Dimensional Hotel
Chapter 312: The Noble Sacrifice

A deafening explosion echoed throughout the entire hall. The Hermitage Members, trapped by the walls, floors, and consoles, watched in terror as a part of the control hall fell from the ceiling, crashing directly onto the head of the “Sage.”

The heretic cultists, trapped beneath the steel, struggled desperately, trying to break free from the heavy metal, but every movement only intensified the restraints on them. A furious fire—a fire born from this living ship—seemed to pulse through every wall, pipe, and circuit, filling the air with heat that burned in every direction.

Then, the pipe that had fallen from the sky was slowly lifted.

The “Sage,” dressed in white robes, rose to his feet. With every small movement, his body grew taller and stronger. He had been a tall, thin old man when he first crawled out from under the pipe, but as he straightened, he transformed into a figure over two meters tall, his physique strong and perfect, resembling a statue of a hero in its imposing grandeur.

The wrinkles of age faded, and his sunken cheeks became plump and radiant. His once too-large white robes were now perfectly fitted to his form. He gazed up at the steel-cast face on the wall, where sparks of bright blue electricity danced through his beard. His expression was one of stern authority and fearless power, almost as if he were a god walking among mortals.

He took a step forward, and thunder erupted from beneath his feet: “The greatness and necessity of the Path to Sanctification is beyond your understanding!”

A heretic cultist, trapped in the steel cage, suddenly became filled with excitement. Though still bound by chains, he shouted aloud: “The Sage has completed his final metamorphosis! We’re saved!”

The other Hermitage Members in the hall, witnessing the Sage’s transformation, also stirred with excitement. It was as though the savior himself had arrived, and despite not knowing how the Sage could possibly confront the ship—now alive and hostile to everyone—they cheered, feeling hope rekindled.

Yet, Yu Sheng remained silent. Without a word, he tore two pieces of steel from the walls and hurled them at the massive white-robed man like cannonballs. He also manipulated the ground beneath the Sage, softening it and distorting the gravity in the hall, using everything at his disposal to launch an all-out attack.

Thunder crashed throughout the hall, and steel rained down like a violent storm. The towering old man in white rose into the air in the chaotic gravity field, controlling the thunder as it met the furious barrage of steel. His body, which seemed to be made of flesh and bone, now displayed a strange, rock-like texture, allowing him to withstand the steel crashing into him. With his powerful form, he released a mighty thunderbolt at the face on the opposite wall.

However, to Yu Sheng, this was entirely meaningless.

His body was the ship itself, and the face on the wall was merely an “interactive interface.”

The power of thunder exploded against the wall, scattering into waves of blinding electric light and scorching molten traces across the metal surface. Yu Sheng’s face melted and distorted in the thunder, disappearing in an instant. Yet, before long, the roof of the hall opened its eyes, looking down at the Sage floating in mid-air.

“You seem to care little for the lives of your ‘fellow’ cultists,” Yu Sheng said slowly.

The few Hermitage Members previously trapped in the walls had been struck by the power of the thunder’s aftermath, now little more than piles of charred remains, still smoking in their metallic prisons.

The cheers from the hall gradually quieted.

The massive old man, still surrounded by thunder, merely turned his gaze upward at the now even larger face on the ceiling, unafraid: “This, too, is a noble sacrifice—”

In the next moment, his already enlarged body expanded again, glowing even brighter with thunder!

His form surpassed “strong” and entered the realm of grotesque and terrifying, his muscles bulging as his limbs stretched and deformed. His skin cracked, and the electric light burned through the flesh beneath, causing it to flow outward in a liquid form, dripping like blood. His once majestic white robes turned to ash. In a matter of breaths, the Sage had transformed into an aberrant behemoth, glowing with electric light, his human form unrecognizable. Thick arcs of electricity shot from his body, and as they swept over the floor of the hall, they turned dozens of Hermitage Members into charred remains.

“This is all a noble sacrifice!”

Yu Sheng’s ventilation system immediately sucked in a breath of reactor fumes. “What the hell, you’re killing your own people even worse than I am?!”

Despite his exclamation, he didn’t hesitate. Another series of deafening crashes rang out in the hall as the ship’s structure began to rapidly shift. Metal was extracted, moved, and reshaped. Two giant hands suddenly formed from the walls and rushed toward the aberrant behemoth in mid-air, aiming to clap down on him with all their might!

He had to find a way to deal with this increasingly powerful and unstable old man quickly, or else the heretic cultists in the hall would be wiped out by their own leader!

The metal hands collided with a thunderous crash.

