Dungeon System: World Of Chaos War - Chapter 43 The Cursed One
At the swampy forest area, the warriors had already caught several Toad and Frogmen. They didn’t seem to be the smartest at all, it looked like they were mindlessly attacking while trying to escape at the same time.
The Mud Golems had already invaded the Swamp. None of the Frog or toad men could fight them and was forced to run. Every time they hurt the Mud Golems in some way, they would quickly regenerate using the Muddy terrain around them.
Stella noticed Vitiate when she turned, she also noticed the strange Lizards she had never seen before. Vitiate was riding on one, so she didn’t see it as a threat that they needed to be cautious of.
The lizards sped over to help catch Frog and toad men, some frogmen were really poisonous like the dart frog type. Vitiate was wary of the really colorful ones since they reminded him of that particular frog, just touching them would cause pain!
“Catch as many as you can, and help the Minotaur with the big frog. Sludge, focus on helping the Minotaur with catching that giant frog!” There were 3 large cages that were starting to fill up with knocked out frog and toad men.
The toad men seem to be the ugliest of the two, they were quite hard to look at compared to the frogmen. Vitiate used his chains of contempt to capture several toad and frogmen alike.
They weren’t that big, they were around 5’3 each, but he could get points off of them later. He made sure to appraise them like he did with all the creatures he would come into contact with.
The sludge monster did better in closed-off spaces when in a fight. It was just too slow, as most could just kite it if they didn’t faint from the horrible smell. The sludge monster wrapped its tendrils around the giant frog and started slamming it on the ground with no mercy.
The Minotaur backed off, it didn’t want to come into contact with this frogman, and was actually trying to avoid it. It didn’t take long for the giant frog to faint, but the sludge monster kept body slamming it all over the place!
“Okay, it’s down, we don’t need to kill it, we need to capture it!” Vitiate hurriedly and spoke before it killed it. The sludge monster stopped and tossed the giant Frog into a separate cage. Vitiate signaled the Golem to bring him a big sample of the poisonous swamp water.
The Goblins were using tranquilizer arrows to knock the toad and frogmen out. They had knocked out and caught many of them by the time he got here. “Master, the Mud Golems are still catching more frog and toad men. We saw that there was a rare type in there, at least its color seemed unique compared to the others.”
“A unique frogman, this sounds good, so what color was it?” At this point, no more toad an frogmen were running out of the swamp. Most of them probably went deep into the swamp water to avoid being caught and detected by the Golems.
Mud Golems obviously couldn’t go into water.
Before she could answer his question, the Wind Wolf seem to have detected something. She looked off into the forest with a dazzling gleam in her eyes. However, the people she noticed had a change in expression.
“What is it Wendy, are you sensing something? Who is it this time, is it more elves?” Did the elves follow him, and if they did, why?
The wolf signaled to him that these weren’t elves, but humans!
“Humans?” He looked into the direction she was looking in with a frown on his face. The wolf suddenly told him that they were moving away, they were retreating.
“Oh? Ice Dragon, have those Corrosive lizards chase and capture those humans if they can!” The Ice Dragon looked up, these were her mounts, she didn’t want to walk around when she could just ride on these guys.
She looked reluctant, but she complied. Vitiate really didn’t care if they got away or not, technically, but if he could catch them, hehe! The Corrosion lizards ran off as soon as the order was given. At that moment, the 3 Mud Golems came out of the swamp.
One was holding a cauldron in its arms full of swamp water, while the other carried frog and toad men. Vitiate noticed the strange color of one of the frogmen, it had a gold coloration to it, unlike the rest.
They were all knocked out and put into a cage, he could check this special frogman out later. The other Golem sat the polluted water from the swamp down slowly. Vitiate cringed with the sight of the water, but he wanted to use this water for many different experiments.
Each Golem was assigned to carry a cage to the Dungeon under the Kobolds Guidance. However, before sending them off, one of the Golems relayed a message to him, it went straight to his mind.
Vitiate gasped in surprise, the Golem had discovered something in the forest near the swamp that stunned him.
“I have to check this out, now!”
He made one of the Kobold knights stay behind as many other Goblin Archers followed the other group back. All that was left was Stella, the Kobold knight, the Ice Dragon, the Wolf, and a few Goblin archers.
The Sludge Monster had already went back into its cage, where it would return to the cube to be put on the 10th floor again.
“This way, guys! Our Golem friend has made a discovery in this forest that’s too good to pass up!”
Vitiate had already ordered the DragonRex to come to the swampland once it had escorted everyone back safely, so it should arrive soon if everything went well.
The other monsters didn’t question him, but Stella was curious.
“What was it, did it discover a treasure of some sort that would boost our power?”
“Yes, it could do some good for us, it could do real good! Judging by their condition, they may want to consider coming with us.” From the way he was speaking, it didn’t seem to be an object.
Stella remained quiet, she would find out soon enough. The Golem had shown him the location through its mind, so he knew where to go. Vitiate paused, the wolf sent him a message saying she sensed multiple figures watching them.
Vitiate looked around and reached out to grab a branch nearby. However, the branch flinched and tried to break away from him.
“Ah! The bad guy caught me, help!” The voice was that of a little kid, he raised it up to reveal the full appearance of the creature. It had all green skin with green eyes, the place where there should have been hair was branches instead.
Vitiate’s intelligence had gone up recently, so he knew exactly what it was.
Dryad!
“Ah, let Isra go, you bad man, you evil guy!”
“Go tell mother, she’ll save us by beating up this bad man!”
“Oh, no, the bad men are back to cause more trouble for us, run and tell mother!”
Several other Dryad kids popped out, they all had unique and different appearances from one another. Vitiate let the little Dryad girl go, and she quickly dashed away. Stella was about to shoot a tranquilizer arrow at her, but he told her not to, they could just follow them.
