novelraw Chapter 416: Battlefield and Experiment
Chapter 416: Battlefield and Experiment
This opportunity arrived far sooner than anyone anticipated.
A mere half year into the fifth loop, the black tide once again gathered at the edge of the horizon, surging toward the wizard camp with a decisiveness and desperation that surpassed any previous assault.
Jie Ming and the logistics-system wizards, upon hearing the alarm, felt surprise but swiftly prepared. They hurried to the core observation platform above the legion’s main formation.
Unlike the previous loop, most of the instruments now on the platform came in duplicate sets.
One set consisted of the old instruments salvaged from the previous loop, repaired and recalibrated. The other set was newly constructed this loop using reset resources.
Jie Ming’s research group had decided to collect data while simultaneously conducting experiments, so the new equipment would handle primary data gathering.
The old equipment, meanwhile, would observe the discrepancies produced in the time reversal for materials that had once existed, then vanished, and now reappeared—serving as a critical paradox reference experiment.
“Why are they in such a hurry this time?” Jie Ming muttered while calibrating the macro energy scanner before him, his brows furrowed as he gazed at the black wall rising once more on the distant horizon.
According to experience and records from prior loops, the Sickle-Skull should have preferred delay and attrition, using the loop to endlessly trial-and-error and learn.
Moreover, due to unknown reasons, most Sickle-Skull seemed to harbor considerable aversion to the time loop itself. They should have welcomed the wizards’ strategy of prolonging the conflict. “I don’t know.” Lord Frost’s voice came through the communication rune, calm yet tinged with gravity. “Our advance rhythm precisely replicated the ‘slow boil’ strategy from the previous loop, but the enemy clearly refuses to cooperate.”
“They may have sensed something… perhaps the shift in our research focus, or that we are using the loop to pursue something they perceive as even more dangerous.”
Jie Ming fell into thought.
The Sickle-Skull’s aversion to time reversal was clear, yet now they had chosen this near-suicidal all-out offensive.
Were they panicking, sensing that the wizards’ research might touch the very root of the loop?
Or was there, deep within their unknown decision-making network, some more ancient will driving them headlong into the flames?
Regardless, the present moment was the perfect chance to secure high-tier samples.
“Commander, please try to preserve as many high-grade samples as possible during the engagement—preferably seventh- and eighth-tier individuals.” Jie Ming immediately made the request. “Alive or dead makes no difference. Intact corpses or separable intact body parts are both acceptable.”
“Granted.” Frost agreed without hesitation. “In any case, spoils of war will vanish after the loop. Might as well make full use of them. Prepare yourself—the frontline pressure will be immense.”
With those words, war erupted once more.
This time, the Sickle-Skull army had clearly learned bitter lessons from the previous two loops.
When the wizards habitually unleashed their targeted “Frequency Pollution Fields” and “Crystallization Disintegration Waves,” countless reverse-modulated energy shields immediately flared across the insect tide.
They rippled like countless waves across a black sea, neutralizing and canceling most of the interference effects.
They even deployed specialized “Scavenger” variants that deliberately absorbed and decomposed the nanomachine clouds targeting their pheromone receptors—at the cost of their own bodies.
The Sickle-Skull were evolving. They were adapting.
But the wizards had never stopped advancing either.
Even before the main wizard force could unleash large-scale spellcasting, the task of frontline slaughter had already been handed to the newest generation of bioengineered beast swarms.
These monstrosities were based on captured low-tier Sickle-Skull genetics, fused with predatory traits from various extreme-environment organisms, and embedded with dozens of lethal weak-point encodings tailored specifically to Sickle-Skull physiology.
Their forms were grotesque: enormous armored centipedes covered in bio-energy cannon muzzles, or grotesque fleshy masses oozing hyper-corrosive slime and firing piercing bone spikes.
Most critically, these bio-beasts had been granted the ability to devour massive amounts of biomass for rapid evolution and high-speed fission reproduction.
The moment battle began, the first wave of tens of millions of bio-beasts charged like starving wolves into a flock of sheep.
Their claws and fangs easily tore through reinforced Sickle-Skull carapaces. Their secreted digestive fluids rapidly broke down tissues and converted them into their own energy.
Whenever a bio-beast consumed sufficient biomass, its body would writhe violently, then split into two—or even three—independent individuals in an extremely short time!
The instant the black insect tide collided head-on with this silver-gray “plague,” the battle turned decisively one-sided.
The number of bio-beasts grew exponentially amid combat, spreading like dense ink dropped into water, rapidly diffusing and engulfing everything.
Soon, silver-gray reversed the flow and swallowed the black ocean whole.
Wherever they passed, only weathered fragments of drained carapaces remained—energy and biomass completely siphoned away.
The wizards in the rear played the roles of “support” and “harvester.”
They unleashed wide-area energy storms to clear obstacles for the bio-beast swarms and create openings.
Or they precisely eliminated high-tier Sickle-Skull attempting to organize counterattacks or unleash special abilities.
Under Commander Frost’s orders, numerous wizards specifically used invisible force fields to peel relatively intact and valuable Sickle-Skull corpses from the chaos of battle and transport them back to the platform.
Jie Ming swiftly entered working mode.
