"Fire."
The Guard Captain's voice was as cold as iron in winter.
Su Ming's compound eyes captured every detail in that split second: fourteen archers had their bows drawn to the limit, arrowheads shimmering with pale blue magical light—enchantment arrows with a silence effect. Twelve spellcaster guards were already condensing high-density energy orbs at the tips of their staves. Worse, two fixed wall-mounted guard ballistae were slowly swiveling toward him.
In the wild, that kind of firepower would blast a Level-15 Elite Monster to smithereens.
But Su Ming didn't move. Not because he was paralyzed by fear, but because he figured something out in a flash.
He wasn't afraid of physical damage. At Level 3 in his Abyssal Tyrant Form, paired with that ridiculously thick carapace, ordinary arrows and spells wouldn't even scratch his vitals. But he wasn't worried about damage. He was worried about crowd control.
If even one of those fourteen enchanted silence arrows hit, his Skill System would be locked for five seconds. Five seconds. In that window, he couldn't use Abyssal Pressure, couldn't cast Abyssal Taunt, and even basic evasion skills would fail. Meanwhile, the ballistae only needed three seconds to reload.
Three seconds of lockout, two seconds for the shot—more than enough to nail him to the cobblestone.
Running wasn't an option. The barrier had already closed, its light screen blocking every exit. But the barrier had a weakness—it only worked horizontally.
Su Ming snapped his head up. Overhead, the golden light screen looked like an inverted wok, sealing the entire Starter Village beneath it. But the screen's thickness was limited, and it only blocked horizontal movement, applying zero pressure from above. In other words, it was a net, not a steel plate.
He needed height.
"Fire—" The captain's command was cut off before it even finished. Su Ming moved.
All eight legs drove forward simultaneously. The lobster shot out like a crimson cannonball, beelining for the nearest building—the smithy by the square, a two-story wood-and-stone structure with black smoke still puffing from its chimney.
"Stop it!" Bowstrings twanged in unison. Fourteen enchanted arrows screamed through the air.
Su Ming didn't look back. He retracted his carapace to its tightest state, angling his thickest dorsal plate toward the arrow rain. A sharp clatter echoed as most arrows deflected off his shell, but two slipped into the seams. The silence effect triggered instantly.
A chilling numbness spread across his back, and his skill interface grayed out for a moment.
But Su Ming didn't need skills.
He just needed that wall.
*Boom!* The two-meter Abyssal Tyrant slammed into the smithy's outer wall at full speed. The wood-and-stone structure crumpled like paper, caving inward. Debris and splinters exploded outward, scattering tools and half-forged weapons across the floor.
"What the—" The NPC blacksmith, mid-strike, yelped and dropped straight onto the hearth.
Su Ming didn't stop. He scrambled up the collapsed wall wreckage, charging straight for the second floor. The floorboards groaned in agony under his weight. The entire building swayed on its foundation.
He reached the window and leapt. The second-floor height combined with his explosive leg muscles launched him nearly eight meters into the air. The golden barrier hovered less than three meters above him. It would do.
Mid-air, Su Ming curled his body, funneling every ounce of strength into his pincers. He snapped them open, driving them into the light screen like twin reverse chisels. *Zzzzt—* The moment his abyssal carapace made contact, a piercing crackle of electricity tore through the air. The pale-gold barrier flickered wildly, its energy draining rapidly at the impact point.
It hurt. Like dipping a pincer into boiling water. But Su Ming held firm—well, lobsters don't exactly have teeth, but he clenched the muscles between his plates—and pushed through. A tear opened in the light screen under the force of his claws. Not big, maybe half a meter wide. But for a flattened lobster, it was plenty.
Su Ming wrenched his body through the gap. His shell scraped violently against the barrier's edge, emitting a teeth-gritting screech. The instant his tail tip cleared the opening, the rift snapped shut, showering golden sparks. He plummeted onto the grass outside Stream Valley Town, rolling twice before coming to a halt.
