. It was now an uncontrollable, raging disaster, and therefore, entirely valueless to the sect's strategic goals.
...
The massive, reinforced iron-wood target dummy in the pavilion shattered, jagged splinters embedding themselves into the obsidian walls.
The Phantom Ash Scorpion's entire upper carapace was pressed flush against the floor, while its newly ascended, dual-veined stingers whipped through the air like a lethal, purple blur.
The dummy was unrecognizable, covered in deep, corrosive trenches and bubbling violently where the venom had made contact.
Sunny observed the destruction from his spine-throne.
"Acceptable," he whispered. He simply tossed another highly toxic, unrefined spirit-core onto the floor.
He didn't pat the Scorpion's carapace. He was entirely focused on hiding his internal shock. That thing just melted a target designed to withstand artillery fire in three seconds.
It was not incredibly difficult to force a beast from Normal to Elite grade if one had unlimited resources.
As long as the fiend wasn't fundamentally crippled, drowning it in Corrupted Spirit Stones would eventually force a breakthrough.
But pushing a beast to the Commander tier required a fundamental shift in its lethality.
Captain Kael stalked through the rear training grounds, his Blood-Marrow Hound silent at his heels, performing random inspections of the surviving Vanguard disciples.
Seeing his approach, the exhausted, bleeding youths immediately scrambled to their feet, desperately pretending to be deep in brutal cultivation.
Actually, Kael easily saw through their pathetic facades. He knew exactly who was actually pushing their limits and who was just surviving.
True Demonic Beast Taming required the master to inflict their own dark will upon the fiend, to constantly suppress and threaten it, in order to stimulate its killer instincts and enforce absolute obedience.
Some disciples didn't even have a trace of dark Qi circulating through their meridians, only activating their blood-whips when Kael's shadow fell over them. Their fiends looked confused and sluggish, entirely unaware of the lethal stakes.
They didn't have the reaction time to fake the required cruelty.
What is this?
Why is my master suddenly hitting me?
I was just resting!
RAAWR! A massive, mutated Bone-Crusher Boar gnashed its exposed tusks in sudden, violent anger.
It glared at the terrified disciple holding the whip. How dare you strike me when there is no prey!
Every time this weak human tried to assert dominance, the Boar felt the urge to trample him.
Feeling the suffocating pressure of Kael's gaze, the Boar couldn't suppress its feral rage any longer.
"Mercy, you cursed swine! Wait, do not gore my leg!"
When Kael eventually passed by Sunny's isolated pavilion, a deep, unsettling glimmer of absolute respect rose from the bottom of his cold eyes.
He did not enter, but he observed from the flap. Very few cultivators possessed the sheer, terrifying apathy of the Young Master.
Another massive strike from the Scorpion's tail.
This time, it sounded like a minor spirit-cannon detonating.
The Scorpion's jagged, barbed stingers whipped and injected their corrosive payload at an impossible speed.
The strike came fast and carried undeniable malice, cleanly severing a new iron-wood dummy entirely in half. Looking at the fracture, the edges weren't just cut; they were instantly liquefied by the localized heat of the venom.
During the strike, the Scorpion's tail moved like a blur of toxic lightning.
Sunny had initiated this specific training regime when he realized the Scorpion's new stingers were slightly longer and heavier.
"Continue until the venom sacs are dry," Sunny commanded coldly.
Within the warded pavilion, Sunny watched the beast with dead eyes.
The Scorpion did not hesitate. It raised its head, met its master's terrifying, glowing gaze, and immediately returned to violently dismantling the remaining targets.
Sunny didn't sit aside in comfortable silence; he actively projected his innate villainous aura, keeping the psychic pressure in the room at a suffocating level, ensuring the beast felt the constant threat of execution if it slowed down.
Only when the master established absolute, terrifying tyranny did a fiend truly become a flawless weapon.
Finally, after three hours of relentless destruction, although the Scorpion's outward appearance hadn't mutated further, Sunny saw clearly through the System interface that its combat proficiency had perfectly synchronized with its new Commander-tier core!