Chapter 106: The Descent
Zac was picking up speed as his descent continued through the black hole. He desperately tried to grab onto the wall as he fell but the surface was almost completely smooth. Seeing no alternative he grabbed [Veruns Bite] with both hands and stabbed forward while summoning a sharpness-imbued [Chop] at the maximum length he could maintain.
The cosmic energy edge cut into the wall, and Zac removed the Dao-empowerment as soon as it did. Luckily the walls inside the hive queen were quite a bit softer compared to the hardshell exterior. The harsh deceleration almost ripped the axe out of his hands, but he barely managed to hold on as he ripped a large scar along the wall while moving downward. Soon he stopped just as he saw some green light below.
Since his momentum was gone he took out one of his back-up axes from his pouch and stabbed into the wall with another cosmic edge. Like this, he climbed downward toward the exit. He initially thought about climbing up to find the others, but he soon discarded that thought. They should be down here somewhere as well, and going downward might be a better bet to find them.
Besides, their goal was to go further down to find the core room in any case. So Zac started using the fractal edges of his axes as ice picks as he slowly climbed down toward the exit, And as he saw what created the green glowing light his eyebrows rose.
It was a large pond of acid. If Zac hadnt stopped his decent he would have fallen right in, and even with his armor and Endurance he wasnt sure hed survive the bath. As he hung close to the edge Zac was pondering on what to do. He could see that there was dry ground roughly ten meters away from the hole, but he doubted he could climb the ceiling all the way over there as his axes would just slide right out.
He took out his huge elongated axe from his pouch. It had accompanied him during many of the wolf waves when he wasnt able to freely use his skills, and by now it was mostly warped and dull. It wasnt really as useful lately since he didnt have to be as stingy with his cosmic energy anymore. Its total length was a bit over two meters, and it would make a decent measuring tool for the pond. Careful to hold it completely vertical he simply dropped it straight down.
The axe fell down and just as it was about to be completely submerged it stopped with a thud for a few seconds before it fell down into the pool completely. It looked like the depth was only roughly two meters. Even if it was shallower than he had dared hope, it was still enough to completely submerge him if he dropped down.
He didnt have any more time to ponder, as the edge he hung from with his axes suddenly cracked, and he fell down together with a large chunk of wall. He quickly threw out a bunch of non-essential tools and items from a pouch, such as his large table and chairs, and a few boulders he used for ranged battle. They smacked into the pond with a large splash, and Zac felt a burning sensation on his feet from the splashing acid.
He landed on a boulder that was rapidly sinking, and without hesitation used two of his standard axes as stilts with the help of [Chop] as he pushed down with elongated edges. He hoped that he would be able to jump over the pool like a pole vaulter, but the fractal energy edges broke almost immediately, dashing that hope.
Instead he kept throwing out rocks on the ground, gritting his teeth as the splashes hit his hands and face. Luckily the distance wasn't very long and after a few more boulders he was close to the edge of the acid ponds, so he leaped through the air. He sailed toward dry land as the boulders he stood on earlier quickly disintegrated.
He landed in a pile with a grunt, and quickly took out a rag to wipe the acid off his blistering feet with a grimace. After smearing some healing ointment on them he got up and looked around a bit stumped. He couldnt believe things turned out that well. The blisters hurt but wouldnt leave any lasting damage, and he only lost some furniture and two axes in the escape.
As he surveyed the area he found himself in a cave that was roughly 30 by 30 meters. There was no other hole in the roof, meaning that the others couldnt have ended up here. Most of the room was the large pool of acid, and as Zac looked around it almost felt like a digestive system rather than some sort of trap. Perhaps the ant workers normally filled the room they entered earlier with whatever a hive queen ate, and it dropped down into what was essentially its stomaches.
There, unfortunately, were no visible exits in the room, and Zac was afraid that the acid could rise at any time judging by the markings on the walls. There was a clear line on the walls at roughly the height of his waist that indicated that the liquid at one point reached all the way there. He quickly walked to the wall and started tapping it.
After tapping for a while he heard a hollow sound roughly at the height of his head and started to carve the cave wall using his axe. Even though the walls werent as hard as the exterior, he was still forced to use the Dao of Sharpness once again. He briefly wondered if a beast as large as the hive queen could feel him ripping a hole in what might just be its stomach, but he guessed that this couldnt even be considered a wound for something this size. In just a few minutes he carved a hole large enough to crawl through and found himself in a large tunnel.