Behind him, muffled roars from the players and the Guard Captain echoed through the barrier, sounding dull and heavy, like hearing noise through a thick quilt. Su Ming lay on the grass, catching his breath, and shook the dust from his shell. Two seconds left on the silence countdown. He didn't dare waste a moment. Pushing off with all eight legs, he sprinted toward the dark treeline in the distance. Three kilometers east of Stream Valley Town lay the edge of the Misty Marsh. He had to slip into that death zone before the Destiny Guild could react—a place even high-level players avoided.
---
The Misty Marsh lived up to its name. The moment Su Ming stepped into the reed beds at its edge, visibility plummeted to under ten meters. White fog coiled around his legs like living things, and the air grew thick with the stench of fermenting stagnant water. The solid dirt gave way to spongy sludge, each step costing three times the usual effort. But he didn't slow down. Because the pursuers behind him were far worse than the fog.
The barrier had bought him five seconds, but that was more than enough for the captain to alert the guilds outside. The Destiny Guild's bounty was still active. Five thousand gold per life was enough to draw every greedy player on the server out of hiding. Sure enough, less than ten minutes into the marsh, sounds echoed ahead.
Three players. The leader was a warrior named "SwordWanderer," Level 7, wearing decent-quality leather armor. Behind him trailed an archer and a mage, both hovering around Levels 5 or 6. A classic dungeon trio—warrior, mage, archer. Enough for grinding, and barely adequate for hunting a lone lobster. If Su Ming were still a standard Level-1 mob, these three might actually give him trouble. But he wasn't anymore.
"Holy shit, it really is that lobster! The forums didn't lie!" SwordWanderer swallowed hard, raising a cheap-steel longsword shimmering with subpar enchantment light. "Brothers, take down this bug, and we split the five-thousand-gold server bounty!"
Su Ming didn't move.
Five thousand gold.
Just five thousand gold was enough to make sword-dulling rookies throw away their lives.
He exhaled a string of murky bubbles, his massive right pincer snapping upward.
And swung.
The scythe-like claw tore through the air with a sharp crack. The warrior didn't even have time to register the movement before he was smashed face-first into the mud. A red-and-white damage number, "-1,240," floated skyward, instantly wiping his HP bar. One-shot.
"G-ghost...!" The remaining two collapsed into the sludge, scrambling backward in a panic. One of them lost a free starter cloth shoe in the mud, cutting a truly pathetic figure. "Why run?" Su Ming followed at a leisurely pace, his pincers dragging two deep trenches through the sludge. "Weren't you just trying to cash me in for money?"
Two minutes later, two more corpses and a pile of shattered gear joined the marsh. Su Ming didn't bother glancing at the loot. He just pushed deeper.
First wave: a five-man assassin squad.
Second wave: three rangers trying to box him in with physical traps.
Third wave: reinforcements for that unlucky SwordWanderer, a twelve-man mixed team.
Fourth wave, fifth wave...
Tonight, the Misty Marsh was unusually lively. Server-wide bounties and temporary guild leaderboards had drawn every greedy fly in the vicinity. Su Ming didn't even need to hunt. Just following the beams of their cheap flashlights guaranteed running into another suicidal party.
Boring.
Between Abyssal Pressure and the stat crush of the Abyssal Tyrant Form, these low-level players might as well be made of paper. The only thing that mildly surprised him was the Dark Energy growth rate. On his system panel, the [Dark Energy] progress bar was skyrocketing. Every party he wiped pushed the meter noticeably forward. The more players cursed him on the forums, the more vicious the livestream chat became, the more absurd the values on his [Absolute Reflection] and [Ironclad] traits grew. He glanced down at the panel.
[Dark Energy: 73%]
The bar pulsed with an ominous crimson glow, coiled like a venomous snake ready to strike.
"Master, your Dark Energy is climbing pretty fast," the Sprite chirped, hovering above his head as she nibbled on a French mini-bread she'd magically acquired. Her words came out muffled. "At this rate, it won't take long to trigger... uh, that thing."
"What thing?"
"Nothing good, anyway." She dodged the question smoothly. "You should find a safe spot to lay low. The Destiny Guild's main force is probably already on the way. Those scrubs were just the appetizer."
Su Ming stayed silent.
