Chapter 176: Dungeon?
It was a task that he needed to approach very carefully. He had been up close and personal with three of the monsters so far, and they weren’t anything spectacular.
It was their numbers he needed to be wary of instead, and that was where his careful approach would come into play.
He needed to sneak very close to the lair to observe the surroundings, locate choke points that could be advantageous to him. Places he could funnel the monsters into, reducing the numbers he would face at a time.
But that wasn’t going to be until later... for now he needed to rest. He had been awake for the whole day, and while his nano-enhanced body could still keep going for days, he didn’t want to overtax himself when it wasn’t necessary.
He felt it was better to scope out the monster lair when he was in tip-top shape.
He settled in for the night, waking up well-rested just before the crack of dawn, fully rejuvenated.
He wolfed down the remainder of the purple tuber crop he harvested the previous day, making some quick checks around his abode afterwards.
"I need to get more of those root plants," Zephyr muttered.
His requirements for food meant that he needed more per serving than the regular champion here, so to maintain such a healthy appetite, he needed to find a way to plant.
He had already eaten the portion of the plants he had intended to plant from the previous day.
"Guess I’ll have to make a detour to get more first." Zephyr muttered as he carefully sealed the opening to his abode with earth magic.
The fact that he was in the hard-earth, rocky part of the desert meant that sounds and vibrations traveled way quicker than it would in the sandy areas.
Here, a small loose stone tumbling down the jagged paths would resound so loudly like he was announcing his presence.
Even the steps he took as he walked to the food source location were very careful.
He arrived at the food source without incident, crouching by the patch of tuber crops. A few of them had already been pulled out, maybe by another group of the stout monsters, but there were still enough for him to take.
He dug up enough to last him two days, along with a few more that he could also plant.
This time he was really going to plant them...
Just to be on the safe side, he uprooted a few more to add to his earth-container. "This should last me for now," Zephyr muttered, dusting off his palms.
He knew he couldn’t lug around the heavy earth construct filled to the brim with the tuber crop, so he simply buried it with earth magic some distance away, amid a few natural ridges.
He had just turned to continue towards the monster lair when his body stilled.
"Monsters?"
His ears picked up faint sounds that didn’t belong to the desert wind.
Zephyr retraced his steps, moving to the ridges where he had buried his stash and hid behind them, waiting.
It didn’t take long to spot them — dark shapes moving between the rocks, grunting and cackling among themselves.
It seemed they were a scouting party.
There were about eight of them, and they were sniffing around the area where he’d killed their kin yesterday, growling low and gesturing at the ground.
Zephyr stayed perfectly still in shadow, watching them curiously.
He carefully observed each one of them, watching to see if he’d get the same feeling as the previous day, but he didn’t.
They still held tools though, so his curiosity still wasn’t satisfied.
He was going to follow them this time.
From their movements and gestures, he could tell that they weren’t particularly suspicious about their missing colleagues. If anything, it looked like they fully believed it was something else entirely — gesturing at the sand and the sky, shrugging as though dismissing it.
"That was easy...?" Zephyr exhaled softly, following after them immediately they started heading back.
He flicked his eyes briefly to the map overlay in his HUD panel, frowning more and more the further he trailed after them.
"Where the hell are they going...?"
For the past few minutes, the direction to the monster lair on the map, and where the monsters themselves were headed didn’t line up at all.
"A detour?" Zephyr muttered, hissing under his breath.
He wanted to maximize the dark hours just before the break of dawn to scope out the surroundings of their lair better, so he couldn’t afford to waste time like this.
He debated just leaving them and heading straight for the lair directly, but a nagging curiosity that prevented him from doing so.
A feeling at the back of his mind that told him there was something more to this.
"Fuck it. If I’m wrong, I can always go again early tomorrow." He gritted his teeth, pushing onwards after them.
The monsters’ journey led him deeper into the red hard earth lands.
There were more plateaus here. Deeper fissures. Cliff faces that looked like teeth biting into the sky.
