Chapter 32: The Great Freeze

Elias had recited this chant hundreds of times in the past, but he had been a mortal at that time and had not been able to see the Lumina, and this was the first time he was speaking them as a Reawakened Siphon.

When he spoke the words to reawaken the Green Swarm in his blood, there was an element of intent behind his actions, as he would begin to feel a connection with the Green Swarm after reciting past the third line of the ancient chant, and what Elias did at this point was to direct that intent towards his target, making it so that only the green Swarm in the body of his targets were activated.

When this happened, they would begin to feed and multiply inside the body of their targets, and their food was blood. Unlike Elias, who was their chosen host and could endure their hunger, his prey were usually not able to last more than five seconds before every single drop of blood in their body was gone.

At that time, the Green Swarm would leave their body and wait for Elias to summon them. Usually, they had increased in number and grown a little, but Elias had long observed that these creatures could change their size at will, but he had not seen them grow more than the size of a flea. He sometimes wondered how big they could grow if they wanted, but Elias had no means of communicating with them, and he just left this speculation to the side.

In the present situation that he found himself in, Elias knew that this method of hunting his attackers would not work. The first problem he had was that he was not dealing with a single target; he was dealing with thousands, an uphill battle that no one could ever think of attempting.

The next problem was that none of his targets here had ingested any of his blood; of course, they were screaming for his head on a platter, but none of them had begun to eat him yet, and so he could not target any specific statue to bring them down.

Instead, he had lost a limb and had been bleeding all through his run, and Elias knew that in his blood were the Green Swarm, the Vessel of Hunger, and a faint plan had been brewing inside his head.

To survive, he would have to do something drastic; he would be fully activating the Green Swarm, and it would not just be the ones inside the limb or the blood he had lost, but also the ones in his body.

This was the first time Elias would be using the Green Swarm in this manner, and he had no idea what to expect. He had used the Green Swarm to hunt successfully for a hundred and twenty-three times, and in all that time, he had only been activating the ones inside the body of his prey.

Elias was aware that the number of Green Swarms ingested by his targets was usually not much, maybe a few dozen, but when they finished feeding and left the body of his prey, their numbers would have multiplied to hundreds, and in the case of Josef, thousands.

All this time, Elias was aware that the Green Swarm inside his body was growing, but he could not tell by how much. He knew that despite them sleeping inside him, they were still devouring his blood; the fact that his regeneration had slowed down by half meant they were actively consuming him always, and that meant growth, and he was sure that he would have exploded if these eldritch creatures were not able to change their size at will.

There was a fear inside his heart that the day he summoned the entirety of the Green Swarm, it would be the day that he perished. Well, it was time to find out if these were his final moments.

“Leave your borrowed dwelling and rise to feed on me!”

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The sudden explosion of ice and the cry that emerged from thin air seemed to shock the statues into place, but not for long. Ice had covered their bodies, but only a light coating, and what had stopped them in their tracks was the unknown cry; now that it had passed, they slowly began to move.

The whispers began once again, and now they held a note of alarm.

Many of them collapsed; the unexpected ferocity of the flame had burned every last black ichor in their bodies, and this was what gave them life. So hundreds of them collapsed, and their Vitality and Lumina rose above their heads, forming a swirling red vortex like blood.

Each of these statues was at the peak of the Fury Forge level, and they were particularly robust monsters; a single one of them would be able to push a Wisp to level up multiple times, and with hundreds of them dead, Elias should be able to easily reach Mist Phantom, maybe even higher.

But he was not out of danger yet. Hundreds may have died, maybe even thousands, but there were thousands still left behind, and only one of them reaching him would kill him.

Elias had finished whispering the final words, and he began to feel a growing chill in his body as if his blood were transforming to ice. He groaned, and cold air emerged from his mouth that froze the air in front of him, and he staggered as if he were drunk.

His mind was beginning to grow a bit blurry, but his increased Will suppressed any fuzziness in his thought, and noticing a glow from his body, Elias looked down and brought his hands up to his face, his mouth slowly widening in shock.

He was glowing green!

No, this was the wrong way to describe it. Elias could see his bones, every vein inside his body, his flowing blood, every line of muscle, all were outlined by a green glow, and his skin was like a thin sheet of parchment; he was sure that even his eyes were glowing.

“What the hell?” Elias muttered, and that was the last thing he could say before he became frozen in place.

His mind was still sharp, and thankfully, he could not feel any pain, but Elias thought that maybe it was because all of his nerve endings had been killed, and the chill in his body was so potent that he could not quickly heal from that damage.

Only his eyes could move a little, and soon even that motion stopped, and Elias was frozen like stone, his two hands upraised and his face frozen in shock.

In front of him, the statues began to move, and leading them was “Josef.”

“What do we have here?” the monster crooned as a wide smile tore a large wound on his face, letting the grin of the statue reach his ears.

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