He knew the Sprite was right. Scattered hunters were just cannon fodder. The real killing blow was still coming. Guild Master Po Jun was meticulous; he wouldn't just send a mob of amateurs to their deaths. But hiding wasn't an option. Simple reason—he had nowhere to hide. He couldn't return to Stream Valley Town; the NPCs had flagged him as hostile. Other Starter Villages had guards too. Once his ID was recognized, his fate wouldn't differ much from this one. Safe zones in the wild? On day one of server launch, such things didn't exist.
The only way out was deeper. The center of the Misty Marsh was a forbidden zone. Rumors said even the Destiny Guild's elite squads avoided it. High-tier monsters, poisonous miasma, hidden whirlpools—and an unverified legend: an entrance to the Abyssal Floor. His past-life memories confirmed the legend was true. And more importantly, it held what he needed.
"Deeper," Su Ming decided.
"You're insane." The Sprite nearly choked on her bread. "The marsh core is a Red Zone! You know what that means, right? It's the 'you die the moment you step in' kind!"
"I won't die." Without looking back, Su Ming parted the reeds with his claws. His eight legs carved a steady, heavy rhythm through the muck. "I jumped off a cliff, crossed poison fog, and survived a server-wide manhunt. You really think a swamp core is going to finish me?"
The Sprite opened her mouth, then closed it. After following him this long, she knew one thing for sure: the word "fear" didn't exist in this lobster's brain. To be precise, his dictionary only had two words: "do it" and "done."
---
The deeper he pushed, the more treacherous the terrain became. What started as relatively flat mudflats gave way to a labyrinth of undercurrents and whirlpools. One misstep could sink him knee-deep into sucking silt. The toxic fog thickened in the air, and even though his carapace filtered most of the poison, a faint sting still prickled at his gills. But it wasn't the environment that put him on edge. It was the monsters. Their levels were skyrocketing. From the initial Level-3 Serpent Lizards and Level-5 Marsh Lizards, to Level-8 Toxic Toads and Level-10 Shadow Crocodiles. Ugly as sin, each packing an absurdly high damage output.
Yet Su Ming didn't even glance their way. Abyssal Pressure. Though still at its basic tier, the skill's effect under the Abyssal Tyrant Form far exceeded expectations. Any monster beneath his level automatically fell into a terror state within a five-meter radius, their aggression plummeting. Wild, non-elite creatures simply flattened themselves to the ground, trembling as if paying homage to a king returning from the deep. Su Ming strode through them like a tyrant inspecting his domain. The rare high-tier mob dumb enough to ambush him got casually swatted into the silt, leaving not even a corpse behind.
But one monster was different. A Level-12 Marsh Python. It didn't flinch at Abyssal Pressure like the others. Instead, the moment Su Ming drew near, it exploded upward from the submerged sludge. Its massive jaws parted, revealing fangs glowing with a sickly green venom, lunging straight for his face. Su Ming sidestepped. The fangs grazed his carapace, leaving a faint white scratch. This beast was higher level. Abyssal Pressure barely registered. The python hit the ground and coiled instantly, its triangular head looming over him. A crimson forked tongue hissed. As thick as a human waist, its dozen-meter-long body coiled tight, scales shimmering with an eerie green hue in the fog. Su Ming's compound eyes narrowed slightly. This was the first real threat he'd faced in the marsh.
The python struck first. Its tail whipped forward like a steel whip, dragging mud and pebbles, sweeping horizontally. Blindingly fast. It tore a whistle through the air. Su Ming didn't block it. He leapt backward, all eight legs punching deep craters into the sludge. The tail whizzed past, missing him by less than ten centimeters. The displaced air pressure bent his antennae sideways. Before he could regain his footing, the python's second attack arrived. A frontal strike. The massive head shot forward like a green cannonball, reeking of carrion. Su Ming made an unexpected move. Instead of dodging, he charged straight into it.
Just before impact, he snapped his pincers wide and clamped down hard on the python's neck. *Crunch.* The sound of blades biting into scales echoed through the muck. The python's hide was tough, but not tough enough to withstand an Abyssal Tyrant's grip. Su Ming felt resistance, but he didn't let go. He poured in everything he had.
