Chapter: 855

The next chamber had many chairs, tables, and empty glasses; a dining hall. Some roots branched off from the others, but the majority led through the room, leading to a spiral stairway on the other side.

Seeing no enemies present, Jay sneaked through the room. When getting to the stairs, he and Red opened some more of the luminous jars around, splashing them around the entrance and on the stairs themselves.

“Hopefully no patrolling lesser knights will come down after us... but they might send something up after we dumped the bodies over the edge.” Jay whispered, disappearing down the stairs.

The spiral staircase went past many rooms; some pitch-black and others containing the luminous jars.

Of course, Jay would take a few moments to splash some jars around, ruining the paths of the patrolling knights.

More roots crowded the steps as they descended, and after an hour of walking, Jay wondered when it would end.

[230 Exp]

More knights died at the gatehouse, but seeing the enormous size of the castle, with many lit chambers, Jay thought he must have only touched the tip of the iceberg.

“The army of one-hundred must have been the surface guards… more will come up to the surface. Eventually.” He thought.

Seeing the odd labs throughout the castle, along with the unending architecture built deep into the earth, Jay guessed that this castle was not built by the parasite-infested knights, or the pre-parasite knights, but by whoever created this grand experiment within this starving crucible.

“The scientists and experimenters probably threw these people into the grinding maws of research.”

“I feel sorry for the children born here, but it seems this crucible has raised them into monsters, too. All are tainted, after all.” Jay thought, remembering the girl who lured him into the cannibal village; the villagers who only followed him to get free armor.

“The leaf-skin village is further from the castle, but as the roots spread, it will only be a matter of time before they turn into cannibals too…” he nodded.

“Perhaps the true experiment was on the people living here, rather than the plant, or the parasites.” Jay pondered.

Traveling deeper, the staircase opened into another room - yet several knights were in this one, from what Jay could see. A thick, pulsing root trailed from the depths of the staircase and went into the room too, branching in different directions and carrying nutrients from somewhere below.

Peeking from the staircase, it surprised Jay to see several knights without armor... or any clothes, for that matter.

Oddly, their flesh wasn’t dark or rotting either, as if they had only been infected by the parasites recently.

These fresh-looking men were standing around some more of the basins, each of them cupping the green fluids and drinking them.

“Yuck.” Jay's face turned sour.

Every so often, he could see an occasional wriggling string under their skin, though the men didn’t respond to it as they kept drinking the green fluids.

In this strange room, only one knight donned armor, and it was a lesser type; a walking parasite nursery. Periodically, it would walk over to the basin and hold its non-fighting arm out; splashes of eggs and parasites entered the fluids, which were drank down by the fresh humans.

“Like little babies suckling the milk. Probably aren’t too adept in battle… this won’t be too hard.” Jay thought, analyzing each of them.

Already, Jay had decided to slay them. Without armor, they could do nothing against his sword, his helminth bolts, or his unstable teeth spells. They didn’t even have weapons to fight back.

However, Jay would not use the teeth spells unless it was an emergency, fearing the explosion would attract too many enemies.

(Red, you take the armored knight. I’ll handle the others.)