Last Totem Novel - Chapter 176
Chapter 176 Hegemon
The reason why Iron Slag dared to take risks was because this Abyss Hegemon’s rank was relatively low. As long as he could hit its nerve center, he would be able to kill it in one blow. The academy’s textbooks divided the Hegemon of the Abyss into three grades.
The newly hatched Hegemon of the Abyss was only the size of a calf, its shell was light yellow, and its texture was extremely soft. This was its most fragile stage, and any adult male could kick it to death. After a few months of eating and growing, its carapace will gradually harden, its color will gradually darken, and its body will grow larger and larger.
The adult Hegemon of the Abyss was over thirty meters long and ten meters tall. Its shell was black and its texture was extremely hard. Ordinary bullets could not deal any effective damage to it. Its head and tail were small, but its torso was large. When it lay on the ground, it looked like an irregular semi-ellipsoid.
The textbook divides the newly adulthood Abyss Hegemon into elementary levels. The Hegemon of the Abyss was moving extremely slowly at this stage. Although the shell was strong, he didn’t have any means of attack. The only thing he could do was to command the swarm of homologous insects to protect himself. Other than that, he didn’t pose any threat.
Of course, this was only the initial stage of the Hegemon of the Abyss. If its strength was only that, then the swarm of bees and insects would not be humanity’s biggest opponent at the moment.
Compared with humans, they are more advanced and perfect in the use of energy. The swarm of bee ants can directly devour spirit stone ores and black oil, absorbing the high-density energy within. As for human technology, it could only deal with spirit stone ores, and in the process of refining and extracting, it would also lose most of its energy. Scientists estimate that humans currently use less than 1% of their spirit ores, while swarms of bee ants account for 97%.
The difference stems from the way energy is absorbed. The swarm of bee ants devoured and digested spirit ores directly with minimal consumption; As for humans, they could only extract psionic energy from ores through industrial methods, which consumed a tremendous amount of energy. At present, the greatest significance of spirit stone mines to humans is to extract “liquid psionic energy”. However, liquid psionic energy could not directly drive psionic equipment, and could only be used after being absorbed by the psionic energy user. Furthermore, there were still impurities and toxins in the liquid psionic energy, which would affect the psionic energy user’s body to a certain extent. Therefore, only low-level psionic practitioners who had poor talent and had no chance of advancing in their lifetime would be able to increase their strength by consuming liquid psionic energy. The more talented Psionic Adepts were simply disdainful of using them.
However, amongst psionic powers, those with low talent accounted for the vast majority, so liquid psionic power was still very popular. Some people can increase their level by one or two by consuming liquid psionic energy on a regular basis. Although it was only effective against Tier 5 and below, there were still quite a few people who chased after it like herons. After all, above Silver City, experts were respected, and strength represented everything. As for the Tier 6 [Psionic Energy External Release] stage, it was no longer a matter of “quantitative change”, but a matter of “qualitative change”. Therefore, consuming liquid psionic energy was of little significance.
Unlike humans, Hegemons of the Abyss had the ability to digest spirit stones when they reached adulthood. If they devoured a large amount of spirit stones, the color of their shells would gradually change from black to dark red. Moreover, to a certain extent, their shells would emit a faint red light, just like burning iron.
At this time, the Abyss Hegemon would advance to Crimson Hegemon, and a successful Crimson Hegemon would have the ability to digest black oil. If they swallowed a large amount of black oil, they would advance again and become the ultimate form of Hegemon-the Golden Hegemon.
At this stage, even Saint-ranked Psionic Adepts would retreat from them. Unless they had a huge advantage, they wouldn’t be able to fight easily. This was because facing the Gold Hegemon meant the possibility of death. Fortunately, the number of Hegemons of Gold was as rare as the number of Saint-ranked humans. Not only did they need to devour a large amount of black oil, they would also need a long time.
At this moment, there was only an Abyss Hegemon in Iron Slag’s line of sight. Other than commanding the swarm of insects, it did not pose any other threat.
The moment the charging was complete, Tie Zha aimed at the head of the big silkworm and shot out!
With a muffled thud, a ray of blue light shot out from the muzzle of the gun, causing ripples to shoot straight at the Hegemon of the Abyss who was crawling on the ground. In an instant, blue light struck its body, causing the thick shell to instantly collapse and scatter.
A deep cry of sorrow came from afar, followed by a series of ear-piercing screams from all directions. Seeing that Tie Zha had succeeded, he immediately put away his rifle and rushed in the direction he came from. At this moment, in the line of sight of countless scouting soldiers and ants, the weeping flies and thorns were in a mess. They hissed as if they had suffered a great deal of pain.
However, the chaotic swarm quickly regained its calm. Instead of hissing, they surrounded them in an orderly manner in the direction of the attack.
Tie Zha hadn’t run far when he saw that the wounded silkworm was still alive from the scouting ant’s line of sight. At the same time, he saw red dots surging towards him from all directions. The swarm of insects was distributed in twos and threes, and the number of insects was extremely large. They had already formed an encirclement around him. If they continued to run towards the path, they would bump into a pile of weeping flies and sting insects in a few minutes.
Sensing this, Tie Zha stopped and looked left and right, wanting to find a breakthrough. He thought quickly. The Weeping Flying was faster than him, and it wouldn’t take long for it to catch up to him. He wasn’t afraid of a dozen or so weeping flies, but over a hundred could only flee. Not to mention, groups of stingers followed behind the weeping flies.
