LRAB Chapter 4 Hermit Crabs
Chapter 4 Hermit Crabs
The beetle sensed a shadow falling from above. Its compound eyes rolled upwards in unison, and its eight limbs spread outwards, attempting to leap backwards to avoid the sudden attack.
Luo Lan, however, did not give it any room to jump.
[Terrification lv.2] Unleashed with brazen force!
The crimson eye on the back of his hand suddenly widened, and a phantom blood mist seemed to explode deep within its pupil.
A distorted ripple followed the direction of the single eye's gaze and crashed into the beetle's four-fold eye at an extremely fast speed.
As the skill was activated, Luo Lan felt a strong sense of fatigue surge back as the skill was activated, clearly indicating that this move had consumed a lot of mental energy.
However, the beetle below is undoubtedly in a much worse state.
Its limbs, which were already taut and ready to exert force, seemed to have all their strength drained away in an instant. Its entire body froze on the stone bridge, as if petrified.
Without any hesitation.
Luo Lan twisted her body in mid-air, slamming her left arm heavily onto the stone surface in front of the beetle. Her forearm bones acted as a shock absorber, and her five sharp finger bones instantly transformed into claws.
Using the recoil from the landing, the bone claws fiercely grabbed at the small section of the head that was sticking out from the front of the beetle's carapace.
My fingertips gripped the insect's head tightly.
Grasp, exert force, and twist!
The soft tissue of the beetle's head and neck broke between its bony fingers, and green juice seeped out from the cut surface, condensing into thin lines in the gaps of its dark brown carapace, and dripping onto the stone bridge.
Luo Lan continued to exert force, using his forearm as a fulcrum to pull the bone claw. The hard, spider-like head of the beetle was torn from its shell, and thick, green juice gushed out from the broken end, splashing onto the stone bricks covered with purplish-brown lichen.
At the other end of the stone bridge, the first two beetles that had lined up to leave had already disappeared.
But the third-ranked beetle suddenly stopped its segmented limbs, its not-so-large brain seemingly finally noticing something amiss with the smell of the juice splashing at the back of the line.
Its somewhat clumsy body slowly turned around on the narrow bridge. Four pairs of cloudy compound eyes looked back at the same time, just in time to witness a pale, bony hand forcefully snapping the neck of its own kind.
"hiss--"
The beetle immediately let out a hiss, twitched its eight slender limbs, and quickly crawled towards Luo Lan.
Luo Lan's single eye on the back of his hand also spotted the insect. Killing a lone insect was enough to achieve the strategic objective of this ambush, and he didn't want to cause any more trouble.
I don't have time to argue with you right now.
Luo Lan's single eye on the back of his hand stared intently at the charging target, its crimson pupil contracting violently. An invisible ripple of mental energy spread towards the target.
[Terror Lv.2] activated again!
Their eyes met, and the beetle, which had been crawling aggressively towards them, suddenly froze.
One second it was running wildly, the next it was frozen in place like a statue, its limbs twitching slightly from extreme fear, and the fierce light in its four compound eyes quickly dissipated.
However, the situation on Luo Lan's side is equally worrying.
After using a skill that consumed mental energy twice in a row, an extremely heavy sense of fatigue instantly overwhelmed him.
The vision of the one-eyed person on the back of their hand suddenly blurred considerably, and the scenery in front of them even appeared distorted and doubled. The five fingers supporting them on the ground even felt a little weak, and they almost lost their balance.
[It seems this skill can only be used a maximum of three times in a short period of time.]
Luo Lan assessed his already fragile mental state. If he forced himself to activate another skill, the enemy's fate was another matter, but he himself would probably crash on the spot.
Fortunately, the insects on the other side were affected by the skill and were completely frozen in place, which also blocked the narrow stone bridge, so Luo Lan didn't have to be distracted for the time being.
Having resolved the unexpected trouble, Luo Lan turned her attention back to the dead insect "trophy" before her.
After turning halfway around, using his left forearm as a fulcrum, he firmly pressed the end of his forearm against the base of the beetle's carapace. His five finger bones gripped the cracks in the stone bridge, and little by little, he pushed the heavy beetle corpse away from the conspicuous bridgehead.
Back in the underground castle, in the shadows at the corner of the corridor, there is a recessed section of wall with a pile of rubble, deep enough to hide this thing.
Luo Lan only stopped moving the body inside and scanning both ends of the corridor with [thermal vision] to confirm that no heat sources were approaching and that no other insects would disturb them.
The green fluid from the insect that had splashed out earlier had solidified on the surface of its carapace. Luo Lan once again manipulated the bone hand, following the flow of the green fluid, and accurately located the large hole left by the severed head.
Starting from the edge of the hole, sharp finger bones continued to dig and tear inward.
The beetle's carapace was thicker than Luo Lan had anticipated. Starting from the opening in its head, she inserted her bony finger, initially encountering a hardened chitinous inner wall, only moving deeper to the softer parts. Clumps of sticky soft tissue were continuously pulled out.
Finally, Luo Lan simply used the hole as a passage to insert the entire bone hand into the hard carapace, frantically stirring it inside, and thoroughly cleaning out all the sticky organs and remaining soft flesh.
[Chaos Essence +1]...
With the thorough cleanup, the soft flesh of the beetle, which was useless to Luo Lan, was completely transformed into a reserve of source essence.
[Current Chaotic Essence: 20]
Whether it was because this beetle was too small compared to the rotten, stitched corpse, or because it was too weak in life, it only provided Luo Lan with a mere three points of source essence even after emptying its belly.
The profits from this are really insignificant compared to the chance to "pick up" and devour corpses directly in the underground palace.
However, Luo Lan wasn't after those few points of source essence at all. His target was the complete shell in front of him, its internal organs completely hollowed out, leaving only a hard outer shell.
Come on, let's enjoy the fun of rubber bonding!
Luo Lan glanced at the size of the insect's carapace and felt it was like a tailor-made armor for his chariot, now that he only had one left hand.
[Casting - Assembly]
[Consumed Chaos Essence: 8]
[Current Chaotic Essence: 12]
[Assembled: The carapace of a young beetle spider]
Rank: None
As soon as the skill was activated, a strong pulling sensation suddenly came from the bony left hand inside the remains of the young armored spider.
Luo Lan could clearly feel that the bottom of her left forearm was inserted directly into the center of the carapace.
Immediately afterwards, countless inexplicably generated nerve synapses extended from the ends of the bones and firmly attached themselves to the inner wall of the insect's shell, which should have been dead long ago.
The carapace, which had been stiff on the ground, trembled slightly.
Then, the young spider stiffly raised its eight long limbs, and the ends of the limb appendages braced against the slippery ground.
This time, however, the one controlling this body was no longer a low-level demon that didn't even reach the transcendent level, but Luo Lan.
The skeletal hand emerged from the front of the carapace, from the hole that had once been the insect's head.
Five sharp, bony fingertips protruded out in a semi-curved shape, like the deadly tentacles of some mutated creature extending from its shell.
Above the knuckle, a huge scarlet single eye was wedged at the edge of the carapace opening. Dark red fleshy tendrils that had grown around the eyeball were firmly rooted in the cracks at the edge of the carapace, filling the connection between the bone claw and the carapace perfectly.
It looks just like a bizarre, monstrous hermit crab!