Chapter 21: The Mother Queen ‘Rashabel’
“Don’t kill me.” A hoarse, terrified voice sounded.
The monster, which had been spun into a windmill, abruptly stopped. BeBe, still gripping one of its vines, shouted, “What, scared now? But… too late! Boss, we have to kill this monster anyway. Let me finish it.”
Linley nodded slightly. Desri and the others remained silent. This monster had clearly tried to kill Desri just moments ago, so why would they let it off easily now?
“Stop!” the monster’s large mouth shrieked.
BeBe chuckled twice, looking at the monster. “Stop? Afraid of dying?”
“BeBe, don’t waste words with it,” Linley said.
“You can’t kill me. If you kill me, you’ll all die!” the monster roared hoarsely.
Linley, Desri, Fain, and the others exchanged glances, then looked at the captured plant life with amusement. Fain laughed loudly, “We kill you, and we’ll all die? Tell me, how will you kill us?”
The monster breathed a sigh of relief, its attitude calming now that it saw the group’s reaction. Then its hoarse voice sounded again: “If you kill me, I can’t take revenge myself, but… you should understand that in the seventh level of the Necropolis of the Gods, I’m not the only exile, am I?”
Linley frowned.
In the sixth level, they had encountered the Flame Sovereign, and many had died there. Killing the Flame Sovereign had been extremely perilous. The seventh level shouldn’t be much less dangerous than the sixth, and it definitely wouldn’t just have this kind of plant life.
“Speak,” Fain barked with a frown.
All the experts stared at the monster.
“In the seventh level of the Necropolis of the Gods, I’m just an ordinary creature. The truly powerful one is the Mother Queen!” The monster’s voice carried a hint of pride. “I advise you to release me. If you kill me, the Mother Queen will surely kill you all.”
“Mother Queen?” Linley frowned in confusion.
One of the three Six-Eyed Golden Lions explained to the group, “In some other planes, there are strange lifeforms divided into a mother body and child bodies. The child bodies are born from the mother body, and the mother body’s strength is hundreds or thousands of times greater than the child bodies. In the magical beast world, the Bee-Wasp clan is like this. The entire clan has just one Mother Queen, and all other magical beasts are her children.”
“Mother body, child body? Mother Queen?” Linley and the others were secretly alarmed.
If that was the case, the Mother Queen would be far more terrifying than this child body.
“Right. My relationship with the Mother Queen is that of child body to mother body,” the monster quickly said. “You should release me. If you kill me, the Mother Queen will sense it, and then… you will face the Mother Queen’s wrath. You will surely die.”
The monster was extremely confident.
The Mother Queen’s power was not something this ‘child body’ could compare to.
“What should we do?” Desri looked at Linley, seeking his opinion.
Among this group, especially after the sixth level, Linley’s status had subtly risen. His strength was clearly superior to the others, and Tulily and the others had even benefited from him.
“Kill or not?” Linley hesitated.
He couldn’t tell if the monster was telling the truth or lying.
“Whoosh—” A gust of wind. One of the Six-Eyed Golden Lions charged at the monster at incredible speed, its body rapidly expanding to the size of a dragon. Its golden-furred claws suddenly grew to several meters thick, and the massive claw slammed down toward the monster.
The monster trembled in fear, trying to scream.
The Six-Eyed Golden Lion’s three pairs of eyes simultaneously shot out black light. The six beams enveloped the monster, freezing it in place.
“Pfft!”
The claw, faintly crackling with spatial tears, struck the monster’s body, paused briefly, then shattered it like a brick smashed by a heavy hammer. The monster’s body split apart, green liquid spilling out.
Though it seemed slow, it happened in an instant. The Six-Eyed Golden Lion had already killed the monster.
“Why did you kill it?” Rosalie’s eyes, faintly glowing with emerald light, fixed on the Six-Eyed Golden Lion as she asked coldly. “Aren’t you afraid of luring the Mother Queen here?”
“If you don’t want to be hunted by the Mother Queen, follow me.” The Six-Eyed Golden Lion didn’t explain further and flew off in one direction. The other two Six-Eyed Golden Lions followed immediately. Linley, Desri, and the others, though puzzled, flew after them.
After flying about a hundred miles, the three Six-Eyed Golden Lions stopped.
“What’s going on?” Linley asked.
“We killed it, and the Mother Queen might come after us now,” Rutherford said with a frown.
The lead Six-Eyed Golden Lion snorted, baring its fangs in a grin: “You’re all so naive. That monster said a few things, and you actually believed it? Just because it made up a story, you didn’t dare to kill it?” The other two Six-Eyed Golden Lions had amusement in their eyes.
These three Six-Eyed Golden Lions had followed Dein for an incredibly long time and had far more experience than Linley and the others.
“What? Are you saying that the monster claiming to be a child body and that there’s a Mother Queen in the seventh level is false?” Fain asked.
“No, that’s probably true,” the Six-Eyed Golden Lion nodded its large head. “We three brothers encountered this kind of plant life back in the Gebados Plane Prison. Plant life generally does have a Mother Queen, and the Mother Queen’s strength is indeed a hundred or a thousand times that of the child bodies!”
“Then why did you kill it?” Karosa frowned.
Linley was also puzzled.
The Six-Eyed Golden Lion snorted, “Don’t you get it? A Mother Queen can give birth to hundreds or thousands of child bodies. To the Mother Queen, child bodies are just soldiers. Have you ever seen an emperor immediately take revenge just because a soldier was killed?”
