Chapter 351: Charged Creeper
From the soil that had been completely polluted and turned into a swamp, a hand suddenly broke through the surface.
Like a zombie clawing its way out of the grave, Steven forcefully dragged his body up from that mire.
The pollution here was so strong that even his body began to twist in strange ways. When he scratched his chin, feeling something there, at first, he thought that he had grown a beard, but then he looked down and noticed what it was. Tentacles.
Well, there's nothing he can do about it.
His physique was indeed excellent, and a Minecrafter's abnormal body was naturally resistant, but that didn't mean he was truly immune to everything. He still got debuffs like anyone else—he just had the handy trick of cleansing them away with milk.
He tugged the corner of his mouth into a crooked grin as he felt the changes taking root within him. This pollution… it was even more outrageous than Oripathy. At least Oripathy could be suppressed or treated. But this thing—it felt more like a total biological reconstruction, a rewriting of the body at its most fundamental level.
In a sense, it wasn't too different from those Seaborn.
The Seaborn reshaped themselves into aquatic forms, but this pollution… this aimed to twist its victims into some abstract, incomprehensible aberration.
Still, he had always been satisfied with his looks. Turning into a freak with a tentacle face? No thanks. He wasn't exactly short on body parts anyway.
Lifting his head, he met the gaze—or rather, the countless gazes—of the Collapsal looming over him, its thousands of eyes all fixated on him at once. Steven bared his teeth in return, his grin revealing sharp, fanglike canines that hadn't been there before.
Since its last move had failed to finish him… wasn't it about time for his turn?
Bending his knees slightly, Steven launched himself like a bullet fired from a cannon. In the blink of an eye, he became a blazing meteor hurtling straight toward the abomination.
The Collapsal hadn't expected this. The concentrated pollution it unleashed—enough to collapse reality itself—should have been more than enough to erase such a bug of an existence. Yet instead, it had only gnawed at his body a little.
But that was fine.
If he was polluted, then logically, he should be under its control.
Tentacles whipped wildly as the Collapsal's myriad eyes all flared crimson, beams of bizarre light converging on Steven just as he reached striking distance.
And the Minecrafter felt it immediately—an alien force trying to surge from within him, clawing for control of his body.
Unfortunately for the Collapsal, compared to the power already within him, this intruding force was laughably tiny. If he hadn't noticed the dramatic light show, he probably wouldn't even have realized anything was happening at all.
So, the pollution really had added a bit of power to his body. If his strength was ten thousand before, then this "gift" might have raised it by… what, a single point? Maybe two at best.
The changes were so minuscule that Steven barely even noticed any attempt to seize control of his body. To him, it just felt like the pollution was sprouting a few extra tentacles here and there, maybe even popping out an extra… appendage or two.
…Wait.
Now that he thought about it, couldn't this actually be used for… certain fun scenarios? Especially with Talulah and Alina…
"Ahem, ahem, ahem."
Steven coughed violently, shaking the nonsense from his head. This was not the time for kinky daydreams. He was in the middle of a fight with a literal eldritch horror. If Talulah or Alina ever found out what he had just thought, they'd probably look at him like his taste in women had taken a serious nosedive into depravity.
Composing himself, Steven raised his head and met the suffocating mass of eyes staring down at him. Thousands of pupils glared, desperate to dominate him, to force him into becoming one of its kin.
But… he simply couldn't cooperate, even if he wanted to.
And since the monster had gone out of its way to "gift" him this new body, well, Steven supposed he owed it a little gift in return.
So, under the Collapsal's confused gaze, Steven didn't strike. Instead, he casually pulled out an egg-shaped object and hurled it at the abomination.
The green egg, no larger than his fist, struck the monster's flesh. No explosion, no shockwave, nothing like his previous attacks. It was so underwhelming that the Collapsal almost didn't register it as an attack at all. In fact, judging from the faint pulse of pollution within the Minecrafter body, the monster felt as if his hostility had… vanished entirely.
Had it succeeded in converting him?
Or was this something else?
A hint of doubt flickered in its countless eyes. Warily, it fixated on the green egg resting against its body.
Then, in the next instant, the egg warped—reshaping itself into something grotesque, a purely green rectangular creature with no arms, just four stubby legs like a platform… and a face twisted into a look of eternal suffering.
