From the moment he fell into that flood of spiders, David's mind had only one thought left.
Run!
He had nothing to do with this crazy war in the first place. No interest in dealing with whatever dark being was behind those spiders, and no desire to figure out what was behind that steel door the steam knight was guarding.
Any regular hunter would've died in those webs and flames already.
But David could still bounce around just fine. He still had a full 600,000 life energy left. Plenty of chances to escape.
But that steam knight that had locked onto him didn't seem willing to let him go—the ancient knight wouldn't let any living thing near the door.
Boom—!
Sprinting David suddenly felt a massive force slam into his back, then came the deafening explosion.
The impact launched David into a wall, even breaking through the brick, carrying him into another sewer passage.
What smashed through the wall wasn't David's body, but a cannonball that had turned into a high-temperature fireball from air friction...
This one shot punched through countless walls, like it pierced the entire sewer world. Countless bricks collapsed, sewage kicked up huge waves. Just the shockwave from the cannonball passing by could tear a human body apart!
David rolled several times in the sewage wave and scrambled up dizzy. His ears were ringing. One look at his health bar on the panel scared him half to death.
Life energy dropped 50,000 points!
That cannon didn't even hit him directly, just grazed him and took 50,000 health... If it hit him head-on, could he even survive one shot?
He had no intention of testing that. Before the second cannon fired, David took off running!
The steam knight in the distance raised its right arm, which could transform into a bronze-colored cannon. Right now that barrel big enough to fit a soccer ball had turned red, smoking with steam. The gears and bearings inside the knight kept turning and compressing, seemingly loading the second shot in a hurry.
Using the cannon to bombard the target would take too long. The ancient knight's intelligence hadn't rusted that much. It raised its left arm directly, and a dozen grappling hooks attached to steel cables shot out with a "whoosh" from the outer side!
David had already escaped through the hole in the wall. Logically he should've been out of the steam knight's line of sight, but those grappling hooks acted like they had eyes!
They "bang bang bang" bounced off the walls at speeds faster than arrows, ricocheting through the sewer passages several times, sparks flying everywhere!
The dozen or so grappling hooks even adjusted their trajectories by colliding with each other, finally precisely covering David's escape route.
In the blink of an eye, four or five grappling hooks grabbed David at once!
"Damn it! Is this a magic trick!?"
No time to think. The Hand of Monster swung out, claws sparking against the steel cables and successfully cutting one, but that little bit of time wasn't enough to deal with the other hooks. The knight in the distance pulled hard, the cables contracted, and the massive force instantly yanked David back!
"This is too much! You think I'm a pushover!!"
Now David was pissed off too. Legendary creation or whatever, if it dared drag him back, he'd make it taste the power of the Hand of Divine Corpse!
Buzz—buzzbuzzbuzzbuzz!!!!!!
Just as he was thinking this, the hooks dragging him back suddenly transmitted a high-frequency vibration.
This strange wave directly scattered all the strength in David's body, even making his brain go numb briefly!
"What... is... this... thing... resonance...?"
Blood sprayed from his facial features, his eyes turned blood red, his vision blocked. Life energy dropped another 50,000 points...
At this moment, David truly understood how powerful this so-called "legendary creation" was, completely beyond his imagination.
For the first time, he lost confidence in his Hand of Divine Corpse...
The hooks dragged him through the shattered wall corner, pulling him directly in front of the knight. A thick "steel spike" shot out from the steam knight's right arm. It was going to pin the flying David straight to the ground.
Right then, the Hand of Monster on David's back also thrust out, meeting the steel spike head-on!
Time seemed to slow down at this moment. He watched the manifested Hand of Monster get completely overpowered by the opponent's weapon.
The steel spike pressed into the Hand of Monster's palm, piercing through... no, it directly crushed and exploded the claw's arm bone.
The reaction force slammed David hard into the ground, shattering the floor into cracks.
Almost simultaneously, David's Heretic's Arm also reached out, grabbing the steam knight's head before that steel spike could punch into David's chest.
For just a moment, really just a moment, the steam knight's movement froze.
Was it because Touch of Folly took effect, or because the knight's "brain" had already stiffened over the long years?
Nobody knew...
Anyway, David seized that tiny opening and swung out the Hand of Divine Corpse hard!
He poured all his remaining 89,447 psychic energy plus 279,884 life energy into that arm.
Over 360,000 total defense-ignoring equivalent damage!
Actually, David couldn't see the steam knight's "health bar" at all. It seemed like it had no life, or maybe the low-level Watcher evil spirit couldn't see through the knight protected by mysterious power, couldn't get its structural information.
But if this attack sacrificing half his remaining health couldn't hurt the enemy at all, David figured he might as well give up and wait to die.
The dark red Hand of Divine Corpse clenched into a fist and swung straight at the steam knight's iron fist.
The instant the divine fist and legendary fist collided, a silent shockwave carrying high-frequency vibrations blasted everything around them away. David got launched again.
He saw the Hand of Divine Corpse crack under that force, but at the same time, a bunch of metal parts also scattered in the explosion. The knight's entire right arm and even its whole right shoulder got smashed by one hit!
David's body shot out like a cannonball. His brain got shaken until his consciousness went fuzzy. In the last moment before flying out, he seemed to finally see the steam knight's health bar appear...
Looked like about a fifth got taken off?
"That's absolutely ridiculous..."
That was David's last thought. He flew out through the hole the knight had blown open earlier, fell into the surging sewage flow, and quickly got swept into a shaft, dropping into a deep ravine along with the sewage waterfall.
The steam knight still stood in place.
It seemed stunned by the damage the enemy dealt to it and didn't continue pursuing... With its right arm completely destroyed and the grappling hook device gone, it couldn't chase the target anyway.
Yeah, the ancient knight did have a brain.
You could see from its torn shell that its insides weren't completely metal. Some flesh tissue radiating powerful vitality and very metallic-looking bones wrapped around a bunch of power cylinders, and they were squirming, growing...
The steam knight was a fusion of flesh and machine.
Not only that, its metal body could also grow and recover on its own like living flesh.
Right now, its torn metal right arm was repairing itself at a visible speed. Probably wouldn't be long before this legendary creation was good as new again...
...
Safe to say, for a long time to come, that legendary creation in the imperial capital's sewers became a shadow David couldn't shake from his mind, to the point where he never dared casually enter the deep sewers to hunt monsters again.
He was totally traumatized...
Right now David was still soaking in the sewage, completely exhausted.
When the sewer world's walls got punched through, he'd at least found a way out of the maze. Weirdly enough, when he barely recovered consciousness in the water flow, he found himself "flowing backward" upstream with the sewage river...
A strange feeling covered his whole body, like space was being twisted.
Until the backward flow phenomenon ended and he fell into another stinky, dirty sewage river. At the same time, he saw light from the outside world shining into the darkness.
Then, a hand grabbed his powerless body and pulled him up from the sewage outlet flowing toward the Lionheart River...