The Black-Armored Giant Scorpion rumbled, “In the Bee-Wasp clan of magical beasts, the Mother Queen doesn’t care if ordinary beasts die.”
“That’s the first reason. The second reason is that it would be better if the Mother Queen came after us,” the Six-Eyed Golden Lion said.
“Huh?”
The group was confused. Why would it be better if the Mother Queen chased them?
Another Six-Eyed Golden Lion said, “Remember in the sixth level? The Flame Sovereign was right next to the passage, and when it left, it ordered the Thousand-Crimson Rock Demon to block the passage. It’s the same logic. Their duty is to hinder us. I suspect the Mother Queen is right next to the passage to the eighth level.”
“Right,” Fain and the others nodded. The logic was simple, but they hadn’t thought it through.
“Killing one child body would make the Mother Queen leave the passage? Ridiculous. If it’s really powerful, we can take the chance to find the passage and enter the eighth level,” the Six-Eyed Golden Lion licked its tongue. “Let’s keep searching for the passage. But when we find it, be careful. That Mother Queen is nothing like the monster we just dealt with.”
Everyone understood and immediately set off to find the passage.
No one dared to be careless, knowing the ‘Mother Queen’ existed.
“Whoever created the Necropolis of the Gods really put some thought into this,” Linley mused as he flew, searching for the passage. Whether it was the Flame Sovereign or this plant life, he had never encountered anything like them before.
“But if it was truly built by a Sovereign, finding these strange races and exiling them here would be easy for their subordinates.”
Linley sighed inwardly.
They continued searching. This desert world was vast. Every time they flew a short distance, they would spot an oasis in the distance. The group wasn’t afraid; they would fly over to check if the passage was nearby. If the oasis-turned-monster attacked them, the five magical beasts would go down and kill it.
After a long while.
The desert world shifted with the wind, sand dunes rising and falling. A gust of wind blew, rustling a large amount of sand, revealing a patch of black stone wall.
“Look, that seems to be the passage!” Fain pointed excitedly into the distance. The others also saw it.
With their sharp eyesight, that black stone wall stood out starkly in the yellow sand world.
“It must be the passage.” Linley and the others flew over immediately.
“Whoosh—” Linley stirred up a strong wind, blowing away the sand covering the stone wall, revealing the buried structure.
It was a black pyramid-shaped building. At the base of the pyramid was a passage staircase, ten meters high, with faint black light shimmering—a clear sign of the passage.
“Sizzle—” Suddenly, countless vines and leaves surged from beneath the black pyramid.
In the blink of an eye, the entire black pyramid was wrapped in vines and roots, the passage sealed tightly. For a hundred miles around the pyramid, endless vines and roots shot into the sky.
Linley and the others’ hearts trembled, and they flew higher.
“Hahaha…” A crisp voice came from underground. Then, amidst the countless vines, roots, and leaves, a massive green light shot into the sky, hovering in midair.
A green female creature stood in the air. She was ten meters tall, her body covered in endless twisting vines and roots. Around her, thousands of roots and vines, each nearly a kilometer long, writhed.
Her vines and roots were clearly different from the child bodies—they were a translucent, crystalline green.
As if they weren’t plants, but some kind of transparent, soft crystal. Extremely eerie.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen outsiders.” The green female monster spoke with a smile. “Life has been so boring. Hmm… humans. Wow, what wonderful bodies. I love human bodies the most. Oh, before that, let me introduce myself.”
The green female monster’s gaze swept over the group. “I am Rashabel. You can also call me the Mother Queen.”
“As expected.” Linley and the others grew even more cautious.
This green humanoid monster was indeed the Mother Queen—Mother Queen ‘Rashabel’!
Linley and the others carefully observed ‘Rashabel’. Her vines and roots looked like soft green crystals, far more powerful than the child bodies just by appearance.
“Rashabel,” one of the Six-Eyed Golden Lions said loudly, “I’m sure you’ve encountered other outsiders here. You don’t have to make trouble for us. I hope you’ll let us enter the passage directly. Otherwise, if we fight to the death, I doubt you’ll come out unscathed.”
Mother Queen ‘Rashabel’s’ eyes swept over the three Six-Eyed Golden Lions. “Oh, threatening me? Interesting. Let me see if you have the strength to back that up!” As she spoke, she suddenly—
“Swish!”
Mother Queen ‘Rashabel’s’ body shot into the air, closing the distance with the group in an instant.
“Retreat!” Linley and the others immediately flew backward without hesitation.
Mother Queen ‘Rashabel’s’ countless roots and vines shot out like arrows. As Linley retreated, he watched behind him and was horrified to see that the tens of thousands of vines and roots weren’t random.
They moved according to a special profound mystery, all shooting forward simultaneously.
“Space freeze?” Linley was shocked to find that the space around them seemed to freeze—not literally, but they felt as if they were stuck in mud, flying becoming incredibly difficult.
“Swish!”
In an instant, countless vines and roots wrapped around Rutherford and Karosa. They were slightly slower in flight and were immediately engulfed.
The countless vines and roots compressed—
“Gurgle, sizzle—”
Blood poured from the gaps between the vines and roots, immediately absorbed by them.
“Rutherford and Karosa are dead.” The fleeing Linley and the others’ faces changed drastically. Even experts like the five Saint-level peak experts, Rutherford, died instantly when wrapped, without any chance to resist.
The compressed vines spread out again, dancing wildly. Rutherford and Karosa had vanished without a trace, not even bones left.
“Mmm, delicious.” Mother Queen ‘Rashabel’s’ emerald gaze locked onto Linley and the others, who were fleeing at top speed in the distance.