Epic of Caterpillar
chapter-259

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Before continuing our journey through the dungeon, I decided to spend some time with my child, as I wanted to inspect their growth.

Amiphossia seemed to steadily increase her strength through the combination of level-ups and the nourishing of her body through cultivation using her two Auras in conjunction. Thanks to the countless Phantasmal and Ghost encountered in here, she was able to increase her cultivation speed by consuming these beings of her same affinity.

Although she can do it swiftly, it seems that other phantasmal beings can do this to a certain extent as well, like Geraldine, who had recently evolved to a Rank 3 Winter Ghost, or her eight-limbed Mystical Wolf Seishin who evolved into a Twelve-Limbed Phantasmal Wolf after eating many ghosts and helping Amiphossia cultivate with its own phantasmagoric essence.

The Nine-Tailed Fox Chief Sesshomaru hasn't evolved, but its steadily training with the rest, and slowly learning how to cultivate using its soul, it is quite intelligent and can understand most of Amiphossia's commands without any problems. Will he evolve into the handsome character that I named him after? Hopefully not so close to it, or it would be copyright

Amiphossia's Familiars grow in strength as she does, so they also increased in power when she reached Rank 5 on her soul. Her soul also changed and mutated again, becoming [Venomous Heavens Mystical Phantom Soul]. It seems that Souls can mutate based on the user's element affinity or blessings. What will my Soul mutate into…?

Sadly, I am no expert, and I cannot really instruct her with new techniques on how to strengthen her body that much. However, I made her train her Aura for a bit, forcing her to use all of its power while combined, and expanding it as much as she could, her domain can reach around one hundred and fifty meters around her, it will be very useful whenever she uses it for healing by infusing her Heavenly Medicine Magic.

Ryo in the other hand has been steadily increasing his physique, his soul hasn't shown many changes, but his body has evolved drastically, he has now been taking the power of his transformation skill, remaining transformed for several hours as a "training" and to be able to get used to the immense boost of power, by controlling his strength, it was rather hard when he wanted to sew or do blacksmithing, but he ended up learning.

His Aura had been permanently settled inside of his body, constantly nourishing his muscular yet slim body. His brown skin is slowly turning reddish due to the effects of using his transformation too much, I don't know if this is a good thing or bad, but he doesn't seem annoyed. It seems that he had a hard time molding his Aura in the way I or Amiphossia do, and with a lot of effort, he only managed to create a domain of thirty meters, in this domain any of his allies gain strength, while enemies become pressured and can even be paralyzed out of fear.

Now that he had trained his Aura to maintain it inside of his body, I'm going to make him train it to be maintained outside of his body as a domain, and when he masters both he will be able to freely switch between the two like me. My children were born with such powers, instead of me learning them by fusing hundreds of Skills, so they should naturally be able to master them with ease.

Valentia is slowly learning how to maintain her Aura inside of her body permanently like Ryo, but without making her [Monster Arm] react to it and expand over her body, she is having a hard time learning how to control this explosive power, but her determination is fierce, and I know that my daughter can do it.

She is also using her Dominating Aura to nourish her body and soul, whenever she activates her [Monster Arm] with her Dominating Aura, she also awakens a hidden Shadow Aura, however, this one is very wild and usually doesn't respond to her orders, so it's hard for her to practice with it, as its need her previous Aura to appear… For now, she needs to master her Dominating Aura, and then with it, she will be able to train her Shadow Aura as well.

Like Amiphossia, Valentia can boost her cultivation by eating Dark Beings, like Sentient Dark Matter, who are very common in here, using her [Monster Arm] to devour the corpses of such beings, she can strengthen her physique and psyche, yesterday, she reached Rank 3 Soul.

Aarae in the other hand, has been training with Ailine and Vudia, and the three siblings have been nourishing their bodies with each other's Magical Auras, it was an almost mystical technique, but all three of them were compatible with each other Auras, increasing the speed of their cultivation immensely. Aarae now is trying to not only reinforce his Magic powers but his Soul as well, as if he increases the Rank of his soul, he will be able to strengthen his Hammerhead Shark Familiar.

