ICS - Chapter 102: Intellect Devourer

Through Teresa's ability, Roland already had an extremely detailed understanding of Wailing Gorge, but he did not rush in.

After disposing of the pirates properly, he instructed Hobby to send elite sailors into Wailing Gorge first, using small boats to scout the interior.

Only after confirming that the pirates entrenched inside showed no unusual movement did he arrange for the sailors to rest. At the same time, he used [Sea Gazing] again to observe the weather.

One day later, when sunlight finally pierced the heavy fog, the Seabird set sail once more and headed toward Wailing Gorge.

Before long, the steep terrain entered their sight.

Roland, who already understood the situation here, did not pause to admire it.

Detailed information and a careful plan made the reefs and stone pillars at the entrance, which had once capsized countless inexperienced ships, seem almost nonexistent.

Under Roland's calm command, the Seabird nimbly avoided those fatal obstacles.

Soon, as the water became calmer, the ship entered the interior of Wailing Gorge.

Jagged cliffs towered on both sides, almost blocking out the sunlight overhead.

Sea wind passed through the holes and gaps in the cliffs, producing eerie shrieks that tangled with the waves below and sent chills through anyone who heard them.

"Cliffs, caves, and..."

Roland's gaze fell on the sea beside them.

There, several solid pieces of land jutted up abruptly.

They were earthen yellow, completely out of place beside the surrounding cliffs, which had been washed black by seawater.

"Hobby..."

Seeing that they were still some distance from the cave Teresa had identified as the pirates' hiding place, Roland quietly asked the Halfling beside him, "When you and your elder brother passed through Wailing Gorge before, were there pieces of land sticking out of the sea like this?"

"There should... not have been."

"But I heard my elder brother say that, for some unknown reason, terrain has changed a little in many places over the past few years, so..."

As the Halfling spoke, he looked toward the young man beside him, whose brow was tightly furrowed.

Under Trevor's personal instruction, Hobby very much approved of Roland's cautious style. Even so, sometimes...

Even he felt Roland's caution might be a little excessive.

"Mr. Roland, you need not worry too much."

"I understand."

Roland narrowed his eyes.

"Is the recovery of Mana Elements changing the terrain?"

He carefully examined those abrupt pieces of land again. Only after confirming that there was truly nothing unusual did he withdraw his gaze.

The Seabird continued forward, and the outlines of three pirate ships appeared in everyone's sight.

The sailors tightened their grip on their weapons, ready to move.

Yet the battle was strangely easy.

For some unknown reason, the pirates left behind inside Wailing Gorge were not only extremely weak, but also pitifully few in number.

All the pirates on the three ships together amounted to just over fifty people.

In only moments, these pirates were driven off their ships and onto the firm earthen-yellow ground nearby.

Seeing that only a dozen or so pirates remained stubbornly resisting, Roland's tense nerves finally loosened a little.

Although the pirate leader, Captain Harem, still had not appeared, Roland did not believe the man could still contend with them after losing all his subordinates.

According to the existing intelligence, this captain was powerful, but he had not stepped into the transcendent realm. At most, he was an extraordinary powerhouse.

Even so, Roland stood on the deck with his hand steady on the sword hilt at his waist.

Until the battle was completely over, he would not lower his guard.

Just then, faint footsteps sounded from behind him.

Roland glanced from the corner of his eye and saw Galvez dragging weak steps to his side.

The bard looked like his bones had been pulled out. Both hands rested limply on the bulwark, his back hunched, and he let out a long sigh full of weariness.

"What's wrong, Galvez? Did something happen?"

Roland asked the question, but his gaze remained fixed on the battlefield below.

"No... nothing."

The bard waved weakly. His fingers brushed across the strings in his arms, producing a string of plaintive low notes.

"I just feel... all of this is too smooth. No fierce killing, no thrilling reversal, not even a chance for you to display your divine might. It is truly... far too dull."

As he complained, he scratched his messy brown hair, then took paper and pen from his coat.

He bit the tip of the quill, frowned hard, and pondered bitterly.

"How should I embellish this and turn this... hm... adventure bland as water into something exciting and moving?"

Listening to the poet's utterly irrelevant lament, Roland forced down the urge to roll his eyes.

He was just about to brush him off and send this troublesome fellow back to the cabin when his pupils contracted. His gaze locked onto the cliff.

At the entrance of the cave connected to those abrupt patches of land, several figures were staggering out.

Pirates.

But their appearance made everyone on deck draw in a cold breath.

