Chương 8: Ugly Todd

Acid Todd are Level 10 monsters, and individually they are not even that strong, but the problem is that they always stay in huge groups, with the smallest group I have ever encountered still having around 50 of them, and currently, just by looking around the surroundings, I can see more than 200.

They are about the size of a large grapefruit, with bloated and lumpy bodies covered in wet, translucent gray-green skin, pus-filled warts and patches of peeling flesh, while their huge bulging yellow eyes, tiny pupils, crooked teeth and permanently open mouths dripping with corrosive saliva make them look even more disgusting. Their legs are short and crooked, with long dirty claws and swollen toes that make them look more like some kind of mutated frog than an actual monster. One of the Todd suddenly attacked.

Fshhh! A stream of green liquid shot toward me at an insane speed, but with 80 points in agility, I easily avoided it and watched as the acid hit the wall behind me, immediately starting to hiss as the surface began melting, leaving a small one-inch gap where the acid had eaten through it. I started sweating internally.

That was their acid spit, and before attacking, they inflate their throat like a frog before violently spitting out a stream of glowing green acid that hisses on contact and can eat through metal, wood and flesh, while their bodies constantly secrete a thin acidic slime that leaves smoking footprints wherever they hop.

Normally, they are very easy to kill because of their cowardly nature, but when there are this many of them together, they become extremely aggressive, and judging by the way they were starting to surround me, I could already tell that this was going to be a problem. Soon, all of them started making the same loud sound. Croak... Croak... Croak…

There are two ways to clear this level, the first being that I kill them all one by one until the path opens, but there is a chance the reward from the last level could change if I do that, and that is extremely important if I want to get the Heirflame. The second option is the same method Cecilia used, which is basically avoiding them and passing through the passage without killing any of them, but honestly, that sounds much harder than simply killing them.

Cecilia had a skill back then that made them unable to attack her, but I don't have anything like that, and if I tried to walk toward the door normally, they would probably melt me into a pool of poop before I even got close. So I had to try something else.

I willed my aura to cover my entire body, and the process was much harder than I expected because I had to maintain the aura around every part of my body while also keeping my concentration, and I didn't exactly have the luxury of taking my time because every few seconds another Todd could spit acid at me. Fshhh! Another stream of acid shot toward me as a few of them moved closer, and I quickly dodged before continuing to spread my aura over my body.

Finally, I finished coating my entire body in aura, and honestly, the moment I completed it, I felt really strong. It felt very intoxicating. The feeling was crazy, almost like I was on drugs. Then I activated my Sovereign Aura and willed it to operate at full power. SOVEREIGN AURA DESCRIPTION An aura attack that creates immense spiritual pressure on beings of a lower level, forcing them into submission, and the greater the difference in level, the stronger the effect.

The moment I released it, a powerful spiritual pressure descended upon the Acid Todd, and all of them immediately stopped croaking as their bodies froze in place. As Level 10 beings, they shouldn't even be able to move under my full spiritual pressure, but there was one problem.

The water they were currently standing in was also the water I needed to cross in order to reach the exit, and wherever there is a large group of Acid Todd, the water usually becomes highly acidic because of the amount of acid their bodies constantly release. It wasn't as strong as their own acid spit, but it was still extremely potent, and if I stayed in it for too long, it would burn through me. The only thing protecting me was the aura covering my entire body. Hopefully it was enough, at least, I hoped so.

I took my first step and slowly started moving forward, and the moment my feet touched the deep water, I immediately felt a burning heat spread through my legs. It wasn't anything too extreme at first, almost like standing in front of a normal heater, but the deeper I moved into the water, the hotter it became, until soon it felt like someone had been holding a hairdryer against my legs for hours. It burned a little, but I could handle it.

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. The Acid Todd didn't move at all, completely frozen under my Sovereign Aura, and as I slowly got closer and closer to them, I honestly felt like vomiting because they were even more disgusting up close. God, they are ugly and the smell is horrible. Just kill me already.

There were simply too many of them packed together, and even though they were unable to move, I still had to push some of them aside with my hands just to make enough room for myself to pass through. During that process, a little bit of their acidic slime touched my hand, and the moment it made contact, I felt a sharp burning sensation. It felt like someone had thrown boiling water onto my hand. I gritted my teeth and kept moving, refusing to stop because I was already too close to the exit.

After what felt like forever, I finally made it out of the crowded area, and once I was away from the Acid Todd, I stopped for a moment to recover my strength and recharge my aura before continuing toward the exit. I was completely tired by then, but at least I had made it through without killing a single one of them.