The deserted tunnel looked completely organic, which was an unsettling change from the mostly rocky or chitinous appearance from earlier. The walls even looked like they were slowly pulsating to a heartbeat. He could only hope that the increasingly biological make of the wall meant he was getting closer to the core. He started walking along, ignoring the stinging pain from his burned feet, and since the tunnel was completely deserted he dared take out an F-Grade Nexus Crystal to recuperate his energy as he moved.
He was completely lost by this point and wasnt sure whether to try and complete his quest or try to look for his teammates. Then again, he had no structured method to do either, so he chose to simply move forward and take things as they came. If he found Ogras and the others, great. If he found a core-looking room, hed try and destroy it.
The power of the queen and her guards sounded daunting, but he made significant improvements since he fought the fiend wolf. He both had his new axe and the Seed of Sharpness, pushing his lethality to a completely new level. He also possessed another ace in the hole he remembered as he touched his right forearm with some anticipation.
After walking through the deserted tunnels for a bit he came to a fork. One of the paths was pretty much the same as the one he was currently walking. The other had a surprisingly low amount of cosmic energy. He unhesitantly walked toward the pathway with a higher amount of energy, but after a hundred meters stopped himself and backtracked.
Something was absorbing the cosmic energy in the other tunnel, and it might just be the queen. It should take huge amounts of energy to keep spewing out all these ants, even to just survive when youre this big. He couldnt even imagine the energy requirements for a humongous hive queen if Zacs own caloric intake increased by a few times since he evolved. That kind of requirement should be impossible to satiate unless it was through cosmic energy.
He held his axe at the ready as he silently crept into the tunnel. As he moved further the energy kept getting sparser, to the point that there almost was none left in the air. The feeling was extremely uncomfortable, almost like there was no air to breathe. It was the first time he felt the atmosphere to be like this since the integration, and he was surprised to see how reliant hed become on cosmic energy.
Finally, he entered a huge cavern and what he saw made him stop in place and just gawk. It felt like a scene out of a horror movie, with an uncountable amount of monster pods. The whole cavern was filled to the brim with receptacles that shone with the same green light as the crystals embedded in the hive walls. They stood up on the floor leaving only thin pathways and were even affixed to the walls and the roof. Zac couldnt be sure but it felt like there were tens of thousands of pods in the cavern.
Zac quickly entered a path and inspected the closest pods. Inside was an embryonic version of one of the worker ants that made up most of the armies. After walking through the path he quickly saw that all the pods were mostly the same, the only difference was the stage of growth of the ants. That meant that this likely was only one of many pod-rooms, and the more powerful types were created somewhere else.
He thought a second about destroying the whole cave, but that would take a crazy amount of effort going by how large the place was. It wouldnt make sense for him to completely expose himself when there likely were many more caverns just like this. His goal was to kill the queen, and if he did most of these pods should likely die out on their own.
He stealthily made his way forward toward the other end, but a sudden movement made him freeze. It was a shadow that flickered oddly beneath a pod. Zac frowned and moved toward it, which caused the shadow to actually move away. Zac realized what was going on and started following the flickering shadow until he reached a small path hidden behind a few pods.
Inside he saw Ogras, Alea, Janos, and Herod hiding at the entrance of a tunnel. They obviously met a similar situation as himself earlier, as their clothes were full of burned holes. Zac couldnt help to sneak a peek at Alea, and was rewarded with a pout and a teasing wink.
Herod was even worse off compared to the others with his whole arm singed to the point of pieces of flesh being missing. He was completely white with beads of sweat covering his face, and he was shivering as though in shock. His eyes were alert though, fearfully darting back and forth.
With a furrow Zac noticed that Rivea wasnt with them, but just as he was about to ask what was going on Ogras quickly signaled him to be quiet. The demon pointed to the walls, and for the first time he noticed something was different about the tunnels compared to those walked through earlier.
It wasnt the usual biotic walls anymore, but it rather looked like there were a multitude of cables, or veins, running along all the surface. The veins split up as they entered the large cavern, and Zac could see a thin line was attached to every pod.
Zacs heartbeat started to increase as he started to realize what was going on. He took out a piece of paper and wrote Queen? as he pointed toward the other end of the small tunnel they hid in.
With a serious face Ogras nodded.
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