Chapter 297: In the steps of our forefathers, we trample their remains
Three fat larvae of various insect species and a Silverfanged Centipede.
Not a bad haul for the hunter, plenty of meat to last her for a few weeks.
All she had to do now was drag it back home, butcher, treat it and-.
Thunk!
“Huh?”
The hunter had spent almost their entire life in this jungle and had learned from their caretakers what kind of prey they could acquire based on what fell from the skies above.
A loud splat meant leaf eaters with decent meat.
A loud thud meant something more vicious but something they could make tools out of.
A loud “thunk” was…new.
Curiosity and caution conflicting, the hunter decided to quickly butcher off the best bits of the current kills and make their way over to the see what kind of prey gets attracted by a “thunk”.
“Something heavy…or something light?”
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“Alright, no more horror movie marathons before adventuring,” Zhen Liu instructed the kaijin immediately after exiting the lift, “I do not need to develop an irrational fear of elevators or axes or something before exploring anywhere dangerous.”
One of the downsides of sharing a soul link with multiple sentient beings is that emotional feedback tends to get amplified if all of the members connected to the controller are feeling the exact same thing all across the board. Which in this case was anxiety towards elevators, a feeling that didn’t abate all too much for a full twenty minutes straight.
“Elevators aren’t even that scary, it’s the psychological message that they can carry that is,” Zhen Liu muttered while rubbing his temples.
As the kaijin exited the lift, Nepherage and Frosttusk proceeded to ignore their liege’s grumblings and search through their surroundings, making sure to secure the area before adventuring onward.
“Come on out, my apprentice.”
“You…too…friend…”
“Whirr!”
“..!”
As an extra measure, the two kaijin also summoned their respective zakos as well.
Hurricroak followed suit, but she proceeded to be a bit of a wiseass before doing so.
“Milord, there’s no way insect hell any of us would get spooked by an axe-wielding lunatic. I can kill an axe-wielding lunatic, very easily. Just not the dark monsters that humanity can become when tortured and isolated in a lift,” she commented while summoning her two boney zako.
“Well ladee…did you just make a pun?”
“…maybe.”
“Son of a bitch.”
Moving on from the kaijin’s lame joke, Zhen Liu took in his surroundings to determine what their next course of action should be exactly.
‘Looks like that book was right about there being a camp here at some point…or maybe it’s more accurate to call it a cold case crime scene…’
Immediately outside of the lift was an abandoned campsite of sorts, a “safe” domain in otherwise hostile environment.
Scraps of tattered cloth and broken equipment was scattered about in a set radius of about six meters, the clear remains of tents and survival tools that had once been key parts of this campground. Granted the thing that captured the group attention the most was the sheer amount of skeletons around the area.
Humanoid skeletons.
Some of the skeletons looked like they were attempting to run away from something to enter the campsite but got killed in the process, some of them looked like they were trying to run away from the campsite before getting killed by arrows to the back or a saber to the skull, while some of the skeletons appeared to have been broken by a high impact force only possible by being thrown several thousand feet from the air.
Either way there was a lot of dead bodies.
=It appears that journal was less of an over exaggeration and more of an understatement.=
=The one showing clear trauma where someone was decapitated, had their head shoved up their own rectum and then tossed down here to rot.=
Aside from the history lesson about this place’s origin written by shapeshifted spider of all people, there was a second slightly more compelling reason why Zhen Liu and his kaijin had come here: the firsthand journal account of a group of explorers who, to quote Pathos, “found the tomb of the Insectile Queens.”
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Title: The Journal of Belios Fetoni – 2nd year student of Golden Rhino University – Alchemist Division
Date: Fifth day of the third month, Azure Kings Era – Year 56
The date for the expedition has been set, huzzah!
Through sheer luck or maybe pure happenstance, Professor Zelini managed to find someone who was interested in bankrolling our venture into “Insect Hell”!
A welcome change in luck what with the months and months of rejections and even the explorer guilds refusing to provide funding due to “incalculable casualties” and a “known dumping ground for unsavory elements”…no matter!
I am excited to see what sort of beasts live in the bottom layer of Insect Hell, as well as what types of flora and fungi are down there.
If the stories and rumors are true, and that there is nothing but insect type aether beasts down there, then the natural treasures in the area must be hyper specialized in a manner to foster such a development.
I cannot wait to see what kind of medicines we can create with such items!
There is however, one caveat to the affair.
The expedition will not be solely in the hands of the Alchemist Division, rather it is to be a joint venture between us and the History Division.
A strange caveat to be sure, but it was at the request of the organizer.
Our areas of interest don’t conflict with one another so it should be fine if we collaborate.
…
I do hope this expedition of ours go well.
If we are successful in our endeavors, our department will get a much needed boost in funding and we’ll be able to get our hands on newer and better quality equipment.
Hell, if things go really well, perhaps this journal of mine will can be published as a memoir of the adventure!
Wouldn’t that be grand?
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‘Huh…now that I think about it, this is the first time since I made them that we actually used the zakos for actual combat and non-training purposes,’ Zhen Liu realized as he watched the simple-minded almost beings take point at various parts of the abandoned camp, next to their respective kaijin counterparts. He had never notice this before, but with kaijin and zako now next to one another, he swore he could see physical traces of the kaijin appearing in their respective zakos.
The metallic one assigned to Nepherage appeared to be developing little horns.
The boney ones assigned to Hurricroak began to develop glowing spots.
While the plant one assigned to Frosttusk looked…harrier? No…mossier. There was now moss growing in parts of the body to mimic Frosttusk’s fur.
“Heh. Cute.”
After assigning the zakos to the kaijin, Zhen Liu for his part, kind of forgot about their existence, physically at least. He did keep track of them via his nightly routine of checking everyone’s stat growth and abilities, but there wasn’t much to check in regards to the zako.
Everytime he clicked on them, he got that same little blurb from the first time he checked them and no visible stat displays, except for the evolution chance meter thing at the very bottom.
Every night he checked on that particular stat, it would only show an increase of 0.01 percent…except for the one under Frosttusk’s care which jumped from 20% to 40%.
That little jump happened around the time he jumped from Master to Grandmaster, so he wasn’t too shocked about it.
He still had no idea if he had any cores compatible with it though.
‘The description did say nascent [Lust]…fuck, am I going to have hang around a brothel or something?,’ Zhen Liu thought to himself as he recalled the [Lust] core he had swallowed before.
Desperate times had called for desperate measures, but he didn’t expect having to second guess it’s usage now that he had a “compatible” zako for it.
‘Wait…shit, I also need to find a “catalyst” for Razor Maiden…whatever that means. If it’s another high priced item, I either need to rob a rich man or start stealing business deeds or something.’
But as Zhen Liu got lost in his thoughts about what he had to do to increase the deadliness of fighting force, and the kaijin were busy searching the camp ruins, an outside observer had come to see what the fuss was about.
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“Not…prey?,” the hunter thought to themselves as they arrived to the source of the “thud”.
Milling about the wall, the hunter saw something they hadn’t seen in a very, very long time.
“No…people?,” they muttered quietly to themselves.
It had been a long time since the hunter had met “people”.
The last time they spoke to someone, was the day they had to bury them.
“Keep watch…learn intent…”