He moved among the continuous stream of “samples” being delivered, sweeping them with mental power for rapid sorting.
First- and second-tier specimens were bulk-stored in designated zones as basic research material.
Third- and fourth-tier were carefully inspected for morphological and mutational characteristics, then categorized.
Fifth- and sixth-tier received focused screening.
All samples followed the experimental plan: half were stored whole in the Cave Heaven, while the other half were carefully sectioned—perhaps a limb, half a head, or certain organs—only the sectioned parts stored, the remainder left outside.
Each tier was divided into multiple batches, sectioned by percentage of volume, and stored in the Inner Cave Heaven to observe changes in the next loop.
Just as sample collection proceeded at full speed, a sudden change erupted high above!
Five terrifying pressures that dimmed heaven and earth abruptly descended, as though the sky itself was being crushed downward by invisible weight.
Five eighth-tier Sickle-Skull leaders—far larger than usual, their carapaces flowing with dark golden patterns—led over a hundred ferocious seventh-tier guards, tearing through the cloud layers and charging straight toward the wizard camp core!
Their target was clear—destroy the command system and those “researchers” they perceived as a fatal threat!
“So they’ve finally shown themselves?” Lord Frost’s icy voice resounded through the heavens.
He did not hesitate in the slightest. His silver-gray robe billowed as his figure transformed into a streak of light that ripped across the sky, fearlessly meeting those five eighth-tier auras head-on!
One against five!
Behind him, dozens of sixth-tier wizards who had long been itching for battle let out long howls and soared skyward, each selecting a target and pouncing toward the hundred-plus seventh-tier Sickle-Skull.
Though vastly outnumbered and outranked, no trace of fear showed on the wizards’ faces—only cold calculation.
The sky instantly became a vortex of clashing laws and energies.
Frost’s figure flickered unpredictably amid the siege of five higher-tier beings. Each of his strikes was concise yet efficient, the law fluctuations he triggered causing space itself to wail in agony.
With his own power alone, he firmly pinned down five existences one tier above him—even completely suppressing them!
The sixth-tier wizards’ battlefield was likewise proceeding with exceptional smoothness.
Some faced several seventh-tier Sickle-Skull alone; others formed small battle formations to fight outnumbered.
All manner of bizarre and powerful witchcraft bloomed: localized time-flow distortions, folded and torn spatial structures, molecular-level material deconstruction, soul-level mental assaults… The wizards gave the violence of knowledge its most vivid expression.
Seventh-tier Sickle-Skull fell one after another amid shrill shrieks, their broken corpses raining down.
Soon, sixth-tier wizards finished off their opponents. They wielded energy to drag several—even dozens—of seventh-tier Sickle-Skull corpses back to the platform, dropping them before Jie Ming.
“Hurry! While the energy hasn’t fully dissipated!” the wizards urged.
“You’re too ruthless—most of these samples are already in pieces!”
Despite his words, Jie Ming’s mental focus was razor-sharp, his movements swift as illusion.
He rapidly inspected each corpse, paying special attention to the special chest plate known as the “Honor Carapace.”
According to research, this plate recorded every severe injury the individual had endured. Each healing left a unique, unfalsifiable color imprint.
Because the colors produced by each healing varied randomly, in Sickle-Skull culture, the more scars and colors on this plate, the richer the battle experience—and the higher the social status.
Such a unique carapace naturally became the ideal marker.
Jie Ming used a specially crafted blade to precisely cut standard circular, triangular, or square fragments from the Honor Carapaces of several corpses, then stored the fragments in the Cave Heaven.
As for the corpses themselves, half were stored whole, while half had only the sectioned Honor Carapace parts stored.
The fierce battle in the sky was nearing its conclusion.
With a single “Annihilation Star Mark” that tore open the void, Frost grievously wounded the last two stubbornly resisting eighth-tier leaders, locking them in midair with powerful binding witchcraft, rendering them immobile.
In his hands, he already held three lifeless eighth-tier Sickle-Skull corpses.
He descended to the platform and set the three corpses down, pointing to the two still restrained in the air: “Keep the living ones for observation. Handle the corpses according to your experimental plan.”
Jie Ming nodded and stepped forward to carefully examine the three eighth-tier corpses.
Their Honor Carapaces were far larger, covered in dazzling, mottled colors that recorded countless brutal battles.
Jie Ming selected one complete corpse, along with circular fragments cut from the Honor Carapaces of the other two, and solemnly stored them in the most secure isolated zone of his Inner Cave Heaven.
With these markers, progress could finally be made in studying the time paradox mechanism in the next loop.
Jie Ming patted his chest with satisfaction.
On the battlefield, under the combined slaughter of bio-beasts and wizards, the Sickle-Skull army’s numbers had already fallen to a critical threshold.
That familiar, fundamental pulling sensation originating from the root of the world once again swept over Jie Ming’s perception without warning.
The plane’s elements began to tremble violently. Time began to reverse.
The fifth loop was about to end.
In the final instant before his consciousness was stripped away, Jie Ming unleashed every ounce of his mental power, sweeping up every new instrument and recording crystal on the observation platform and forcing as many as possible into his Inner Cave Heaven.
Darkness swallowed his vision.