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◈ Unbound Magic Swordsman ◈
Chapter 16: Venomous Insect
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When he passed the edge of the swamp, a massive nest that had swallowed three rotting giant trees overwhelmed his view.
A grotesque fortress made from mud, fallen leaves, and mucus vomited up by Venomous Insects, all sickeningly clumped together.
It stood well over twice a human's height and was so broad that even four wagons parked side by side would not fill its width.
Dozens of Venomous Insects crawled over its hideous surface.
Ordinary specimens.
Giant arthropods as large as an adult's forearm.
Six hooked legs and horrifying red spots etched across black carapaces.
They were clearly larger than the lower colony he had burned before.
The mucus dripping from their mouths was such potent venom that it blackened and melted plants the instant it touched the ground.
Hidden in a tree's shadow, Lucian mechanically counted their numbers.
More than forty patrolled outside the nest.
Including the forces gathered within, the colony must number close to eighty.
And at the deepest point of the nest.
Inside a large, grotesquely hollowed-out opening, a huge mass more than twice the size of an ordinary specimen crouched.
A Queen.
Its bloated body was larger than a person's upper torso. The red patterns on its shell were dark and grotesque, as if it had been drenched in blood.
The stronger the Queen grew, the larger the colony it would form.
That was why the request had been posted. It had to be exterminated while it still could be.
What mattered now, in any case, was the distinct ripple flowing from the Queen's bloated body.
Magical power, Ether.
A concentration of Ether that could not be compared to some mediocre Goblin Shaman.
Below his dantian, the Mana seed pulsed like a hungry beast.
If he killed that monster, the vessel holding his mana would expand explosively.
He calmly formed a plan.
Picking them off from the outskirts through assassinations, as he had before, would be suicide.
A Venomous Insect colony was a single organism linked by pheromones.
The moment one head burst, eighty of them would descend like a carpet bombing, spraying acid venom.
The Wyvern Light Armor would protect his torso, but it could not stop his exposed face and throat from melting.
There was only one answer.
Strike the Queen, the colony's core, in the shortest possible time and destroy its chain of command.
Fire attack.
The insects' bodily fluids were highly flammable like oil, and the mucus nest would make excellent kindling.
The problem was Lucian's flame.
A torch-sized flame that burned for six seconds from his fingertips could not engulf the entire nest in an instant.
Lucian took a small leather pouch from his pack.
Two bottles of strong lubricant oil used to maintain equipment.
Part of his thorough preparations to complete the request.
He read the swamp wind against the tip of his nose.
A northwesterly wind.
If he set a fire in the blind spot northwest of the nest, the smoke and flames would ride the wind and devour the whole nest.
* * *
Lucian circled through the swamp like a ghost.
Avoiding the mucus alarms by a narrow margin, he reached the nest's northwestern rear.
The nearest scout specimen was only fifteen paces away.
He tore open the lubricant oil and generously splashed it over the mucus wall at the base of the nest.
Several Venomous Insects caught the scent and twitched their antennae unpleasantly, but it was buried beneath the terrible stench of pheromones, and they did not raise the alarm.
Lucian stepped back a couple of paces and forced mana into the fingertips of his left hand.
Fwoosh.
A crimson flame flared up.
He mercilessly drove the torch-sized flame into the oil-soaked mucus wall.
Whoom!
The oil-fed blaze surged up explosively and spread wildly across the nest's northwestern wall.
The mucus itself was flammable fuel.
Orange flames devoured half the nest in an instant, along with black smoke.
“Skreeeeech!”
The colony let out a tearing scream in panic.
Unable to endure the flames, dozens of Venomous Insects poured down from the nest's surface like a waterfall.
Avoiding the fire and smoke, they instinctively rushed madly south, with the wind at their backs.
A suitable diversion.
The northwest side where Lucian stood, including the entrance leading to the deepest part of the nest where the Queen lurked, was empty.
The Queen also tried to crawl south to escape the flames, but its path was completely blocked by its own young flooding together in panic.
Utter chaos.
Now.
