69novels Chapter 593 Semi-Summoning State
Chapter 593 Semi-Summoning State
Once it entered its dormant state, its form completely blended into the darkness, with only the tips of its dragon horns occasionally flashing a faint icy blue light, like a firefly flashing by in the darkness.
Celia did not emerge from the shadows.
Fifty minutes later, they arrived at the outskirts of the shamanic ritual site.
Fang Ping lay prone on the edge of a bomb crater, observing the open space ahead.
Three bone pillars were supported in the center of the open space.
Each bone pillar is as thick as two people can hug, about four meters tall, and its surface is covered with densely packed summoning runes.
The runes glowed with an eerie green light in the night, a color unlike that of ordinary shamanic energy totems—deeper and darker, like mold growing on rotting flesh.
In the center of the triangular area formed by the bone pillars was a blood pool about five meters in diameter. The pool was not filled with water, but with a dark red liquid.
The liquid churned continuously under the energy of the bone pillar, with fist-sized bubbles rising to the surface. When the bubbles burst, they released a scorching, bloody odor.
Fang Ping smelled the blood and his stomach churned.
He wasn't a new recruit who had never been on the battlefield—he had fought his whole life and had seen all sorts of things.
But the unnatural stench emanating from the blood pool made him instinctively feel that something was wrong, as if something was rotting from the inside.
Two rows of orc prisoners knelt around the blood pool—not from the Blackrock tribe, but prisoners of war from rival tribes and humans.
Their minds were controlled by some kind of spiritual totem; their eyes were vacant, and they knelt motionless on the ground. The life force within them was being slowly drained away by the bone pillars, flowing along the runes towards the center of the blood pool.
Behind the bone pillar stood three shaman priests. Two of them were ordinary high-ranking shamans, level 78.
The third-ranked player's level made Lin Tian pause for a second—level 86, wearing bone armor and wielding a bone staff woven from the bones of three different magical beasts.
His face was covered with white sacrificial patterns, the designs of which belonged to the same system as the runes on the bone pillar, emitting an eerie glow at night.
The energy transmission ends of the bone pillars all point towards the blood pool, and the body in the center of the blood pool is gradually taking shape.
The dark red, translucent energy appeared and disappeared on the surface of the blood pool, like a projector that had not received a complete signal—it had a general shape, but the details were still unstable, and it had not yet fully anchored itself to this world.
Red warning characters were flashing on the system indicator bar in the center of the blood pool.
[Partial Summoning State - Not Fully Materialized]
[Current progress of physicalization: 67%]
[Estimated time of full arrival: 18 minutes and 32 seconds]
Threat Level Assessment: LV90 (After Fully Deployed)
[Note: In the semi-summoned state, any high-intensity energy impact from the outside may interrupt the ritual and cause an unstable backlash of the blood pool's energy. This backlash damage is effective against both the summoner and the summoned.]
Lin Tian raised his right hand and gave a silent command. His finger movements were concise and swift—just three sign language gestures—and then he disappeared from the edge of the crater.
The stalactite leap passed directly through the energy barrier above the blood pool—a protective shield set up by the shaman to prevent ranged attacks.
The next second, Lin Tian was already standing on the open ground directly in front of the blood pool.
He was moving too fast. The two orc guards closest to him were still standing still, not even having raised their iron axes yet. The alert status had just popped up above their health bars—there was still at least a 0.5-second delay before they could switch to combat mode.
Chen Feng's rain of frost arrows followed closely behind.
The icy blue beam of light emanating from the tip of the staff split into dozens of ice cones in the night sky, covering the shaman area behind the bone pillar.
The ice spikes exploded upon landing, creating a patch of white frost and forcing two ordinary shamans to interrupt their spellcasting to maintain their protective totems.
Luo's armor-piercing arrow accurately struck the rune node on the left bone pillar—the most vulnerable spot. The armor-piercing rune on the arrowhead exploded the moment it hit, blasting a crack into the bone pillar.
The crack wasn't long, but it was enough to cause a brief short circuit in a small portion of the totem's rune loop.
Fang Ping had already rushed to the outer edge of the blood pool. The moment he drew his twin swords, he stepped forward to block Lin Tian's left. The first beastman guard who charged at him swung his axe, but he blocked the axe with his left sword and kicked the guard in the knee with his right foot.
The guard staggered backward, but Fang Ping did not pursue him. Instead, he quickly sheathed his knife and returned to his defensive position to hold his cover.
His task was to ensure that no orc infantry could disrupt Lin Tian's output rhythm.
He didn't care about enemies outside the attack range; that was the area Chen Feng and Lao Luo were responsible for.
But as soon as anything enters Lin Tian's melee range, he must step in immediately—that is Fang Ping's entire role in this five-man team.
Lin Tian raised his right hand, and a dazzling white light shone from the tip of his index finger.
Stellar rays.
An extremely condensed golden beam of light burst forth from his fingertips, its diameter twice as thick as usual thanks to the boost from his over seven million intelligence attribute.
The beam of light tore through the air and shot straight toward the bone pillar on the left, which had already been cracked by Lao Luo.
The moment the beam struck, all the runes on the bone pillar lit up—a protective mechanism set up by the shaman that would automatically activate upon receiving a fatal attack.
But these defenses were as fragile as paper before the penetrating power of the star rays. The golden beam pierced through the bone pillar, the runes exploding one after another, scattering fragments everywhere.
The bone pillar emitted a piercing cracking sound, and the crack extended simultaneously in both directions from where Lao Luo had shot it, covering the entire bone pillar in the blink of an eye.
Then it exploded.
Before the sound of the first bone pillar shattering had even faded, Lin Tian's left hand had already condensed a second star ray.
This time, the target was the bone pillar on the right side.
The same penetration, the same explosion—two stellar rays, two bone pillars, all within three seconds.
The energy balance of the blood pool changed drastically immediately after two of the three bone pillars broke.
The energy cluster in the center of the blood pool began to shrink, its color changing from dark red to grayish-white, and the bubbles on its surface suddenly accelerated.
The outline of the half-summoned monster's body became even more blurred—it could originally be seen as a complete head and torso, but now the torso was rapidly collapsing, as if the supporting skeleton had been removed.
But at the same time, an unusual energy pulse came from the deepest part of the blood pool.
Without the restraint of the two bone pillars, the sacrificial energy in the blood pool began to stagnate and backfire internally—removing the bone pillar was equivalent to removing the capacitors from the system motherboard, but the remaining bone pillar continued to pour sacrificial energy into the blood pool.
This caused the energy pressure inside the blood pool to surge instantly, and the summoning stability indicator on the shaman system panel flickered wildly.