“I can’t escape!” Looking at the dense red dots around him, he came to this conclusion.
Right now, he had two choices. He could either directly break out of the encirclement and quickly retreat. As long as he escaped from the range of the Abyss Hegemon’s brain waves, he would be safe. Or rush back now and shoot the half-dead silkworm. He frowned and hesitated for a few seconds. Suddenly, a bright light flashed. As he ran towards the direction, he commanded the army of soldiers and ants to surge towards the wounded silkworm.
In the blink of an eye, the twenty or so soldiers closest to the big silkworm flew out of the bushes and quickly climbed towards their target.
Just as the soldier ant climbed onto the giant insect’s body, drilled into the wound caused by the psionic armor piercing bullet, and began to bite the inside, the iron slag encountered a group of weeping flies. The rapidly running iron slag pulled out its shotgun and bombarded it. The blazing iron sand knocked the singing flies in the front row to the side. Although it did not cause any fatal damage, it did cause a short period of setback. After firing, the iron slag dropped the shotgun, pulled out a single-edged straight sword, and decisively charged into the swarm of weeping flies.
There were about a dozen of them in this group. Tie Zha swung his round sword. First, he kicked the first one flying towards him. Then, he swept his sword across the group and cut off the head of the third one and the foreleg of the third one. Then he slammed forward and used his shoulder to knock away the fourth wishing to pounce. Then, he raised his sword from the bottom to the top and sliced open the abdomen of the fifth wishing to pounce. With a final explosive shout, he punched the sixth wishing to fly a few meters away from his body with his fist.
At this moment, seven or eight thorns emerged from the dense forest not far away. They lined up, sucking in the air while slowly advancing towards Tie Zha. Seeing the thorn bug’s chest bulge up high, Tie Zha rolled on the ground and, at a critical moment, rolled behind a tree trunk.
“Whoosh whoosh whoosh …”
A sharp sound of air piercing could be heard. Pale spikes sliced through the tree trunk, obliquely nailing themselves into the soil in front of them and submerging more than half of them. However, uneven waves rose again and again, and as soon as the iron slag dodged a calamity, a few weeping lacewings bypassed the tree trunk and pounced towards him.
He had a headache from melee combat and ranged attacks. In the next second, he dodged the bite of the weeping flies and immediately drew his bow, causing the nearby weeping flies to spit out green mucus. In the blink of an eye, the second round of spikes shot out and flew towards him. He immediately pounced forward and could easily pounce into the cover area of the second tree trunk. Five or six sharp thorns followed him and pierced into the ground behind him.
Tie Zha grasped the hilt of the sword, twisted his neck, and hid behind the tree trunk. He bent his body and bent his arms, preparing to wait for the thorn worm to approach before rushing out desperately. At this time, a weeping fly circled around. However, just as it was about to pounce on the iron slag, it suddenly let out a hoarse cry and stopped in its take-off position. Seeing this, Iron Cinder immediately reacted, ignoring the weeping fly and rushing out of the cover of the tree trunk to kill the chaotic swarm of thorns.
In just a short moment, Tie Zha had entered the swarm of thorn insects, one sword at a time, killing them all!
At the same time, a thousand meters away from him, hundreds of soldiers and ants swarmed towards the big silkworm one after another. In an instant, they climbed onto the giant insect’s body, drilled into the broken wound, and bit down on the flesh and blood inside. The Hegemon of the Abyss instinctively sent a distress signal to the swarm of insects around him.
In the blink of an eye, the surrounding insects all retreated. The pressure on the iron slag decreased sharply. Then, he climbed up the tallest banyan tree in the vicinity and stood on the intertwined branches of the girl. He took out the psionic martial artist rifle, pulled the bolt, rebounded, pushed the bolt, raised the spear, aimed it, and completed it in one go!
The markings on the body of the spear gradually lit up, and the psionic starsand slowly flowed into the barrel of the spear.
About a minute later, Tie Zha pulled the trigger and ended the Abyss Hegemon’s life with a single shot.
The swarm of insects fell into chaos again. The iron slag hid in the canopy and rested for a while. Only after the swarm regained its calm did he come down from the tree and retrieve the shotgun that had just been dropped on the ground.
Afterwards, he used the corpses of the thorns to hatch hundreds of scouting ants, monitoring the entire jungle. The weeping flies and thorns that had lost their Abyss Hegemon became a little dumb. They basically stayed where they were and hid.
A moment later, the iron slag bypassed most of the swarm and arrived beside the corpse of the Hegemon of the Abyss. Looking at the insect-like body of a small mountain, Iron Cinder couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. This operation was a bit rash. He almost lost his life. Then, he pulled out a single-edged straight sword, circled around the head of the big silkworm, and stabbed it.
Dark green mucus immediately sprayed out. He stirred it hard a few times, then pulled out his sword, reached in to feel for it for a while, and took out a spherical crystal. The crystal was exceptionally transparent, emitting a faint cyan fluorescence.
This was the Abyss Hegemon’s crystal core. According to the textbook, the queen, queen, and Abyss Hegemon all had crystal cores. The cores contained abundant psionic energy and could sell for hundreds of gold coins.
Looking at the translucent crystal core in his hand, he suddenly felt an inexplicable desire. He couldn’t help but be shocked. According to past experience, this kind of desire would only appear when he was preparing to use “genetic plunder”.