The fetid mist of the Glowing Swamp was at its thickest at dawn.
Raine knelt at the edge of the fungal mat, emerald energy seeping from his fingertips into the sludge. [Life Sense] rippled outward like waves. Three kilometers away, the roots of the Mechanical World Tree were spreading underground at a speed of ten meters per second; wherever they passed, the swamp's glowing fungi withered in swaths, transforming into black metallic tumors.
"It's polluting the ley lines."
Raine withdrew his hand. The silver-blue patterns beneath his skin dimmed from energy depletion. Ever since the battle at the Purification Furnace, the four powers within him had remained in a state of imbalance—his Seed of Life was being eroded by mechanical toxins, his elven energy had been over-consumed, his dragon blood had become increasingly uncontrollable from prolonged berserk states, and the shackles formed by the Holy Alliance's seals kept fracturing.
Behind him came the sound of metal scraping. Ravenna was shaving down a stalk of luminous fungus with a dagger. The pulse of her violet-gold heart made the blade vibrate at high frequency, slicing cleanly through a fungus core theoretically harder than steel. Everything below her right elbow had already turned to metal, her skin taking on the cold hardness of alloy, yet her fingers still moved with dexterous precision—a grotesque fusion of alchemy and machinery.
"Good news is, I can use this thing as a resonance tuner."
She tapped her metal arm, producing a crisp tang. "Bad news is—"
The infant in her arms suddenly convulsed. The skull-shaped brand on his chest shot out a beam of black-green light across the swamp. From the distance came the clicking sound of metal breaking through earth—three Burrowing Scouts, centipede-shaped mechanical beasts, raised their heads from the muck, compound eyes locking on the source of light.
"—this little brat's still sending out signals."
Ravenna finished her sentence as her dagger left her hand, [Alchemical Pierce] striking precisely into the energy core of the foremost scout.
Raine's Frost-Whisper Sword swung in midair, releasing [Frost New Moon]—a crescent of ice that cleaved the other two in half. But the remains of the third suddenly self-destructed, and among the shrapnel were hundreds of Neural Probes!
"Down!"
Raine tackled Ravenna to the ground. A stabbing pain shot through his back as at least twenty probes pierced his flesh, squirming toward his spine like living creatures. He grunted, crimson dragon blood boiling instinctively—[Reverse-Scale Burn] incinerated the probes into molten iron, but the corrosive steam made his lungs burn.
The infant abruptly pressed a hand to Raine's bleeding wound. The gear-like right eye spun wildly, and disturbingly—beads of blood floated into the air, forming a miniature map. In the eastern mountains, five points of light flickered, connected by pulse-like lines.
"The coordinates of the remaining Watchers?"
Ravenna prodded the blood-map with a metal finger, making the points ripple.
"Wait… this arrangement—"
Her violet-gold heart contracted violently. Her metal arm stabbed into the map involuntarily, and the five points instantly re-formed into a sigil—one she had once seen in an alchemical tome: the Pentagram Ley-Line Seal.
"Not ordinary Watchers," Raine's emerald left eye bled. "They're seal nodes… the Devourer wants to release what's been suppressed."
From the depths of the swamp came the roar of steam vents erupting. The World Tree's roots had changed direction, now stretching eastward at full speed. Worse still, the Gear Moon in the sky had already devoured three-quarters of its surface, and within the missing crescent loomed the shadow of some multi-eyed behemoth.
The infant's skull brand suddenly expanded. A mechanical voice forced its way from his throat:
"Mother… hungry…"
Crossing the polluted swamp now meant racing the mechanical roots.
Raine cloaked the three of them in an emerald veil of [Life Camouflage], simulating the energy signature of swamp lifeforms. But the trick was becoming less effective on Ravenna—her metal arm kept emitting disruptive pulses, twice nearly attracting patrols of Abyss Annihilators.
"Can't we just cut this damn arm off?" she grumbled for the fifth time, slapping away an electrical spark from her forearm.
"Cut it now and the mechanical toxin will go straight to your heart," Raine replied, slicing through a blocking metalized vine. The dragon-fire on his Frost-Whisper Sword barely suppressed its regrowth. "We have to find the next purification device."
The infant's condition was even more worrying—his left side was turning translucent, like a fading ghost, while the right side's mechanical patterns grew more intricate, even sprouting Omega-like armor plates. Most disturbing of all was inside the skull brand—its mechanical pupil was developing emotion, gazing at the world through the infant's eyes.
By noon, they were forced to hide in a half-collapsed dwarven watchtower. Ironbeard had once said these towers were part of the ley-line monitoring network. Raine activated the remaining [Holo-Ley Scanner], emerald streams of light sketching a horrifying scene in the air:
Of the five sealed mountains, three Watchers' energy readings had already turned dark red, the fourth—toward Glass City—was violently fluctuating, and the fifth…
"Twilight Canyon?" Ravenna frowned. "Isn't that a goblin ruin?"
