Chapter 1251: The Toxic World

Chapter 1251: The Toxic World

Rushing forward in one great leap, I plunge my entire body into the atmosphere of the fifth. Despite the thrill of exploration, of taking part in another adventure in the Dungeon, I can't say this is a pleasant experience. If I were to liken to anything, it's like sticking my head straight into a toilet.

A toilet filled with acid.

My entire body burns. My carapace is on fire, my antennae are frying away, the joints in my legs are in immediate pain. Worst of all are my eyes. They are immediately attacked, consumed by the toxins which never relent in their attack.

Even more disturbing than the physical discomfort is the feeling I get from the mana. It's invading my body constantly, those fingers of poison stretching inside, attempting to corrupt me from within. It's... awful.

Yep... this is absolutely awful. No wonder people consider this place an uninhabitable wasteland of death. It is an uninhabitable wasteland of death.

I trigger my healing gland, welcoming the sensation of the icy cold healing fluid rushing throughout my frame, pushing back the damage caused by the environment of the fifth. At the same time, I put my brains to work, seizing the invading mana and purging it before it can do much damage or begin to propagate itself. With these measures in place, it still absolutely sucks to be here, and I probably couldn't maintain it indefinitely. Putting aside how absurdly painful it is, without sufficient Will from the Vestibule, I'd eventually run out of healing to constantly repair myself.

Forward, forward, forward! I press on, eager to break through to the end of this entrance and take a glimpse of the true fifth stratum. It really tests my grip, the walls are far slipperier down here than they were in the fourth, but I hold firm and manage not to fall.

Luckily, considering the condition I'm in, I don't see any monsters in the tunnel itself, which I'll take as a win. After carefully scuttling down the wall for almost a hundred metres, it finally comes to an end and opens up into a wider cavern below.

Interestingly, the space is less like a chamber and more like an enormous tunnel. Hundreds of metres across, perhaps even a kilometre, and just as deep, it's massive, on par with some of the largest I saw in the first and second. Filling that space is the most disgusting kind of 'life' that I think I've ever come across. Seeing it in all its glory, I get a clearer picture of what the terraforming slugs were trying to achieve when they invaded the fourth.

[Holy moly. It's awful down there.]

[Master! You're hurt!]

[Of course I'm hurt, just being down there is enough to hurt. You're going to have to be very careful. I'm not sure how vulnerable your shadow body is going to be, but if the acid eats into it like it did my carapace, you'll have a rough time.]

"What was it like, Eldest?" Coolant asks me when I crest the exit of the tunnel again.

"Bad," I reply bluntly. "It's going to be a heck of a job purifying that place. Impossible, many would say."

"What do you say?"

I clack my mandibles.

"I say, we can do it in a year."