SSS-Ranked Trash Hero: I Was Scammed Into Being Summoned-Chapter 90: Killing The Worm Mother

The darkness inside the pit was absolute. For any normal person, stepping into that hole would have been a death sentence. But Lena was not a normal person.

As she fell, she didn’t scream. She didn’t even flail. She tilted her body, catching the side of the tunnel with her black, clawed hands.

The stone and gray roots hissed as her nails tore through them, slowing her descent. She kicked off a protruding root and began to run down the vertical wall, her Demonic Grace keeping her feet stuck to the surface.

The air grew hotter and thicker the deeper she went.

Lena activated Life Sense.

The tunnel was a maze, branching off in a dozen different directions. But to Lena’s eyes, there was only one path. The Worm Mother was a blinding sun of energy moving through the dark. She was retreating toward a massive pocket of mana deep beneath the earth.

Behind her, the sounds of the surface faded. The clashing of swords and the roars of the soldiers became a dull, distant vibration.

Down here, there was only the sound of her own steady breathing and the wet, rhythmic thump-thump of the Mother’s heart.

Suddenly, the tunnel walls began to move.

They weren’t just walls. They were lined with "Guardians" worms that had fused themselves into the gray roots of the growth.

They functioned like living traps. As Lena passed, they lunged out of the walls, their circular mouths snapping at her limbs.

Lena didn’t stop. She didn’t even draw a breath. She shifted her weight, her body blurring as she moved between the snapping jaws.

With a flick of her wrist, her black claws sheared through the soft necks of the wall-worms. She didn’t look back to watch them die. She had a target.

Back on the surface, the clearing had become a furnace.

Captain Vane’s "Iron Phalanx" was glowing a dangerous, molten orange.

The hundred demon soldiers were standing in a tight circle around the edge of the pit, their spears moving in a blur.

But the swarm was endless.

The offspring were no longer just running; they were piling on top of each other, forming a literal wall of pale flesh that was ten feet high and closing in.

"Mana levels at twenty percent!" one of the soldier shouted, his voice cracking with exhaustion.

"Hold!" Vane roared. Her armor was smoking, the heat from the enchantment blistering her own skin. "If we fall, they swarm the pit and bury Lena! Hold until your hearts stop beating!"

Ollen, Dren, and Tok were fighting a losing battle on the eastern side. They had been pushed back until their heels were at the very edge of the crumbling hole.

Dren’s blue skin was covered in deep gashes. His massive sword was chipped and dull. He swung it with a grunt, clearing a small space, but three more worms immediately filled the gap.

Tok was in a trance-of-sorts. Every time a worm got within three feet of him, it exploded in a spray of gold-tinted mist. But even his "Internal Rupture" had limits.

His hands were bleeding through the cloth wraps, the bones of his knuckles beginning to crack under the strain of a thousand impacts.

"They’re coming from the trees now!" Ollen yelled, pointing his broken spear.

A second swarm, one that had been hiding in the canopy of the growth, began to rain down from above.

They dropped like heavy, wet stones, landing on the soldiers’ heads and shoulders.

The formation wavered.

A soldier in the front rank went down, his throat torn open, and the "Iron Phalanx" flickered.

Skall stood at the edge of the chaos. He was the only one who didn’t look exhausted. His two short swords were held low, and he was watching the sky.

He stepped forward, and for the first time, the "mystery aura" around him didn’t just feel like a hint.

The worms nearby froze, their primitive instincts screaming at them to run from a predator they couldn’t understand.

Skall sheathed his swords. He didn’t need them for this. He raised his hand toward the sky, his fingers curling as if he were catching the moonlight.

"Silver Moon: Piercing Frost," he whispered.

He moved instantly.

A flash of silver light, brighter than the sun, erupted from his position. It didn’t look like a sword strike; it looked like a web of frozen silk expanding outward.

The light passed through the soldiers and the guards without hurting them, but when it hit the worms, they didn’t just die, they turned into statues of ice.

The entire front line of the swarm, thousands of creatures, froze solid in a single heartbeat. The "wall of flesh" shattered into a million glinting shards of ice.

The soldiers stared in shock. Vane looked at Skall, her coal-like eyes wide with disbelief.

That wasn’t the skill of a common mercenary. That was a high-tier Beast-Lord technique.

Skall didn’t look back. He was already breathing hard, his face pale. Using that much power was clearly a strain. "Don’t just stand there! The ice won’t hold the new ones! Keep fighting!"

