Epic of Caterpillar

138 Forsaken Labyrinth

[Day 126]

Today I gathered with the entirety of the Construction Team to talk about a big project. I've been thinking this for a while but never had the time to do it, and now with the threat of the Athetosea Kingdom, I think it's time to do so.

The plan is simple, we will build a wall surrounding the Grand Forest. It will be arduous and tiring work, but with the help of thousands of Undead, it won't be an impossible feat. The wall won't be as obvious either, it will be inside of the forest, and it will be covered by the "outside forest" as well.

I've been planning on adding several magic devices and magic technology from the Aquaria Kingdom. It will be able to summon a giant magic dome of solidified magic force whenever it is threatened or if an outside force comes for us.

Because this project will take several days, even weeks, months, and possibly years. I decided to immediately start this right away, commanding fifteen thousand Undead Skeletons to move towards the outside of the fifth layer and begin moving the ground around.

According to the experts on construction, we need a nice "root" for such a wall of massive proportions. So, the Undead will be in charge of digging the ground until reaching around fifty meters.

Also, the walls won't be made of just normal rock bricks, but of enhanced and mass-produced magic cores bricks, which are made with Magic Cores and mixed minerals alongside tons of pure magic. There are over one twenty factories working on this special brick, which I gave them the recipe beforehand.

It was a rather busy day going everywhere while assessing the situation, so I didn't have much time to train or be with my family, I will try to compensate this in the next days.

The Athetosea Kingdom issue has been mostly stall… However, Alice has been steadily hypnotizing nobles, using this opportunity while the Champion of Psychic Eyes is secluded on her territory.

[Day 127]

Although I've eaten more humans from the war that I've stored, I haven't gained any more skills. It seems that my hunger is not getting as satiated with the same food.

[Insatiable Appetite] seems to have evolved with me. Although it only used to be a small negative status from a skill that I obtained after fusing my Belly skills alongside various devouring skills from monsters, it has become something else now. Its as if my own stomach has become a living being separate from me and its constantly asking for new and delicious things to devour.

Well, as long as I keep eating big amounts of food, this "feeling" can be calmed. However, I need a higher quality of food. Something like the bosses from the Dungeon on Evergreen Town on the Vast Plains, they were certainly delicious.

Unlike myself, those who receive a share of my blessing doesn't feel the "necessity" to keep eating high-quality food. Thankfully, my wives and children don't have any necessity like this outside of the blood that my children need to keep on growing strong, although they can just hunt monsters for blood by now.

Because of this, I decided to finally explore the [Forsake Labyrinth], a hidden dungeon that was found by a mining team on one of the various mountains on the Rocky Mountains land.

Unlike the Bloody Sacrifice Dungeon, which is on our total control, this dungeon is independent and too dangerous. Only my strongest servants on the levels of Truhan, Celica, the Slime Family, and such can safely come back.

Truhan and Celica have recently made a party with the Slime Family and other high ranked Ogres, and they've been exploring the place a lot. Celica has made several maps which I've made prints of using a magical machine from the Aquaria Kingdom.

Because it's so close, there is no need to prepare me too much. I wanted to take a quick look and eat some new monsters and perhaps bosses, because of this, I will go alone. My wives have their own activities so it's not like they don't have a reason to live without me at their side.

My children won't come either as they are too weak for this yet, this seems to be a very high-level dungeon and I only want a small taste of it for now.

After having breakfast, I quickly flew towards the [Forsaken Labyrinth], which was being guarded by two Giant Undead Warriors so no monster tries to sneak away from the place.

I specifically reserved the dungeon for me today, so I will be on my own and no one will be stealing my prey.

The entrance to the dungeon seemed to be a cave made of hardened clay, with a deep brownish color. There were conventional black stones too, alongside yellow and orange colored gemstones decorating the wide cavern. These gemstones were named [Spiral Dripstone], [Dark Pressure Gemstone], etc.

According to my servants, due to the influence of the dungeon, these gemstones and stones grew extremely quickly and sometimes they come to gather some accompanied by a strong group of people.

