Chapter 616: Vella Breaks Chorus

Dark mana surged across the copper junction boxes as Vella knelt at the primary nexus beneath the shattered willow grove.

Around the sunken perimeter, dozens of severed conduits hissed, venting faint purple vapors where Eirwen broke the central command wave.

Behind her, Hajin stood with his feet planted firmly against the damp earth, anchoring the equipped Spirit Ring contract between them.

The physical tether hummed against his palm, carrying the brutal psychic backwash of the national network without flinching.

"Every secondary conduit is pulsing in erratic triplets," Vella whispered, her dark eyes tracking the violent spikes across the copper manifold.

"Can your contract take the full feedback if I sever three nodes simultaneously?"

"Take as many as you need," Hajin answered with complete confidence.

"I can hold this link until midnight without breaking sweat."

"Do not get cocky, summoner," she murmured, tracing a needle-thin scalpel of shadow mana over the first vibrating conduit.

"If I slip by a fraction of an inch, fifty civilians in the lower valley wake up screaming."

She aligned her breath with Ferra’s portable copy of the counting house timing wheel, watching the pulses cycle down.

"One... two... three," she whispered under her breath, timing the erratic current down to the final microsecond.

Her shadow scalpel snapped down like an executioner’s guillotine, slicing through the primary conduit with surgical perfection.

[ Host contract synchronized: Spirit Ring anchor stable ]

[ Hostile node severed: District seven channel purged ]

A shrill psychic shriek tore through the underground chamber as the first parasitic core withered into ash.

Across the valley, the twitching militia fighters in the warded trenches went limp, drawing deep, natural breaths as the puppet strings dissolved.

"First channel clean," she announced, wiping a bead of perspiration from her forehead.

"Moving to the municipal relay cluster."

Before she could position her shadow blade over the second conduit, the tangled wires suddenly writhed like agitated vipers.

A colossal Choral presence coalesced within the junction box, manifesting as a distorted face composed of shifting purple runes.

"Spirit physician," the collective voice hissed, vibrating directly inside her skull like grinding millstones.

"You waste your craft trying to save every peasant."

"Let us bargain," the entity whispered, its discordant tone oozing false sympathy.

"Leave the northern supply corridor untouched, and we will voluntarily surrender the western wards without shedding another drop of mortal blood."

"If you refuse, we will detonate every remaining node, turning forty thousand human minds into hollow husks before your blade can move!"

Vella stared directly into the writhing purple runes, her expression turning as hard as subterranean slate.

"Bargain with a parasite?"

"You must be joking!"

"I spent three days examining your disgusting circuitry with Didi," she said, leaning forward until her nose almost touched the humming conduit.

"We mapped the exact point where civic loyalty ends and your foul possession begins."

"You do not possess the bandwidth to detonate those minds while holding off our host’s anchor!"

"Kill them all!" the chorus shrieked in sudden panic.

"Detonate the—!"

"Hajin, clamp down!" Vella yelled at the top of her lungs.

"Locking the anchor now!" he roared back, driving pure sovereign mana down through the Spirit Ring contract.

The golden contract flared with absolute authority, seizing the Choral wave in an unbreakable metaphysical vise.

Deprived of its escape route, the central possession mind thrashed helplessly within the exposed junction box.

Vella drove both hands into the core of the machine, weaving dozens of intricate shadow tendrils through the copper relays.

Using the exact surgical divergence Didi documented, she separated the genuine civic oaths from the parasitic choral implants in rapid succession.

"Sever the first junction... isolate the second line... purge the third bypass!" she commanded herself in rapid succession.

Conduit after conduit snapped clean, releasing hundreds of trapped minds from the suffocating hive consciousness.

With every severed link, the Choral entity lost mass, its screeching voice dropping in pitch until it sounded like a dying insect.

"This is for every patient who cried out in the clinic," Vella snarled, plunging her shadow scalpel directly into the central core.

The primary Choral nucleus shattered with a deafening crack, spraying harmless purple sparks across the floor.

[ Host contract kill verification: Primary choral nexus eliminated ]

[ Total valid hostile cores severed: 1,420 ]

[ Experience calculation: Host rule applied via equipped Spirit Ring contract ]

[ Host experience gained: +40,000,000 EXP ]

[ Cumulative host experience: 670,000,000 / 1,000,000,000 ]

[ Ring seven progression: 67.0% ]

Hajin let out a long, satisfied whistle as the massive golden experience orb flowed through the ring into his chest.

"Forty million in one clean sweep," he muttered, flexing his fingers as fresh power settled into his spiritual core.

"That was magnificent work, Vella."

"Clean up your own drool, summoner," she replied with a faint smirk, standing up and dusting off her dark robes.

"I still have forty-eight patients in the field hospital who need their neural channels checked for residual scarring."

She walked down the row of silent conduits, physically inspecting every brass terminal to ensure no dormant parasites lingered in the wires.

The elder arborist peeked into the chamber from the outer trench, his face pale with lingering dread.

"Is... is it over?" the old man stammered, clutching a wooden talisman against his chest.

"The choral wave is dead," she told him firmly, sheathing her shadow scalpel.

"Go tell the field surgeons they can wake the patients."

"Not a single mind was lost, and every civic oath remains intact."

The old arborist dropped to his knees in tears, whispering prayers of gratitude toward the ceiling.

High above the battlefield, the celestial stream broadcast lit up with millions of explosive comments and blinding superchats.

[ Seoul_Tactician: "FORTY MILLION EXP FOR HAJIN! We are cruising toward Ring Seven at lightning speed!" ]

[ StarlightScholar: "Vella absolutely dismantled that hive mind without blinking! The surgical precision was unreal!" ]

[ IronVanguard: "Did you see that entity try to negotiate? Bro got rejected so hard his entire network exploded!" ]

[ HearthKeeper: "Hajin’s contract anchoring is ridiculous, he just absorbed that entire feedback surge like a sponge!" ]

[ ShadowMage44: "Six hundred and seventy million total host EXP! Our boy is an absolute monster!" ]

Rumi and Nari slipped into the chamber, their lynx ears flicking toward the ceiling as they sniffed the ozone-filled air.

"Smells like fried calamari," the elder twin noted with a cheerful grin, nudging a charred conduit with the tip of her shoe.

"Do not kick the live wires, you silly cat," Nari chided, swatting her sister’s arm.

"If you blow up the junction box now, our healer will make us drink bitter tea for a week!"

"I would make you drink battery acid," Vella said dryly, though the faint twitch of her lips gave away her amusement.

Hajin chuckled, closing his status screen and offering the spirit maiden a flask of clean well water.

"Drink some water," he urged gently.

"You performed miracles today, but tomorrow we march on their supply lines."

"I know," she sighed, taking the flask and drinking deeply before handing it back to him.

"Their central mind is broken here, but their physical armies will not wait for our congratulations."

"Let us get back to camp before the soup gets cold."

Vella paused at the exit and asked the nearest freed patient to repeat his own name and the date of the last safe water delivery.

He answered without a second voice intruding, and she finally let Hajin guide her away from the junction before her hands began to shake.

Together, the group stepped out of the subterranean junction into the bright afternoon sunlight, leaving behind a cured nation.