The python thrashed wildly. Its massive body rolled violently through the sludge, tail whipping everywhere, pulverizing reeds and shrubs. Su Ming was dragged off balance, his shell taking several fresh cracks from the impacts. He refused to let go. Like a gator locked onto its prey's throat, he held on regardless of the violent rolling. His claw edges sank inch by inch into the python's neck muscles. Blood gushed out, staining the surrounding black mud. The python's movements slowed. Its violent thrashing degraded into spasms, then into weak twitches. Finally, its massive head slammed into the mud and went still. Su Ming released his grip, panting heavily.
Seven or eight fresh cracks marred his carapace, and his HP had dropped by nearly a quarter. But staring at the massive corpse, his compound eyes held no fear—only a pure, post-combat adrenaline rush.
[Defeated Marsh Python (Level 12 · Elite). EXP Gained: 12,000.]
[Level Up: Level 4.]
[Dark Energy +15%.]
EXP and Dark Energy banked simultaneously. Su Ming gave his panel a quick glance. All stats ticked upward. Not a huge jump, but every little bit helped. At this stage, every point mattered. He didn't linger. The python's blood scent would draw more high-tier mobs. He needed to clear the area fast.
---
12:20 AM. Su Ming finally reached the edge of the marsh core. Before him lay a dead, still Blackwater Lake. The water was thick as ink, its surface unnervingly flat and silent. Through the fog, the faint silhouette of a structure loomed in the center. The legendary abandoned altar. Su Ming's carapace burned. Ever since stepping into the core, a searing heat had coursed through him. Not from outside, but from within—specifically, from the Abyssal Core Fragment embedded beneath his chest plate. Right now, the fragment was pulsing frantically, like a heart on the verge of detonation. Crimson light seeped from the seams in his shell, casting a blood-red glow over the surrounding sludge.
"Master..." The Sprite's voice trembled slightly. "Whatever's in your chest... the energy readings are spiking. Over ten times higher than the outer marsh."
Su Ming looked down at his chest. Over layers of battle-hardened carapace, newly formed dark-purple veins resonated with an energy source radiating from the lake's center. The frequencies matched perfectly, like two synchronized heartbeats. He stopped at the water's edge. Not from exhaustion. Not from fear. But because he saw something he shouldn't have. Footprints in the mud. Not from monsters. From humans. And not just one set. At least a dozen distinct shoe prints converged from different directions to the shoreline, then vanished onto the water itself. The depth and freshness of the prints told him they arrived recently. Less than an hour ago. Someone had beaten him here.
Su Ming's compound eyes narrowed. He crouched low, pushing his Abyssal Tyrant perception to the limit. His antennae quivered in the damp air, filtering every faint trace. He caught it. Human scent. Metallic tang. Residual magic. Not casual players. Guild forces. And elites at that. Su Ming snapped his head toward the northeast. Deep in the fog, countless blue-white headlamps advanced like ghost fires. Disordered footsteps, clinking armor plates, and shouted commands from guild channels merged into a suffocating roar. Three hundred. Five hundred. One thousand. His HP had just fully regenerated. His Dark Energy bar sat high, fueled by a trail of harvested malice. But he didn't smile.
He recognized the headlamp insignias. The Destiny Guild's elite force. Guild Master Po Jun leading personally. Combined with mercs hired from other major guilds, they'd somehow managed a perfect encirclement at this exact hour. In previous skirmishes, this "bug lobster" had made the Destiny Guild drop their gear and lose face. Po Jun had even stepped onto the field himself, only for Su Ming to leap off a cliff and escape. For a top-three server guild, that humiliation was unacceptable. So they came. With a thousand elites. With frost traps, magic formations, heavy crossbows, and siege equipment. With a resolve to fight to the death.
Su Ming straightened slowly. Eight walking legs braced in the sludge, holding up a carapace the size of a small mountain. His two massive pincers clacked together in midair, producing a metallic boom that rattled the eardrums. One thousand players versus one lobster. Sounded like a joke. But Su Ming knew the rules of *Divine Realm*. Numbers were power. Even with his hardest shell, a thousand Level 10 players focusing fire could drown out any endless barrage of skills. Not to mention, the Destiny Guild boasted core members above Level 20.
Run? To where? Blackwater Lake behind him, a thousand-man formation ahead. His eight legs, no matter how fast, couldn't outrun mages' long-range spells or rangers' tracking arrows. Only one path remained. Kill.
