Magical Girl's Knight Brother

Chapter 594 The Pleasurable Thing of Crawling

The SAN value is collapsing at an alarming rate, like a flood bursting its banks.

A strange, cancerous itching sensation struck, starting on my arms, then spreading to my neck, cheeks, and back. The feeling didn't originate from the skin's surface, but rather from deep within the flesh, as if something was wriggling and swelling beneath the skin, eagerly trying to burst forth.

Desker looked down at his arm in horror.

There were no wounds, no bloodstains.

But beneath his calloused, veiny skin, thin, dark red "lines" were visibly rising and wriggling. They were like living snakes, swimming under his skin and creating winding bulges.

The bulge grew more and more pronounced, stretching the skin thinner and thinner, giving it an eerie translucency. One could even vaguely see the surging dark red essence beneath—blood vessels, the blood vessels of his own body! "No...this can't be..." Desk groaned, a hoarse, bellows-like sound rising from his throat, extreme fear gripping it. The next second, the most horrifying scene unfolded!

puff!

A very faint sound, like the cracking of a ripe berry, rang out.

A prominent vein on his arm pierced his skin without warning, without any pain whatsoever, as if the skin never existed, or as if piercing the skin was the most natural thing in the world.

A dark red, wet, lifelike "thread" emerged and was exposed to the cold air.

It was not a rigid tube, but rather pulsating and throbbing slightly. The tip was not even broken, as if it had grown and extended directly from the flesh. After the thread was exposed to the air for a few seconds, countless fine, equally dark red hairs began to grow on its surface at a visible speed.

These fine hairs grew rapidly, becoming dense, and in the blink of an eye, the blood vessel that had pierced the skin transformed into a thick, sticky, long hair. And this was just the beginning!

*Pfft! Pfft! Pfft pfft!*

As if a switch had been flipped, a series of dense, slight cracking sounds instantly rang out from all over Desk's body! His arms, neck, cheeks, chest, back... all the blood vessels throbbing violently beneath his skin seemed to receive a command, piercing through the thin skin barrier and rushing out one after another.

There were no screams, only desperate gasps from Desk's throat, like gasps for breath.

He watched helplessly as every inch of his skin blossomed, countless wet, dark red lines piercing through his skin and then, upon contact with air, sprouting into thick, long hairs. All in just a few seconds.

The experienced old mercenary, Desk, who had been huddled in the shadows, had disappeared.

Instead, there was a humanoid monster covered in thick, dark red hair. These hairs were not attached to the surface; each hair was clearly connected to a broken blood vessel that had pierced the skin. They writhed slightly as if breathing, emitting a strong stench of blood and an indescribable stench of filth, stemming from the desecration of the very essence of life.

His features were covered by thick, writhing red hair, leaving only two empty eye sockets. But what flickered in those sockets was no longer human fear or reason, but a chaotic, inhuman madness, as if forcibly sewn into this terrifying body.

Even more bizarrely, throughout the entire mutation process, Desk did not feel any pain. It was as if the piercing of his skin and the transformation into disgusting long hair were all natural occurrences, the proper course of his body's "evolution" or "return".

This complete distortion of cognition is more despairing than any physical pain.

He (or rather, it) clumsily and unsteadily stood up, its long, dark red fur, covering its entire body, moving without wind, like countless tiny tentacles searching the air. It seemed to have lost its clear goal, and only, guided by some lingering, corrupted, and distorted instinct, began to stumble and move in one direction—direction none other than the oak barrel tavern that still radiated a false warmth and emitted waves of alluring laughter.

This walking, blasphemous creature, composed of blood vessels and frantically growing hair, was being dragged step by step, like a puppet, towards the door leading to a deeper despair by the terrifying source of the illusion. Wherever it passed, it seemed to leave a filthy, twisted trail in the air—proof of the complete manifestation and intrusion of spiritual pollution. All of this was perceived by two sharp, solemn eyes that abruptly halted their charge from the depths of the distant ruins. "A horny, pleasurable thing... I didn't expect to feel this power again." Scáthach frowned. "That's right. I should have realized it when I saw those cursed undead outside; only it possesses this kind of power."

"An object of pleasure for ants? What is that? Is it also one of the Great Old Ones?" Tang Zijun asked softly.