Aarae has an Arcane Oceans Aura, which is mostly composed of Mana or Magic Energy, now he's slowly learning how to use his Ki or Life Energy, so he can nourish his weak physique as well. He slowly learned that just being a specialist mage wasn't enough in this life, so he wants to be strong physically as well, at least to a certain extent, so he's not as frail as paper. With my lineage, it should be possible for him to break through his species limits on physical strength, as he is a special Mershark species specialized in Magic, not physical combat.

Ailine is an incredible specialist, and even if she tries to strengthen her "physical" capabilities, it will be useless as her body is made of Slime, however, she is learning from her mother Rimuru, that she can infuse magic on her Slime Body so she can gain higher physical strength, and she is even learning to shapeshift like Rimuru, gaining the ability to change her arms into that of giant beasts, or gain massive Phoenix Wings.

She is incredibly talented, being very close to surpass Rimuru at any time now… However, Rimuru is just happy about it and doesn't feel bad at all, after all, the stronger our daughter is, the safer she is.

Aside from this special technique, she is also learning how to create Magic Shields, surprisingly, she is very good with offensive magic, but had a very hard time creating a simple magic shield, without my Azure Gemstone Tattoos supporting her, she may have died quite a few times… She has just learned how to make a basic Nine Colors Shield of around three meters of diameter, and actually only has a limit of two, so she needs to practice more and level up that Spell Skill. Her Nine Colors Aura helps her refine and cultivate her Slime Core, which shines brightly whenever she stars her cultivation, her Soul has recently reached Rank 3 as well.

Last but not least, Vudia is both using Ailine's method of cultivation and Brontes's method of strengthening, using her Golden Thunderstorm Aura to nourish her Soul and Orbs on her hands, while using her Life Energy or Ki alongside her Electric Conductivity manipulation to slowly reinforce her muscles and physique passively. She may be very small, but her physique is incredibly strong.

She can crush a three meters tall Ogre with her bare and tiny hands… That's the power of a cyclops, while she also has all of the magic potentials of a Fairy… And the tiredness of a Vampire… And all of the amazing Spells that a Vampire can develop as well like Superhuman Strength, Amazing Self-Regeneration Abilities, Blood Magic, Cursed Eyes Skills, Charming Skills, Illusion Magic, Hypnosis Magic…

She is slowly awakening such spells faster than my other children that should be Vampires as well, only Amiphossia has recently awakened Blood Magic and some Cursed Eyes Skills, Valentia, Aarae and Ryo haven't. It is rather strange, as Vudia barely drinks blood. Some experts could say that Vudia is what's called a "perfect vampire", a Vampire that possesses all of their strength, skills, and talents without any of their weakness, like the necessity to drink blood or the weakness to Sun, Fire, Light, and Holy. Vudia's Aura Domain can extend up to one hundred meters, and within it, she can manipulate Thunder flawlessly, becoming a Domain of Thunder.

After inspecting each of my children and training with them for some hours, we decided to finally continue through the Dungeon. The stairs towards floor 86 were already cleaned thanks to my Aura Domain, which automatically killed and ate anything that seemed like a threat. Spawn Artifacts were already destroyed by my Phantom Fox Clones and every loot possible was taken and delivered to me. There were various minerals, gemstones, equipment, potions and materials, such precious items for my ever-growing Kingdom were highly desirable, even when we had so much already, its never enough.

I also made these Phantom Fox Clones explore previous floors, to see if treasures appeared once again, to my surprise, they did, so they came afterward with even more riches and items, however this time they were of lower quality due to being brought from the previous, easier floors, some Bosses had respawned already, but they weren't able to kill them and bring the corpses to me.

Reaching floor 86, we encountered massive ruins, even more houses made with stones and even a giant temple were here now, but in a terrible state, slowly deteriorating. The temple inside of the dungeon seemed to be a nest for ghosts and monsters, I could feel the presence of various strong Undead inside, the surrounding ruins covered the entire floor, and through it, only previous floor monsters wandered around in small numbers.

