"I'll think about it first."
Ethan thought about it for a moment but still didn't make a rash decision.
After all, he could register anytime before the competition started.
He planned to wait until things at home were arranged, at least until the town had finished upgrading.
Once he had also arranged all the work at home, it would be more appropriate to register.
"Of course, honored guest," Seeing that Ethan showed no intention of taking out the registration fee, Alfred quickly made a welcoming gesture and said, "Please follow me, honored guest!"
"Mm."
Ethan replied and immediately followed Alfred deeper into the hall.
They walked for nearly a hundred meters.
Only then did Ethan reach the very end of the hall. At the edge of the wooden hall was a huge door.
The door was about ten meters tall and edged with gold. Some very unusual patterns had also been carved onto it in relief, making it look like a scene of a great battle.
On one side were humanoid creatures, as well as humans, such as mages, warriors, elves, and so on.
And on the other side were some extremely strange-looking creatures.
There were eight-eyed spider monsters, fish-headed people, wyverns, giant mantises, and tall, elongated shadow creatures that looked like suspended corpses.
Since they were all carvings, and there were so many figures, Ethan couldn't be sure what all the monsters depicted were. But he could roughly tell that it seemed to be a scene of the Mist World fighting the Nightmare Land.
Alfred twisted the door handle left and right in a certain rhythm. A series of mechanical clicking sounds immediately came from behind the huge door, and then the massive relief door slowly opened by itself.
Everything behind the door was dark, so dark that almost nothing could be seen.
But the instant the magnificent door was fully opened, a beam of light fell from above into the room behind the door, landing on a huge beetle.
The beetle was pure black, with some red spots on its body.
The beetle was about the size of a bus. In the empty space between its head and wings was a seat that had been fitted in, just large enough for an adult to sit in.
"Honored guest, please prepare ten spirit stones for the energy fee and feed them to the Dark Armored Bug," Alfred considerately held out his hand and said, "Of course, if the guest trusts me, I can… I can take them and feed it for you."
"Then I'll trouble you."
Seeing the troubled look on Alfred's face, Ethan immediately guessed that feeding this giant beetle was probably not an easy task.
Professional matters should naturally be left to professionals.
He directly placed the ten spirit stones into Alfred's hand, then tossed him a Dragon Coin as well, treating it as encouragement.
Sure enough, Ethan had guessed correctly.
When Alfred approached the Dark Armored Bug with the ten spirit stones, he took a deep breath with a look of someone gathering up his courage.
And when he reached the Dark Armored Bug's side, he directly closed his eyes.
He looked like he was leaving his fate to heaven.
The next second.
Slap!
The Dark Armored Bug suddenly stuck out a long purple tongue and quickly swept away the ten spirit stones from Alfred's outstretched hand.
Then… its wet, sticky long tongue, covered in some unknown green liquid, actually licked Alfred's face once.
Smack!
Alfred's entire face turned green.
Not only because of all the slime, but also because Alfred himself had turned green.
He had probably been disgusted by it.
"Honored… honored guest," Alfred maintained a stiff smile and said, "P-please… go ahead!"
"Mm!"
Ethan lightly pushed off with his toes and jumped straight onto the beetle, which was more than two meters tall, landing on its back.
After sitting down in the seat on the Dark Armored Bug's back, Ethan tossed ten Dragon Coins toward Alfred as a tip for his trouble and said, "Thanks!"
"Thank you, honored guest!"
Alfred was overjoyed. He had even forgotten that his face was covered in green liquid.
He opened his mouth and repeatedly thanked Ethan. But the moment he opened his mouth, he accidentally swallowed quite a bit of the green slime, instantly making him so disgusted that…
"Blegh!"
Alfred quickly rushed out of the room and ran toward the outside of the hall.
He had probably gone to throw up.
———
Flap! Flap! Flap!
After Alfred left, the Dark Armored Bug began flapping its wings.
Strangely, however, when the Dark Armored Bug flapped its wings, it neither flew up nor moved. Instead, circles of air ripples began appearing around it.
These ripples were invisible to the naked eye and could only be felt, something similar to an aura.
Then those ripples continuously accumulated at a certain point until they reached a certain amount.
A completely black dot appeared on the ground, and it continued growing and spreading.
The black dot was extremely dark.
It was so dark that even when the light from above shone into it, it seemed to be absorbed, creating the illusion that even the light itself was being swallowed.
One minute later, the black dot had finally expanded to an area as large as the Dark Armored Bug. Then Ethan's vision suddenly went black. When light appeared before his eyes again, he discovered that the Dark Armored Bug had somehow already entered a spatial gate.
It kept flapping its wings, carrying Ethan forward through the air.
And surrounding the Dark Armored Bug were a large number of spatial rifts.
Ethan looked out through those spatial rifts…
[🎉 Shoutout to Someone's_Nobody, MahSty and Shinto for joining p@treon. Your support will help me bring better stories to you. Thank you very much.🤗]