But in the very next moment, brilliant electric light erupted from their palms. To Yu Sheng’s shock, he watched as the hands were slowly pried apart from the inside. Hot, bright white material, like blood, dripped from the air. The thunder-wrapped aberrant behemoth reappeared before him—its form now completely distorted, as though it had been flattened by the earlier blow, only to forcefully reshape itself again.

From within the swollen, writhing mass of flesh, seven or eight arms pushed outward, slowly prying apart the closed metal giant hands.

A roar-like sound echoed from the electric light—

“They are unstable beings that have undergone multiple iterations. They have yet to ascend into sufficiently loyal and steadfast, noble individuals. Rather than allow them to reveal secrets to the enemy and lose their honor, I would rather send them, while their souls are still pure, to join the ranks of the ancients!”

Yu Sheng: “…?!”

However, what shocked him even more was that the surviving Hermitage members in the hall, upon hearing Sage’s near-death sentence and declaration of betrayal, did not react with anger or hesitation. Instead, they began to shout—

“Step onto the path of the holy!”

“Martyrdom! Martyrdom! Martyrdom!”

“Salute to you—witnessed by the way of the perfect!”

The hall was filled with a fevered, ecstatic, and chaotic atmosphere that left Yu Sheng utterly stunned. It was the first time he had witnessed such a scene—a place so filled with mindless frenzy, where individuals, though walking the path of destruction, carried their “faith” with such high-spirited zeal. The sight left him in awe. And in the next second, he noticed that around the aberrant behemoth, which was forcing the giant hands apart, an electric storm even more violent than before erupted.

“Its” body was rapidly expanding; something was about to burst out from within.

“This is a noble sacrifice!”

Yu Sheng: “What the hell!?”

Although he couldn’t understand how much advanced technology the holy Revere Hermitage had, nor how a living person could transform into such a form in such a short time, one thing was certain to Yu Sheng—if this Sage sphere exploded here, not a single heretic cultist in the entire hall would survive, and even the core structure of the ship might be shattered into pieces!

He had no confidence that he could fix this place after such devastating damage—this was not the same as reconnecting a few pipes and wires.

So, without hesitation, he chose the backup plan of the backup plan.

At the far end of the control hall, the heavy composite porthole let out a sharp tremor and suddenly tore open a large hole.

Along with the ear-piercing alarm of gas leakage and the sudden whirlwind that swept through the entire hall, the interior space of the ship was exposed to the vacuum of space. A terrifying suction force rushed from the hole, and at the same time, a massive pipeline fell from the ceiling and, halfway down, swept through the air like a cudgel, smashing into the rapidly expanding aberrant behemoth with immense force.

“Out you go!”

Sage let out a distorted roar in the wind. Due to the drastic pressure changes, his final scream sounded strange and eerie, but in the face of the uncontrollable gravity, the powerful impact, and the terrifying suction of the vacuum, this monster could no longer maintain its form. It was flung out of the “pillar of order” like a cannonball.

The next second, the shattered viewport quickly repaired itself, and the remaining Hermitage Order followers in the hall perished before the vacuum and extreme cold could take them. Yu Sheng sealed off the breach in the spaceship just in time.

His gaze immediately turned toward the view outside.

The aberrant behemoth, flung into space, continued to rapidly move away from the pillar of order, its body pulsing with blinding electric light, like a violently beating heart expanding and contracting. Yu Sheng watched as it flew further and further away, already bracing himself for an explosion’s shockwave—though space might not generate a shockwave, the immense energy released at close range was bound to have significant effects.

He tensed, every nerve on edge.

The aberrant behemoth, transformed from Sage, expanded and contracted violently a few more times, then continued flying farther and farther away…

And it truly kept getting farther and farther.

It kept accelerating—until finally, it became a streak of light racing through the stars.

Yu Sheng: “…?”

…

“Noble sacrifice, noble sacrifice… bearing the shame is also a sacrifice…”

In the depths of space, the aberrant behemoth seethed in anger. The intense radiation and low temperatures of the cosmic environment brought him immense pain, but he knew he had survived the grip of that terrifying ghost.

From the formless mass of flesh, a tiny limb formed, its end tightly clutching a talisman: a ruby embedded at the center of a double-ringed circle glittered brightly. He poured his consciousness into the beacon.

“This… this is Babole-3. Requesting… requesting the consumption of one blessed shelter, any coordinates will do. I… I am dying… I carry important intelligence!”

A flash of light streaked through the pitch-black depths of space, and “Sage” disappeared into the vastness of the universe.

This novel is translated and hosted on bcatranslation