Zero fear in Su Ming's compound eyes. Only a calmness forged at the absolute limit. In his past life, he'd spent ten years as a pushover. In this life, every fight was a gamble with his life. He was used to being backed into a corner. Or rather, he thrived on it. Because only in desperation would a lobster's pincer clamp down hardest. In the distance, the Destiny Guild's formation deployed. A line of tower shields pushed forward on the left, building a moving wall. On the right, the mage squad crouched back, channeling ultimate skills, their garish light effects blinding. Rangers hung in the rear, strings taut and arrows nocked. The formation spread wide, slowly tightening like a fishing net.
"Hold the line! Stay steady!" Po Jun's voice echoed from the rear, steady and ice-cold. "It's just a mob. Bounty: one hundred thousand gold. Five hundred thousand if taken alive. Don't let it slip through our fingers."
Su Ming caught the "one hundred thousand gold" figure. His pincers tightened slightly. One hundred thousand. Last time it was five thousand. Now it's doubled twentyfold. Looks like this lobster's market value was outpacing inflation. The first arrow rain blotted out the sky.
Su Ming didn't dodge. He spread his pincers wide and charged straight into the impenetrable volley, unleashing a roar that shook the entire Misty Marsh. It wasn't a sound humans could make. Nor any known monster. It was the Abyssal Tyrant's war cry—a shriek from the Abyssal Floor that struck pure, soul-deep terror into anyone who heard it. Arrows slammed into his carapace, sparking violently. The Ironclad trait deflected the majority. Absolute Reflection turned the few that hit his weak points against the archers, dealing raw damage. Only a lucky few slipped through his seams, chipping away under two hundred HP. Su Ming drove his eight legs forward and charged.
At the center, the Destiny Guild's formation began to fracture. Frontline heavy warriors raised their shields, trying to hold the line, but facing a massive lobster wreathed in dark mist, sprinting like an out-of-control armored tank, their courage drained at a visible rate. Su Ming's right pincer tore through the tower shield wall. 500 True Damage. Ignores defense. Three warriors' shields shattered like paper. Along with them, they dissolved into three white lights, instantly recalled to the respawn point. A massive breach opened in their line.
"It's charging! Fall back—" Panic spread through the ranks like a plague. Su Ming gave them no time to regroup. Left pincer sweeping, right pincer cleaving, his eight legs carved a bloody path through the crowd like eight drawn blades. Every strike accompanied a terrifying damage number. Every impact scattered players trying to block him. Behind him lay scattered corpses, shattered gear, and piercing screams.
But he wasn't unscathed. High-tier mages' fireballs and ice lances detonated on his carapace. Not fatal individually, but the accumulated damage slowly chipped away at his HP. Assassins occasionally found gaps for backstabs, each strike draining two or three hundred life. A few heavily geared elite warriors landed deep slashes with enchanted weapons. Su Ming's HP fluctuated between 80% and 60%. Dark Energy frantically fueled his regeneration. Every curse, every "die," every scream of terror converted directly into health. But the healing couldn't keep pace with the damage. He was surrounded. A full thousand players formed an airtight cordon. Heavy warriors in front wove a human wall with shields and bodies. Mages and archers in the back poured out relentless damage from safe range. Even a few engineering players were hastily assembling siege crossbows. Those giant bolts could pierce castle walls. A direct hit would shatter his carapace.
Su Ming leaned against a massive boulder, gasping for air. Cracks webbed across his shell. An ice lance had pierced his left hind leg, sending shooting pains with every twitch.
"All units, siege crossbows loaded! Target locked!" Po Jun's voice cut through the noise from outside the ring, utterly devoid of emotion.
Su Ming looked up. Three siege crossbow tips glowed with blinding magical light, all aimed squarely at his chest. He couldn't survive this volley. He had one choice left.
Su Ming's compound eyes locked onto the Blackwater Lake in the marsh core. It held what he needed, and his only chance at survival. He stopped trying to break out. Instead, he took the most insane route possible—charging straight into the densest part of the encirclement. The Destiny Guild's main force. A wall of steel forged by hundreds of elite players. Everyone watching thought the lobster had lost its mind.