I gathered some myself, which took me roughly half an hour. Although I could gain some skill if I eat them, I would need to eat around one thousand, and I only managed to gather a few.

The actual entrance to the dungeon wasn't an "official" one, but it was a broken wall that the mining team broke by accident. The actual entrance of the dungeon has not been found yet, some speculate that its actually on the dungeon last floor, on the deepest of the Realm.

It seems that this dungeon is very old and quite ancient and that its power has been weakened by the passing of the years, this is why breaking its wall was so easy and why it hasn't regenerated at all.

The inside of the dungeon resembled an endless tower that had a spiraling staircase, the entire dungeon was made of clay-like bricks and had unintelligible markings and words written on an ancient language.

Between the spiraling staircase, there would be a small floor that would have four to five rooms. Some were closed but I just forced my way in.

Each of these rooms is a central spawn point for monsters to appear, alongside this, there would be the occasional treasure chest with some low-rank materials or equipment.

At first glance, this dungeon seems incredibly easy to traverse as you only need to walk down the stairs and loot the rooms, however, as I kept advancing, the stairs would begin to be covered on dangerous traps that would be the end of an unaware adventurer.

Most of these traps were pitfall traps with the occasional poisoned arrow wall, or if you are extremely unlucky, a giant boulder would fall over you without previous warning.

The monsters of the floors 1st to 10th were as follows:

[Ancient Venomous Mandrake], the weakest of the bunch, this monster's body is completely made out of roots, which are purple and secrete a deadly toxin. Alongside this, it has several leaves over its humanoid semi-circular head which are decorated on extravagant colors, I assume that these colors are there to alert predators about its dangerous toxin.

[Limb Detacher Horror], a strange creature, it seems to not have a solid body and instead is made of shadows. These monsters would usually take the form of a very malnourished human. It would sometimes extend its arms to amazing lengths reaching over twenty meters. It usually likes to scare you by hiding behind walls and yelling at your back, it has a skill that lets him paralyze whatever it scares with his yelling.

[Ancient Twelfth Armed Tarantula Fiend], a tarantula of no more than one meter on length, it has a beautiful brown colored fur that is decorated with several red stripes. As its names imply, it has twelve arms instead of eight. Its poison is not so lethal but it attacks in big groups of more than one hundred. Even if their poison is not so potent anyone would still die from the thousands of bites they would get while being swarmed by them, their poison will quickly melt their prey into a soup as they would feast on the poodle of bones, flesh, and blood.

[Savage Earth Girtablilu], a savage species of Arachne that has the lower half of a giant scorpion. These, in particular, have no intelligence and act more or less like savage monsters. Their lower half is brown colored and is as hard as steel. Their claws are gigantic and can easily pierce adamantine. They also have a massive scorpion tail which secretes a deadly and corrosive poison that can inflict with several negative ailments. Their humanoid upper body has four eyes and spiked ears. Although they seem to be beautiful, their jaws can open wide up to three meters, showing their inside fangs and gigantic tongue, they are no beautiful at all by then.

[Silver Relic Anaconda] / [Golden Relic Anaconda], a rare species of golems that resemble long and thick snakes. They are either made of pure silver or pure gold. These fiends have a length of over twenty meters and their heads are as big as an Earth's elephant one. Their long bodies are beautifully decorated with different paintings and precious gemstones. They do have fangs made of silver or gold, depending on their type. These fangs secrete a deadly toxin just like a normal snake would do. However, they prefer to choke their prey first before slowly killing them with their toxin. Even if they are golems, they can somehow eat living prey. They have countless ores inside of their bodies, which makes them extremely hard to kill. They like to swarm their prey with big groups of over twenty.

[Hellish Nightmare Ants Swarm], these are a group of small-sized ants that have a brownish color and small red-colored stripes. Although they are weak as one, they are never alone. These monsters wander around the dungeon on massive swarms of over one hundred thousand, because they are so small, they reproduce extremely quickly and will instantly fill any hole that you end up making on their moving swarm. They usually take a humanoid form and have shown extreme grades of intelligence as there are reports of them trying to trick my servants into thinking that they were an unlucky adventurer on the brink of death, even to the point of imitating the yelling of a human, goblin, troll or monkey. From the distance, most people were not able to tell if they were really a person or a swarm.

