Chapter 37. Ancient Devourer

After reaching level five hundred, Victor confirmed with almost certainty that the System was a lie…or at least his version was.

“Yeah, I got nothing! No new class or evolution,” Victor shouted as he unleashed a semi-charged Doom Ray at an enormous intelligent willow tree with a craving for flesh, setting it ablaze. Before encountering this behemoth of a monster, he had started to think he and Alice could deal with anything, but it was only the fiftieth floor, and they had encountered trouble.

The Fleshtrees, as they had chosen to name them, were resistant to almost every element and could regenerate in seconds. One-shotting them was their only option, but high-powered spells that could instantly kill a tree the size of a skyscraper were few and far between…and when thousands of them populated a continent-size forest, shooting off high-tier spells left and right was not ideal. But they had little choice as the dragons were rapidly approaching, and they needed to keep moving forward.

The fiftieth floor was basically a dense marshland with the occasional open space. Fleshtrees of various sizes inhabited the biome. Victor had seen willow trees back on Earth and had always admired the chaotic way their branches grew out, shrouded in dense green leaves that hung down like a depressed teen’s haircut. But with the bark black and the leaves a mixture of red and gray, the place had a grim atmosphere.

In the far distance, shrouded by fog, Victor could see a towering willow tree–themed tower lined with pulsating red vines like blood vessels, but in their path were Fleshtrees so tall they touched the top of the floor’s dome. One Fleshtree must have consumed or concealed the glowstone sun as the place was bathed in total darkness. Nevertheless, the group had managed to travel unmolested for the most part, with Henry riding on the back of the dragon Alice used to use as a mount.

Meanwhile, Wiggles happily churned through the Fleshtrees’ exposed roots down below the murky depths of the marshland as Victor, Alice, and Genus flew overhead.

As the group passed by the aflame Fleshtree from Victor’s Doom Ray, they confronted a literal wall of Fleshtrees between them and the next floor’s tower. “I refuse to believe any Delving team could get through this!” Henry cried from atop the black dragon mount. The blood-red leaves of the closest Fleshtree swayed to the side, and the bark split vertically and exposed a wall of sap with a scarlet eye floating in it.

The eye that would dwarf Genus turned and stared right at Henry. “Cover him!” Alice called as she put herself between the murderous tree and Henry. But, of course, their lives did not really matter due to them being undead. Still, Victor wished to conserve his stat points where possible, and resurrecting an over-leveled apocalypse horseman and a smashed-up zombie dragon would not be cheap.

Before anyone could even react, thousands of black vines coated in toxins erupted from the ground below Henry and clasped around the dragon mount’s legs and tail. Alice wasted no time and set the vines alight with the upgraded version of her fireball spell, Hellfire. The dense mana shield that coated the vines evaporated away due to Alice’s True Damage that ignored the magical defenses and directly burned the vines. The purplish inferno drilled down the vines and spread toward the main body. The ancient Fleshtree saw the threat coming, so it used Geokinesis to manipulate the terrain and form a physical stone barrier between its burning vines and its main body.

The dense mana shield surrounding Alice flickered as her mana reserves bottomed out. Despite leveling into the nineties and investing most of her unspent points into her INT stat, hurling high-tier magic at trees for days had taken everything out of her.

Genus flew below Alice and let her rest for a moment on his back. But, unfortunately, while Alice was out of commission for a moment, the other ancient Fleshtrees forming the wall between them and the tower had awoken and stared at Genus with their alien eyes.

Genus took in a massive gulp of air as his belly inflated and glowed; golden fire escaped between his teeth before he opened up his maw and unleashed a devastating attack. Golden fire engulfed the thousands of vines rearing to strike, their mana shields flickering under the assault. They shot up, but the majority failed to reach Genus as he tried to fly higher, but eventually, the floor’s dome was only a few meters overhead. Despite the immense distance, the vines closed in within seconds.

Before they seized Genus, Victor appeared from Stealth, severed them all with a swipe from his claws, and froze the tips with Freezing Cone just for good measure to stop them from regenerating.

“Looks like there’s no other way…” Victor sighed as he began charging up a Doom Ray at around ten percent capacity. A million stat points vanished into the abyss of the spell’s fuel.

“Is there really no other way we can get through? We have been blasting holes through all the obstacles so far, and that just gives the dragons chasing us a clear path forward, just like the tunnels Wiggles made through the cave floors.” So Alice said from atop Genus’s back. She had her Fly skill active to avoid plunging to her death as she used Meditation to rapidly regenerate mana at the cost of her defensive capabilities.

Victor used his black ocean network and confirmed a dragon noble family was only three floors behind. They didn’t have to waste any energy on clearing out the monsters and simply followed their trail of destruction, and if Victor blasted these Fleshtrees to make a city-size hole, the dragons would have another already cleared route to take and gain on them.

With a sigh, he continued to charge the spell and aimed it. “What can I do? My skills all rely on assassinating, army building, or total annihilation. These trees have far too much defense for my Annihilating Aura, and their dense Mana Shield and bark protect them from my Freezing Cone and Shadow Magic.”

The sky distorted due to the flashing purple lightning that crackled around Victor’s extended claw. Mana streams funneled into the spell and began rapidly burning Victor’s hand, and his lifeforce surged to defend his body from evaporating.

