Chunghoe Castle is incredibly vast and complex.
This is something the party members have experienced to the point of exhaustion while wandering around for the past few months.
But there's one misconception everyone has—they're all convinced that the Audience Chamber is the final destination of this castle.
As if that could be true.
*He needs a place to live too.*
The Audience Chamber is exactly what its name suggests—just an audience chamber.
A place specially designed for him to meet with others.
Aside from being more ornate and spacious enough to accommodate many insects, it's nothing more than a place for audiences, nothing more, nothing less.
You could call it the boss stage.
And now it was time to explore what lay beyond.
The Insect King's bedroom, laboratory, storage room, and so on...
The good news is that there shouldn't be any more dangers ahead.
Honestly, after being blindsided so many times, I can't be completely certain... but as far as I know, that's how it should be.
*There shouldn't be anything else, right?*
After all that suffering, there better not be. If there is, I might just kill myself. Life would be too disgusting to continue.
Anyway, we began exploring the rooms beyond the Audience Chamber. Fortunately, finding them was quick.
They were located straight ahead from the entrance we came through.
"It's surprising this part hasn't collapsed..."
"You can say that again."
"Hmph, I suppose he built his living quarters more sturdily."
So we moved on to the next room, gossiping about the Insect King along the way.
Unlike the rest of Chunghoe Castle we'd passed through, the space beyond the Audience Chamber wasn't very large.
It was small enough that you could take in the entire area at a glance.
Of course, since it was divided into several rooms, it would take some time to check everything...
But compared to the distance we'd already covered, this would be nothing.
"Hero, shall we move together or separately?"
The Saintess asked as I was looking around.
I answered without much thought.
"I prefer moving separately..."
"Then let's do that."
"Won't the other party members object?"
"I'll convince them. They're probably tired and want to rest quickly."
With that, she went back to the party members.
She began persuading them, and they quickly agreed.
"Indeed, we're all tired, so dividing the tasks makes sense."
I found it somewhat surprising to watch.
We had definitely grown closer during this battle.
She was the only one who witnessed my struggle, and she was the one who delivered the final blow.
The only person who saw me achieve something, I suppose.
*Come to think of it, my body was clean when I woke up.*
I was definitely in a filthy state when I passed out.
My body was covered in blood, with liquefied locust corpses all over me.
But when I woke up, I was as fresh as if I'd just bathed. She must have used Purification on me.
She must have been extremely tired herself, yet she still cast Purification on me. No matter how little I know about her intentions, I couldn't help but feel grateful for this.
Thanks to her, I was able to wake up feeling refreshed.
Anyway, we decided to split up.
Camilla and Adel took the storage room, Lily and Yulice the bedroom, and I was assigned to the laboratory.
Creeeeak...
As I pushed the door, the distinctive spine-chilling sound of rusty hinges echoed. The musty smell of mold and faint scent of chemicals greeted me.
I thought to myself:
*Lucky me, getting the laboratory.*
Of the areas behind the Audience Chamber, two places would yield the most valuable finds: the storage room and the laboratory.
The storage room contained all sorts of treasures and high-grade materials. But since there weren't any truly useful items there, I boldly left it to my party members. The money from those items would go toward party maintenance anyway, so it didn't matter much.
Then there was the laboratory.
This was the space where the Insect King's research traces remained.
At first glance, there didn't seem to be anything particularly appealing.
*Not to others, at least.*
But the value of items depends on who's looking at them.
The scattered reagents and insects would just be objects of investigation to others.
But to me, they were immediately usable assets.
After all, I can now use Insect Arts.
I intended to make good use of the insects he had researched and modified.
So I walked around the laboratory, looting what I needed.
Eggs of the One-Eyed Big-Eye Bug.
Powder that helps create summoning circles.
Even a gourd with subspace magic cast on it specifically for insects.
"Oh, this is still here too?"
I even found larvae of the Dimensional Thorn Bug.
All the adult insects must have been used by the Insect King... but larvae were better than nothing.
If I raised them well, I could perform those annoying thorn attacks just like him.
After circling the laboratory once, the last thing I picked up was this: a book placed on the only clean, well-organized desk in the moldy, musty laboratory.
