Epic of Caterpillar
chapter-122

[Day 112]

Today we woke up early in the morning. Due to the little amount of food on the Inn, that would never satisfy my hungry family, we decided to go eat outside of town, where I prepared a giant breakfast made of several monsters we have killed, there was also Gnome, Dryad, Wendigo, Yuki-onna, and Gemstone Wyvern meat.

Due to the alluring fragrance of our feast, a lot of adventurers that were leveling outside of town killing weak monsters approached us. So, I decided to invite them to eat accompany us.

As time passed, more adventurers began to gather around asking to join. Some even brought new meat and beer. I used this opportunity to spread my flesh and slime minions in each of these adventurers, this way I can keep track on the tasty looking ones.

After two hours, my family was satisfied so I quickly gave away the spare grilled meat to the adventurers as they continued the small feast between themselves.

When we entered the town, we did some shopping on the way until we reached the dungeon entrance.

The dungeon seemed to be made of pale blue colored bricks of a very ancient mineral. The entrance was wide and more than one hundred adventurers were walking inside and outside with their different parties along the way.

Greeting every person that enters, there will be a massive spiral stair that descended beyond what my normal view could see, giving the vibes of being an almost endless abyss.

Well, this maze is not called a maze for nothing. This dungeon itself is composed of several floors that change positions each day. Most of the time, the floor that you enter with your party won't be the same that you saw the adventurer party ahead of you previously entered.

The mechanism of such a place is beyond my knowledge, and certainly, I would love to know more about it, as it involves space manipulation. A field that I've been wanting to know for a very long time, but it seems to have been forgotten in time, as it considered a very ancient type of magic. Most of the time, attributed to godly beings and not to mortals.

This raised a question on my mind. How was possible for the Old Ancestor to manipulate space in such a way that he was able to bring the whole Aquaria on that door towards the Grand Forest?

And even when I glanced and almost memorized his entire collection of books, I never found any answer to this.

It seems that he never reported such an event. Such a big event like obtaining a [Legendary] relic, and then placing his entire Kingdom inside of it…

Well, I will leave these thoughts for another day.

When we finally reached the dungeon stairs, my children began to admire the carvings on the walls, which depicted the ancient Dragonoid's building this maze. It seems that it was built by [Divine Order] from a god.

The paintings and carvings also showed how several dangerous monsters were sealed inside. These monsters resemble the dungeon bosses that I saw on the guide books.

This guide book was given to us when I registered my group on the guild. It shows some general information about the monsters on each floor variation, the dangers of coming to this place alone, the different bosses and their "special drops".

It seems that in this kind of dungeon, monster and bosses will often drop special items called Special Drops, which are seen as very valuable crafting materials or food.

One of the most valuable Special Drops on this entire dungeon is the item dropped by the boss named Greater Thunder Wyvern Emperor Baadra, which is the Zapping Golden Nail. A very sturdy item, far surpassing adamantine on its durability and sturdiness. Its also filled with powerful Thunder Magic, akin to more than one thousand Thunder Spirit Stones.

Only the wealthiest of nobles can buy equipment made with such material. Equipment made with this item is always guaranteed to be of [Mythical] quality and tend to have incredible bonuses on the wielder stats alongside some interesting skills. I would certainly love to get my hands on such an item.

When we reached the dungeon first floor, I instantly noticed that it was completely empty, no adventurer was wondering around, meaning that this was a newly generated floor. As I admired the place I slowly walked inside, and as if waiting for the rest of my group, the floor remained still until everyone was inside.

Then, out of nowhere, a powerful force moved the floor, changing our perspective of the stairs. The place where the stairs should be were changed to a long corridor.

Although it would seem dangerous at first glance, the humans inhabiting this town use what is named [Teleportation Thread], a magical item that can teleport anyone back to town, it only has one use and needs to be purchased once again if you want to go back to the dungeon and have a safe way to go back to town.

I have previously purchased several of these items and even ate some, but I didn't obtain any skill. Although its value is high, it is sold at a rather decent price, being fifty copper coins. This item is being mass-produced by a company that belongs to one of the Five Heroes, the Heroine of Alchemy. And it seems to be a gift from her to all the adventurers in this realm.

I would certainly like to meet her one day.

As we continued our way through the floor, I browsed the guide book and using some patterns and the monster found inside, I concluded that we entered a "novice" floor named [Corridor of Foggy Waters].

This place is filled with damp walls and a foggy mist. There are various small ponds of clear water were monsters emerge from time to time and seem to be their main area of spawn.

The monsters found in this place are Sapphire Tail Salamanders, Merfolk Undead Soldiers, Water Slime, Water Slime King, Golden Walking Fish, and Baby River Dragons.