"Are you sure you want me to introduce this to you now?" Scáthach retorted, then gestured with her chin towards Desk, who had already transformed into a monster. "If you don't act soon, your friend will be completely corrupted." Hearing this, Tang Zijun didn't linger any longer. He instantly transformed into a silver streak of light. Without any visible movement, his body donned a suit of armor as he soared through the air. The monster, transformed from Desk, seemed to sense the terrifying energy and the pure, orderly aura emanating from behind it, a force that threatened its very existence. Its red-haired head trembled violently, clumsily and swiftly attempting to turn around. Countless writhing red hairs stood on end like venomous snakes reacting to stress, trying to assume a defensive or offensive stance. However, it was too late.

Tang Zijun's movements were more than a hundred times faster than its reaction. His right palm, covered in a dark blue energy armor, struck down with perfect precision. *Snap!*

The hand did not directly touch the disgusting long hair, but hovered steadily an inch away from its chest. Then, an invisible yet vast and powerful force of spacetime laws, like an invisible giant net, instantly enveloped the entire red-haired monster.

The instant the palm print landed, the core of Tang Zijun's Wolf Rider Belt suddenly erupted with unprecedented excitement. A grand, exhilarating electronic sound effect burst forth, drowning out the deathly silence of the ruins and the hoarse sounds emanating from the monster's throat: "Celebrate! King of Time!!"

This proclamation-like sound effect is the embodiment of the supreme authority over time that Tang Zijun inherited from the fallen mechanical god.

With this announcement

hum!

Behind the red-haired monster, the void suddenly twisted.

A gigantic, incredibly complex and precise golden mechanical clock phantom appeared out of thin air. Gears meshed, the mainspring wound, and the huge golden hands did not turn forward, but instead, with the power to reverse the universe, began to tick and clatter in a counterclockwise direction, resolutely and unstoppably reversing the clockwise direction.

At the very instant that the giant golden clock phantom began to reverse, the dark red fur covering Desk's body, which had been writhing and sucking at his life and sanity, hissed as if it were ice and snow meeting the scorching sun.

A visible reversal occurred: the thick, foul-smelling hairs began to shrink rapidly, as if a videotape were playing in reverse. They went from dense to sparse, from long to short, and finally, strangely, retreated back into the broken ends of the blood vessels that had pierced the skin. Meanwhile, the blood vessels that had been exposed to the air, pulsating and twisting like living things, also quickly dimmed and shrank under the force of time, shrinking back beneath Desk's skin in the same reverse manner.

The wounds on the skin were healing, the writhing blood vessels were calming down, and the wildly growing hair was disappearing. Everything was reversing back to the state of "not having happened"! "...Ah..!" A painful and bewildered groan came from the body that was shedding its monstrous form.

That was Desker's own voice.

As the pollution was forcibly stripped away and reversed by the power of time, his utterly submerged and shattered sanity, like a sunken ship salvaged from the water, was struggling to recover from the abyss of chaos. The dark red fur covering his entire body retracted into his body, his skin returned to normal, and his distorted features reappeared. His eyes, which had previously been empty and filled with madness, were now trembling violently. His pupils first dilated, then suddenly contracted, as an immense, soul-tearing fear and lingering dread washed over his consciousness like a tsunami.

He remembered: the sweet illusion, the whispers in his mind, the extreme terror of blood vessels piercing his skin and sprouting hair without causing pain. The enormous golden clock phantom slowly dissipated.

thump.

Desk's legs buckled, and he could no longer support himself, collapsing heavily to his knees on the cold, broken stone pavement.

Like a drowning person rescued, he clutched his chest tightly with both hands, where the life-threatening veins and hairs had just pierced. Now, all that remained was a pounding heart and the almost suffocating fear of surviving a near-death experience. He gasped for the polluted yet normal air, each breath accompanied by an uncontrollable tremor and sob, snot and tears streaming uncontrollably from his nose and eyes, his body shaking violently. Tang Zijun slowly withdrew his hands, the boiling golden spacetime energy around him receding back into his belt like a tide.

"Desk, are you alright?" Tang Zijun asked softly, looking at Desk kneeling on the ground, having transformed back into human form from a monster and experiencing a severe mental breakdown. Tang Zijun had tried reversing time to forcibly purify the pollution before in the wasteland, but what shocked him was the nature and intensity of that pollution—it could so quickly and thoroughly distort the existence of a mortal. This was something that the radiation in the wasteland could not compare to.

Scáthach's figure appeared beside Tang Zijun like a ghost. Her dark purple gaze swept over Desk, who was kneeling and trembling, and then turned to the oak barrel tavern that still emitted a false warm light.