Their movements were stiff as marionettes, their joints producing creaks that set teeth on edge. Every step carried an unnatural twitch.

Most horrifying were their eyes.

Hollow and vacant, covered by a thick gray film, without the slightest vitality of the living.

Only an unsettling faint purple glow flickered deep within them.

"Gods above... what the hell are those things?"

Hobby's voice carried barely detectable trembling, and his hand moved by reflex to the short blade at his waist.

Those walking-corpse pirates, gray-white eyes gleaming with purple light, all turned toward the open ground in unison.

There stood the Seabird's sailors, who had just won victory and were ready for battle.

"Careful!"

Only after the piercing warning did the sailors recover from their shock, roaring as they swung their weapons.

Swords and blades hacked into those stiff bodies, producing dull impact sounds.

But the battle was eerie enough to chill the heart.

These pirates moved clumsily, but their strength was astonishing, and they seemed completely unaware of pain.

One sailor used all his strength to cleave open one of their shoulders, deep enough to reveal bone.

But that pirate merely swayed. Its broken arm still clamped around the sailor's neck, while its intact hand kept grabbing for the sailor's face, fingertips only inches from his eyeballs.

The strangled sailor's eyes bulged from suffocation and fear. He stared in despair as those dirt-stained nails drew closer.

At that critical moment, a cold flash of light cut in with perfect precision, like lightning tearing through the air.

Clang!

The crisp ring of metal clashing was unusually piercing.

Roland's figure had appeared at the center of the chaos.

The mithril longsword steadily blocked the withered arm that was about to gouge out the sailor's eyes.

Enormous force came through the blade, making Roland's arm dip slightly, but his lower body remained steady as bedrock.

The strange pirate seemed to "feel" the obstruction. Its gray-white eyeballs turned with painful stiffness, hollowly "staring" at Roland.

A wet, inhuman gurgle emerged from its throat, like something was writhing inside.

The air seemed to freeze. Only the wind passing through the holes in the cliffs produced even more mournful shrieks.

Facing several hollow gazes locked onto him, all flickering with ominous purple light, Roland showed no hesitation. Only cold decisiveness remained.

He knew too well that hesitation meant death.

"Back!"

He gave a low shout. His voice was not loud, but it carried unquestionable authority, instantly stopping the sailors around him who were trying to step forward and help.

In the next instant, he moved.

There were no flashy moves, only pure speed and precision.

The mithril longsword became a band of light in his hand, tearing through the gloom and aiming straight for the strange pirate's neck.

Sensing the fatal threat, the pirate stiffly tried to raise its arm to block.

But it was too slow.

Roland's sword was faster than its decayed nerves could transmit a signal.

The sword light appeared and vanished.

There was no fierce collision, only a scalp-numbing muffled sound, like rotten wood split open by a sharp axe.

The gray, withered head flew high, tracing a short arc through the murky air.

The headless body swayed once, and the hand gripping the sailor finally loosened. It crashed heavily onto the earthen-yellow ground like a sack of rotten meat.

The rescued sailor coughed violently and scrambled away on hands and knees.

As for the head, it tumbled across the ground several times before finally stopping with the severed neck facing upward.

Time seemed to freeze at this moment.

On the deck, Hobby gave a suppressed gasp, like his throat had been seized. His face turned pale as paper in an instant, and his small body trembled beyond control as he gripped the rope beside him, knuckles white.

Beside Hobby, however, Galvez reacted in the exact opposite way.

The hand that had been resting on the bulwark suddenly clenched. His eyes, bloodshot from staying up late and exhaustion, opened wide, bursting with unbelievable excitement.

He stared fixedly at the rolling head, a "heh-heh" sound coming from his throat. It was not fear, but ecstasy, the reaction of someone who had discovered a rare treasure.

Above the severed neck, inside the pirate's skull, where brain matter and bone should have been, there was instead a disgusting, constantly writhing mass.

It had a slick gray-purple surface like a skinned frog, covered in sticky mucus that flickered with faint purple light.

Several thick tentacles covered in nerve-like protrusions pierced deep into the base of the skull like vicious roots, fixing the creature firmly in place.

Those tentacles were still twitching and stirring, drawing out the last remaining nutrients.

At the center of this sticky lump of flesh, one could barely distinguish a ring-shaped structure like an octopus's mouth, filled with tiny sharp teeth. It opened and closed, greedily sucking in air, or perhaps the lingering essence of life diffused within it.