The main boss rotates between three choices, the easiest boss is the Azure River Dragon King, a giant serpent-like dragon that is covered on beautiful azure-colored fish scales, has two golden whiskers and a pair of beautiful coral horns. It usually attacks with [Oceanic Breath] and [Ice Spikes], a decent group of human adventurers can deal with it with ease.

Following this boss is the Lighting Tongue Toad King, a massive blue colored toad covered on several yellow markings on its body. Its giant tongue can break the dungeon walls with ease while releasing power lighting attacks and jumping at lighting speed. It can still be dealt with relative ease if the adventurer group possess enough healers and experienced veterans.

And lastly, the strongest boss is the Giant Merfolk Savage, a giant merfolk monster that possess herculean strength and reflexes, alongside this, it has a massive trident that can release powerful lighting attacks. This boss is said to have a lower half of a giant blue whale, and its upper body resembles a bizarre lizardman-like creature.

Its most valuable drop is the boss trident itself, which is considered a [Unique++] weapon and it sold at a very high price.

Seeing how this was a quite low-level floor, I let my children go wild. Meanwhile, I assisted them on the back giving them some buffs on their stats while gathering the dropped items and monster corpses.

It seems that monsters' corpses disappear if one doesn't save them on their Item Box, so I quickly began to gather every corpse that my strong children left scattered around.

There were Water Slimes and Water Slime King Cores, which shined with bright blue colors. And it seems that a Water Slime King dropped a valuable item named [Golden Slime King Crown], which seems to be made purely of gold and decorated with several valuable gems.

It doesn't have any magical power and its quite the bad equipment, giving very little bonuses, but its monetary value seems to be quite high, as it is completely made of gold after all.

My children's next encounter was a big group of ten Sapphire Tailed Salamanders. Each Salamander was quite big, being three meters tall and ten meters long, with very sticky bodies and a strong and sturdy tail covered on sapphire scales, which is their main tool when fighting.

Amiphossia and Ryo let this group for Valentia and Aarae to try out their strength. And well, the salamanders were completely crushed in less than one minute.

Valentia activated her Dominating Aura while enhancing her physical capabilities with her orb, afterward, she jumped over the Salamanders and using her giant monster hand, she began to detach the monster's heads as if they were mere toys.

Meanwhile, Aarae stayed at a good distance, commanding his Hammerhead Shark Guardian, which devastated the Salamanders without much effort. If a monster approached his back, he would cast a powerful Water Blade Energy Slash and slice the salamanders in half. Although he could float around using water bubbles, so he wasn't as targeted as Valentia or his Hammerhead Shark.

Valentia seems to be a little bit like me, as when she finally defeated the Salamander group, my daughter immediately jumped over the corpses and began to chomp and munch on their flesh, she even ate the entire Sapphire Tail of the salamanders. Her powerful shark fangs can destroy almost anything

Meanwhile, Aarae is more composed and only likes prepared food, usually disliking raw meat. However, his Hammerhead Shark Guardian usually eats some meat. Even though it seems to be made of pure magic and energy, the shark still needs to eat. It's quite weird, to be honest, and I don't understand the logic behind it.

As I was gathering the corpses that Valentia didn't eat, I found another drop item, this time it was named [Sapphire Tailed Salamander Secretion Skin Cream]. It seems to be a fairly common drop item, it's a small transparent bottle of glass filled with the salamander refined sticky goo. It said to be good for people's skin so I decided to save it, as I could gift it to one of my wives.

My wives and the humans were mostly talking and enjoying the walk while seeing our children grow stronger. I did the same for the most part while looking for my children safe. I also sent various flesh and slime minions to quickly map the area entirely.

After some more minutes of walking, Ryo seemed to have encountered a hidden passage on a shattered wall, inside of it, there were more than one hundred Baby River Dragons, which I assumed was a big spawn point.

My four children raided the place as they wiped out the entire group in less than half an hour, gaining several levels. Although I've tasted River Dragon meat before on that Skin Changed nomad leader, which name I already forgot, this River Dragon meat was way more flavorful and tender, the fish flavor was very strong on these. I assume that River Dragon may be an evolution from River Walking Fish, possibly.

The big raid netted several rare drops from these dragons, the most noticeable ones were [Aquamarine River Salt], a very delicious salt generated on rivers that flow from mountains that possess a big quantity of minerals, or so it says on its description. It has an earthy flavor to it and the salt is rather subtle.

Another item of consideration are the [River Dragon Coral Horns (Perfect)], which were the dragon horns that stayed on the perfect condition and can be part of Equipment Crafting, and the [Wise River Dragon Liquor], a delicious liquor that was made brewing a river's water alongside clams and various types of seaweed and grains, it has a unique rich flavor to it and is almost as comparable to the Starfish Dew.

On the way to the boss floor, we were so relaxed that we ended up drinking the whole bottle with my wives, alongside some snacks like dried meat and fruits bought on town.

