Chapter 695: Cannon Barrage
After stabbing down once, Xu Huo quickly rolled to dodge an attack from behind, then dashed through a corner of the corridor into the next hallway in a single second.
But the end of the corridor was still just another corridor. The entire Square Palace was shaped like a "回" character, a loop with no way to break through from the outer perimeter...
He turned his gaze to the doors that appeared at intervals along the wall and chose one at random. However, when he kicked it open, an endless stream of corpses tumbled out from inside. The stench of decay mixed with unidentifiable body parts, and because there were so many, they actually blocked the doorway entirely!
The moment he saw this scene, Xu Huo pulled out a lighter. With a single "Boom!", the corpses in the room burst into raging flames!
At the same time, the monster chasing behind him extended countless tentacles to grab at him. The wooden floor twisted and warped, and eyeballs surged forth, crowding around him!
"Swift Swallow" darted through the corridor as rays of light erected barriers around him. The monster's tentacles snapped one after another, but each break was immediately replaced by new ones. In no time, the hallway was packed with twisted, grotesque living creatures!
Xu Huo had no choice but to retreat again, momentarily unable to tell whether the things before him were real or all illusions.
But even if some were real, they couldn't all be. Expressionless, he opened and closed the lighter, setting fires without restraint!
Although the Square Palace itself wouldn't burn, the piled-up corpses in the rooms were too numerous. The putrid gases ignited instantly, repeatedly exploding within the confines of the palace.
Thanks to that, Xu Huo, separated by just one wall, was completely unaffected. Meanwhile, the monster chasing him howled repeatedly and sped up.
It chased him to a staircase that only led upward. He was familiar with this trick—going up another floor would only intensify the instance's mental influence on him. There was no way he was going up!
"Crack, crack, crack!" White stairs grew from beneath his feet, spiraling downward. But before he could step onto them, an eye squeezed out from the edge of the steps, bulging and staring at him as if it would burst at any moment!
His expression shifted. Xu Huo quickly closed off his spiritual realm. Sure enough, the bulging eye exploded. Even from a distance, he felt a needle-like chill!
The monster behind him was closing in again. He had no choice but to use "Absolute Safe Distance" and leap into the sea of fire.
This item had a three-minute duration, allowing him to temporarily avoid being burned. He passed through the fire to the other side of the room, but unfortunately, there was still no exit there either.
Since ordinary items couldn't destroy the Square Palace, Xu Huo had to pull out the energy cannon again. However, the moment he set it on his shoulder, the windows around the room burst open with a series of "Bang! Bang! Bang!" sounds, revealing the corridors and stairs outside!
Xu Huo raised an eyebrow and followed the stairs down to the first floor.
But the instance boss clearly wasn't going to let him off easily. The monster's tentacles also came down the stairs to the first floor. A giant axe flew wildly through the air, dangerously slashing several wounds across his body!
"Boom!" He took a direct hit from the axe, bracing himself against the Crimson Sword pressed against his chest by the immense force. He flew from one end of the hall to the other. Then the axe cut through the wooden pillar beside him, dragging and snapping the entire column in two!
"Tearing down your own place for renovations? Looking for a new home?" Xu Huo's water pouch, wrapped around his arm, had long since burst. He glanced at his wounds, which had returned to normal, then traced his gaze back to the puddle of liquid. Seizing a gap in the tentacles' movements, he crashed out through the crack in the main door!
He rolled on the ground to steady himself and kicked away a person charging at him. Standing up, he realized that outside the Square Palace had turned into a veritable hell!
All those who hadn't perished in the flames were crowded in front of the palace. Whether they were players or not, everyone was clutching corpses or people they had just bitten to death, eating like wild beasts. Blood flowed across the tiles in front of the palace, mixed with the scattered limbs of children...
Xu Huo's brow furrowed deeply. He hoisted the energy cannon, pulled out all the energy chips Bai Kou had given him, and bombarded the Square Palace without mercy!
The first blast shattered the already fragile main door, turning two black-armored figures into scrap. Next came the giant eye in the center of the hall, the room behind the eye, and the monster descending from the second floor!
The powerful energy explosion nearly punched through the first floor of the Square Palace. For a moment, not only did new monster tentacles stop appearing, but even the red glow inside the palace couldn't hold. But Xu Huo felt it wasn't enough. He threw in all the remaining accelerant!
After the blast came a roaring inferno. The chaos in front of the palace temporarily subsided. However, those still alive hadn't regained their sanity. They dropped the corpses in their hands and began surging toward Xu Huo. The remaining black-armored figures also flanked him from both sides, trying to force him back into the Square Palace.
Xu Huo prepared to leave, but at that moment, his shoulders felt as if something had grabbed hold of him. He was lifted into the air. Then, several tentacles burst through the second-floor windows, striking at his body like lightning!
The Painting Woman hidden in his clothes pushed him, causing his body to swing forward and avoid the attack. The tentacles that missed him pierced through the crowd but didn't retract immediately. Instead, they sucked the flesh and organs from those people like straws!
"Universal Lubricant" couldn't remove the item on him. Xu Huo manipulated the strings to loop over his head and caught a metal wire so thin it was almost invisible!
"Raise my hand!" Seeing that he was about to be flung back into the Square Palace by the metal wire, Xu Huo immediately said to the Painting Woman!
The paperized Painting Woman slipped one hand into his sleeve, forcibly lifting his arm and swinging it over his head. Under the effect of "Life Core," the two metal wires instantly turned to powder. Meanwhile, his own inertia threw him onto the outer eaves of the Square Palace's second floor!
The tentacles were still feasting wildly. Xu Huo stood up on the tiles, his gaze cold and sharp as he stared at the eyes moving in the darkness of the second floor.
Using items to play tricks, building a new city to buffer the time before facing players directly, bringing in robots to guard the building and kill people... And in the end, it was all for eating people!
He knew very well that there would never be a second stroke of luck to accidentally destroy an instance. The instance wouldn't collapse, and he was no match for the Square Palace boss. Moreover, judging by the current situation, the chances of clearing it early were slim.
But since a small part of the Square Palace was destroyed and many of the outer buildings had burned down, the instance's mental interference would definitely be greatly reduced. Once he dealt with the metal wires that could control people's bodies, the instance could basically be considered over.
Reactivating the "Orb of Murmurs," Xu Huo stood in front of the window and said to the inside, "Shared Eye is harder than any D-grade instance I've done before. It should have been upgraded long ago!"
"Sneaking around in the Square Palace eating people—are you afraid that after upgrading, you'll run into high-level players who'll blow up your nest?"
Hearing a few "Whoosh! Whoosh!" sounds from inside, he immediately retreated through the air, cutting off the flying tentacles, and taunted, "Do you dare to come out?"
(Chapter End)