"What a waste of time!" Realization dawned on Zephyr as he noticed they were getting closer to the location of another food source.
"Is this what I wasted my time on?!" He practically seethed.
The sun was already on the horizon, casting a deep orange glow on the whole desert, wiping all trace of cover the previous darkness might have provided.
He was just about beating himself up further when he noticed a detail in the distance.
Abruptly, he stopped trailing the monsters, hiding within the last natural cover there was. A ridge filled valley.
Just beyond it was a totally flat, parched and cracked land that provided no cover for at least a mile.
And in the distance after that, a large blob-shaped mound.
A mound that seemed to house the rest of these monsters’ kin, based on what Zephyr could see.
He did a double take, squinting his eyes to confirm whether he was seeing correctly.
But it was still the same. There were monsters milling about through various holes and paths carved into the side of the mound like some sort of hive, or nest.
"A monster lair..." Zephyr whispered in shock, rechecking his Resource Map and finding nothing of the sort displayed on it.
"What the hell’s going on?"
Were there monster lairs his perk didn’t account for?
What was the point of his perk then?
Imagine this lair was just a mile away from his abode. He would never have even known about it till he found monsters crawling down his tunnels!
Zephyr was pissed.
This changed a lot of things. The value of the Resource Map had now dropped by a lot in his books.
It meant that even he wasn’t exempt from the danger of getting caught up in a random monster wave.
Zephyr stayed prone for a long time, watching as monsters came and went into the lair, bringing in resources, going out for patrols, laughing and relating in their unintelligible language...
And slowly his previous idea started to change.
What if this wasn’t a lair at all...?
The feeling Zephyr got from watching them for more than an hour was like he was watching an organized society. From the stout monster guards that made thorough checks as they all entered, to the scouts, the resource gatherers.
Besides their physique... and unintelligible language, nothing else really screamed ’monster’ to Zephyr.
They were crude and barbaric, yes, but they still related and did things normally.
This was more like a settlement than a lair to Zephyr.
"Maybe that’s why it isn’t displayed on the Resource Map?" he frowned. Now he needed to confirm his hypothesis.
He needed to get in there somehow.
Zephyr crawled backwards, disappeared further from view. He considered finding a place to dig in and hunker down to play the waiting game till night fell.
But he decided against it. He could use the same time to check out the monster lair displayed on his map. Finding his way back here was easy.
He started back, moving as fast as he carefully could, covering up ground faster than he had coming.
Already, the sun was rising higher in the sky, and he didn’t want to be out in the open when it reached its peak.
He reached the monster lair within thirty minutes, jogging the last stretch of the distance.
"Okay, now that
looks like a monster lair..." Zephyr whistled.The lair stood out like it didn’t belong in the desert at all.
In fact, it didn’t sound right to call it a lair, it looked more like an opening, a portal, cut directly into a low ridge.
The immediate surroundings of it was a pitch black loamy soil that contrasted clearly against the red hard-packed desert earth.
It looked like the hard earth had been cut out to accommodate its presence, with clean, sharp edges demarcating its borders, pointing to a purposeful creation rather than something natural.
Strange arcane markings were etched directly into the stone doorway to a portal which lay right in the middle of it, swirling slowly with a bleak blue glow.
Fascinating...That would explain the absurd numbers then... Aegis suddenly inputted.
’Huh?’
Host, I suggest you do not jump into this unprepared. You may not be able to back out once you go in.
’I wasn’t planning to anyway,’ Zephyr chuckled. ’No one in their right mind would jump into that without preparation.’
"You seem to know what it is, Aegis...?"
...It doesn’t conform to real life logic, but yes, I think I know what that is...
A dungeon.
.
.
.
A/N: This Chapter’s special thanks goes to DestroyerMagus. Thank you for the Golden Tickets! Many thanks to all who give power stones too! LunarEcho, John Smith and others!
On a side note, I hope you all can also drop some reviews for the book if you’ve been enjoying it. Mana Processor only has one review thus far and I hope we can remedy that 🤞 xD