When we reached the boss floor, there was nothing at first, however, at the second that Valentia put her shark tail in, a giant toad jumped outside of a massive pond near. It was the second strongest boss, the Lighting Tongue Toad King.

The enormous toad had a towering body of over fifteen meters, having very fatty legs and a dignified look on his face. The skin covering its body was of a clear blue, with several yellow tattoos that resembled lightning shocks.

The moment it noticed my children entering, it quickly opened its gaping mouth as a massive pink colored tongue descended towards Valentia at an incredible speed.

BOOOM!

Expecting its prey to be completely smashed, the toad moved closer to where it attached its tongue, just to be welcomed by a terrible and penetrating pain. Valentia intercepted the toad attack with her monster hand, which she shape-shifted to generate several venomous spikes.

"GOOOO!!!"

The toad was infuriated by the terrible pain caused by my daughter, as it tried to smash her again with its tongue, this time, covering it in powerful and shocking lighting.

However, as the tongue approached Valentia, Aarae conjured several water shields that stopped the tongue attack on the place. Without leaving any time for the toad to recognize the source of this magic, Aarae's Hammerhead Shark Guardian tightly bit the toad left leg, causing a heavy wound on the beast tight.

Using this split second of distraction, Valentia embodied herself with a powerful and intimidating aura, which increased all her stats and even made her a tad bit taller. Her muscles began to bulk up as she jumped using the strong force of her shark tail, which left a giant crater on the dungeon floor.

Raising both of her hands, she went for a strong hammer attack towards the Toad's belly, using one of her skills named [Heaven Shattering Dominating Hammer], she slammed the boss guts, making it puke the entirety of its innards.

BAAAM!

Amiphossia and Ryo decided to leave the spotlight to the twins, as they also wanted them to gain some levels and combat experience from this fight.

When the toad puked out its innards, it instantly gulped them once again. With rage, the toad appearance began to change, its face became red-colored, while it began to exude a hot steam. Its eyes became red and its entire body was hardened.

According to the guide book, this is the Toad King "Berserk Mode". The boss will enter on this mode whenever its damaged enough, but not yet killed. This is why is recommended to kill the boss as fast as possible, the more one drags the fight, the stronger this toad becomes.

Aarae noticed the sudden change on the boss as it suddenly began to cast several water shields around Valentia and himself.

Suddenly, the Toad concentrated power exploded in a powerful lighting storm, which filled the entire room.

BOOOM!!!

Thankfully, due to Aarae's quick thinking, most of the damage was reflected, however, Valentia's body is too big, so she was bound to take so damage anyways.

Nonetheless, Valentia welcomed any attack with an intimidating grin, her personality didn't allow her to flinch against such attacks, taking everything head-on, while blowing the boss limbs and guts with her powerful hammer attacks and punches.

Due to the boss high HP and defenses, the fight dragged for quite some time, however, the teamwork of the twins ended on an amazing victory. This was the first time the two have gone through such a hard fight, to the point where they had to think over new strategies or moves in the middle of the battlefield.

This was an enriching experience for both of them, so I congratulated them after healing their wounds. Valentia was very hungry after the fight so we decided to chop the corpse of the boss and then we grilled it near the boss floor. The beast was big enough to feed our entire family without problems.

I was delighted by this boss flavor, its meat was tender and extremely juicy, with an almost sweet flavor to it. If eaten raw, the meat would release sparks of lighting from time to time, so its recommended to grill it beforehand.

Unexpectedly, it went quite well with the River Salt and the Wise River Dragon Liquor, making the tastes of the dungeon itself go well with one another.

[You learned the following Skills]

[Ancient Toad King Thunderstorm Tongue Attack]

It was so delicious that I even got a skill from it!

After the fight, I went to check the boss room again and was surprised as the toad boss had already respawned once again. It seems that the bosses respawn is endless on this place, as it draws its power from a mysterious source.

While everyone was feasting, I went to farm some toads for myself. After half an hour, I killed around eight toads and gained more than ten tons of fresh toad meat.

[You gained 987320 EXP]

[LEVEL 015/250 EXP 4553701/13000000]

Even after killing eight, the EXP was rather lackluster, showing the low level of the boss.

A normal adventurer group would usually leave the dungeon after defeating one boss as they Item Box cannot fit so many corpses inside, but of course, my group was an exception to this rule.

I decided to eat six of the eight toads I killed, quickly consuming them using my slime shapeshift.

[You learned the following Skills]

[Thunder Resistant Mucus Secretion]

[Thundering Muscles of the Lighting Toad King]

Hmm… Well, I was expecting even less than this, although I would have liked the toad berserk mode skill instead, but this will suffice for now.

Because there aren't any rules about sleeping inside the dungeon, I made up a camp using the various tents that I obtained from the nomads and we quickly went to sleep.

Several monsters tried to ambush us overnight, but they were greeted by the myriad of flesh and slime minions that I left as guards.

.

.

.