Spirit Pact Hundred Scenes Record

Chapter 22 Split Operations

Karen raced through the black crystal thicket, pursued relentlessly by dozens of crystalline vines, their tips glowing with crimson light. They were like a swarm of enraged venomous snakes.

Every breath was accompanied by a burning pain, and her lungs felt like a broken bellows. The backpack on her back shook violently with each run, and Xiguang let out a soft whimper inside, but the cub was very sensible and did not struggle, but simply clung tightly to the soft padding inside with its claws.

Karen's diversionary tactic worked—or rather, it worked too well.

When he adjusted the resonance frequency of his spirit runes to its maximum, becoming as conspicuous as a lighthouse in the darkness, the attention of the entire valley was drawn to him. Not only the crystalline vines, but also the centipedes crawling on the ground, the black moths flying in the air, and even the slow-moving, slimy creatures all turned towards him.

Hunger. Transformation. More.

The pollutant's intent surged forth like a tidal wave, pure and greedy. It possessed no intelligence, only the instinct to devour, and the pure, orderly psychic energy emanating from Karen was like a feast in the eyes of a glutton.

So he ran.

Running wildly along the ridge, leaping down steep slopes, weaving through the roots of giant plants, and stepping over moss covered in black slime. Behind them, the shrill whistling of energy beams tearing through the air echoed continuously, and dark red light bullets struck the surrounding tree trunks, rocks, and ground, leaving behind crystalline craters emitting black smoke.

We cannot stop. We cannot turn back.

But running like this wasn't a solution. Karen could feel his strength rapidly draining away; the wound on his back had reopened from the strenuous activity, and warm blood soaked through his clothes. And he was moving away from Leah and Grom—away from any potential counterattack positions they might have set up.

We must change our strategy.

Karen rushed into a relatively dense cluster of crystals. These clusters were about half a person's height, covered with a thick black crust, but some partially eroded crystals, emitting a faint iridescent light, remained in the gaps. He hid behind a larger cluster, curled up, and held his breath.

At the same time, he drastically reduced the resonance frequency of the spirit runes, turning them from "a conspicuous campfire" into "a faint ember".

The chasing crystal vines stopped outside the crystal cluster, their tips flashing erratically, as if searching for a suddenly vanished target. They swayed slowly, their tips sweeping through the air with a faint hum.

Karen's heart pounded, but he forced himself to calm down. He immersed his consciousness into the spirit runes, into the connection with the Dawn, and then tried to do something even bolder: to perceive the "vision" of the source of the pollution.

Since the source of pollution senses the outside world through those energy nodes and crystal vines, conversely, could it also use these connections to peer into the source of pollution's own "sensory perception"?

Carefully, he extended the tendrils of his mind to touch the energy thread of the nearest crystal vine—not the core node, but a thinner branch connecting the network.

Instantly, fragmented and distorted "images" flooded my mind.

It wasn't vision, but a more fundamental sense: heat distribution, psionic concentration, signs of life, movement patterns. In the source of the contamination's perception, the entire world was reduced to a few parameters: absorbable psionic energy (bright spots of light), obstacles (dark lumps), assimilated areas (uniform dark red), and... the intruder.

Karen saw "herself".

In the source of the pollution's perception, it wasn't a concrete human form, but rather an unstable, flickering silver speck of light, radiating an alluring, pure spiritual energy. This speck of light, which had been very bright just moments before, suddenly became extremely faint, almost disappearing into the background noise, but the lingering "smell" remained.

The source of pollution was perplexed. Its simple logic couldn't understand why the target had suddenly "disappeared," so it could only command all sensing units to repeatedly scan the vicinity of the target's last known location.

Right now.

Karen peeked out from behind the crystal cluster, raised her crossbow, and aimed at the pulsating dark red node at the base of a crystal vine not far away.

The arrow pierced the air.

In the source of the pollution's perception, the arrow was merely a small, weak, rapidly moving metallic signal, not belonging to any absorbable spiritual energy, and thus had a very low priority. It did not react.

The arrow hit the node precisely.

Runes lit up, psionic overload.

The vine convulsed violently, and a dark red light exploded from its nodes, spreading along the vine's black crystalline structure, leaving spiderweb-like cracks on the crystal surface wherever it passed. The vine then went limp and ceased to move.

The other vines immediately turned towards the direction from which the arrows came.

But Karen was no longer there.