Although most of these monsters seem to be extremely dangerous, I still managed to get through most of their ambushes with ease. Well, I said, "most" of them as I still went into some small trouble when I was ambushed by these damned ants.

Their intelligence and sharpness are something else. I was entering an open room that had a small golden colored chest on its back, and even when I inspected the whole room with my skills, the ants were so little that they managed to hide beneath the brick of the walls themselves.

As I stepped inside the room, I was quickly ambushed by over two hundred thousand ants that jumped over my back, opening their small jaws, they tried to make of me a quick snack. However, they were quickly met with my extremely hardened skin as their tiny jaws shattered into pieces.

Nonetheless, because they were so many, they walked all over my entire body and were extremely annoying to get out. In the end, I had to use [Flame Body] and engulf my entire body in flames as they died down. Because they were so small, they quickly turned into ashes so it was quite hard to eat them.

Although no skills were obtained from any of these monsters, eating them still satisfied my [Insatiable Appetite] at least for some time. Because of this dungeon is a high leveled one, the EXP was rather fine.

[You gained 4633000 EXP]

[LEVEL 027/250 EXP 21.504.055/52.000.000]

The loot that this old and ancient dungeon gave me on the first ten floors was also rather fine, I obtained mostly some sacks of gold, around fifty gemstones of various types and elements, and some [Rare+++] equipment that could be converted into ingots.

Before leaving the dungeon, I decided to fight the boss, which was awaiting me on the 11th floor.

Unlike the Evergreen Town dungeon, this dungeon didn't have three rotating bosses but only one for every ten floors. The boss would also spawn way slowly, taking half a day to appear once again. I presume that this may be due to the oldness of this place, which is slowly crumbling, I wonder just how ancient a dungeon has to be to crumble because of being too old. This dungeon probably has been alive for hundreds of thousands of years…

Maybe the god that made it has fallen or his power has weakened? Well, that's only a theory, I don't even know how a god can even manage a dungeon from whenever they are.

The boss of the 11th floor was a giant Savage Earth Girtablilu Empress, which had a towering body of over twenty meters. Her muscles were incredibly sturdy, and her lower scorpion half was golden colored, shining brightly as if it were covered on a thin layer of pure gold. Her giant pincers were decorated with countless gemstones of various colors, which included Spirit Stones of Fire, Earth, and Wind.

Her human half was brown-skinned and possessed several black tattoos. Her face was that of beauty and her four golden eyes were extremely charming. She had a beautiful crown made of brown colored horns on her forehead and her hair was of a chestnut color. She held two weapons on each of her human hands. A golden scimitar that had the form of a half-moon and was wrenched in blood and a dark lance, that seemed to be made out of bones and decorated with the pelt of the monster that made those bones.

[NAME: ---

[CLASS: ---

[RACE: Savage Earth Girtablilu Empress

[LEVEL: ---/--- EXP: ---/---

[STATUS: Excellent.

[HP: 1730/1730 MP: 336/336

[STAMINA: 450/450

[STRENGTH: 892

[DEFENCE: 687

[MAGIC: 236

[RESISTANCE: 758

[SPEED: 1084

[CHARISMA: 300

[LUCK: 0

For a moment I thought about enslaving her instead of killing her, however, her charm and beauty was quickly ruined by her massive gaping mouth that extended all over her chest, opening wide. Her giant mouth showed more than one thousand fangs inside and an extremely long and disgusting tongue filled with deadly poison. After seeing such a sight, I only saw her as a monster and nothing more.

Her blows were strong and devastating, she used both of her claws alongside her weapons with mastery, creating consecutive blows made out of [Techniques]. Even more, aside from her absurd strength, she possessed an amazing speed. Every time I tried to go for her head, she would quickly jump outside of my range and shoot me poison balls from her tongue, which had such corrosive capabilities that instantly melted the floor and the walls.

