Chapter 464 - Mental Pressure

Chapter 464: 464 - Mental Pressure

Unfortunately, just like the strength of those Players, the rewards Lohan got from digesting them were completely disappointing.

Unlike the enemies with Rare and Epic Bases he had digested before, these enemies with Common and Uncommon bases, even at high levels, gave him only weak skills and weak upgrades to the skills he already had.

Sure, they weren’t complete wastes, since just from digesting those bodies he got a good hundred biomass and the equivalent of a few hundred biomass invested in skills, but still, nothing truly powerful was gained from it.

Continuing the cave invasion, Lohan and Lisa went deeper with much more ease, now that they no longer sensed anyone else’s presence.

But Lohan was curious.

"While digesting those Players’ bodies, I noticed their Bases were much lower than expected for their level. Players with an average level of 14 and Common and Uncommon bases is very strange..." Lohan commented over the mental link.

Hearing that, Lisa looked at him in surprise. "Do you think there’s something more to it?"

"Yes... even the Players who joined Astralis with a minimum Base of Rare level are still averaging a level like that... it doesn’t make sense that a group of Players like this managed to keep up their leveling speed." Lohan said. "And considering how fiercely they’re protecting this place, it’s becoming clearer and clearer to me that the likely reason for it is here."

That explanation sparked even more of Lisa’s interest, and the more she listened, the more she felt it made sense.

A minor point was that this place was very far from the Astralis base.

Even at her extremely high speed, they’d spent over 7 hours traveling to get here. If it were other Players, who’d have to come at normal walking and running speeds, it would take at least two days just to reach this place.

In that time, Halon wouldn’t have been able to keep clones active with them the whole time, and a large part of the gains they’d get, besides experience, would be wasted.

But even so, curious about what they might find, Lisa’s pace quickened with Halon strapped to her back, looking at that place with even more attention.

It didn’t take long for them to feel a subtle change in the atmosphere.

The sensation was so subtle that if it weren’t for Lisa’s high spirituality, Lohan wouldn’t even have noticed anything had changed, but for the fox, it was as if the air had suddenly gotten heavier.

With every step she took toward the cave, the air grew denser and she felt as if her mind were carrying a little extra weight.

That weight, which didn’t seem like much, grew with every step she took until, after a few dozen meters, even Lohan started to notice it.

"This feeling... could it be the mental power of the monsters we’re looking for?" Lohan asked excitedly.

Even though that feeling was uncomfortable, the more he felt it, the better his gains would be from digesting those monsters.

The weight in the air kept increasing with every step, but Lohan savored every second of that sensation, trying to memorize the exact texture of that pressure. It was as if an invisible, cold hand rested on top of his mind, not squeezing, just reminding him it was there.

"This is pretty uncomfortable," Lisa murmured, shaking her head slightly as if she could shake it away. "It feels like someone is trying to whisper in my ear in a language I almost understand."

"Whispers of the Abyss," Lohan commented, amused. "The name is pretty honest, apparently."

The stone corridor narrowed and descended in gentle curves, the torches fixed to the walls casting long, trembling shadows against the dark rock.

In some stretches, tool marks were still visible on the walls, a sign that the Black Horn Legion had spent time and money preparing that path, which only reinforced the question Lohan had been holding onto.

’Why invest so much in a place that supposedly only serves for hunting mid level monsters?’ he thought. ’Even if the horns are valuable, that doesn’t seem to justify this level of security so well...’

They passed two empty forks, with no creatures in sight, and Lisa noticed that the mental pressure always came from the right hand corridor, getting sharper with each turn.

"We’re close," she said quietly, her ears flat against her head. "I can feel the air changing. There’s a strange smell too, kind of sweet, kind of sickening."

Lohan hadn’t noticed that yet, but as soon as she said it, he activated his enhanced senses skills and caught the same odor, very faint, almost hidden beneath the smell of the cave’s damp stone.

The last turn ended in a wide opening, and the light coming from there was different, a pulsing reddish glow that seemed to come from cracks in the rock itself, where the volcano’s heat came closer to the surface.

The two of them stopped at the chamber entrance and fell silent.

The cave was enormous, with a high ceiling covered in dark stalactites, and in the center of it, lying on a stone platform, was an immense creature.

That creature’s thin, elongated body stretched across the floor, held up by limbs as thin as dry branches, all of them bound by heavy chains and metal cables driven into the rock.

That creature’s hide was pale gray, marked by old scars and poorly healed wounds, and the eyes, or the place where they should have been, were just two hollows sealed over by hardened skin.

On the forehead of that thing, where a large, curved horn should have been, there was only a smooth, flat surface, with clear marks that someone had sanded it down repeatedly, layer by layer, until nothing was left.

"What the hell is this," Lisa whispered, her voice cracking a little.

But the worst part wasn’t the creature itself.

Around it, covering much of the platform, dozens of smaller creatures moved in an agitated, uncoordinated way.

They were smaller versions of the large one, with the same long body and the same thin limbs, but far more bestial, with red, glassy eyes, open mouths and frenzied movements.

Each had a small horn on its forehead, curved and shiny, and the mental pressure Lohan felt came exactly from them, producing a constant hum that grew stronger as they stirred.

They piled onto the large creature, trying to get close to it, climbing over one another, fighting among themselves for space, and the whole scene had such a distorted, instinctive quality that Lohan took several seconds to understand what he was seeing.

"They’re..." Lisa began, and stopped, her stomach visibly turning.

"They’re trying to breed with her," Lohan finished, his voice coming out lower and colder than he intended. "The offspring are trying to breed with their mother."