Chapter 131 - The First Hole Sqeeuuuee! Sqeeuuuee! Sqeeuuuee! The panicked cries of the solar worms were heard outside, alarming the two solar worms at the entrance of the hole. Swweeii! Swweeii! The two solar worms at the entrance squirmed towards the hole with speed. On entering into the hole, darkness along with the sounds of flesh being ripped to shreds and the smell of heated blood, greeted them. The worms didn’t understand what was happening and they could only sense that there was some unknown being here but the said being was moving too fast for them to discern pinpoint their location [Atomic disintegration coat has been activated] [-10 EP] Gustav claws were covered in a whitish glow once again as he dashed out and hacked at the upper body part of a solar worm positioned on the left of the crystal [Slash has been activated ×3] Swhiii! Swhii! Swhii! Gustav’s claws slashed out thrice dividing it into three pieces. At this moment Gustav had already killed five of the solar worms within the hole. Even though the temperature of the hole had increased by a lot due to their numbers initially being twelve, Gustav was able to endure the increase. Not only was the temperature way lower than when he had to handle the twenty at the entrance the other day, but he also had defense now so he was hardly disturbed by the increase in temperature. Swoooshhh! Slash! Swoooshhh! Slash! Gustav dashed across the place while swinging out his arms repeatedly and ripping their bodies to shredded pieces of meat. The two solar worms that entered earlier started shooting out corroding silver liquids from their mouths. Thwii! Thwii! Thwii! Thwii! They couldn’t really pinpoint Gustav’s location but they could sense him from time to time due to his temperature but their attacks only hit thin air because Gustav could see them clearly and dodge unlike them who had their visibility reduced. After a few more seconds Gustav had killed the twelve solar worms he met here when he first arrived. He darted towards the two worms that were standing guard on the outside earlier. Both of them already sensed that he was headed towards them. Thwii! Thwii! They shot out the steam of silver liquid towards Gustav’s direction. Both attacks accurately headed for Gustav. Thoom! [Size manipulation has been activated] Gustav’s body lessened in width becoming about five inches wide and he positioned himself right in between both attacks while dashed forward. Both attacks passed by his right and left side missing him by a hairbreadth. [-20HP] Even though he dodged it, he still lost a little bit of HP due to the air becoming corrosive from the liquid they spat out. Swoooshhh! Gustav’s body went back to normal after successfully dodging their attacks. He extended both his arms as he reached the middle of both solar worms. Slasshhh! His right and left claws sliced through the sides of both worms as he kept running forward with his arms outstretched. Plerrkkkhh! The solar worms screeched out in pain as the sides of their upper body, their belly, and their lower halves were torn open causing their internal organs to spill out along with a puddle of lava-like blood. Plop! Plop! Both bodies of the solar worms fell to the ground as system notifications popped up in Gustav’s line of sight. <+8000 EXP> <+8000 EXP Now that he had killed all fourteen of them, Gustav had now reached level nine. Sshhhsss! Gustav stared at the corpses of the blood worms with a contemplative look. Their bloods were already corroding the ground causing a sizzling sound to ring out. ’I won’t be cooking mixed-breeds for dinner this time...’ Gustav stared at the mess around him with a repulsed expression. ’I wonder if any restaurants will be interested in buying their body parts,’ Gustav couldn’t conclude on whether to take the bodies of these solar worms or not. After thinking for a few seconds he picked them up and put them in his storage device before leaving the hole. He knew he had to be as quick as possible now that he had killed some of the solar worms. He reckoned that he only had about thirty minutes and quickly dashed into the third hole to continue. Just like the previous, the third hole also had a similar crystal and worm surrounding it. [High energy crystal has been detected] [Name: Salitre Pure Crystal] Just like in the previous hole the same notifications popped up here. Gustav moved closer to the crystal which was positioned on the right corner of the hole. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦 [Does host wish to absorb energy into the system] [YES/NO] Gustav quickly said yes and the system started absorbing the energy of the second crystal. After the system was done absorbing the energy the same situation as the previous hole happened again. Gustav was already prepared for it. This time he didn’t spend up to five minutes before killing all the solar worms within the hole. He kept calculating the amount of time left before the entire solar worms would start scurrying towards his location. Gustav quickly bolted out of the small hole and quickly moved towards the first hole. The first hole was where he sensed the energy to be higher and also at its purest form. Gustav dashed into the hole without any hindrance and was surprised to see something different from the other two. Instead of looking at the center of the hole or whatever, Gustav’s sights were locked on the ceiling. On the ceiling, he could see the blue crystal similar to the ones he saw in the last two holes. The difference was, this was almost twice as large, ’Nine hundred and eighty-seven thousand,’ Gustav made use of God eyes to check the readings. It was absolutely higher than the previous two. ’If I’m able to absorb this, the system would have received one-sixth of the amount of energy it needs for the next upgrade,’ Gustav calculated, but it didn’t look like it was going to be easy to absorb this one. The reason for that was, Gustav couldn’t see several solar worms coiled around this one like the previous holes. Instead, there were only two of them on the ceiling. These two solar worms coiled around the large crystal with their eyes closed, oblivious to what was going in the surroundings but they had noticeable differences from normal solar worms. These two were almost twice the size of a normal solar worm with redder skin and a kind of purplish scale growing on the upper part of their body. Gustav moved some steps forward while scrutinizing both worms. Even without the readings, he could tell that these two were not level 4 Solar worms like the rest. Gustav moved forward to observe the worms more when one of them suddenly opened its eyes. Sqrrrreee! Unlike the rest, this one also sounded a bit different with a more refined tone. The one with the opened eyes happened to be coiled around the lower part of the crystal but its shriek also woke the second one. They looked down at Gustav from high up with a menacing expression. Sqrrrreee! Sqrrrreee! Both solar worms shrieked together before bolting towards Gustav with speed from upwards. Swooonn! Swoooon! Both solar worms happened to be crazily fast with almost twice the speed of a normal solar worm. Gustav already sensed that they would be formidable so he activated sprint instantly. [Sprint has been activated] [-20 EP] Swoooshhh! Gustav dashed towards the left dodging both solar worms. Bam! Bam! The solar worms landed on the ground and immediately chased after Gustav who had just finished dodging. Thoom! One of them leaped in the air towards Gustav while the other darted towards him with a wide-open mouth where hundreds of sharp pointy teeth could be seen. The wide-open mouth was big enough to fit in three humans at the same time and would easily rip them to shreds with a single gnash so Gustav had no plans of being caught by it. He jumped backward by seventy-five feet missing the first one that leaped into the air by a few feet. The one on the ground arrived in front of him from the left and Gustav reacted by swerving further left. Swhhhii! Just as the solar worm’s body was passing by his front after he dodged it, Gustav lowered his arms and poured as much strength as he could into it before slashing upwards with a lot of force. Swwhhhiii! Slasshhh! Gustav’s sharp claws covered in whitish light traveled forward with intensity ripping apart the air. Krryyhhrrrr! When it made contact with the solar worm, It tore a sixteen inches deep gash on its body sending it flying several feet forward. ’What the...?’ Gustav was surprised that he didn’t manage to deal more damage than that since he used all of his strength in that attack earlier. Sqrrrreee! The solar worm shrieked out in pain after receiving that attack from Gustav but that attack wasn’t enough to severely harm it. Immediately it landed back on the ground, it dashed out crazily towards Gustav again.