Born in Blood

Chapter 399 Spore Birds

3 weeks passed.

Soon enough, Liam was done with eating the Rank 4 Zeniths of the Trapped Reality colony.

All three dozen of them.

Minus Dumpty, of course.

The tick had to live.

It'd also been interrogated, but gave up nothing.

Even after suffering several doses of Corruption.

Perhaps the fear of someone... or something, was far greater than whatever pain Liam put it through.

Or maybe an Abomination or Binding Oath stopped him from discussing any details.

Still, Liam kept it alive, since it was the only source of those Reality Ticks he studied.

In a way, this invasion helped Liam out big time.

Eating so many bodies back to back gave him a small boost in basically everything.

Sea of consciousness.

Blood.

Chaos Pearl.

Body.

Core.

But it still didn't grant him an advancement in any of them.

Not yet.

Most of the weaker cultivators were basically snacks for him…

With enough power to battle three Zeniths at the same time and win, it was a favor to the world that Liam's progress was sluggishly slow.

Otherwise, with the rate he trained with, and his peculiar method of simply devouring stronger beings to gain power, he would have far outgrown his peers.

To an extent, he already had.

But the Opposition would be failing miserably if Liam had become a Zenith at such a young age.

'It's about time we moved.'

Pretty soon, though, it was time to leave the Trapped Reality colony.

Everything was pretty much in order.

The acolytes were prepared, hungry for war and battle.

All they waited for was Liam, but they didn't have the courage to tell him to hurry up, nor were they allowed to.

Liam was the authority.

…And, well, the threat Liam made of cutting off Neri, Johan and Ian's hands echoed throughout the eighteen thousand.

Yeah…

They'd rather just give him time.

Liam's main concern was the Mega Colony, and higher ranking Abominations that could hinder their path.

Though, all roads eventually led to there, one way or the other.

Smack dab in the middle of the war between the two Empires.

The Line.

Right now, Liam was somewhere around the edges of the Empire of Fear.

Around the curve where the baguette-shaped lands were still moving upward.

The deeper they went down, the longer, more difficult the fights would get.

Navigating the raw, cursed lands was also extremely difficult.

'If this stupid black mist wasn't there, the Empress' lair would probably be visible from here.'

'But it's not.'

'We'll take out at least a dozen colonies before we get to that point.'

'A few months will pass.'

'But by then, we'd have done enough damage.'

'There's a limit to how much we could really do without being captured.'

Imagining the grand battle that would ravage these lands, Liam's lips curled slightly to form a subconscious smile.

'I wonder how many bodies I'll be able to rake in,' Liam thought, smiling. 'As long as that eye-twitching leech doesn't touch any of them.'

***

Liam commanded the 18,000 battalion to leave the colony.

Everyone was huddled together in a circular formation, with Kitsu in the middle, and Liam perched atop its head.

On Kitsu's forehead, was an amplifying device for its mental waves.

It looked like a series of small and large satellite dishes, which helped quintuple and spread the fox's range for illusions.

Though… Kitsu looked extremely pissed off.

Why?

Well, she didn't want to put the helmet on.

In her own words, she felt extremely stupid when wearing it.

But it had no choice.

However, as a result, the 18,000 acolytes, disciples and Elders blended in perfectly with the ugly environment.

Kitsu's mental waves acted like a perfect invisibility cloak.

However, that didn't mean that the group was safe from Abominations.

They were still attacked now and again as they moved forward.

However, with her illusions, the fox could block out sound!

There were special properties to her mental waves.

Kitsu's entire bloodline was specialized in making illusions as realistic as possible, and depending on how much complexity she added to them, they could even have consistency.

And with that came sound manipulation.

It was highly unlikely Liam could obtain the same ability.

But one could hope.

The tight-knit formation continued until the Temple arrived at a massive colony.

On Liam's orders, they'd actually avoided most of the weaker ones.

It wasn't because they weren't worth his time.

In reality, the lower ranking colonies were tighter knit together as they went deeper and deeper into the dark lands.

They visited each other daily.

If Liam chose to attack them, they'd have to get rid of several colonies at the same time, and that would thin out their forces.

The thinner their forces, the greater the risk.

However… the larger, major colonies didn't have this problem.

Since they were deeper down, only 'elites' filled them.

This obviously meant that the battle would be much harder.

But it was worth it.

This one was six times as big as the Trapped Reality colony, and six times as strong, too.

The Spore Bird colony.

Creatures that could make deadly fungus grow on a person's body with insane speed, then make it explode.

But there was a glaring difference.

Before, there were 3 dozen Zeniths and no acolytes.

Now, there was 18,000!

Granted, the massive colony housed a similar number.

But they didn't know they were being attacked.

It was another massacre.

They mowed down the colony like wheats to a scythe.

It took a while, though.

The Spore Birds were disgustingly fast, and their fungus abilities actually killed off a few acolytes.

But bombs, fire and wind proved to be their weakness.

Like this, Liam and the Temple cleared open a path.

Day by day, they were getting closer to the Line.

4 months passed!

At one point, bringing down colonies required excessive planning and arduous preparation.

But they'd brought down twelve!

And several changes happened.

But it wasn't long before Liam had finally glanced at the so-called Mega Colony.

And it was massive.