But Su Ming knew exactly what he was doing. This wasn't a charge. He was using them.
"Abyssal Taunt!"
A deafening roar erupted from him. Sound waves laced with spiritual shock exploded outward in all directions. It wasn't a damage skill, but an aggro taunt. It forced every enemy in range to lock their hate onto him while lowering their rationality, pushing them into reckless, overly aggressive attacks. The effect was instant. The Destiny Guild's elite squad, previously holding formation, completely lost their cool the moment the taunt hit. Frontline warriors stopped shielding and swung wildly. Rear mages abandoned careful targeting for massive AoE bombardments. Everyone just wanted to tear the damn lobster to pieces.
But precisely because of that, their attacks began to overlap. Mages' fireballs detonated on their own warriors. Rangers' arrows struck the backs of frontline allies. Chaos erupted, and the formation completely shattered. Seizing that split-second of confusion, Su Ming sprinted at his absolute top speed toward the Blackwater Lake in the marsh core.
"It's breaking out! Stop it!" Po Jun's furious roar echoed behind him. But the broken ranks couldn't regroup in time. Su Ming plowed through the crowd like a bull in a china shop, leaving a trail of shattered armor and blood. Behind him roared pursuing players and a sky lit with skill effects. Before him lay the unfathomable black water. Su Ming didn't slow. He leapt. The Abyssal Tyrant became a crimson cannonball, smashing straight into the Blackwater Lake. A massive splash erupted. Ink-like water instantly swallowed him. The Destiny Guild members who chased him to the shore exchanged looks. Not a single one dared to jump in. The water's color and stench were all wrong. Their instincts screamed that diving in was a death sentence.
"Guild Master, the lobster jumped into the lake!" The vice-captain's voice crackled through the comms, laced with obvious anxiety.
A five-second silence followed on the other end. Then, Po Jun's voice came through, as calm as discussing the weather.
"Post sentries along the shore. It can't stay underwater forever. The moment it surfaces, focus fire. Deploy a water-element blockade formation. Not even a fly gets out."
---
Bottom of the Blackwater Lake. After sinking roughly twenty meters, Su Ming finally felt solid ground beneath his legs. Surprisingly, the lakebed wasn't sludge, but a layer of hard black stone slabs. Intricately carved runes covered the surface, glowing with a faint blue light. They formed a massive magic circle. At the circle's center was a downward passage. Resting quietly at the entrance was an old-fashioned windproof lantern. The flame inside hadn't gone out, shielded by a transparent sphere, casting a warm yellow glow. In this dead, silent darkness, that single point of candlelight looked profoundly lonely, yet unyielding. Su Ming swam closer.
Beside the lantern, a line of text was carved. Not Abyssal, but Common Human Tongue. Etched into the stone with a sharp tool, the strokes were messy and rushed, as if left under extreme duress.
"Su Ming, follow the light. —Someone who knew the truth before you did."
Su Ming's compound eyes fixed on the words, his antennae drifting slowly in the water. He didn't know this person. But this person clearly knew him. They knew his name. They knew he'd come here. Past life? This life? Or some force he hadn't grasped yet? Su Ming didn't hesitate long. He lifted the lantern from the stone, turned, and swam toward the descending passage.
Above him, the Blackwater Lake surface glowed crimson with the torches and headlamps of his pursuers. But their light could no longer reach him. Clutching the lantern, carrying the cryptic message, bearing a body scarred and a heart full of killing intent, Su Ming sank deeper into the darker, deeper Abyss. Golden text popped up on his system panel.
[You have entered an unnamed area: Blackwater Lake Bottom.]
[You have lost Starter Protection status.]
[You are now the primary nemesis of the Destiny Guild (Player Organization).]
[The Abyss is watching you.]
Su Ming read the lines, raising the lantern slightly higher. Ahead lay a pitch-black passage, endless and deep. Behind, relentless pursuers lurked just out of reach. And he was caught in the middle. Like a true lobster, trapped in a cage. But a cage couldn't hold the Abyss. Su Ming flexed his left hind leg, still embedded with ice lance fragments, forcing the last remnants of pain beneath his carapace. He kept sinking.