Chapter 557: Dungeon (2)
After a glance at the Left and Right Guardians feigning sleep on the ground, Levi dismissed them.
The group quickly gathered their things and set off, following right behind Kemisi.
They weaved through the dilapidated Zijing City. The slender young Snake-man was clearly familiar with the routes here, winding left and right.
“Doesn’t your Dungeon have a main gate?” Levi asked, walking beside Kemi. Fatir was a step behind, holding the Little Snake Maiden’s hand.
Once the initial awkwardness faded, the aura the Saintess unconsciously radiated made the Little Snake Maiden feel warm, and the two quickly hit it off.
“No. It’s called a Dungeon, but it’s really just a massive underground cavern,” Kemisi said, shaking his head. “Everyone lives there, but the higher-status Divine Servants live in even more spacious caves.”
“Similar to the Mushroom People. But I’m curious—living underground for so long, how has your eyesight not deteriorated?” Levi was quite intrigued. The two Snake-men had deathly pale skin, an obvious sign they had never seen the sun, yet their vision hadn’t declined much. He could tell from how they didn’t flinch from the firelight.
“We don’t live underground all the time,” Kemisi explained. “Once the Forsaken Season is over, we come up to the surface to live.”
The more they talked, the more he realized these two Human Abominations were far kinder than he’d imagined, completely different from the Demons Nanny Milan had described.
“Besides you Snake-men, what other descendants of the Divine Lord are in the Divine Servant Race?”
“Rat-men, Spidermen, Cat-men… a lot, anyway. We’re all just the lowest-status Wrigglies.”
…
The Dungeon was only about a mile from Zijing City, and its so-called entrance was so unremarkable it made the Lord cringe.
The entrance was situated on a plain, tucked into a leeward slope. It was a hole about half a person tall. If Kemisi hadn’t walked confidently toward it, the Lord would have mistaken it for a dog hole.
“What are you spacing out for? Come on in,” Kemisi said, waving them over.
‘To be honest, it’s a good thing no one else is here. Otherwise, the biography of the Lord of High Cliff Castle, the Debei Lion Hunter Knight, would be forever stained by an entry about crawling through a dog hole.’
Levi pulled his black, hooded cloak tighter, stooped over, and entered.
Unlike the oppressive, cramped space he had imagined, after feeling his way forward in the dark for some distance, his vision suddenly brightened, and the tunnel’s height jumped to two and a half meters.
Levi noticed the light came from a type of glowing mushroom on the earthen walls, twinkling with a soft blue luminescence. While it wasn’t as pleasant as white light, at least the tunnel wasn’t pitch-black.
He quietly sized up his surroundings. This tunnel was clearly not a single passage; countless branches split off from it, creating a veritable labyrinth.
With his keen senses, the Lord knew he was gradually descending, even without any reference points.
RUSTLE~
Just then, the sound of something scraping across the ground came from a fork in the path to the right. Soon, two Snake-men dressed just like Kemisi emerged from it.
They were two adult Snake-men. Not counting their tails dragging on the ground, they stood about 1.7 meters tall. They were clearly startled to see the Lord’s burly figure but asked no questions, simply lowering their heads and continuing deeper into the tunnels.
“We’re in the outermost Wriggly Zone, where only the lowest-status Divine Servants live, so there are no strict inspections. Just don’t say anything in a bit,” Kemisi explained. “Even if someone asks, just pretend you’re Cat-men.”
Levi nodded and touched the vibrant white, green, and yellow greasepaint on his face. Kemisi had said that Cat-men liked to smear themselves with paint, so as long as no one yanked off his hood, they would instinctively treat him as one.
He didn’t know how long they walked. Along the way, they encountered all sorts of members of the Divine Servant Clan—some were Snake-men like Kemisi, while others were Spidermen with the lower body of a spider and the upper body of a human.
But these Spidermen were different from the Zor; they actually had a pair of ox horns growing from their heads.