No eyes. No nose. Only a pure, primitive parasitic form and an evil feeling that made the soul shudder.

"Intellect Devourer! Gods above, it really is an Intellect Devourer!"

Galvez's voice sharpened from excitement, even carrying a trembling joy that completely drowned out Hobby's suppressed whimper of fear.

He suddenly straightened his hunched back, like endless vitality had been poured into him, and pointed excitedly toward the writhing lump of flesh below.

"Roland! Look at that thing! They burrow into living bodies, suck out the brain marrow, and turn victims into soulless puppets!"

"I heard of them in ancient songs from the northern tundra and saw them on forbidden murals of southern jungle tribes! Gods, I thought they were only legends, bedtime stories third-rate bards used to scare children!"

From deep within the cave, seeming to answer the poet's words, came a denser, more hair-raising rustling.

The next moment, more pirates controlled by Intellect Devourers appeared before everyone.

"Intellect Devourers... Could this be the unnamed monster Trevor mentioned before, the one Teresa detected in Wailing Gorge? But..."

Looking at the stiff pirates before him, moving like marionettes, Roland frowned.

"Is it because the assimilation isn't complete enough?"

As his thoughts raced, his low roar had already sounded like muffled thunder.

"Teresa! Galvez!"

No more words were needed. Invisible tacit understanding formed instantly.

The dormant [Nameless Knight Breathing Method] inside Roland roared into motion, and battle aura as scorching as lava surged through his entire body.

He held nothing back now. His sword momentum turned into a violent curtain of light, no longer precise point kills, but sweeping strikes full of destructive power.

At the same time he called out, a bolt of silver lightning tore through the gloom.

Teresa moved so quickly that afterimages trailed behind her.

The rapier in her hand became countless lethal silver serpents, stabbing accurately toward the joints and wrists of those "puppet" pirates where armor did not cover.

Every thrust came with the muffled sound of severed nerves, instantly stripping several pirates of their ability to move.

Galvez's fingers plucked the strings.

The beautiful melody became invisible heavy hammers, smashing fiercely into the incoming puppet pirates.

The pirates controlled by Intellect Devourers suddenly stalled, like marionettes yanked by an unseen force. Their limbs twisted, and they let out painful hisses as their offensive fell into chaos.

With the three powerful fighters joining hands, the power they erupted with far exceeded what these parasitized shells could endure.

The battle became efficient harvesting.

Broken puppet bodies fell one after another, and the muffled sounds of bone and flesh parting, along with the hum of weapons, became the dominant rhythm.

However, just as the final few pirate puppets had their throats pierced by Teresa's rapier and their chests split open by Roland's longsword, another sudden change erupted.

The slick gray-purple Intellect Devourer bodies exposed from the shattered skulls did not perish with the deaths of their hosts.

Like enraged, eyeless venomous insects, they suddenly shot out from the remains.

Their targets were not the powerful Roland, Teresa, or Galvez, but the shaken, weaker sailors behind them.

These disgusting lumps of flesh dragged sticky strands of purple-glimmering mucus and moved with astonishing speed.

They traced several ominous gray-purple arcs through the air, lunging straight toward the faces of the nearest sailors, whose reactions had been slowed by fear.

The ring-shaped mouths at their centers opened greedily, revealing dense tiny teeth. Their objective was clear.

Burrow into new skulls.

Find new hosts.

Just as those gray-purple lumps of flesh, carrying slick mucus and the stench of death, were about to touch the sailors' terrified faces, an invisible force erupted with Roland at its center.

He inhaled sharply, his chest heaving.

In an instant, the sparks of metal collisions that had not yet faded from the battlefield, the splashing blood mist, even the desperate howls of the dying puppet pirates and the frightened gasps of the sailors, all seemed to be seized by an unseen giant hand and dragged wildly into Roland's open lungs.

These violent battlefield elements were smelted and purified within him, turning into countless fine, brilliant golden embers like scorching sparks.

They did not spray outward. They spread silently and swiftly like a golden mist, with Roland at the center, precisely covering the dozen or so shaken sailors several steps away.

[Ember Echo] activated!

The moment the golden embers merged into the sailors' bodies, the effect was immediate.

The scattered light in their eyes ignited at once, replaced by tangible, blazing battle will.

Fatigue vanished completely. Inexhaustible power seemed to surge from within their bodies, their hearts beating in their chests like war drums and driving away the fear of facing unknown monsters.

Their limbs, stiffened by fear, filled with strength in an instant, and their reaction speed soared.

