Chapter 300: Of course there’s a guardian!
=B-grade horror adventure?=
=First, stop using our new lord’s media as a basis for reality. Last time you did that,you started quoting those non-Aether saints.=
=After a hundred years, second, please don’t risk summoning an interdimensional rodent hellbent on suing us into the ground, by making that reference.=
=Rather not risk it. Also, back to that hunter…, I think they’re about to make a move. How you think this is gonna go?=
=Of talking, or…=
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‘Wait…now that I think about it, shouldn’t we have been attacked by like…multiple giant insects by now? All we’ve been seeing are little first tiered ones and one second tiered Bronze Wing Cicada.’
[Which was the best tasting of the bunch!]
[Un…sure…minn…jarl…]
[Maybe they were intimidated by our presence?,] Nepherage suggested.
She wasn’t entirely wrong about this suggestion.
On the whole walk to their destination, over a half dozen or so solitary hunter insect beast around the third tier were keeping a steady eye on the group, ready to strike.
However, when they witnessed Hurricroak’s tongue lashings against the first tier insects so quickly, they started to develop second thoughts on the matter.
They had never seen such a hunting method before, and for some reason, it made them nervous, like something written in their souls.
Combined with the bright and loud colors of the group in question, many of the predators assumed the group to all be highly poisonous to the taste anyways.
Regardless of the conditions that lead to this moment though, Zhen Liu and the gang had finally found the promised site for the materials needed for their new companions: the Queen’s Burial.
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Date: Twentieth day of the Sixth Month, Azure Kings Era – Year 56
About a week has passed after we had buried Davie…and it turned out to be right decision to linger!
In the first four days alone we had managed to identify twenty-six new medicinal plants that could be used to make new types of elixirs, thirty-four that could be used to enhance existing recipes and forty-seven ones that could be used as substitutions for components that are normally deemed as “too rare” for several more.
And that’s not at all, some of the insect aether beasts we have hunted have also had amazing medicinal properties as well.
For example, we had identified a creature we have come to call as a Jade Scaled Funeral Butterfly, a macabre name to be sure, but we have learned that it’s scales work as a surprisingly potent coagulatant.
Quickly adding a few pinches of the scales and then stirring, turned several jelly-like elixirs we had in storage into fine hardened pills as solid as the finest candies.
The only downside is that when the scales are inhaled in their natural state, it causes rigor mortis of the lungs…
We almost lost a guy…luckily we had antidotes this time.
Anyways, the expedition is going as well as we thought things would go for our division, I can smell the new underclassmen and funding now…that said…not everyone is happy with our progress as of late.
I’m still not entirely sure why the History Division came here in the first place to be honest.
Everyday they go deep into the jungles and everyday they come back with nothing but agitated looks on their faces.
Agitated…
Angry?
Upset?
No, agitated works.
We had initially just ignored the perceived lack of progress they were making,since we were busy with our own research of course…but then…we noticed something odd…namely our sponsor’s behavior, or rather his change in behavior.
Of the first two days of our expedition, Frederick showed interest in both our development in regards to alchemy and the history division’s trips to the jungles.
For all intents and purposes, he made himself be the ideal polymathic student…but then he started to become agitated as well.
It was slow, and we didn’t know when or why, but Frederick started to pay less and less attention to our group’s endeavours, and began to regularly meet with the History Division, almost nightly and immediately after they return from the jungle.
Every time the history division came back from the trips with their agitated looks, Frederick would meet with the professor in charge of them, Professor Festeroy, and escort him to his personal tent.
Frederick and Professor Festeroy would then spend hours in some strange, almost clandestine meeting about the same thing over and over again.
How do I know that?
Simple, I heard them.
It was by pure happenstance that I walked about the tent in the middle of one of their meetings and I heard Frederick and the Professor argue over something they had called the “Queen’s Burial”. Not knowing what that was, and it being none of my business anyways, I simply walked away from the tent in a slow manner bad to avoid detection by it’s occupants.
The day after I had seen them just enter the tent for their meeting, so out of curiosity, I listened in again…and they talked about it again, the “Queen’s Burial”.
