Chapter 165 - 164: Devouring and Growth

Chapter 165: Chapter 164: Devouring and Growth

After ordering Red Bone to stand down, Gu Su noticed that the sound of the Graveyard Demon’s movement had abruptly ceased. The massive body, which had been slowly advancing, came to a complete stop.

Curious, he quickly ascended the wall to get a better view. He saw that the Graveyard Demon had successfully rendezvoused with the convoy dragging the spaceship and the small Mobile Castle, the two groups merging into one at the edge of the ruins.

Below, his Undead minions were methodically dismantling the Strong-rooted Grass Vines entangled around the spaceship and the Mobile Castle. The thick vines were ripped away one by one and collected, revealing the ship’s fractured bulkheads and the castle’s mottled metal shell.

The Graveyard Demon stood silently nearby, as if patiently waiting for something. The Yin Qi swirling around it was far denser than usual.

Seeing this, Gu Su instinctively raised his hand, about to order Bone Ash to deploy some Corroding Mycelium below, just as it had to devour the gas station and the Orc Camp.

But to his utter astonishment, the instant the Undead finished dismantling the last vine, the Red Balloons hanging on the Graveyard Magic Wall suddenly swelled. Their sacs tightened and pulsed with an eerie red light, lifting the entire massive Graveyard Demon slightly upward.

A gap appeared between its base, which had been flush with the ground, and the rubble-strewn earth.

The next second, countless strands of snow-white Corroding Mycelium spewed from the gap at the Graveyard Demon’s base, surging toward the spaceship and the small Mobile Castle like a torrential white river, dense and ceaseless.

In an instant, the two behemoths were completely enveloped by the mycelium, which lunged like a starving Fierce Beast pouncing on its prey, offering no chance to escape.

The moment the mycelium made contact, it began to spread and penetrate aggressively. Slender threads bored into the cracks of the ship’s fractured bulkheads, climbing inward along twisted pipes. The once-hard metal shell was slowly eaten away, emitting a SIZZLING, corrosive sound and releasing wisps of eerie green smoke.

Meanwhile, the mycelium swarming the small Mobile Castle spread along its metal skeleton, tightly wrapping its walls, wheels, and hatches. The once-uneven walls, now covered by the mycelium, slowly softened and dissolved, the castle’s silhouette blurring as it was consumed.

The wreckage of the spaceship’s thrusters was bound tightly by the mycelium. Its casing peeled away layer by layer, exposing the intricate circuits and components within. Like greedy tentacles, the mycelium dismantled and devoured these parts one by one, not leaving even a single shard of metal behind.

The small Mobile Castle’s defensive armor melted into a viscous metallic liquid under the mycelium’s corrosion and was absorbed, bit by bit, into the Graveyard Demon’s body. The once-sturdy castle gradually shrank and dissolved, ultimately merging with the mycelium and being slowly dragged toward the Graveyard Demon’s base.

[Ding! Devouring Heaven-Breaking Propeller Type-4 Spaceship (property of the Purple Swamp Clan). Devouring micro-sized Mobile Castle. Time remaining: 30 minutes!]

A system notification suddenly sounded, and Gu Su stood frozen on the wall, his face a mask of astonishment.

’Wait, that’s it? No consumption options?’

In truth, Gu Su had no idea that this was the Corroding Mycelium’s true method of consumption.

The reason a "choose one of three" extraction option had appeared before was simply that the targets had been too far from the Graveyard Demon. The amount of Corroding Mycelium that could be deployed was limited, so it could only consume a small portion at a time and had to prioritize extracting the core essence.

Now, however, the spaceship and the Mobile Castle were right before the Graveyard Demon. The mycelium could gush forth at full power without restraint, so it was naturally going to consume and break down both trophies completely.

Just like the scattered materials he had previously brought to the Graveyard Demon, the mycelium would first break the targets down into their most basic components. The Graveyard Demon would then filter and absorb what it needed. Upon finding usable parts and materials, the Graveyard Demon would automatically modify and upgrade itself, requiring no manual input from Gu Su.

More importantly, this kind of close-range consumption was a *complete* assimilation. Sometimes, what was pulled in wasn’t just raw materials, but could even include partial spaces and structures from the target itself.

This, however, was something Gu Su was still completely unaware of.

He stood on the wall, frowning in thought, wondering if something had gone wrong. Below, however, the Corroding Mycelium showed no signs of slowing its consumption. At the same time, the interior of the Graveyard Demon was undergoing a cataclysmic transformation, far more drastic than any previous upgrade.

The first changes appeared on the northern side of the Graveyard Demon, in the area where Alice and the Decaying Throne were located.

The previously uniform wall suddenly retracted inward and began to reconfigure. Bricks taken from the Mobile Castle fused with alloys consumed from the spaceship, rapidly piling up and taking shape.

A lighthouse-style Watchtower, roughly five meters in diameter and thirteen meters tall, now stood in its place. The tower’s body had a brick foundation, while its outer layer was clad in a thin sheet of spaceship alloy that gleamed with a cold, metallic luster, splitting that section of the wall in two.

The body of the Watchtower was dotted with fine observation slits. At the very top platform, the previously shattered glass windows had been replaced with fragments from the spaceship’s viewports, making them smooth and transparent.

Seated upon the Decaying Throne, Alice could now look down from a commanding height. Aided by the Watchtower’s elevation, she could see everything happening within a radius of several miles, expanding her field of view many times over.

Most importantly, the Watchtower was now equipped with observation instruments similar to radar and telescopes. In essence, the Watchtower had been directly upgraded.

Next, a faint tremor emanated from the very core of the Graveyard Demon.

The dilapidated old tent that had been with Gu Su for so long vanished in a flash of light. In its place, a structure resembling an RV, cobbled together from the spaceship’s fuselage and the Mobile Castle’s sheet metal, settled firmly where the tent had once stood.

This new structure was more than double the size of the original tent. Its exterior was covered in the Mobile Castle’s defensive armor, and its surface still bore the metallic texture of the spaceship’s hull. It possessed both the sturdiness of the Mobile Castle and the airtight integrity of a spaceship cabin.

The door was retrofitted from the spaceship’s escape hatch. It was thick and solid, emitting a metallic CREAK with a gentle push, a far cry from the flimsy, fragile tent.

Most importantly, the living quarters from the Mobile Castle had been quite good, and all related furnishings and amenities had been brought over intact.

Whether or not the tent’s Level had increased was one thing, but Gu Su’s quality of life was definitely about to improve dramatically.

Meanwhile, near the base of the Graveyard Demon, countless Metal pipes of varying thickness were slowly emerging and extending outward.

These pipes were retrofitted from the spaceship’s propulsion system and the Mobile Castle’s conveyor conduits, their walls gleaming with a cold metallic light. Though they were immediately entangled and secured by the Strong Root Grass and vines on the Graveyard Demon’s exterior, obscuring much of their form, their paths were still clearly visible. They crisscrossed the base like the Graveyard Demon’s blood vessels, with a faint energy flowing within, seemingly channeling the consumed power throughout its body.

The Corroding Mycelium’s consumption continued, and the Graveyard Demon’s transformation never ceased. With every part of the spaceship and castle it devoured, the Graveyard Demon’s internal and external structure became more refined.

The eerie energy fluctuations around it grew more intense. A more powerful and more structured Undead base was slowly taking shape atop the ruins.

Watching the transformation before him and thinking about the bunker and spaceship he’d used the Corroding Mycelium to consume, Gu Su couldn’t help but grab his head and let out a low groan.

’What have I done?!’

’Such a waste!’