SSS-Rank Evolving Monster: From Pest to Cosmic Devourer-Chapter 115: Wepon

Robert’s mind had gone blank.

He stood suspended in the air, his extended palm still glowing with divine brilliance—yet unmoving, useless, paralyzed. A fragment of thought tried to claw its way up his throat, but no words followed. It was as if the very concept of speech had fled him.

This—

His mouth parted. His lips trembled.

He tried to issue a warning. A command. A threat.

But nothing came out.

The silence clung to him like frost, creeping into the gaps of his conviction and coiling around his spine.

From below, Felicia watched with growing alarm. Her elegant features twisted with the faintest hint of displeasure. For someone as composed as her, even a flicker of emotion was revealing.

What is he doing?

They were in the middle of one of the most delicate missions in centuries, and here he was—frozen.

"Uncle Robert!" she snapped, her voice sharp as ice.

Her words cut clean through the eerie stillness, slapping him awake like a sudden downpour of cold water. Robert’s divine light stuttered and blinked, then flared weakly again.

His eyes blinked open—like a man yanked out of a nightmare—and he looked around in bewilderment.

"...What happened?" he asked aloud, confusion warping his voice.

But the question was answered only by silence. Felicia didn’t speak. Ricky didn’t bother. Even the trees swayed quietly, the wind unwilling to interfere.

Robert’s gaze darted from face to face until they locked on Ricky.

And just like that, the confusion melted.

In its place came fury.

"You... monster! What did you do!?"

His voice trembled—not with fear, but with outrage. As if something precious had been stolen from him, or worse—mocked.

But Ricky... didn’t even glance at him.

His compound eyes, gleaming with crystalline clarity, were focused solely on the little girl standing silently beside him.

There was a glint in his gaze now. Something sharp.

Calculating. Cold. Almost amused.

A moment ago, he’d felt trapped—drawn into something he didn’t understand. But now that veil had lifted.

And the truth stood beside him... in the form of a small girl with jet-black hair and innocent eyes.

A girl who had called him Father.

Ricky’s mandibles twitched as a slow, eerie smirk crept across his face.

Then he turned to face Felicia and Robert, his voice calm, smooth, but laced with icy venom.

"How dare you hurt my precious daughter? Are you tired of living?"

His words rang out—not loud, not wrathful—but like the low hum of a guillotine’s blade.

The little girl—Forty-Two—froze.

That voice... that tone...

Her body shivered before her mind could stop it.

Despite her perfectly composed face, a scream was rising in her thoughts:

"How?! How did he break out of my illusion?"

As someone hailed as the heir of the Undead God, Forty-Two was no ordinary creature. Her talents weren’t in brute strength but in magic so insidious that even the most powerful entities could be turned into puppets. She could weave perception, twist instincts, and manipulate reaction. She could forge illusion so precise, it mimicked the primal reflexes of a parent watching their child walk into danger—or a warrior compelled to defend their sworn king.

For those few critical moments, she had hijacked Ricky’s emotional state—crafted a bond from nothing, bent his will without him realizing it.

But now...

He stood outside of it.

Clear-eyed. Aware. Amused. And very, very dangerous.

In her entire life, no one with less spiritual force had ever broken her illusion.

Not once.

Forty-Two had spent her existence among monsters and monsters-in-disguise—undead generals, ghost emperors, bone sages, and even the high priests of the Undead God himself. All had been pawns when she wished it. Their will bent, their emotions stirred, all by the flick of a single thought.

Yet today...

She had encountered an anomaly.

Someone who not only resisted her illusions—but shattered them effortlessly, like mist under sunlight. Her carefully crafted illusion, meant to manipulate even the most paranoid minds, had simply... dissolved around him.

For the first time since arriving in this realm, Forty-Two felt something she didn’t recognize.

Her heart was racing.

It beat against her chest like a drum—erratic, confused, fast. The emotion that gripped her chest felt foreign... wrong... unfamiliar.

Fear.

She was afraid.

And she didn’t know how to process it.

Before she could untangle her thoughts, a sharp, bloodcurdling shriek cut through the moment like a jagged blade.

"Uncle Robert—your arm!"

Felicia’s voice cracked through the air, her usual grace shattered by sheer disbelief.