From time to time, she would jump over a faraway pillar and would begin to summon small Savage Earth Girtablilu that would rush over me with all their might. I restrained myself on using devastating magic as it would most likely crumble the entire dungeon if I did so. So, the battle was prolonged absurdly.

When I managed to catch her using [Light Speed Flight] I quickly cut her head off with my Ollathir sword. However, even without her head, she seemed to be still alive, probably having a second brain somewhere on her scorpion half.

I armed myself with my six-armed layer and decided to finish her off quickly as it was getting pretty late already. However, even with my [Light Speed Flight], she managed to dodge most of my attacks with a sudden burst of strength and speed that she gained after getting her head cut off.

Due to this, I had to chip her slowly, cutting off her limbs and arms, however, this didn't work at all, because she possessed an abnormally high regeneration ability, being able to regrow limbs the moment she lost them. Due to this, I had to think harder on how to beat her without crumbling the whole dungeon down.

So, in the end, I summoned monsters of my own, invoking twenty Advanced Undead Knights, which I spread through the entire floor. And while attaching a trap on their bodies, that would activate the moment she killed them, releasing a series of shadow tentacles that were originally from the skill [Shadow Binding].

When she slew five skeletons in one blow, all of them released their traps and entangled her limbs and arms. But she was a rather merciless boss, even for herself, as she quickly cut her arms and limbs off and immediately growing them right away. The worst thing is that I wasn't able to inflict her with any status infliction as she had the [Divine Protection of the Dungeon] skill, that nullifies negative status of any kind, even those of my [Mystic Eyes] and instant death.

In the end, I managed to beat her using my expanded Aura alongside my Flesh and Slime Minions that were attached over Skeleton Soldiers, which expanded and entangled the boss abdomen. That moment, I completely destroyed her entire body into pieces using my Aura Punches.

After claiming my prize, I decided to rest for a moment and drink some liquor, and just when I was relaxing, the boss spawned right away. Even though they said that it takes half a day, it spawned right in front of me!

I quickly armed myself and went serious from the start, wielding all my weapons and using several [Ultimate Techniques] while protecting the surrounding dungeon from my blows with a solidified magic dome. Surprisingly this time, her death was extremely quick.

After such an easy death, I felt like a complete idiot when I fought her at the beginning, she was surprisingly easy, but the several surprises that she brought to me blinded my judgment and made me lose my cool. I just needed to go all out from the start.

Having this small lesson learned, the boss spawned once again. It was rather odd that she was spawning so quickly if the reports said otherwise. Perhaps there was a hidden condition that I was triggering every time I killed her?

I concluded that perhaps my inner magic is feeding this dungeon with new life, increasing its spawn rate.

After I killed five more, I decided to eat them alongside some liquor and pickled vegetables.

The meat on her scorpion half was rough and dry, however, her humanoid part was tender and juicy, a nice contrast. Her flavors came well together with some liquor from the Aquaria Kingdom alongside some spicy and sweet sauce.

[Calculating EXP gained]

[You gained 27430000 EXP]

[LEVEL 027/250 EXP 48.934.055/52.000.000]

[You learned the following Skills]

[Instant Limb Regeneration]

[Beheaded Surge of Power]

[Desperate Dodge]

[Forbidden Summoning Magic: Lesser Savage Earth Girtablilu]

This boss drops were rather simple; she usually leaves some Earth Spirit Stones and materials. The rarest drop item I obtained was her scimitar, which disappears when you defeat her, but it may drop as a rare item. The scimitar was called [Bloody Golden Scimitar of Scorching Sands] and was a [Unique] rank weapon, which I ate right away.

[You learned the following Skills]

[Weapon Materialization: Bloody Golden Scimitar of Scorching Sands]

[Relic of Scorching Sands]

Although I didn't obtain [Divine Protection of the Dungeon], these skills were not bad at all, so I was satisfied with my hunt and went back home.

I shared the boss meat with my family and had a small feast before going to sleep.

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