What unsettled the Collapsal even more was that its body was steeped in the highest concentrations of corruption—yet this bizarre creature showed not the slightest sign of pollution. Instead, it began to swell, pulsing with unnatural growth.
A dreadful premonition stabbed through the Collapsal's mind. It writhed, twisting its body violently to try and shake the thing off. Whatever this was, it reeked of disaster.
But Steven wasn't about to let it wriggle free.
"Don't be in such a rush to shake it off," he said with a bright smile. "That's my little gift to you. Consider it a thank-you present for turning me into… whatever this is now."
With that, he casually threw a strange metal rod. The spear-like weapon pierced straight through the green creature, pinning it firmly to the abomination's body.
The sheer impact rattled the Collapsal so badly that even its flailing tentacles stilled for a moment. The strike itself did little real damage, but that only made the creeping terror worse. Some primal instinct screamed at the creature that this was dangerous—that whatever this strange boy was setting up, it was lethal.
It struggled harder, desperate to tear free the green monster and the impaling rod.
But Steven only smirked, raising a finger toward the sky. With a sly arch of his brow, he looked the Collapsal dead in the eyes.
"You know what happens when you're standing tall during a thunderstorm… while holding a metal pole?"
The abomination didn't understand his words at all. But it couldn't mistake the savage grin spreading across Steven's face, his voice booming with manic delight.
"Thor, strike me down!"
Just as the abomination was about to tear free the strange object this boy had pinned to its body, it heard a sound—the last sound it would ever hear in its life.
The once-clear skies over the snowfields darkened in an instant. Rolling storm clouds swallowed the heavens, thunder rumbled like war drums, and jagged streaks of lightning split across the firmament, brighter than falling stars.
[Warning: Weather Control Device Detected.]
[Lightning Storm Created.]
The system popped up a neat little message, perfectly timed, and Steven's face twisted into a look that practically said: Seriously? You don't say.
And then, the heavens roared.
Bolts of divine punishment crashed down, slamming into the writhing abomination. It convulsed under the strike, its titanic body seizing as though judgment itself had descended. In an instant, its countless tentacles went slack, drooping helplessly against the frozen ground.
The thunderbolts alone couldn't destroy a monster of this size—Steven knew that well enough. But to paralyze it? Oh yes, that was more than enough.
Besides, he had never planned to finish it off with lightning.
The true killing move was still the green, rectangular monster he had nailed to its body from the very beginning.
Anyone who'd ever mined in Minecraft knew the sound—that infamous hiss behind your back, the sound that meant the end was nigh. Creepers were already the embodiment of danger. But if you wanted something worse? Something nightmarish? That was simple:
A charged creeper.
A creeper wrapped in crackling lightning, glowing like it had overdosed on raw electricity.
Even worse, something felt… off. Maybe it was because this wasn't the same world, or maybe because of the multiple lightning strikes—but Steven could sense it. The charged creeper's power was amplifying far beyond what he had expected.
The space around it warped, reality itself bending from the sheer energy swelling inside. The monster ballooned grotesquely, its aura swelling into something catastrophic.
"…Uh. Did I… overcharge it?"
Scratching the back of his head with a sheepish look, Steven muttered to himself.
And then it happened.
A blinding explosion ripped through the snowfields—an earth-shattering detonation that shook the entire Ursus tundra. The world itself seemed to recoil from the sheer force as devastation blossomed outward from where the Minecrafter stood.
<+>
Note: Character Illustration is in this Google Drive:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iuyfwNVFHzIi9H4rWNT_lAm7jTSiah_M
<+>
If you want to see more chapter of this story and don't mind spending $5 monthly to see till the latest chapter, please go to my Ko-Fi[1]
Latest Chapter in Ko-Fi: Chapter 393: The Street Rascals' Resonance[2]
Link to the latest chapter: https://ko-fi.com/post/Arknightcraft-Modpack-393-M4M21O811E[3]
https://ko-fi.com/stevetheminecrafter[4]
[1] https://ko-fi.com/stevetheminecrafter
[2] https://ko-fi.com/post/Arknightcraft-Modpack-393-M4M21O811E
[3] https://ko-fi.com/post/Arknightcraft-Modpack-393-M4M21O811E
[4] https://ko-fi.com/stevetheminecrafter