"Roar!"

The nearest burly sailor, who had almost had an Intellect Devourer pounce onto his face, let out a deafening roar.

This roar was no longer fear. It was filled with ignited fury and fighting spirit.

And this powerful will flowed back into Roland's body along the path of the golden embers like a returning stream.

The molten-gold battle aura around Roland suddenly brightened.

Speed, strength, and perception all rose at this moment.

At the same time, [Echo Forge] took effect in sync.

Under the guidance of Roland's [Material Synesthesia], the golden embers that had merged into the sailors' bodies instinctively flowed toward the weapons in their hands and the armor on their bodies.

They covered and seeped in quickly like liquid gold.

The equipment on the sailors, already carrying slight damage from battle, was instantly coated with flowing golden radiance.

A faint hum came from the blades, like an invisible hand had polished and sharpened them anew, and the edges glittered with unprecedented cold sharpness.

Even old cuts on leather armor were smoothed by the flowing golden light, becoming tougher.

"Kill these disgusting monsters!"

The rescued sailor roared. There was no longer any fear in his eyes, only ignited anger and the desire to protect his companions.

Time seemed to stretch.

In the strengthened sailors' senses, the lunging movements of the Intellect Devourers no longer seemed so fatal.

The roaring burly sailor moved like lightning.

He no longer tried to retreat and dodge. Instead, he faced the pouncing Intellect Devourer head-on and swung the cutlass in his hand, now wrapped in golden light and unusually sharp, upward from below.

The blade light looked like a strip of silk as it accurately struck the slick lump of flesh.

Hiss!

It was no longer the muffled sound of cutting rotten wood, but a piercing noise like a red-hot brand biting into grease.

The cutlass strengthened by [Echo Forge] easily split open the Intellect Devourer's gray-purple, slippery skin.

The disgusting lump of flesh was cut more than halfway through, and sticky fluid flickering with faint purple light sprayed everywhere.

It gave a violent, silent twitch. The mouth at its center opened and closed uselessly as it fell powerless from the air.

The other sailors also roared and counterattacked.

Roland did not stand aside either.

Along with the slight dizziness caused by his rapidly draining mental power, the all-attribute enhancement under [Ember Echo] pushed his strength to a new height again.

After witnessing the horrifying sight of Intellect Devourers surviving after leaving their host shells, he immediately changed targets, his sword edge aiming straight at those slick, writhing bodies.

Under everyone's fierce counterattack, the situation reversed in an instant.

The remains of Intellect Devourers that had been cut down, pierced through, or smashed flat covered the open ground and deck.

They twitched, making disgusting sizzling sounds, and their severed parts flickered with faint, ominous purple light like dying venomous insects.

After confirming there were no remaining threats, Roland took a deep breath and stopped the operation of [Ember Echo].

"Everyone! Retreat to the ship immediately! We set sail and leave..."

The order to retreat was about to leave his mouth, but Roland's voice cut off.

His brow locked, and he felt something like an invisible needle prick at his senses.

His Spirit, as high as eighteen points, granted him keenness beyond ordinary people.

At this moment, he clearly caught an indescribable yet extremely unsettling aura.

Cold. Slick. Carrying malice like deep-sea sludge, deeper than those dead Intellect Devourers.

This aura did not come from the wreckage before him, but...

His gaze shot toward the thicker darkness deep within the cave.

There were not more puppets controlled by Intellect Devourers pouring out like a tide, as he had expected.

Only a single figure stood quietly at the edge of the shadows.

It was unusually tall and thin, almost merged with the darkness, yet strangely impossible to ignore.

Its smooth, wet head shone with an uncomfortable gray-purple color under the dim light.

Several slick tentacles, their tips faintly writhing, hung from its face and swayed gently.

Those eyes...

If the two masses of ominous purple light pulsing steadily in the shadows could be called eyes.

They stared coldly and emotionlessly in Roland's direction.

A cold will, far purer, stronger, and deeper than the Intellect Devourers, spread outward without a sound like an invisible tide.

It carried pure nonhuman calculation and scrutiny, along with a malice that seemed able to freeze the soul.

Merely standing there, it seemed to be the source of the entire cave's darkness, a living nightmare filled with intelligence.

Roland's blood seemed to freeze in an instant.

He had never seen such an existence, but his instincts were screaming wildly.

This was absolutely not comparable to an Intellect Devourer.

This was a completely new, unknown, and extremely dangerous existence.