At this point, curious of the meaning of those words, I tried asking my fellow classmates to see if they knew anything about this burial.
Surprisingly, a talented yet slack first year classmate of mine knew the origins of that term, at least in regards to Insect Hell.
Apparently it was an old legend that centuries ago, give or take a lifetime or two, a massive eighth tier Infernal Spider Queen invaded the hunting grounds of an equally dangerous Apocalyptic Lacewing, and that Insect Hell was actually the aftermath of their conflict.
The powers used in that battle was enough to tear open the earth and create an ecosystem so perfectly encapsulated, that it attracted insect aether beats from all over the world.
Now when I was told this story, I was…skeptical.
Infernal spiders could be found in Stampeding Bison, sure, but not all the way out here.
The area had some Ignati aether in the air, but not enough to sustain an Infernal Spider of magnitude.
Also, an Apocalyptic Lacewing hunting ground?
Here?
On Stampeding Bison, even though they’re normally native to Soaring Gryphon?
That was an absurd notion!
Regardless, I still failed to see how this ancient legend about aether beasts slugging it out involved the History Department of all things, who normally dealt with ruins and fallen empires, or why Frederick Anterio, the son of a war hero would care about such a thing.
Even if the story was true, it has been literal centuries since that battle took place, surely someone would have claimed whatever spoils could claimed from there by now…right?
On a side note, for the past few days I’ve felt like someone has been watching us, but I’m not sure why… whatever.
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‘Ya know… I’ve been trying to figure out how something this freaking gigantic can remain hidden for so many years…then I remember this place is covered in giant magic insects that could probably eat someone in a single bite.’
[Correction,] Hurricroak interjected, [delicious giant magic insects that I can eat in a single bite.]
Zhen Liu could feel Nepherage and Frosttusk rolling their eyes at Hurricroak’s correction, a sentiment that he shared.
Standing before them, well halfway buried into solid obsidian, was the colossal fossilized remains of what Zhen Liu assumed to be the leg of a giant spider monster.
In terms of shear height, it looked as tall as a redwood tree while in terms of width, it was about as long as a hippopotamus, the normal kind.
The leg looked worn and a bit decrepited, an understandable notion given the supposed age of the thing, but Zhen Liu could still feel radiating off of this massive leg the faint hint of something…wrong.
He just couldn’t figure out what.
‘Hmmm. On the plus side, I think this thing’s “wrongness” scared away the rest of the bugs. First step I took all night here wasn’t covered in maggots for once. I wonder if it’s hollow on the inside…’
Curiosity taking over caution at this point, Zhen Liu walked up to the leg segment and prepared to knock on it.
But then… something happened.
[Wait…milord, look out!]
‘Huh? Wah!’
A projectile that flew as fast as a Lighting Hornet appeared as if out of nowhere and had almost pierced him in the eyes. Luckily for him, Hurricroak managed to catch it in time her tongue.
[Maestro, sorry for the intercept… but I don’t think you could have tanked that.]
‘Nope…’
The arrow before his eyes looked rather primative, but at the very tip of the arrow was a stinger that Zhen Liu recognized as belonging to a Paradise Hornet, a type of insect that’s venom was so potent it could render even an Aether Lord comatose.
‘Who the hell fired this?!,’ Zhen Liu wondered for a brief moment…before the presumed archer appeared from the trees above him, dropping down in a fucking hero pose.
“-_!#)”-;$!”
“What the f- wait…”
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CREATORS’ THOUGHTS
Mizako
Huh…somehow broke 900k views…okay, eff it!
I have 3.3k followers. If even 100 of you spent as little as $3 a month on my Patreon, you would be helping me out so much… I could very easily end up homeless soon with the way things are going…
— Captain Bear (@HauntBear) July 13, 2022
see this post?
this girl made those “normal” human designs and is currently turning them into kaijin, but she needs a hand.
I can bankroll some of it, but I think giving her a signal boost is probably better in the long term.
she’s also been commed to do something… special.