Lucian drew his silver longsword and charged without hesitation into the flames consuming the nest.
The Wyvern Light Armor blocked the heat that would have cooked his flesh, but his exposed cheeks and neck felt as though they were being scorched.
It did not matter.
Pain only sharpened his reason further.
Cutting through the burning mucus passages, he rushed toward the heart of the nest.
Three Venomous Insects that had lost their way in the passage blocked his path.
Slice, thunk! Slice!
As the silver arc flashed three times, the forearm-sized insects split in two, spraying pus.
Acid venom splashed onto the Wyvern Light Armor with a sizzle, but the drake hide did not corrode and shed the venom away.
The moment its value of fifteen gold coins proved itself.
A trace of experience seeped in from the lower specimens he had cut down, but now was not the time to become intoxicated by such scraps.
The heart of the nest.
Lucian's steps faltered when he reached the wide chamber.
The information on the request sheet was wrong.
Two enormous Queens were coiled in the center.
One was the red-patterned Queen described in the request.
But the other was a palmspan larger, and chilling purple patterns writhed over its black carapace.
Purple.
The color of condensed, high-density Ether.
Mana ripples as deep as an abyss, fundamentally unlike the crude green magic of the Goblin Shaman or the wolfman's barrier.
That purple specimen was not an ordinary Venomous Insect Queen.
It was a Mutant, grotesquely corrupted by Ether and evolved into a true superior magical beast.
Both Queens turned their enormous antennae toward Lucian at once.
Thick purple liquid began to boil inside the purple Mutant's disgusting mouth.
It was not ordinary acid venom.
A ruinous poison that would break down armor on contact and corrupt Ether to the bone.
At the same time, the red Queen approached with venom loaded, while ordinary specimens forced out of the nest sensed the Queens' danger and began rushing in madly from every direction.
There was no time.
He would deal with the nearer red Queen first.
He kicked off the mucus-covered floor and leaped.
He drove the mana from his dantian into his longsword to its limit, then layered heat over it.
Fire Blade.
The silver longsword, heated red-hot, came down like lightning toward the red Queen's back.
Clang! Thunk!
The steel-like shell seemed to stop the sword for an instant, but the blade condensed with mana and intense heat mercilessly pierced the carapace and buried itself in its organs.
Sizzle.
As the heat ravaged the inside of the wound, the red Queen let out a scream that tore at his eardrums.
A fatal wound.
It collapsed onto the floor, trailing bodily fluid.
At that instant, condensed Ether venom shot from the purple Mutant's mouth like a beam.
Lucian instinctively threw himself aside at once.
Whoosh!
The purple beam grazed Lucian's shoulder by a hair's breadth and pierced the thick mucus wall behind him.
The wall was not punched through.
It simply disintegrated like dust.
Even Wyvern hide would be pierced through to his heart by a direct hit.
Sure enough, the purple venom that had grazed his shoulder guard was discoloring the leather unpleasantly.
It felt like the cold blade of death brushing his spine.
Should he retreat?
Rolling across the floor, Lucian coldly weighed the odds.
No. He would kill it.
It was dangerous, but not impossible to kill.
Purple Ether.
A concentration of Ether denser than what he had gained from the Goblin Shaman, the wolfman chieftain, or the troll.
He did not know whether continuing to fight in this world had driven him mad at some point, but he could not let this go.
Besides, could he even escape if he ran now?
The crazed Venomous Insects would pursue him until he died.
Either way, there was no way out.
Around ten lower Venomous Insects closed their encirclement from every side, drooling.
Lucian swung his longsword wide and exploded mana to its tip.
Slaaash!
The upper bodies of three insects flew away at once.
At the one that immediately rushed in from behind, Lucian pulled a throwing dagger from his thigh with his left hand, forced mana into it, and flicked it away.
Thud!
The aura-filled throwing dagger pierced its skull precisely and shattered its head.
A series of throws.
Three daggers turned three Venomous Insects into corpses in midair.
The results of his training shone through.
It bought him a fleeting moment.
