The Dawn of the New World

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'Not bad at all,' he thought inwardly looking at his smoking arms.

He had punched with such speed that the friction from the air had caused the metal around his fists to become red hot even without using any Qi.

A muffled gurgling sound came from the opposite direction while the synapse pulled itself out of the bog. Hao Xuan who was waiting for it to attack was flabbergasted when he saw its condition.

The entire top half of its thirty-meter head was missing. Black bodily fluids spurted out from the gaping wound in startling volume.

"Did I...kill it?" Hao Xuan questioned his own obscene strength but the reality was far from it.

Right in front of his eyes parts of the creature's body began to melt and rearrange themselves. The neck and shoulder area that held up that oversized head simply turned into goo and disappeared completely.

More and more tentacles made of that black liquid came up from the pool and began to burrow underneath skin turning into jelly.

Within a handful of seconds the synapse had completely lost its original form turning into nothing more than a squirming mass of jell several tens of meters tall.

"Is it breaking down? I couldn't actually have killed it that easily could I?"

Hao Xuan didn't know what to think, whether to attack it again or step in and interfere with whatever the hell was going on.

And if it was in the past he would have attacked it but now he was much more experienced and knew better than most that jumping in at the wrong time without grasping the full situation could prove to be harmful in more ways than one.

So with bated breath, he distanced himself from the pool and waited to see where it would lead.

In less than thirty seconds the entire main body was converted into the same gelatinous mass before something began to take shape inside. The process reminded Hao Xuan of a moth turning into a butterfly as the outer shell hardened and began to peel off bit by bit.

The leftover black liquid and jell slowly receded back into the pool to reveal its true form which was ashen white.

It had a thin and long upper body that didn't have any facial features or even a head to speak off. It was oval-shaped while the top was covered in 2-5 meters long inverted spikes.

There was one long vertical line going down the middle of the upper body lined with rows of teeth. The appendages, or rather the limbs, were much more conspicuous than before.

There were still a total of eighteen of them but there were six on the upper body that were much more pronounced than all the rest. Two of the arms had six digits on each hand folded tightly into fists just like Hao Xuan's while the other four were in the shape of gigantic serrated blades.

The bottom half of its body was still stuck inside the pool but from what Hao Xuan could make out it was arachnid in design with a large abdomen lined with the remaining twelve appendages. (Reference Image posted in Authors notes and discord)

'Those should be its legs but they look much weaker. Looks like it redirected whatever resources it had to develop the top half of its body to fight me first, leaving the rest for later. The shape is also...perfect.'

Hao Xuan did not have a weapon on hand and was using only his hands. And this new design of the Synapse was almost a perfect counter to the blunt attacks of his fists.

It had no head anymore so its biggest weakpoint was gone. It probably had sensory organs like the eyes and ears but they weren't visible at first glance or simply were hidden somewhere out of sight in one of the many crevices.

Its front body was basically just a slab of heavy obtuse muscles lined with sharp teeth while the back and top were covered in inverted spikes that would dig into anything that got close.

Two of the limbs had fists which were probably for closer range while the other four were segmented and pulled back into its body but even from where he was standing Hao Xuan could tell they would be able to expand by up to 3-4 times and strike almost anywhere within the pit.

Hao Xuan was more amazed than anything else by how quickly it adapted and changed its entire form to perfectly counteract him.

'And all it took was one punch. One attack for it see through it. Not to mention...I've seen that form before somewhere else...haven't I?'

***

Authors Notes:

All images are posted in the Official Discord.

Link: https://discord.gg/AHdSBFQ

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Reference Image Link: https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/009/400/874/large/duong-ct-ilu28.jpg?1518773090

Shortened Image Link (case sensitive) : https://urlzs.com/SMNA2