Chapter 151 - Straight To The King

Still a little muddled from the pain, I stood up. The grating sounds of the mace being dragged against the floor were grating against my ears, filling my mind with anxiety.

It was now that I realized I didn't get a wooden stake, or any weapon for that matter. In other words, since there was no mana in this place, there was little I could realistically do.

...Unless I was willing to sacrifice my hand in order to take this three-horned demon down. Wait, what constituted as a weapon I could use anyway?

As that question appeared in my mind, it quickly disappeared as I realized that the dragging sound was getting terribly close.

In desperation, I held out my hand in front of me and decided to think about the consequences later. Since I couldn't cast the healing spell here, it was probably a terrible idea.

If I retreated back outside of the cave to cast spells, I would be thrown right back into the flames.

However, there was nothing else I knew to do at this point and I planned on trying everything I could.

My eyes widened with determination.

And then...

They narrowed.

The three-horned demon in front of me collapsed. My eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness and let me see what was in front of me.

While it was indeed true a three-horned demon was in front of me, its body was unbelievably thin and its body a pale grey, unlike its normal black color. Although it brought its mace along with it, the fact was, the three-horned demon could only barely drag it along with itself.

Now, The mace lay by its side while the three-horned demon itself was face down on the ground.

After a bit of unsteady breathing, I gradually calmed down.

I reflected on my past thoughts and realized they were quite foolish. There was no need to force myself to confront the demon in front of me. After all, I could run away.

That would be much easier with the ability to teleport.

However, my mind instantly locked onto the idea that I had to kill. That it was either the three-horned demon or me.

...My mentality seemed to be a little more self-destructive than before.

Regardless, the fact that I didn't have any weapon on me was still going to be a fairly major problem. After all, I still had to get through the black lizards in order to reach the lizard king. In essence, there was no real way for me to kill any of the black lizards.

That is, unless I wanted to give up the peppers. However, that was my only way to kill the lizard king, so I wouldn't do that unless I had become an idiot.

I began walking forward silently, right past the three-horned demon.

For a moment, I considered bringing along the mace, but my body seriously couldn't support more than a couple of swings with that. Considering that there was no magic here, that meant the inability to use the healing spell.

In other words, the condition of my body was precious while I was still inside here.

And so, I walked down the cave path with the intention of fleeing as much as possible.

I was able to reach the part where the cave split into two paths without encountering any of the black lizards. It was a little frightening as my vision really didn't extend far. Though I had dealt with this before, the lack of vision was jarring, especially because of the fact I was unarmed.

Nonetheless, I walked down the left path, remembering that this was the way towards the black lizard ecosystem.

It was also where I remembered there being several black lizards here. With slow and silent steps, I walked forward.

I intently looked in front of me, trying to catch any sign of the black lizards before they reached me. For what felt like an eternity, there were no lizards.

The paranoia made me occasionally glance at the side to see if they were there or even behind me. Although there was nothing there, it felt as though they were crawling at my sides or following from just behind me.

I put myself under the illusion that the black lizards were all around me.

However, no matter how much I scared myself, my steps steadily moved on.

My eyes continued to dart all over the place.

Left, right, behind, front.

Then eventually, I saw the tip of a black lizard's mouth. Adrenaline immediately kicked in and my mind was ready to teleport at any moment.

...But the lizard wasn't moving.

I took another step forward and realized it was a baby black lizard that had died. There were no external wounds that told me so, but its emaciated body told me the whole story. It had died of starvation.

I spent a second watching over the baby lizard. But in that second, my ears caught onto what sounded like a snap. My ears listened in more closely and heard the sound of flesh being torn.

I slowly took another step forward and saw that a larger black lizard was feeding off the corpse of the baby lizard, not even sparing the bones. The lack of kinship was not too surprising to me.

After all, the black lizard would probably starve to death otherwise.

I walked down the side of the cave in order to avoid the black lizard and was able to walk past it without getting noticed.

The cave walls gradually spread out and to my surprise, the cave walls spread out to the side. It was no longer a path, but a large enclosement. From what I recalled, I met several black lizards on my journey here, but now there was only one.

I hugged the left wall and slowly walked across it, not forgetting to look down occasionally. My goal was the tiny black crystal that let me see everything.

And soon enough, upon casting my eyes down, I saw that tiny black crystal. I bent down to pick it up with my thumb and index finger. The instant that I touched it, my vision cleared up.

It was as though I had been closing my eyes this entire time and only decided to open them up now.

I took a brief scan of the vast expanse before me.

Far down this expanse was the lizard king, sleeping peacefully. It seemed like all the bigger and stronger black lizards were also either leisurely sleeping or eating. However, things were not so peaceful near the entrance of this expanse.

There were several of the smaller black lizards opening their jaws wide that appeared to be roaring. It was like a group of kids yelling at each other trying to justify who deserves a piece of chocolate.

Though instead of chocolate, these black lizards were fighting over the right to reside over a hill. Their roars definitely weren't that loud because even as I strained my ears to their limits, I couldn't catch a hint of any sound being made.

After a small period of time, a pair of lizards left the hill, letting a group of three lizards take it. Yet, all things considered, there were only a few stalks of black grass on that hill. In other words, it would probably be difficult for the three of them to reach an agreement when the food was so scarce.

The pair of black lizards that just had their hill taken from them began walking across the expanse, trying to find another hill. However, they began walking into the entrance of the expanse. The only thing they would find there was a bunch of stone, a dead demon, and an aggressive fish.

Perhaps the fish got its food from black lizards that aimlessly wandered into the pond in search of a hill.

After making those observations, I continued to hug the edge of the wall and continued down it. Without a weapon, I doubted it would be easy to steal the black grass. Though I'm sure I could easily take some with my ability to teleport, there was only so much I could do.

That was because the lizards that acted as patrolmen would eventually notice me at some point. I still remembered how they followed me everywhere, forcing me to run and fight them head on.

I was pretty sure the amount of black grass I needed to consume was quite high in order to have those lizards notice me. However, the point at which it was too much was unknown to me.

My memories weren't clear enough to remember it down to the number of every stalk of black grass.

And even if I could, that wasn't the way I wanted to do things.

With my weak body, I slowly traversed down the side of the expanse.

After quite a while, I passed by all the large black lizards and reached the lizard king.

Then, I poked the lizard king on the snout.