But the purple Mutant was already condensing a second Ether beam.
A purple sphere was growing horribly inside its mouth.
Its charging time was roughly five seconds. He had to kill it within five seconds.
Lucian drove every bit of his remaining mana into both legs.
Body Reinforcement.
The muddy ground caved in, and Lucian erased a distance of five paces in just two seconds.
Just before the ruinous beam burst from its mouth.
Lucian twisted sideways and thrust his longsword into its flank.
The purple beam grazed Lucian's side, leaving behind a dreadful chill, while Lucian's blade tore deeply into the Mutant's flank.
“Skreeeeech!”
When purple bodily fluid pouring from the split shell touched the silver longsword, blue smoke rose as the metal began to corrode.
The crack he had paid three silver coins to repair split open with a crack.
His weapon was melting.
If he dragged this out, he would have to face that monster barehanded.
What would happen if he touched bodily fluid that corroded even metal with his bare hands?
Losing his weapon meant at least a fatal wound.
Naturally, he had to finish it before then.
Though blood poured from its cut flank, the Mutant charged madly on six legs.
It was more than twice as fast as the lower specimens.
Lucian stepped back and cut off one of its forelegs with his sword.
The metal corroded more severely, but its mobility visibly dropped.
The Mutant opened its mouth wide to charge a third beam.
Lucian's eyes flashed coldly.
This time, he would not give it distance.
He gripped his last throwing dagger in his left hand, converted the mana in his dantian into heat, and explosively concentrated it on the dagger's edge.
Then he threw it at the creature's mouth with all his strength.
The red-hot dagger was swallowed straight into the center of the beast's mouth, where purple Ether was condensing.
Thunk!
Foreign heat had been driven into the detonator just before the magic was completed.
“Skreekekekek...!”
Ether backflow.
The purple beam condensing inside the Mutant's mouth ran wild and exploded inside its mouth.
Boom!
Half its head blew away, and purple bodily fluid spouted in every direction like a fountain.
Lucian leaped like lightning through the dreadful debris of the explosion.
The collapsing Mutant's back.
He drove the last of his mana into the cracked longsword and brought it down vertically at its center.
Clang! Thunk!
At the sword tip that pierced the shell, he felt a hard, unpleasant sphere, not a heart.
The Core that stored a superior magical beast's Ether.
Lucian mercilessly twisted the hilt and shattered the Core.
Crack!
Purple ripples exploded from the Mutant's corpse and swept through the entire nest.
The Ether waves touching Lucian's skin tried to corrode his flesh, but the mana within him surged out violently like white blood cells devouring pathogens and pushed away every trace of the foreign Ether.
The Mutant trembled, then collapsed completely onto the sticky mud.
At the same time, a tide of experience poured in.
The essence of dense, concentrated Ether, wholly different from the scraps he had devoured from the Goblin Shaman and troll.
Lucian's entire body tingled, and his Mana channels expanded another layer as though tearing through his veins.
The density of mana gathering at his fingertips had changed.
Killing magical beings accumulated magical experience.
The stronger the magical being, the higher the quality of experience.
“Whew...”
Lucian released a rough breath and looked around.
When the purple Mutant, the colony's true Queen, died, the nest descended into uncontrollable chaos.
The red Queen, merely a nominal figurehead, had already died from his earlier blow. The more than forty ordinary specimens that had lost their leader either ran into the flames in confusion or fled madly into the forest.
Lucian cut down the insects that could not escape and only circled in place.
Scattered specimens were no threat. A Venomous Insect moving alone was no match for Lucian.
Ten. Twenty. At the moment he split the carapace of the thirty-fifth insect.
Clang!
The corroded silver longsword, finally at its limit, broke in half.
Lucian threw aside the broken hilt and drew a spare dagger from his right thigh.
Its reach was shorter, but it was more than enough to kill insects.
He cut down both Queens and all forty-three Venomous Insects inside the nest.
As the flames completely devoured the nest and it collapsed, Lucian, covered in blood and venom, dropped heavily onto the burning wreckage.
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