“Fine,” Alice said and turned to watch the light show. She ensured her Void Eye was active as it reduced the world’s brightness.

“Three…two…one…” Victor counted down for everyone’s sake. “Fire.” He unleashed the spell, and the entire floor became daytime. An arc of purple lightning discharged across the sky. The Fleshtrees all slammed shut their bark eyelids to protect their vulnerable eyes and deployed their Mana Shields at maximum power. They lit up like Christmas trees with red mana dancing across their surface. The Doom Ray blasted into them with the force of a nuke combined with the wrath of Zeus.

The entire dungeon floor shuddered as dust plumed into the sky alongside thousands of shards of bark and residual mana. Yet as the smoke cleared, the Fleshtrees were still standing, and the stadium-size hole in one of them was rapidly closing.

“Do we rush it?” Genus said, getting in position to fly through the gap before it closed. “This could be a good chance and give us some room between the dragons and us.”

“No, stop.” Victor looked closely. “Those darn trees didn’t even feel a thing.”

Alice nodded, her Mana Sight and Void Eye skills active. “That is an illusion spell, not a real opening. I am willing to bet they used some life-saving skill to avoid that attack, or perhaps they are just that sturdy? Would match up with what we have seen so far.” She put her hands on her hips and sighed. “If only you could use void magic.” She eyed Victor as he floated there silently. “I mean, you are a creature from the void. How come you can’t use it?”

Victor prepared another Doom Ray before the Fleshtrees recovered and sent more roots. “Alice, we have gone over this. The System is not here to help me. It’s here to restrain me. If I can somehow break free of its clutches or regain my true body, I could obliterate these Fleshtrees without issue. But for now, I will have to work with what I got access to… Have you recovered?”

Alice responded by coating herself in her void armor and floating in the air. “I recovered enough mana to use a few void spells with your help.” Then she said, “But the simple fact is those Fleshtrees are so titanic that a single spell can’t take them out in one go, and they regenerate in seconds. Could we use Wiggles to sneak under them?”

Victor debated the idea, but one check on his undead pet sunk the idea before it could even fly. “Sadly, no, Wiggles is currently fighting the middle Fleshtree’s roots and is losing. I am expending a lot of lifeforce to regenerate him right now, but it’s worth it to keep those roots from attacking us.”

Victor scanned the surroundings, and after confirming the Fleshtrees were still recovering, he gestured to Alice. “Create a path through the middle Fleshtree’s Mana Shield with a large void-empowered Fireball. I will then force my way inside and explode them from within. I believe that the eye is a weak point.” Victor then turned to Genus. “Get ready to dive bomb through the gap. This time, it will be a real path, and we can use this to buy us some time. I refuse to believe the dragons hot on our tail can deal with this situation so easily.”

Genus huffed in agreement as he lacked the energy to respond. They had been up for days at this point, as every inch of these last few floors had been crawling with carnivorous plants that tried to swallow them at every opportunity.

From Genus’s perspective, Victor vanished, but he could feel the considerable mana fluctuations surrounding the area where he disappeared. Alice directed him with her Void Eye. “He is approaching the Fleshtree’s eye very quickly. I’ll fire before he gets out of my Void Link skills range.” It was the skill Alice had acquired upon accepting the Friend of the Void class. It allowed her to access some void affinity while Victor was nearby.

Everything from then on happened quickly. Victor and Alice had practiced this particular spell combination, so they both performed their roles without communicating. Alice summoned a Fireball, increased its size to a few meters in diameter, and held it over her head. After attracting the Fleshtrees’ interest as all their eyes turned to her, she hurled it at the middle one. “Nice defense, but can you dodge this?” she sneered as the void-empowered orb sailed through the sky.

The Fleshtree seemed to foresee its impending doom as it tried to sacrifice its titanic branches, the sound of wood creaking as the branches that could belong to a world tree swung in the way and evaporated in the Fireball’s path. The void affinity simply deleted all it came in contact with, although the Fireball deflated in size with every impact.

Luckily Alice had made it large enough as it reached the main body after blasting through over ten branches. The Fleshtree shut its vertical bark eyelid as a last-ditch attempt… But to Alice’s relief, the fireball evaporated the scarlet mana shield, punched straight through the eyelid, and exposed the floating eye below.

Alice then saw in her Void Eye the shadow of Victor sneak through the gap before the Fleshtree’s mana shield repaired itself. What occurred seconds later was the Fleshtree’s realization that Victor was inside its eye as it pulsated before exploding in a brilliant explosion of pure white. Genus didn’t waste a second and dive-bombed through the explosion. Steaming-hot sap splashed them as they soared through, but both Alice and Genus’s mana shields kept them dry and safe from the heat.

“By the Goddess!” Alice shouted as she looked over her shoulder and saw the smoldering mess of the Fleshtree begin to regrow. “Are they even killable?”

[Ancient Devourer defeated! Exp awarded to all party members…]

[Contribution has been calculated at 10%.]

[Exp awarded: 10% of total gain.]

“Wait, we killed it?” Alice exclaimed as another screen appeared before her eyes.

[You have reached level 100]

[Evolution to High Human has commenced]