In any case, the journey left the Lord dumbfounded. He felt as if he had arrived in a world where body parts were pieced together at random.
‘Even though the Races of the Material Realm were countless, none were such a hodgepodge. To put it nicely, they were crossbreeds; to put it bluntly, they were mongrels.’
‘After all, you wouldn’t find a pig-man with Minotaur horns in the Material Realm.’
However, from what Kemisi said, the Dungeon’s Night Wanderer nobles had even more bizarre features.
If people like Kemisi could be considered merely strange Half-Beastman crossbreeds, then the Night Wanderers were monsters cobbled together from scratch.
“Are your living quarters much farther?” The tedious journey made the Lord yawn.
“Not far. Past the corner up ahead, we’ll enter the Wriggly Zone,” Kemisi replied out of habit, already used to the questions.
“What does ‘Wriggly’ mean?” Fatir asked curiously.
“It means lowly bugs.”
As they were chatting, a towering tunnel entrance appeared before them, at least three and a half meters high.
“Squeak, squeak. Kemisi, you’re finally back.”
But just as they were about to enter, a figure emerged from the shadows, blocking their path.
Levi sized up the newcomer. This must be the Rat-man Kemisi had mentioned. It was about 1.7 meters tall, with an ugly rat’s head, two long, thin incisors, and a long, curved horn on its head.
It wore a tattered orange-red robe with a rusty dagger hanging from its waist, looking both ugly and fierce.
“Squeak, squeak. Don’t forget today’s red earthworms.” Its facial skin twitched into a vicious smile as it eyed the tall figure behind the young Snake-man.
But it wasn’t afraid. In its eyes, there was no one in the Wriggly Zone who hadn’t heard of its great name, Doug.
Its nose twitched slightly, as if it had caught a fragrant scent.
“Here.” Kemisi simply untied a small pouch from his waist, tossed it over, and asked, “Can we pass now?”
Levi watched the whole exchange without a word. It was obviously some kind of Trade, a classic case of the strong preying on the weak.
Such behavior was commonplace among sentient races, nothing strange about it at all.
“Don’t be hasty. You can’t eat hot red earthworms if you’re in a hurry,” the Rat-man said. It opened the pouch, and its sharp, thin fingers plucked out a writhing red earthworm and tossed it into its mouth, beginning to chew with a “CRUNCH, CRUNCH.”
Finally, with a satisfied expression, it licked up the mucus from the earthworm’s body that was left at the corner of its mouth.
The sheer disgustingness of it made the Lord’s face fill with revulsion.
Doug licked his lips with satisfaction. His scarlet rat eyes darted about before he spoke slowly, “Normally, one bag of red earthworms would be enough. But since there are four of you now, you’ll need two bags… no, three bags!”
It made no effort to hide the greedy look on its face.
Doug remembered what that scent from earlier was. ‘It’s the smell of meat! Kemisi and the two behind him smell of meat!’
‘How I’ve missed it!’
‘The last time I ate meat… that was the Little Snake-man a new moon ago. But there were too many of us, it wasn’t nearly enough to go around…’
“Or you can hand over the meat you’re hiding, otherwise, you can forget about getting in!” the Rat-man finally revealed its true motive.
“That’s impossible!” Kemisi angrily gripped his rusty knife.
For one thing, the meat they had just eaten had been a treat from the mysterious Human Abomination behind him, for him and his sister. It was already gone.
He had only managed to dig up two bags of red earthworms tonight. If he gave them to Doug, he and his sister would go hungry.
The Lord behind them had no intention of wasting any more time bickering with this Rat-man. ‘You can’t show weakness to petty characters; if you give an inch, they’ll take a mile. This Rat-man is no different.’
“Fuck your whole damn burrow!” the Lord roared, stepping forward. Before the creature could react, his large hand clamped around its neck. It had no time to beg for mercy before a sharp *CRACK* echoed out, killing it on the spot.
He tossed the corpse into a nearby corner like a dead dog.