He moved among the crystal clusters like a ghost, revealing himself for only a very short time each time to fire a precise arrow before immediately moving on. At the same time, he adjusted the resonance frequency of his spirit runes, making himself sometimes faint and sometimes obvious in the perception of the pollution source, creating chaos.

One, two, three...

He cleared a gap.

But his stamina was also rapidly depleting. He only had five arrows left in his crossbow. Warm liquid welled up from his nasal cavity again—the backlash from overusing his spirit runes.

More importantly, he could sense that the source of pollution was shifting its "attention" away from these scattered vines and refocusing on the massive core deep within the mine. It was like someone who, after being repeatedly bitten by mosquitoes, no longer cared about the specific bites but instead prepared to swat all the mosquitoes in the area.

He had to go back. Lydia and Grom needed time, and the time he had bought for them was running out.

Karen began to retreat towards the ridge, along the path he had come from. But the situation was different now—where the vines he had "killed" lay paralyzed, black crystals were slowly regrowing, new, finer filamentous crystals extending from the main vein, attempting to repair the damaged nodes.

The regeneration rate of pollution sources is faster than expected.

He had to get back to Lydia and Grom before the vines fully recovered.

---

In the ridge hollow, Lydia and Grom's preparations were in their final stages.

The dwarf pieced together the three rune metal plates into a triangle, each edge of which was marked with connecting runes in silver powder. In the center of the triangle, he placed a fist-sized, murky yellow crystal—an "overload psionic core" taken from the emergency reserves in the engine room of the Cloud Whale. It was usually used for emergency engine restarts, but could also be modified into a single-use, high-powered explosive device.

"Directional blasting," Grom explained as he adjusted the angle of the metal plates. "These rune plates will guide the explosive energy in one direction, like focusing sunlight with a lens. Theoretically, as long as it's aimed at the core of the pollution source, one shot can blast a hole through it."

"Theoretically?" Leah squatted down beside her, holding several thin metal probes in her hand—these were the fuses used to remotely trigger the device.

"I haven't tried this stuff in a cancerous ley line environment," Grom said honestly. "Disordered psionic energy could interfere with rune channeling, or it could trigger a chain reaction that blows us all to smithereens."

Leah was silent for a few seconds. "Karen doesn't have much time left. I can feel the vines regaining their activity, and the energy fluctuations deep within the vein are becoming increasingly unstable, like... something is being prepared."

No sooner had she finished speaking than Karen's shout came from afar:

"Leah! Grom! I'm back!"

The two looked up and saw Karen burst out of the crystal clusters, covered in black slime and crystal fragments, pale-faced, with blood from his nose congealed into dark red streaks, but his eyes were still bright. From the backpack on his back, Xiguang peeked out, her amber eyes filled with exhaustion, but she still let out a soft, joyful purr when she saw them.

"Are you alright?" Leah went up to Karen and quickly checked her condition.

"For now," Karen gasped, "but the source of the contamination is reacting quickly. It's starting to repair the nodes I damaged, and the core energy is... gathering. Like it's about to release something large-scale."

Grom's face darkened. "We can't let it finish. Our device needs at least ten more minutes to be fully calibrated and secured."

"We don't have ten minutes." Karen looked toward the vein. Even without his spiritual vision, he could see that the area on the main vein covered by the thickest black crystals was now emitting an increasingly intense dark red aura, like a heart about to explode.

The three fell into a brief silence.

Then Karen spoke. Her voice was calm, as if stating a perfectly obvious fact:

"We can't keep running. The cult's airships are waiting outside, the pollution in the forest is spreading, and it will take time for the Narwhal to be repaired. Even if we blow up the source of pollution this time, if the cult catches up, or if the pollution breaks out again from somewhere else, we're still doomed."

He looked at Leah and Grom.

"We must find the root cause of the pollution and completely resolve it. And the cause lies deep within the mine—the last message from the spirit of the mine, 'Black stones from the sky.' We must go in, find the source, destroy it, or... at least figure out what it is."

Leah and Grom exchanged a glance. A struggle flickered in the red-haired girl's green eyes, but it was quickly replaced by determination. The dwarf spat, his braided beard swaying with his head shake.

"Kid, do you know what's down there?" Grom pointed to the vein. "The core area of ​​a cancerous spiritual vein, with a spiritual energy concentration high enough to burn down an ordinary person's spiritual vein. It's teeming with contaminated crystalline creatures, and there's a possibility of triggering a secondary explosion. Going down there is suicide."

