Epic of Caterpillar

“Okay, sorry!” Sighed Elfina, crossing her arms. “It was all tasty… Burp.”

“I-I apologize for doubting your culinary talent, Kireina-sama.” Said Fiere.

“I never doubted you! I even let you cook to see what you would make…” Said Luminous pridefully.

“Suuure. Well, now that we got our bellies full, let’s go downstairs!” I cheerfully said.

While we walked downstairs the threat of the parasites never left my mind, I had analyzed them with Appraisal all the time before cooking them over, and even then I still got a few raw carcasses inside my inventory, what I got out of them was that they were strange parasites that obeyed someone called “Slack”, that was somewhere in the depths of this mysterious Dark Labyrinth. I really want to know why the fuck there’s a guy named Slack in here, so I asked the one that knows the most about all of this, our beloved Luminous.

“Can you tell me more about this Dark Labyrinth? From where does everything came from? What’s the origins of this place?” I wondered while asking him everything I wanted, he felt overwhelmed but ultimately answered the questions anyways, I was forcing him to do so! Nobody is going to keep secrets from these caterpillar eyes as long as I am here.

“Okay, stop staring at me so weirdly! I’ll tell you what I know… This Labyrinth seems to have originated from the corpse of an Evil God long ago.” Sighed Luminous. “Before it was occupied by elves and made into a fortress city where adventurers come to level up, it used to be a monster-infested nest… Demons once used this place to generate more monsters in an attempt to invade the elven forest for some mysterious reason. They failed and the Dark Labyrinth was then conquered long ago… Now it has been creating monsters at a steady pace, but there’s always people willing to fend off the monsters.”

“I see… So an Evil God…?” I asked.

“Well, Dark God, there was never any true evil god. You’ve already seen their corpses lying around the world at this point, haven’t you?” Asked Luminous. “The Dark Gods and Light Gods died over the land, some of their bodies contained light and fertility, turning the lands fertile, others rot away, forming pools of miasma that rot the land away… It also generated monsters, lots of them. And the Dark Labyrinth is said to have originated inside the gigantic skull of a Dark God that is buried underground.”

“Wow, so we are walking through the interior of the skull of one of your uncles!?” I asked.

“I am the son of a Light Goddess so Dark Gods are only my distant relatives!” Said Luminous. “But maybe… I guess you can put it that way?”

“D-Distant relatives?!” Asked Elfina. “L-Luminous-sama, are you saying that Dark Gods and Light Gods are closely related with one another? This is… nobody ever said that before. I think the church would get angry at you… But you’re a god so… Erm, I don’t know if they would….”

“Well, I have never revealed this truth to others before because I know how much people glorify the Light Gods over the Dark God, attribute the later to the demons to further ostracize them into monsters that cannot be compared to people. It has never been my intention to throw disbalance into the civilization of this world, so I have kept my mouth shut.” Sighed Luminous. “But both Dark Gods and Light Gods come from the same original Creator. I can only call her Creator Goddess, it is an important figure, mostly forgotten in history, as she was gone just after she created the gods. Her existence is only registered in the Akashic Records.”

“C-Creator Goddess?!” Asked Elfina. “Who could this be?”

“Information about her is rare… I don’t know anything further than what I’ve read… This world seems to be mysterious and has a lot of secrets that not even I can properly discover, yet it feels so small and insignificant.” Sighed Luminous. “Kireina, you who has gone through other worlds, what do you think of Runeterra?”

“I think it is indeed a small world…” I sighed. “My original world, Genesis is… Well, gigantic in comparison. I guess every world is different. It might be a blessing in disguise that this world is not as massive. It shouldn’t be as hard to make you all join together to protect and nurture it.”

“Hm, true…” Sighed Luminous. “Well, going back to the Dark Labyrinth topic, this Dungeon has been presenting some strange anomalies, monsters parasitized was one of those anomalies. Other adventurers had also found parasitized monsters and had been hunting them down, but as we go deeper, they become larger in size and strength, and also in numbers. This dungeon only has around ten floors, so we are already over midway through down to the bottom. The bottom itself most likely hides the origin of these parasites. I feel a strong amount of miasma down there. Whatever took shelter at the bottom of the Dark Labyrinth, it is not a mere monster.”

“What could had gotten there then?!” I wondered, as we moved forward, suddenly, we heard the cries of monsters. We swiftly moved to the stairs and peeked into the next floor, floor 8.

“Gryyyaaah!”

“Kukyaaaahhh…!”

“Gyyaaah!”

It was a large group of Barbarian Monkey Warriors, evolved forms of Barbarian Monkeys. They grew armors over their bodies and wielded stronger weapons. However they were fighting against a massive mass of limbs of various other monsters, with tentacles and eyes. One of them was captured and it was crying a lot as the monstrosity’s tentacles were absorbing it! Wow, kind of reminds me of me!

“Amazing! I wish I could get this power back.” I sighed.

“T-This is horrifying!” Said Elfina. “Uugh… T-The monkeys are getting absorbed by the parasite creatures?! A-Ah! There are more?!”

Suddenly, several more of these monstrous chimera thingies appeared, they looked like mismatches of various other monsters’ parts. One of them resembled a giant scorpion but each leg was that of a monkey, a rhino, or a lion… the rest didn’t looked any pretty. It kind of reminded me when I used to summon my chimera monsters!

“T-These are parasites… so many!” Said Luminous.