"On the Origins and Summoning Methods of Gu Poison"
It seemed to have been read recently.
The book was covered in fingerprints.
This showed just how serious he was about summoning Gu Poison.
"Hmm..."
I sighed as I looked at it.
"I'll have to perform a summoning someday too..."
It was essentially the pinnacle of Insect Arts.
This skill, which reached the height of summoning magic, could eventually summon ancient calamities.
Of course, he can't summon for a third time now that he's dead.
But we still have our second chance. The first one doesn't count.
*The problem is the enormous amount of sacrifices needed for summoning.*
Just look at the Insect King today.
He consumed most of his insects just to summon one worm. I would need to provide the same level of sacrifice.
An absurd amount.
Still, I had to summon no matter what.
These creatures had power equivalent to the Four Heavenly Kings, so of course I needed to summon them.
"Ah, whatever, let's just take it."
So I took his book. Fortunately, the Gu Poison summoning circle is stackable.
This means I don't need to provide everything at once; I can gradually add sacrifices over time.
So I should be able to perform a summoning eventually.
Creeeeak...
After finishing my farming, I went back outside the laboratory.
My companions must still be investigating, as there wasn't even a shadow of a person in the hallway.
Well, the other two rooms were quite spacious compared to the laboratory.
I finished quickly because I knew what was in the lab and the area was smaller, but it would clearly take them longer.
With nothing else to do, I decided to wander the corridors.
I'd already gathered most of what I needed, but you never know.
With so many variables in the game now, something new might have appeared.
Unfortunately, there wasn't anything new.
However, there was something that shouldn't have been there.
"...Huh?"
After wandering the corridor for quite some time, I suddenly felt a strange sense of dissonance as I passed a certain point.
It felt like there was something there that I was forcibly ignoring.
Like I had seen something I needed to see but had hastily erased it from my mind.
Feeling something was off, I turned around and soon discovered a hole.
A hole just large enough for one person to pass through.
This hole in the corridor wall seemed out of place and random.
What was even stranger was that I couldn't see anything beyond the hole.
It was pitch black, as if coated with Vantablack.
Just to be sure, I created a small fireball and threw it in, but I still couldn't see beyond the darkness.
Anyone else would have found this suspicious. What on earth was this?
But the more I examined the hole, the more I felt a strange certainty.
This place seemed familiar.
Just to be sure, I checked the hole using the System.
Sometimes the System would provide information about the name or background of a space.
But when I checked the hole with the System:
[#!^$◇ ◆ ◈맯뒳뷽?긜긳긇깑?]
All I could see were broken characters.
That's when I became certain.
This was indeed the hole I knew. I didn't know why it was here, but I was sure.
Having reached that conclusion, I decided to enter the hole.
[WARNING!]
As soon as I put one foot in, a warning message appeared.
[WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!...]
When I pushed my upper body in, the warnings began to sound frantically.
An enormous number of warning messages filled my vision.
"Move aside."
I ignored them.
As far as I knew, this space wasn't dangerous at all.
And if the warning messages were this severe, I should have been dead long ago.
So I continued to descend through the hole.
I couldn't see anything, and a strange chill ran down my spine.
[궳!으?# ¶띿맟궸⁋랣뮒...]
[%!$⧓∏∐▣□■▣▣▣...]
Meanwhile, the System seemed to be malfunctioning, continuously sending strange characters.
Though I couldn't make any judgments, I continued downward, using the sensation in my fingertips as a guide.
After crawling for quite some time...
Whoosh!
[∑∏∀...]
The space widened.
The warning alerts that had been ringing in my head disappeared, and my previously dark vision brightened.
My body even felt strangely refreshed.
I arrived at an open space about the size of a room.
The floor was spotless, without a speck of dust, and the walls had no markings—just an empty space.
In this featureless space, the only thing that stood out was the center.
In the middle of the cavity, where an unusually bright light shone down, there was a stone emitting a mysterious glow.
I approached to examine it.
[▣△뭻▲※궯#@&∑]
The text was still coming through broken.
I sighed.
"...Hmm."
Why is this really here?