Her wide eyes locked onto Robert, who stood stiff and trembling. From his shoulder down, his entire right arm had begun to liquefy—melting, like wax under flame.

But this wasn’t blood or tissue falling to the forest floor.

It was tar.

A dark, noxious substance slithered from his disintegrating limb, hissing as it touched the earth, releasing a foul stench that made the nearby trees curl and blacken at their roots.

Robert’s face twisted into a grotesque expression—shock, confusion, and then pain.

Beads of cold sweat streamed down his forehead. His knees buckled slightly, his body trembling under the weight of agony.

"Shit!"

The word left his mouth involuntarily—harsh and ragged. A man of divine faith, a priest of the radiant Sun God, swearing out loud for the first time in decades.

Darius stood frozen, eyes wide.

His body, trained through countless battles, suddenly felt cold. A shiver ran down his spine.

He had witnessed monstrous creatures fall. He had seen powerful warriors torn apart. But never—never—had he seen a Stage 3 powerhouse begin to dissolve into nothing like this.

His gaze flickered toward Ricky instinctively.

And that’s when he noticed...

Ricky hadn’t moved.

He wasn’t shocked.

He wasn’t disturbed.

He was watching it all unfold with the calm of a man who had long predicted this outcome.

Because he had.

It was him.

The monstrous mosquito’s compound eyes glinted with a faint, unreadable light. His arms remained folded, posture relaxed, as though he were simply watching a well-scripted play reach its climax.

The corners of his mandibles twitched into the barest hint of a smirk.

"It’s already begun," he whispered to no one.

What no one else knew—not Felicia, not Robert, not even Darius—was that the entirety of Emerald Green Forest was no longer just a spiritual zone.

It was a weapon.

Every inch of it—air, soil, leaves, trees—was filled with sleeper cell poison. Billions upon billions of microscopic venom sacs floating like motes of dust. Unseen. Unfelt. Undetectable. Until triggered.

A passive deathtrap, waiting for Ricky’s silent command.

And Robert... had just taken a breath too deep.

Now, his very soul was beginning to unravel.

So from the very moment these people stepped into the Emerald Green Forest, they had been dancing in the palm of Ricky’s hand.

They just didn’t know it yet.

Not just them—anyone who lingered here long enough would suffer the same fate. The air was no longer just air. It was a silent killer, a sleeper trap. Invisible, patient, inevitable.

Even the defenses of a Stage 3 being—renowned for their near-impervious resilience—meant nothing with enough time. The sleeper cells didn’t need to overpower; they simply needed to wait.

And now... they had waited long enough.

Suddenly, without any sound, a cold and detached voice echoed directly in everyone’s mind—clear, calm, and final:

"Mr. Robert, I warned you before, but you didn’t bother paying attention. Now it’s time to face the consequences."

The moment those words ended, the buzz of insect wings shattered the tense silence.

A flash.

Like a phantom from the abyss, Ricky appeared behind Robert—a monstrous blur moving faster than the eye could follow, faster than thought.

From his back, his four-foot-long proboscis gleamed like a blade forged from moonlight, etched with eerie, silvery veins that pulsed like living metal.

Robert, still groaning in pain, could only turn his head slightly.

Too late.

The sleeper cells had already invaded his nervous system. His thoughts were muddy. His movements lagged. His senses dulled.

He was helpless.

And then—

Schlunk!

The proboscis pierced through his back like a lance from hell, sliding in with terrifying ease. There was no scream. Just a sudden jerk—then silence.

In the blink of an eye, all of Robert’s vitality vanished.

His body convulsed once, twice, then began to shrivel rapidly. His skin sank into his bones, his eyes lost their light, and his once-mighty frame crumpled like a paper doll under the rain.

Felicia stood there, unmoving.

Her eyes wide.

Her lips trembling.

She hadn’t even blinked.

It all happened too fast.

Too clean. Too cold.

She could only watch as the proud priest of the Divine Sun Empire, her protector, her uncle... became nothing more than a hollow husk, drifting to the ground like an abandoned robe.

And standing behind the corpse, still holding the limp body aloft with his proboscis, was Ricky—silent, still, and completely calm.

His compound eyes glinted with the light of something ancient. Something utterly inhuman.

Thud! Robert slid down and fell to the ground.

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