Before leaving the room, I looked back at the Acid Todd one last time, all of them still standing there silently under my Sovereign Aura, and without wasting any more time, I turned around and left the place. – This area was way bigger than both of the previous areas combined, darkness stretched across every corner of the place so completely that it was impossible for me to tell how far the room actually went or what might be hiding beyond what my eyes could see.

This was supposed to be the boss monster's room, the place where I needed to fight it before being allowed to proceed to the reward chamber, yet there was no monster anywhere in sight, and the longer I stood there without finding even the slightest sign of its presence, the more confused I became because I couldn't understand what was going on or where the monster had disappeared to.

I looked around again and again, searching every part of the place that I could see, but there was still nothing, and the thought that maybe something had changed because of me slowly began to creep into my mind, making my anxiety grow even worse as I wondered whether my actions had somehow affected the boss monster or the entire structure of this place.

I started to panic because if the boss monster didn't appear, there was no way I would be given access to the reward chamber, and without reaching that chamber, acquiring the Heirflame would become impossible, which meant Cecilia would be exiled and I would eventually die as well, leaving me with no way to change what was going to happen.

My heart began racing faster as those thoughts continued to pile up inside my head, but before I could completely lose control of myself, a notification suddenly appeared in front of me. [Sovereign Composure activated.] Once again, a sudden coldness spread through my body as my emotions were suppressed, and although the panic that had been consuming me moments ago was still fresh in my mind, I could no longer allow myself to be overwhelmed by it because there was no point in panicking when there had to be some kind of reason why the boss monster wasn't here.

I forced myself to calm down and began examining the room more carefully, but no matter how much I tried to move toward the darkness covering the far end of the area, the distance between us never seemed to become any smaller, as though the darkness itself was constantly moving away from me without actually changing its position.

This had to be some kind of magic because there was no other reasonable explanation for what I was seeing, and while I was trying to figure out what kind of ability could create something like this, I suddenly noticed some writing on the wall to my left. The writing covered a large section of the wall, so I slowly walked toward it and examined the strange characters, but they were written in some kind of language that I had never seen before and couldn't understand no matter how closely I looked at them.

Then, as though the system had somehow read my thoughts and realized that I couldn't understand what I was looking at, a notification appeared in front of me. Ding!

+1 I stared at the notification in confusion because I hadn't even asked the system to do anything, yet the text on the wall was suddenly being translated for me, and although I wanted to question how it had managed to recognize the language and translate it without me doing anything, I was far more concerned about the strange circumstances surrounding this place.

Why was the system suddenly helping me with something like this, and why had it decided to translate this particular writing for me now when it had never done anything similar before? It was obviously suspicious, but I couldn't afford to waste time thinking about it because the Heirflame was still my priority, and I could deal with the system and its strange behavior after I managed to get out of this place. Once I get out of this place, I will have my vengeance.

I looked at the translated text and immediately became confused because the entire wall was covered with writing, yet the system had only translated a small amount of it, which made me wonder whether it was deliberately hiding something from me or whether there was some other reason why so much of the writing had been reduced to such a small message.

"Are you sure you aren't hiding something from me?" I asked the system, although I already knew I probably wouldn't receive an answer. I moved toward the next section of writing and began reading the translated text. What cursed luck I have, because if only I hadn't gotten entangled with those people, I wouldn't have been caught by that woman. I moved farther along the wall and began reading the next message, trying to piece together what had happened from the fragments that had been left behind.

She trapped me here using a unique skill, so I can't get out of here by normal means, and I need something more than that if I want to escape from this place. It was becoming increasingly obvious that whoever had written these messages had been trapped here for a considerable amount of time, and whatever had happened to them had probably been connected to the strange magic surrounding this place. I continued moving to the next section, where another message had been written.

The last item I stole from the ••• house turned out to be a great item, because I found a book about space magic. I stopped when I saw the name of the house because the system hadn't translated it, leaving only strange symbols where its name should have been. That made me even more suspicious because if the system could translate everything else, there had to be a reason why it couldn't translate that name.

The writing became messier as I moved farther along the wall, with some letters looking uneven and rushed, as if the person writing them was struggling to continue, but I kept reading because these messages were the only clues I had about what had happened inside this place. I was finally able to perform low-level space magic. It had been a few days since I performed the space magic, and I had felt like something was watching me since then. Right now, I hear a crying sound. Am I going crazy?

I'm certain now that something came out of that space spell, and it's here with me. However, the next section of writing looked different from everything I had read before. The characters were uneven, and the wall around them was stained with something dark that looked like dried blood. I slowly moved closer and read the final message. If you are reading this, run. A sudden chill overtook me as I stopped in my tracks because I could feel breath on my neck. Something was standing behind me.