Chapter 78 Separating the Scepter

Separating the scepter from the giant was no easy task.

In fact, destroying both at once would have been easier for Hao Ren—he had enough firepower to solve that problem, but now he wanted to obtain the artifact intact, which meant giving up almost all heavy weaponry.

He was even hesitant to use ordinary attacks, because each time the black giant was attacked, the surrounding dark rifts and shadow armies would grow stronger.

"Boom!" After another grand explosion, Hao Ren blasted away hundreds of shadow servants in front of the giant, then distanced himself to face the enormous enemy from afar. The giant clumsily waved his deformed torso, roaring at him, and with each roar, more shadow monsters continuously split from the dark domain around him.

The battle had been going on for some time, and Hao Ren felt his physical strength beginning to wane. However, as the battle continued, he became mentally sharper, and a vague idea gradually became clearer:

The giant seemed to be an outright enemy. This corrupted and twisted Heracles had completely lost his mind and humanity. However, the "characteristic" of splitting off shadow servants after being attacked seemed suspicious: it felt as if these dark, evil forces were not released by him, but had been imprisoned within his body, leaking out only when his limbs were damaged.

Otherwise, the giant would have released many times more soldiers through self-harming methods.

This idea that came out of nowhere lacked evidence and could almost be called wishful thinking. Under normal circumstances, Hao Ren shouldn't have placed his hopes on such idealized things, but a sense of sixth sense was strongly taking effect, making him unable to help but believe—within that dark and twisted body, there was still a persevering soul. Perhaps it was this soul that was maintaining the giant's form and restricting the number of shadow servants.

Just then, the data terminal suddenly spoke up: "Partner, you are a demigod, your intuition is sometimes more than just intuition."

"Nolan, give me another clear-out!" Hao Ren issued an order to the ship in the sky, while leaping up and charging towards the opponent again, "All drones, free fire—except for that scepter, hit anything else!"

Huge explosions rang out continuously as the Petrified Turtle Rock activated a series of small sentry guns on both sides of its hull—these were the weakest weapons on the ship, and didn't even qualify as weapons in the ship's armory. They were originally used to clear space debris, but they were still enough to produce considerable effects on this battlefield. A large number of shadow servants were shattered by the artillery fire, and even the dark rifts around the giant shrank slightly.

At the same time, drones and autonomous machines began to fire on the giant's body—although this would lead to more monsters splitting off, Hao Ren had given the order, and the AI no longer considered anything else.

The giant's body burst open with countless black and red wounds. This terrifying monster, whose physical strength was more than ten times stronger than the Guardians, staggered. He shook his arms, trying to regain his balance while howling madly. At that moment, Hao Ren had already approached his feet.

Just like a mouse challenging an elephant, Hao Ren felt even more aware of his insignificance in size as he rushed onto the giant's huge limbs. However, he had had many encounters with Guardian giants like Mu Lu, and the discomfort caused by this size difference was quickly thrown to the back of his mind. He raised his head, his only target: the scepter embedded in the opponent's chest.

The red crystal at the top of the scepter shone with an ominous light, with a black spot like a spatial rift in the middle, leaking a crazy and evil aura that caused even the spiritual world of a demigod to be shaken.

The closer he got, the clearer the strange aura in the crystal felt, and Hao Ren couldn't help but be horrified: What exactly was this thing? It clearly had a power very similar to that of Vivian, but why did it exhibit such terrifying fluctuations?

The giant, of course, immediately launched a counterattack. He tried to shake off the "bug" sticking to him, and dangerous currents of high temperature, high pressure, and strong poison emerged from the cracks in his skin. This was just the beginning; soon, the power of shadow permeated from all around, and countless shadow arrows appeared out of thin air, raining down on Hao Ren's shield.

Just as Hao Ren braced his shield and began to resist, he suddenly heard a rustling sound of flapping wings and a sharp cry. Large groups of bats appeared around him, blocking the giant's counterattack.

In these short few breaths, he had come to within three meters of the scepter.

The scepter released destructive power. Around it, space was fractured, time was distorted, and the rules of matter were almost non-existent. Hao Ren finally felt this at this position—he sensed an aura similar to the great rift in the center of the Rift Nebula beside the scepter.

This was a phenomenon caused by the intense conflict of the world rules of two worlds.

Of course, the annihilation aura felt here could not be compared with the Rift Nebula, but even if the scale was reduced countless times, they were still essentially the same level of things.

The giant seemed to feel a threat, or the scepter felt a threat and immediately stimulated its host—in short, Hao Ren felt a powerful energy reaction suddenly appear in the surrounding space, and the skin on the giant's chest was also covered with a dark red light.

This seemed to indicate a powerful counterattack.

"Heracles!" He pressed his hand hard on the giant's body, concentrating all his mental strength, "If you can still hear me, try your best one last time!"

His previous "intuition" was soon verified, because the giant's body did indeed freeze imperceptibly for a moment.

This moment was quite short, but within this moment, Hao Ren felt that the negative power released by the scepter was also suppressed: the soul in the giant's body seemed to squeeze out all its remaining strength, finally regaining the initiative once again.

The next second, Hao Ren's hand was on the scepter, and almost at the same time, the scepter vibrated violently, and the overwhelming negative power broke through the blockade again, and began to frantically erode everything around.

Hao Ren almost felt his body going out of control at that moment, but the part of his body blessed by the goddess immediately took effect, and the erosion of the crazy thoughts was temporarily blocked. He took out the highest-level dangerous goods storage box from his portable space at the fastest speed in his life, and then pulled the scepter out of the giant's flesh and threw it into the storage box.

Just as the storage box closed, he felt a burst of dizziness.

The surrounding scenery shook rapidly, and various colorful colors filled his vision, followed by an endless sense of falling, and his whole spirit seemed to sink into darkness and lost its response.

But the fall only lasted for a short time. Hao Ren suddenly woke up and found himself standing in an unfamiliar place.

A vast wilderness, endless, overgrown with weeds, two small rivers meandered across the wilderness, and finally merged into one place. Looking up, the sky was clear and cloudless, the sun was shining brightly, and a magnificent and mysterious mountain peak was suspended in the sky, surrounded by clouds and light.

"The first time I returned 'home', my stepmother cursed me with the most vicious language, my blood brothers and sisters despised me without hiding it, and a few people showed me indifferent indifference, and my father, he sat on the golden throne, and he said to me, welcome home, don't mind the others."

Hao Ren turned around in horror. He saw a person standing behind him at some unknown time, a tall, strong, and rough-looking man who was smiling.

This man had short, light brown curly hair, and his face had sharp edges and corners. His figure was almost as strong as Izhaks, and the muscles all over his body bulged under the simple gray-white short shirt, containing endless power, and there was a long scar on his face, which seemed to represent a glorious battle.

Other than that, he had no other characteristic objects or decorations on his body.

"Heracles?"

"It's me," the strong man smiled, "After so much effort, we can finally meet and talk."

"This is your spiritual world?" Hao Ren looked around, "Well… I didn't expect your spiritual world to be so… robust."

"The last memory, I want to make it clearer."

Hao Ren frowned, he said, "You have something to tell me?"

"Yes, about that 'artifact', about that core, and about your partner… I don't know how much you know about her, but you fight side by side, so I'll tell you everything I know."