Chapter 277 Life Cycle 6

“It’s been nearly two days since I entered this dungeon, so about two to three hours have passed in the real world. Asra will wake up soon…” Jay thought.

When he had left the real world, it was already late into the afternoon. Leaving Heavy to guard Asra, the vampire, she was wrapped up in a noon-leather blanket when he left.

To make another assassination attempt, Dark was still making its way back through the mountains and forest towards the mage hunters, while its secondary aim was to misguide them.

As for the mage hunters, they were still cutting a path through the mushroom desert, waiting for more specialised hunters to arrive who were adept with tracking magic.

After slaying Sullivan and his most loyal men, the mage hunters had irreparably damaged Losla forever, yet it was still changing. After being terrorized by the mage hunters, the villagers were already packing their belongings, while the other more paranoid types had left everything behind completely, not wanting to risk another lockdown where death would be the only escape.

Anya and Smiley (Matheson) were in mirror reality thirty-four at the third academy; an institution for variants. While safe for now, each of them was dealing with their own share of troubles; Anya, losing her father, and Smiley, his imprisonment, parasite, and escape.

Under the orders of Norgrim the headmaster, one particular student, William, was using his variant powers to locate Jay, but after using up all of his mana, had little progress. For now, he knew as much as the mage hunters did, which was that Jay was somewhere in Hollow forest; the time dilation of the dungeon Jay was in interfered with his spy type variant magic.

A third group was tracking Jay, too. A novice cohort of bounty hunters: Estra, Linc and Vanderby. Along with many other bounty hunters, they were after the gold reward placed on Jay, totaling three-hundred thousand gold. Dead or alive.

Yet none of that would matter if Jay couldn’t escape this dungeon.

“… Asra will just have to wait. Hopefully Heavy keeps her company.” He shrugged. Jay still had the [Guidance], so without it, Asra had no way of finding Luna, which was a military school for the vampires.

Red had finished stomping parasites, but Jay still kept his feet far from the pools of green and red blood as he followed the pulsating root through a passageway into another chamber.

Dimly lit, they placed only a few luminous jars around the edge of the room, and Jay guessed why as he saw the grotesque things looming in here.

Large fleshy bulbs of clear fluids filled the room, each of them connecting to the pulsing roots somewhere behind them.

Jay slowly walked around the bulbs, each of them as tall as him, round and transparent, with green and red veins travelling across them. Inside each of them were humanoid life forms in different stages of life, ranging from babies all the way to grown men. Most of them slept, but a few nearer to the light writhed and moved around inside, responding to the light nearby.

“So, they make their own humans…” Jay thought, walking past more of them.

“Break down the bodies in the pits, pump the nutrients back to the castle, create more knights, gather more bodies…” Jay shook his head. “The circle of life is, uh, not so beautiful.”

“It’s no wonder why their armor is so rusted. They’ve been recycling it.”

“The plant must depend on the parasite-knights as much as they depend on it. They’re practically made for each other.” he thought.

“… Well, maybe they have been made for each other, here in this crucible experiment.”

Walking around the giant bulbs, Jay found nothing of interest, but as he stepped over a pulsing root, he noticed something that made him shudder.

While the pulsating roots connected to the fleshy bulbs, Jay found they did not form from the roots, and the discovery disgusted Jay as his eyes made sense of what he was seeing.

“No…” Jay stepped back from one of them, only to bump into another, his backpack pressing against a fleshy balloon.

“Mmm! Mmm, mmm!” A muffled, desperate scream.

Jay couldn’t bear to look, nor to listen, as he stepped back from the bloated bulb with a full-size human inside the giant translucent sack.

The screams were not coming from inside the fluid pod, but from the pod itself.

Jay discovered what happened to the females.

The roots entered their mouths, and over time, changed their anatomy. It enlarged their stomachs to an enormous size while shortening their limbs, turning them into these living growth sacks.

Looking into her eyes, Jay saw she kept a part of her consciousness as her wretched eyes stared back from the cold stone floor; the plant kept her alive, but she was just a cog in the machine. A tortured existence.

Suddenly, the root pulsed, pumping more nutrient down her throat and she soon lost consciousness again.

Jay could only speechlessly stare, “They’re fucking people… the bulbs are fucking people?”

Speedily walking out of the room while holding his breath, Jay made sure not to touch anything, trying not to wake another, not wanting to have seen such a sight, not wanting to hear those hopeless, pained screams again. The more he looked, the more those bulbs looked like bloated stomachs, some even keeping a semblance of a belly button.

Walking out through the hallway, he stood in the basin room again; the dead, naked bodies still bleeding everywhere.

“I have to get out of this fucking place… out of this dungeon,” Jay whispered to himself.

“I’m used to guts and blood, but that was something… something that I won’t forget.”

Glancing at the staircase, Jay considered leaving, but then turned back and glanced at the hallway behind. For a few moments, his eyes lingered, but soon decided against putting them out of their misery.

“Their deaths may cause an alarm. If the knights know I’m this deep into the castle, there’s no telling what they’ll do to stop me.” He thought, “Besides, the dungeon will just reset when I finish it.”

With no other options, Jay walked to the stairs and left the floor. It was a floor among many that he would pass by as he followed the root, descending deeper into this horrible castle.

[Your skeleton has been slain.]

[115 Exp]

Another skeleton died, taking an enemy with it.

“Looks like they’re about to lose the gatehouse. I’m surprised they held on as long as they did.” Jay thought with an approving nod; It pleased him having such reliable companions.

“They bought me enough time to travel through the wall, enter the castle, destroy their patrol paths, and descend. All while recovering my mana pool.”

During the journey, Jay had consumed some bondtussle root for some extra mana regeneration, and he had sixty-two mana.

In one sense, it pleased Jay that his plan had worked so well. The plan displaced most of the knights remaining in the castle, and if he had to guess, were closer to the surface levels while he was, hopefully, deeper down.

Jay continued down the spiral staircase, passing by a few empty dark rooms and reaching the bottom.

However, it wasn’t the bottom floor. The staircase ended in a tight passage, with luminous jars lining either side. Jay emptied a few to ruin their scent-paths, and continued along, coming to the top of another staircase.

“Ah… more damn stairs?” he frowned with a sigh.

Having some rations and some water, he prepared his legs and mind for more stairs.

As he and Red stood still, Jay noticed a faint sound coming up from the lower staircase. Jay instantly recognised this familiar sound, and it was getting closer, louder...

“Marching… more knights are coming from below.”