Vitiate and company just went on and followed them, these kids thought they slipped away. They had finally managed to track the kids to their final position. Once they were there, they saw a tree with a woman attached to it, she looked like she had aged 1000 years, she looked like she was withering away!
Suddenly, the trees started to move and close in on Vitiate and company. The Kobold knights started to cut the vines, and so did Vitiate. That’s until the ice Dragon Froze the branches to where they couldn’t operate anymore.
“Dragon!”
A voice filled with surprise could be heard from the woman attached to the tree, she had completely overlooked the dragon. This was obviously the Dryad mother the little dryads from before were talking about.
“What do you want from me, you keep coming here stealing from me every time!” Her voice was filled with resentment.
“Steal? Sorry, but this is my first time in this area, you must be mistaking me for someone else! You shouldn’t just attack people randomly or it might start a conflict.”
Vitiate looked at her withered face, then appraised her.
|Title: Dryad Mother,
|Name: Lucy
|Race: Dryad
|Race Type: Nature
|Class: N/A
[Current Status Effects: Corrosion Curse, Life Draining Curse, Vitality Curse]
He saw that she was a Dryad mother for sure, but she was sadly dying. Vitiate’s face visibly changed, she had so many curses on her, who the heck hated her so much to put so many Curses on her!?
She was clearly in pain, no one could get a decent amount of sleep with so many curses on them.
“Are you not one of them, you guys want my seed of life so bad, but I’ll never give it to you! I’ll rather take it to the grave with me before I hand it over to you evil things!” Her voice was filled with scorn, her situation wasn’t going to get better.
“I just told you, I’m not one of whoever you’re talking about!”
She seemed rather paranoid, but he somewhat understood as he was very paranoid himself when he first came to this world. However, she has reached a new level of paranoia, which was far greater than his.
“You’re not one of those ugly bloodsuckers, well, you don’t look anything like them. However, you could be disguising yourself, I know how you guys like to play mind games with people, but I won’t fall for it!”
“Oh, can any of those bloodsuckers do this?” Vitiate utilized the Light element for her to feel and see, she was stunned, those ‘Bloodsuckers’ couldn’t use this element, In fact, they were weak to this element!
“You’re not one of them.” She calmed down immediately after confirming this.
“I see! If you’re not one of them, then what are you?”
Vitiate felt like he was being asked this question too much, and he would never stop hearing it when people saw him as is.
“That’s unimportant now, what is important is that this swamp isn’t doing you any good. You and your daughters won’t last long here.” Vitiate could see that she was started to rot and corrode away, she wasn’t going to last another month!
“Sigh, my life is already finished, this place used to be such a nice place to live, but those frog and toad men corroded the nice waters of this area. It didn’t take long before it started to affect the soil around here, killing all the plant life.”
“Yeah, it’s that and the fact that you’re cursed!”
Lucy’s tired eyes went wide, then she put her head down as if she was thinking.
“So, you understand, right? Did those bloodsuckers curse you as well?”
Lucy shook her head.
“No! Thinking about it at this point, it was definitely the man they were with. That man had Death energy around his body, so curses were something he could surely do.”
“What? Was he an undead or something?” Vitiate found this amazing, did this part of the island have undead monsters?
“No, but I do believe he could command the undead, he had 3 Bulky silver skeletons by his side, he was definitely a human!” Lucy said seriously, she had actually opened up to Vitiate, this was because of his acting skill, the light element, and his Aura of Soothing playing together right now.
Hearing that he could command skeletons, it was easy to guess what he was!
“Humans working with Vampires, this is something new for sure. However, they’re both affiliated with the undead, so it makes sense that they could agree to agree.”
“Speaking of which, what type of curse do I have on me? You’re a user of the light so I understand how you know these things.”
“Well, you have 3 curses on you, to be exact.” Vitiate looked into her eyes and said.
“T-t-three curses!?” She was shocked, they were really trying to kill her, wasn’t this just overkill at this point!? Lucy wanted to cry, but she had already dried out, so no tears came when she wanted them to.
The Ice Dragon just shook her head in pity, she was quite familiar with these things. After all, her parents would pass information onto the next generation of their children. So she knew how curses worked and what they could do to someone, she looked at her appearance and knew it was because of this.
“It really is the end for me, I could have never imagined!”
“Yeah, sorry, but there is nothing I can do, you looked too far gone.” Vitiate sighed and shook his head, it was too bad. He could see the little dryads hiding behind their mother’s tree, they showed signs of rotting away as well.
Suddenly, a shadow could be seen in the sky, once it spotted Vitiate and his group it landed.
“Oh, so you’re back!” The DragonRex had returned, which showed that the escort went without a hitch.
“Amazing! You have 2 Dragons following you, now I’ve seen it all, just what are you, really?” Lucy looked at Vitiate curiously, she was dying so he kind of wanted to tell her, at least. However, he felt that it was a taboo for anyone to know now.
Vitiate wasn’t going to be the one to make his race known, it would be others within his race. He would stay in the shadows for a bit, while they built an empire.
This was his plan, he would just focus on his dungeon and creating chosen Apostles.
“…”
Lucy smirked.
“I can understand that much, but do you think it’s possible to save my children, can you heal them or take them to a safe place?” Vitiate could hear the desperation in her voice, and he could see it in her eyes.
“Sure, I can do that, I’m in need of Dryads who can purify. Your kind does a lot for the land and the earth, how could I ignore such beings?” The Dryad kids were too young to fully use their power, while she was heavily cursed. She would still need a lot of rest before she could do anything even if she was healed.
[Ding! Your Acting Skill has risen to level 3!]
At that moment, the Ice Dragon spoke to Vitiate directly in his mind.
‘Really? So, I can do that and actually save her!’