"Staying here is just waiting to die," Karen retorted. "Besides, I have spirit runes; I can sense the structure of the contaminated area and avoid the most dangerous zones. Dawnlight is sensitive to light energy and can warn of energy bursts. We have a chance."

Leah bit her lip. "We'll split up. Grom stays here to finish the explosive device as a backup plan. Karen and I will go down and find the source of the contamination. If we don't return within... say two hours, or if there's a violent explosion down there, Grom, you detonate the destructive core and then try to get back to the Cloud Whale."

"You two are going down?" Grom's eyes widened. "Lia, how effective is your Wind Whispering Vein in this environment? Karen has some special abilities, but her combat experience is practically zero. You have no idea what's down there!"

"That's why we need you to have been there," Karen said, her gaze unwavering. "You're a craftsman, a technical expert. If we find the source but don't know how to destroy it, or if we need special tools, you can provide support from up there. And the explosive device needs someone to operate it; if things get out of control, at least you can create a disruption, giving us a chance to escape."

Grom fell silent. His blue eyes darted back and forth between Karen and Lydia's faces, and finally he let out a heavy sigh.

"A dwarven proverb says: 'It's foolish to send stonemasons to war and warriors to carve decorations.'" He muttered, but had already started taking things out of his backpack. "Take these."

He handed Karen a short metal rod with a button at the end. "A signal flare. Pressing the button will fire a red light blast that will glow for ten minutes, visible even in fog. Use this if you encounter danger and need support, or if you need directions to find the source."

He then handed Leah a small leather pouch containing several metal spheres the size of pigeon eggs. "Stun grenades. They explode three seconds after the safety pin is pulled, releasing a bright light and a loud bang, temporarily interfering with the perception of psionic beings. Use them sparingly; there are only six."

Finally, he looked at Karen. "Kid, that spirit rune of yours... it can be hidden, right? After you go down, try to stay hidden, don't be so conspicuous. And your little lion, tell it to keep a low profile too."

Karen nodded and tucked the signal flare into her belt. Xi Guang seemed to understand, conveying a message of "I will try my best."

"Two hours." Leah looked at Grom, then at Karen. "Whether we find it or not, we must start retreating in two hours. Grom, set up the explosives here, but don't detonate them yet. Wait for our signal."

"I know." Grom was already adjusting the angle of the rune metal plate. "You'd better come back alive. Otherwise, this trip will be a huge loss."

Karen and Lydia nodded to each other, then turned and walked toward the mine.

Just then, a voice suddenly rang in their minds:

"Take me with you."

The three of them turned their heads at the same time.

The black cat—Shadow—had appeared on a nearby rock at some unknown time. Its deep black fur was almost invisible in the dark red light emanating from the mineral vein, with only the silver specks in its eyes clearly visible. It sat crouched, its tail elegantly curled at its paws, as if awaiting an invitation.

"What are you going to do?" Grom frowned, "Make things worse?"

Shadow's ears twitched, seemingly dissatisfied with the assessment. "You can't get out of the labyrinth below. Crystal growth has altered the internal structure of the vein, creating natural traps and deadly loops. Without a guide, you'll wander around in there until you die."

It leaped off the rock and landed lightly at Karen's feet, looking up at him.

"I'll lead the way, little one."

Karen stared into the shadow's deep black eyes, at the silver specks of light that shimmered like distant stars. He didn't know who this mysterious cat was, where it came from, or what its purpose was. But in the storm, in the infirmary, the knowledge and abilities it displayed far surpassed those of ordinary spirits.

And it's right. They do need guidance.

"Okay," Karen said. "You'll come with us."

Shadow seemed satisfied, its tail tip swaying slightly. It walked in front of Karen, its dark claws leaving no mark on the ground covered in black slime.

"Keep up." Its voice rang directly in their minds. "Keep quiet and don't touch anything. The 'residents' below... aren't very good-tempered."

Karen and Leah followed the shadow toward the largest fissure at the base of the vein, completely covered in black crystals—a dark, deep opening that looked like a natural entrance formed by a meteorite impact or abnormal crystal growth, radiating an unsettling chill.

Grom watched their figures disappear into the darkness of the rift, muttered a dwarven curse, then turned and continued fiddling with his explosive device.

Two hours. Countdown begins.