The infant suddenly grew restless, silver-blue energy flooding uncontrollably into the projection. At the location of Twilight Canyon, a hidden symbol appeared—a moon entangled in thorns.
"The Moon-Hidden Sanctuary…" Memory fragments flashed through Raine's mind. "The goblins' place of sealing… the Seed of Corruption."
The infant screamed. The skull brand fired a tangible black-green beam straight through the tower's roof. Through the hole, the Gear Moon's shadow was twisting into the blurred visage of a woman.
"Mother… awakens…" The mechanical voice carried a warped reverence.
Ravenna clamped a hand over the infant's mouth. Her metal fingers hissed as they corroded:
"Shut it, you little—"
The tower shook violently. The ley scanner spat sparks, switching to live feed: on the trunk of the World Tree, countless metal petals were blooming, revealing a hundred-meter-wide circular platform. Upon it stood twelve robed figures, jointly lifting some luminous object—its energy signature identical to the infant's skull brand.
"The Council's holding the Descent Ritual." Heat flushed along Raine's dragon-blood markings. "We have to destroy at least two seal nodes before they wake 'Mother'."
A heavy thud landed outside. Through emerald vision, Raine saw three Abyss Executioners—heavy mechanicals armed with rotary chainsaws and neurotoxin cannons, chests branded with the Devourer's pupil emblem.
"Guess who ordered express delivery?" Ravenna flexed her metal wrist. The violet-gold heart pumped an overload of energy, her entire arm glowing dangerous red.
Raine shoved the infant into a corner instrument cabinet, Frost-Whisper Sword at the ready. For the first time, three energies willingly fused, forming unstable white-gold flame along the blade:
"I'll take left, you take right, middle one gets the 'surprise'."
The Executioners' chainsaws roared in unison. [Death Cyclone] shredded the tower walls. And behind them, the swamp's metalized ground swelled—something larger was coming…
Battle erupted amid the tower's collapse.
Raine's [Light-Blade Dash] was so fast it left afterimages, each white-gold slash leaving molten scars on Executioner armor. But these three-meter killing machines learned fast—by the second clash, they were already predicting the tangle of emerald vines, intercepting with back-mounted Corrosive Gel sprayers.
Ravenna fought with brutal simplicity. Her metal arm unleashed [Overload Strike]—each punch arcing with high-voltage discharge. The third blow crushed the right Executioner's head into its chest cavity, but at the cost of smoke from her joints and violet-gold patterns eaten away by mechanical toxin.
"Raine! Nine o'clock!"
Her warning came a second too late. The middle Executioner suddenly broke apart, hundreds of Killer Gears swirling into a tornado that surrounded Raine. Just as the teeth were about to close—
The infant's cabinet exploded.
The skull brand's black-green beam cut with surgical precision, severing the Executioner's power conduits instantly. Even more shocking, all the Killer Gears turned midair, shredding their former master into scrap!
"Nice work, you little—" Ravenna's cheer cut short.
The beam didn't stop. It lanced deep into the swamp's bulge. Mud cascaded away, revealing a colossal slumbering form—remains of an ancient mechanized tree, with half a merfolk woman's face embedded in the trunk—the same visage as on the Gear Moon.
"The First Watcher…" Raine's mind surged with memory. "She was the first to be corrupted!"
The merfolk's eyes snapped open, gear-wheels spinning in her powder-blue pupils. The infant convulsed as his skull brand resonated with the identical mark on the trunk, the black-green beam swelling tenfold.
Ravenna's violet-gold heart flared, [Alchemical Binding] chains wrapping the infant—but too late. The First Watcher's roots erupted from the ground, tips splitting into syringe-like points, injecting dark-gold liquid straight into the ley lines.
The entire swamp boiled.
Fungal mats metalized into fields of razor crystal clusters, which began self-assembling into hundreds of Basic Constructs. At the heart of the First Watcher's trunk, a spatial rift was slowly tearing open—
"She's forcing open an Abyss Gate!" Raine scooped up the backlash-stricken unconscious infant. "We have to go—now!"
But Ravenna stood unmoving. Her metal arm was fully overloaded, yet the violet-gold lines under her skin were unnaturally calm.
"No. You go."
Her heart floated from her chest, suspended in the air. The alchemical matrix unfolded with unprecedented precision, and Raine suddenly understood—this heart was already a hybrid of alchemy and Watcher energy, a living bomb capable of disrupting the ritual.
"Tell Old Nick…" She turned and grinned, blood on her fangs, "his foot-bath recipe needs updating."
Light engulfed everything.
When Raine regained vision atop a cliff a kilometer away, the First Watcher's location was nothing but a five-hundred-meter crystalline crater. At its base lay half a violet-gold severed finger, still faintly twitching…
And in the eastern sky, the Gear Moon's advance had halted.