Chương 27: Broodmother’s Chamber (1)

[Bloodspawn Broodmother - Level 24] Rowan backed away from the edge of the cliff as he stared at the broodmother. Level 24. That was more than twice the level of the strongest enemy he'd ever faced. And it wasn't alone. Around it were dozens of fleshy beasts, more than he'd ever seen, even at the battle between the ants and bloodspawn. After he'd recovered from the shock of so many of them, he took stock of his surroundings.

What he'd initially thought of as a cliff he was standing at the edge of was actually more of a steep slope. Below him, the many bloodspawn were in a massive, globelike chamber. Dozens of side tunnels connected to it, whether they were at ground level or dozens of feet up, like the one Rowan was in. In the center of the room was a massive, bulbous creature. Then, he turned his attention to the most important thing of all. The water. From a hole in the ceiling, an unending stream of clean, clear liquid poured out.

The waterfall pooled in a small pond below, seemingly formed by the water slowly eroding away the stone floor. But it didn't stop there. The water from the pond spread out along the edge of the cave, almost like a moat. It flowed through channels nearly as deep as the pond itself, wrapping all the way around the chamber. Not all of it was visible, though. A significant portion of the water wasn't, actually.

While the liquid flowing from the pond had eroded its way through the rock, there were many instances where there was still a roof of stone over the moat, with the water going under it. Most of the tunnels connecting to the massive hole in the massive cave had rocks serving as a sort of bridge between the main area and the branching tunnel. Still, there were a few that had nothing bridging the gap, meaning that anything trying to get from one side to the other would have to slog through the water.

Beneath the water was also the only spot in the entire massive cavern, other than directly around the broodmother, that was not covered in crimson fungi. For a moment, he wondered how none of the water was overflowing and flooding the entire area. Then, looking closer, he noticed. From the ring of water came several small streams—six of them, to be exact—each running into one of the side tunnels.

Rowan practically salivated at the sight of the liquid, but he couldn't get to it, not unless he was willing to expose himself to all of the bloodspawn. So he held himself back and tried to think of a plan to get to it—he stopped. It really wasn't that urgent, at least not anymore. He was just five enemies away from completing his quest, and with so many bloodspawn wandering around, he could pick off a few of them with ease. Nodding to himself, he focused back on the horde of bloodspawn waiting below him.

While his chains did a good job of illuminating things, they simply weren't bright enough to illuminate the whole room. Instead, through several holes in the ceiling, beams of light shined down. It gave him hope that the surface wasn't too far away, but he didn't let himself get too excited; for all he knew, the surface could still be hundreds of feet above him. Still, the beams of sunlight washed over the bloodspawn, allowing him to make out every one of their figures.

Despite the extreme numbers of hounds in the area, there were surprisingly few of them in the chamber, with the only one he saw being more powerful than pretty much any of the doglike bloodspawn he'd seen before. [Fungal Bloodspawn - Level 10] It was far larger than the normally dog-sized beasts, easily the size of a car or the ironclad ant he had fled from back when he was still in the ants' territory.

The massive hound also looked more similar to the humanoid bloodspawn than its smaller brethren, as it had multiple mouths as well. Although Rowan wasn't really sure it counted, since the beast had three heads, with just a single maw to each. This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. Then, he focused on the other creatures in the room, one after another. Not them all, of course; there were just far too many for that.

He only looked for those that were particularly large or dangerous-looking. There were three of the brutish fungal beasts with the hammers of flesh on their arms, standing in a circle around the broodmother. All of them were level 10 or higher, stronger than the previous brute he'd killed. There were also a few other variants of the creatures, some with different types of weapons and even one with bone armor. But what truly caught his attention was that every single one of the bloodspawn had 'fungal' in their name.

Every single one but the broodmother. Rowan focused back on the broodmother, really taking in the details. It was many times the size of anything else in the room, around the height of a small tree, perhaps fifteen feet tall. But it was wide, too. He wasn't sure, but he thought it had to weigh at least several dozen tons. Beneath the misshapen flesh, Rowan tried to make out some kind of figure, whether it be humanoid or not. But he couldn't. It was just a blob.

Its body was covered in countless pustules, and from it stretched a half dozen… tentacles? He didn't know how else to describe them, but just looking at them put him on edge. Each of the tentacles slowly moved around the cavern, crawling along the floor and leaving trails of exposed stone behind them. That explained why the area immediately around the broodmother was moldless, but Rowan still wasn't entirely sure why. So he watched the massive creature, taking a sip of water and grabbing a piece of jerky.

Then, he waited. — An hour later, he finally had his answer. Or, at least, a theory he thought was probably correct. The beast was using the fungi it harvested to create fungal bloodspawn. It wasn't much of a surprise, since he'd already suspected it, but it was still both fascinating and terrifying to see the process of the bloodspawn's creation.

Every few minutes, one of the many bubbling pustules scattered across the broodmother's massive body would burst, and from it would come a newborn, level 1 fungal bloodspawn. Rowan assumed the beast needed the fungi to give birth to the fungal variants of its children, and it hadn't taken him long to figure out why it took the effort to purposefully create fungal versions of its spawn: the necrotic poison.

With the vine stranglers, he'd realized that since their vines didn't have any fungi on them, the thorns didn't have any adverse effects—other than making him bleed, of course. But its moldy teeth, on the other hand, carried that rotting effect that came from the fungi. Basically, the broodmother wanted more powerful soldiers. Something else he'd noticed, though, was that, so far, the massive creature had only produced the doglike bloodspawn. It was almost as if it couldn't produce anything else.

It did explain why there was such an abundance of the hounds in the area, but it also raised a problem. The other bloodspawn. There were variants other than solely the hounds. Rowan had tried thinking of other solutions to the problem, but all of them felt weak. And as time continued to pass with the broodmother solely producing a single type of bloodspawn, he let out a breath.

If the beast before him could only produce the doglike beasts, then there was only one reason he could think of for the existence of the others: there was more than one broodmother. Rowan shuddered at the thought of there being more than one of the flesh abominations, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. But, from what he could see, he probably wouldn't run into too many hounds; the newborn bloodspawn, along with dozens of their kind, simply stayed in the broodmother's chamber.

Of course, every once in a while, some still left. But most of them stayed in the cave. If they continued behaving like this, Rowan thought that he could wander in relative safety as long as he didn't stray too close to the broodmother. It also meant that the larger group of hounds he'd encountered earlier was a fluke, although, if he were being honest, he wouldn't mind running into another large group, if only for the rations and progress it would give.

Looking away from the cavern for the first time in a while, he turned around. The tunnel he was in stretched from where he was all the way back to where he'd fought the first group of hounds. And, while there hadn't been any other caves branching off from it during the vast majority of its length, at the end of the tunnel, just a few yards from him, were two side passages, one on each side of the tunnel.

On second thought, it probably hadn't been such a good idea to sit, watching the broodmother for more than an hour when more bloodspawn could've come from any of the three tunnels behind him at any time. He would have to be more careful next time. Rowan turned his attention to the two branching tunnels, trying to decide which one was the best choice. The one to his left was sloped slightly upwards, while the one to his right was the opposite, going downwards.

On one hand, going down would probably bring him closer to the broodmother and her spawn, but he wasn't sure if he wanted that. On the other, going up would take him further away from the bloodspawn, which he wasn't sure he wanted either. The underground river he could still hear was also above him, but the tunnel was pointed away from the waterfall, so he doubted he would easily find it. After a few more seconds of thought, Rowan shook his head. He was overthinking it.

The trepidation of such a high-level enemy being so near was making it hard for him to make a choice without fixating on the risks. And so, before he could question his own decisions again, he turned right.