Risen World

Chapter 276: Canyon Dungeon Part 24

Although Joshua didn't like the idea of rushing right into a boss room at the moment he didn't have a choice in the matter. It was either run head first into the boss fight against a giant snake or stay behind and get bitten to death by the tons of small snakes that were hissing up at them and heading in their direction. Joshua rushed ahead of everyone up to the door to the boss room and immediately started pushing it open. He strained his body to push the doors open as fast as he possibly could seeing as they only had a matter of seconds before the snakes were able to reach the platform that they were all on.

Once the doors were open the entire group rushed through into the dimly lit room before Joshua and the Carsen Brothers quickly closed the doors behind them so none of the snakes could sneak their way into the room. It was already bad enough that they would have to take on a massive boss unprepared, there was no reason to let more enemies in on the fighting. For a while everyone could hear hissing coming from beyond the door that they just closed, but that only lasted for a couple minutes before things grew quiet. Knowing that they were out of danger of the smaller snakes Joshua decided to turn around and inspect the room that they had all rushed into. At the moment he was just glad that there wasn't a giant snake charging at them already.

The first thing Joshua noticed about the room was the fact that it was even darker than the area where they faced the spiders on the way to the boss of that path. It wasn't as dark as the bat and beetle path, but it was hard to see much further than a few feet in front of himself. The room was clearly large just based off of the fact that any sounds the group made while moving seemed to leave an echo. Their footsteps rang loudly in the room just from this fact alone. The ground was rather smooth with a few noticeable rocks around as if they were inside a cave. Lastly there were several large pillar like structures throughout the area that they could all see whenever they got close enough. These pillars towered upwards to the point where they couldn't see how high up they went.

Joshua was surprised that after spending a few minutes looking around the place he had yet to sense the boss at all. This wasn't a good sign in his mind, in fact it was a huge problem. With the snakes in the canyon he could at least sense their presence. Even with the spider boss that they had just faced he was able to sense its presence. This snake however simply seemed to vanish from the room altogether. He had felt its power when entering the path so he knew that it was still there yet for some reason he couldn't pinpoint it at all.josei

'What's that?' Aito said surprising everyone. Joshua wasn't surprised that he was the first person to notice something with his enhanced vision. He started to concentrate his sight in the direction that Aito was pointing out as his group moved a bit closer to it. When they got close enough Joshua was able to see what looked like moving shadows at first. It was a bit odd considering the fact that usually whenever he saw something like this he figured it was simply the dark playing tricks on his eyes. This time however the movement was to uniform, it felt as if something was just on the edge of his vision and was moving and making it hard to figure out what it was. Whatever it was it was enormous since the weird motion seemed to go up a good couple of stories in height. Before Joshua could see what it was he heard Aito take in a deep breath and knew that his longtime friend had gotten a better view of it at this point.

'Stay calm everyone. I think a part of the boss is up ahead.' Aito said through the mental link so no one would get surprised when they came within view of it. It didn't take long for Joshua to see what he was talking about as they approached closer. What was in front of them was actually on the other side of two pillars and stretched all the way across them and out of sight. From what Joshua could tell it looked like a portion of the body of a giant snake that moved rhythmically up in down occasionally in accordance with the creatures breathing.

The fact that a snake was two stories tall while lying on the ground instantly sent warning bells through Joshua's mind. The snakes in the canyon were nowhere near this size. The scales on its body were all like shields of their own that could be comparable to the one Jayce carried around. The defensive capability from this alone was going to be a giant pain to try to get through. As Joshua watched the portion of the snake for a moment it started to move in an unusual fashion. It was as if the snake was on the move as it slithered forward while rubbing against the two pillars. Joshua could hear the pillars creaking from the force that the simple movement had created as the snake's body rubbed up against the pillars.

'Not good, the bodies moving which means the boss is awake and surrounding us.' Henry said with a frown. Because of the size of the snake the movement of its body started to create grinding sounds along the floor. Joshua knew they didn't have much time to find the head of the snake before they'd be taken by surprise. He spread out his aura sense quickly and realized how large the room was. The pillars in the room all went up about ten stories and were rather thick. If they weren't so big then the snake would have been able to crush them easily and the group would have had no chance of living at all with the snake being able to coil around their entire surroundings in a matter of seconds.

