Deep within the hilltop ruins, a scorched clearing lay silent. The air felt thick, almost frozen in place. Suddenly, Lu Ye's radar went dark. The vision from his Eye of the World was torn apart, flooded with static and corrupted data.
"Something's interfering with me," he murmured. Qin Hao's life-sense grew hazy. "I can't detect any heartbeats… just a kind of 'presence.'"
Zhao Yang's blood mist instinctively recoiled. He licked his fang-like canine and muttered, "That's not a zombie. And it's not human either."
In the center of the clearing, a twisted shadow slowly emerged. It had no fixed shape—its body seemed to be made of liquid metal and refracted light. Sometimes it resembled a humanoid figure, other times it shifted into a multi-legged crawling form. With each transformation, the surrounding space trembled slightly, as if reality itself was adjusting its coordinates.
Eye of the World – Fragmented Analysis Name: Interference Entity Tier: Early Stage Tier 3 Traits:
Higher-dimensional projection
Disrupts perception, skill activation, and physical laws
Strong attraction to metal and energy structures
He Xuan frowned. The metal blades floating around him began to shake violently, as if pulled by an invisible magnetic field. He tried to control them, but the metal started splitting and reshaping itself—becoming sharper, stranger.
"It's… rewriting my ability structure," He Xuan growled, clenching his jaw. He forced himself to suppress the mutation, but a deep gash had already opened on his arm from the backlash.
Lu Ye attempted a spatial freeze, but the entity's presence made the space unstable. The freeze lasted less than two seconds. Zhao Yang's blood mist couldn't penetrate the creature's shell, only swirling around it to create minor interference. Chen Mo charged in, but the entity shifted form mid-attack and struck him hard in the chest, leaving a deep wound. He coughed up blood instantly. Qin Hao's threads of light were absorbed by the entity and reflected back as a shockwave, nearly knocking him unconscious.
"We can't fight it the usual way," Lu Ye said quickly. "It's not trying to kill us—it's trying to 'correct' us."
He Xuan bit his tongue, forcing his metal core to activate. His metal stopped responding to precise commands and instead began to evolve on its own. The six floating blades fused into a single hovering metal disc, covered in strange symbols. It locked onto the entity's core automatically.
"I'm not controlling it anymore. I'm letting it hunt," He Xuan growled. The disc shot forward and exploded against the entity's body in a violent shockwave.
For the first time, the Interference Entity let out a sound that resembled pain. Its form destabilized, and the spatial tremors intensified.
Lu Ye seized the moment and triggered a spatial fold, trapping the entity inside a temporary dimensional fracture. Zhao Yang and Chen Mo struck together—blood blades and iron rod piercing straight through its core.
The entity collapsed into a swirling cloud of distorted light and vanished into the air.
He Xuan dropped to his knees, the metallic patterns on his arm still writhing. "It showed me… a different form of metal," he whispered. "Not just an element. A structure. A… language."
Lu Ye didn't respond. He quietly recorded the symbols etched into the metal disc. Qin Hao was already tending to He Xuan's wound, while Zhao Yang stared into the distance. "If that thing was just an early Tier 3… what's waiting deeper in?" he asked.
Lu Ye looked up at the warped sky beyond the ruins. "We have to hold on. Because now… they've seen us."