Nine-Tailed Phantom Foxes were now incredibly rare, the same for Wraiths and Skeleton Dinosaurs, the floor seemed to be filled with weak ghost of different elements, Venomous Ghosts, Blaze Ghosts, Tundra Ghosts and so on.

After snacking on the few big monsters around, I commanded my Phantom Fox Clones to loot the chests and disarm the traps, it took them half an hour to do everything almost flawlessly, so the overall expedition was way faster and more enjoyable.

We decided to explore the giant temple inside the Dungeon, which was filled with ghosts and some strong Undead. I wondered if there could be some Mini-Bosses? Spawn Artifacts were already destroyed by my Phantom Fox Clones, so other monsters shouldn't be able to appear out of thin air and ambush us… That's it if the God of this Dungeon doesn't interfere and create more Spawn Artifacts out of nowhere.

The temple ruins seemed to be made of a different rock, which was purple-colored, it was also covered in green moss, and it released an eerie presence. As we adventured inside, we encountered some new species of monsters, this time Slimes, Phantasmal Slimes. Phantasmal Slimes were something similar to Yurei, being an Undead type of Slime that could also become a phantom and cross physical matter. However, even with their Physical Damage immunity, they were weak to Fire, Light, and Holy Magic, becoming puddles of boiled slime whenever they were hit with a Fireball.

These Slimes liked to attack in big numbers, sometimes they would be living in colonies and show up as a big Phantom Slime. They also had a King Phantom Slime, which was a Mini-Boss, it had a beautiful dark crown on its head, which shined brightly in various colors due to the gemstones imbued in it. Kaguya disposed of this monster with ease, throwing five Fireballs, afterward, I ate the remains of the boiled Slime and its Cores, they were particularly tasty for Amiphossia.

Its Crown was dropped as an item, it was a Head Equipment of [Mythic+] quality, and was able to grant the user high magic affinity with Phantom, Dark, and Shadow Magic, but it also could control the user mind, it was a "cursed item", so I only saved it for now.

Quickly exploring the Temple Ruins, we discovered stronger Ghosts, they were Rank 3 Ghosts, evolutions from Blaze Ghosts, Venomous Ghosts, Tundra Ghosts, and so on. These were Toxic Ghosts, Flaming Ghosts, and Winter Ghosts. These Winter Ghosts were different than Geraldine and way weaker, perhaps because Geraldine maintained her magic after dying, or well, her magic talent, being able to relearn her previous life spells, she also has a Core, something that these ghosts don't possess.

These Ghosts didn't pose much of a threat, even when evolved, but if they gathered together, they may become a little bit annoying, nonetheless, they were tastier than their previous evolutions, and were rich in Mana, it felt as if they were completely made out of it.

The "Final Boss" of this Temple was a giant Ghost King… But it was more like a Mini-Boss, its strength wasn't compared to a Boss monster at all. However, it was still a good practice for my children and wives. Although everyone just ganged on the Giant Phantasmagoric being with their magic attacks until it died. It had a lot of cores inside of it, which flew to the ground the moment it died, we devoured them and then went outside of the temple. Seeing that this temple still was impregnated with amazing Phantasmagoric Presence, I decided to save it inside of my Item Box, making sure that no beings were inside.

It could be a nice ingredient to create a new Undead Dungeon on the surface. I grabbed it with my Aura, forming a massive hand, then the Aura Hand, moved the temple to the Void that my Item Box created when I opened it, it took one space, and I could even stack it, but where would I find the same temple? After thinking for some time, I also saved a lot of the surrounding ruins, they were also imbued in Phantasmagoric Energy, and could even be used as Magic Materials.

Floor 87 was rather empty, there were small ruins around, which I looted as well. My Phantom Fox Clones looted the chests inside while we ate anything that came our way through the trip. Without realizing, we had already reached the door of floor 88 Boss's room.

[Kireina] gained 632.880.000 EXP]

[LEVEL 047/250 EXP 1.631.521.091/2.450.000.000 EXP]

[Kireina] learned the following Skills]

[Phantasmagoric Slime King Essence]

[Spectral Ghost King Psyche]

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