His senses soon spotted more of the snake's body and that was when Joshua realized how long the snake actually was. The snake's body was like a maze as it wrapped around different pillars all over the room, but the one thing Joshua was now certain of was the fact that the door they had come from was now blocked off by the tail of the snake. He could feel it at the edge of his aura sense as it slithered by the door before stopping in the way and blocking the exit off. It was then a deep hiss filled everyone's ears and echoed throughout the room. The hissing lasted for a long while before it was followed with a chuckle.

"It seems my first prey has decided to crawl in front of me." A deep voice that sounded like it was hissed out around the entire time. The voice had a bit of a hypnotic effect to it that made some of the members of the group feel a bit hazy, but they were able to regain control rather quickly once Joshua washed Light's aura over them. The voice was feminine, but not in an alluring way. It almost sounded demonic with a heavily arrogant tone to it. "It seems the games have finally begun. Soon more and more of you weak humans will find your way into my lair and be killed off slowly by me."

At first Joshua tried to pinpoint where the voice was coming from, but because of the echo that was an impossible thing to do. So instead he copied what the boss was doing and used his aura to amplify his voice and spread it throughout the whole room so that the boss wouldn't be able to find their location in turn. "I'm guessing you're the big bad snake that the spider warned us about?" Joshua asked as he stayed on guard and made sure to stay away from any parts of the snake's body as the group wandered through the area.

"Oh so you've defeated that gullible fool already. I'm guessing he was straight forward with his actions. He used to be more vindictive like me, but now he's gone and become a good little boy for the world authority I see. Otherwise I can't see how a pathetic group like this could actually bring him down." The snake hissed as its killing intent poured out and flooded the entire room. It came from all directions so it was impossible to pinpoint the main source. Then it all calmed down as the snake let out an amused chuckle. "No matter it just works out better for me in the end."

"What do you mean by that? I highly doubt you're going to just go down and let us kill you in a fair fight." Joshua replied as he edged the group away from another portion of the snake's body that just appeared at the edge of his view.

"I'm sure the little spider must have told you about the fact that after a hundred battles he'd be released from this hell hole." The snake hissed out with a voice filled with disdain at the thought of being under the control of any type of entity.

"Yes and he's only got ninety nine more to go. I don't think that'll take him all that long with the amount of groups that will be coming through here in the future." Joshua responded. He was the only one talking since he was the only one that could talk through his aura in a similar way as the beast. The moment someone else made a sound any louder than breathing he was certain that the boss would be able to pinpoint the location of the group.

"Well in my case I shall have to face a thousand battles for my past transgressions. That doesn't mean I have to die a thousand times though." The snake hissed in amusement. "It only means I have to kill a thousand groups. Judging by what you said before I'll have lots of prey in the coming years and I won't just sit around and be a stepping stone for them to reach greater heights. No, once they reach me their journey shall end and it will end at the pit of my stomach being digested for weeks. I'll make sure it's as slow and painful as possible."

Joshua and the rest of the group frowned at those words. They realized that explorers died at the hands of beast all the time, but outside of the purple haze monsters they had never come across such a vindictive enemy before. To enjoy torturing others so much was beyond their expectations.

"Well that is if they're able to get to me in the first place. It'd be just as hilarious to see them fail at my little jokes to get to this room. Death by a pit fool of my kind should suffice for an interesting end as well." The snake laughed causing its body to shake. All of the pillars that were in contact with the snake's body shook in return and even most of the room was shaking simply because of the massive creatures laughing. "Maybe I should make the answers harder to figure out so that more people die in that way, but then I don't think it would count as a confrontation on my record."

"You sure do seem to enjoy toying with others. I bet that's the reason while you were put here in the first place. After all you're nothing but a coward that slithers around preying on the weak after all." Joshua said with an edge to his voice. He meant every single word after seeing the personality of this snake. The spider may have preyed on weaker beast for food in the past, but he did it for food and because of a bit of laziness on his part. Even so he was clearly willing to change based off of the way he took on Joshua's group. This snake however was having none of that. This snake wasn't going to change and was even taking advantage of the dungeon to continue to play its cruel games.

"Oh I see you've got a little back bone in you. Well let's see just how much pressure it takes for me to snap it in half." The snake responded as its powerful aura flooded the room once more.