The soldiers, revitalized by the sudden breathing room, roared and surged forward. The battle on the surface turned into a desperate, bloody grind once again.

Deep below, the tunnel finally opened up.

Lena landed on a floor of soft, pulsating meat. She was in a cavern the size of a cathedral. The walls weren’t stone; they were made of millions of interwoven gray roots and thick, translucent membranes.

In the center of the cavern sat the Worm Mother.

She was "plugged in." Her massive, pale body was connected to the walls by hundreds of thick, umbilical-like cords. These cords were glowing with a sickly, rhythmic green light.

She wasn’t just a monster; she was the heart of the growth. She was drawing mana directly from the deep earth and pumping it into the forest above.

This was why the numbers never went down. The Mother was a factory that never stopped.

When Lena entered, the Mother didn’t run. There was nowhere left to go.

The creature reared back, its massive body uncoiling from the center of the room. It stood thirty feet tall, its vertical mouth opening to reveal a throat that glowed with concentrated acid.

Screeeeeeech!

The psychic blast was so strong it knocked Lena back three steps. Her ears bled, and her vision blurred.

"Enough noise," Lena hissed.

Her red eyes glowed with a feral intensity. She didn’t use her claws this time. She stood tall, letting the dark mist from her shoulders fill the chamber. She was done playing the part of the butler.

All this time she was fighting, her control over her skills kept improving, and she continued to learn more about them.

And she could feel there was more to her skills than just this.

The Mother lunged. It moved with surprising speed for its size, its head coming down like a falling building.

Lena used Demonic Grace to skip sideways, but the Mother was smarter now. It used its tail to sweep the floor, catching Lena in the ribs and slamming her into the meat-wall.

Lena gasped as the air was knocked out of her. The membranes behind her tried to wrap around her limbs, holding her in place. The Mother arched its head, the green glow in its throat reaching a peak. It was preparing to melt her where she stood.

Lena didn’t struggle against the membranes. She closed her eyes.

Mana Drain.

She didn’t target the membranes. She targeted the Mother’s umbilical cords, the ones connected to the wall right behind her. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

As the Mother fired a stream of hissing, green acid at her, Lena pulled.

The effect was instantaneous. The green light in the cords didn’t just dim; it reversed. The massive amount of mana the Mother was drawing from the earth was suddenly redirected through the cords and into Lena.

It was like trying to drink from a waterfall. Lena’s skin began to glow with a pale green light. Her muscles bulged, and she let out a scream of her own, not of pain, but of pure, overwhelming power.

The acid strike hit the wall where Lena had been a second ago, but she was already gone.

Boosted by the stolen mana, Lena was a streak of black and red. She moved so fast she left a vacuum in her wake. She appeared directly in front of the Mother’s face, hanging in the air for a fraction of a second.

"You are a stain on this world," Lena said, her voice echoing with the power of a dozen demons.

She drove both of her clawed hands into the Mother’s "neck," right where the head met the body.

She didn’t rip.

She didn’t tear.

She simply opened the floodgates.

Mana Drain: Maximum Output.

The Mother didn’t have time to scream. The energy that had been fueling the entire growth was being ripped out of its body and into Lena. The Mother’s ivory skin began to turn gray and shriveled. The green light in its body faded to a dull, dead brown.

Above them, on the surface, the effect was felt immediately.

The thousands of offspring attacking the soldiers suddenly stopped. They didn’t fall over; they simply crumbled. Their pale bodies turned into ash and gray dust, blown away by the wind. The giant trees of the growth began to wither, their gray leaves turning into black soot.

In the cavern, the Worm Mother collapsed. It was no longer a mountain of meat; it was a dried, empty husk of skin and bone.

Lena landed on the floor as the umbilical cords snapped and turned to dust. She was trembling. The amount of mana she had just consumed was too much for her body to handle all at once. Her skin was hot to the touch, and her red eyes were flickering.

She looked at the remains of the Mother. The "heart" was dead.

Suddenly, the cavern began to shake. Without the mana from the Mother to hold the structure together, the tunnels were collapsing.

"Not yet," Lena whispered, forcing herself to stand.

She looked up at the ceiling, seeing a faint glimmer of moonlight through the long, vertical shaft she had fallen down.

She began to run.

Behind her, the "Throne Room" was buried under tons of rock and dirt. Lena leaped from wall to wall, her Demonic Grace pushing her body to its absolute limit as the tunnels disintegrated around her.

On the surface, the soldiers and mercenaries stood in the center of a dying forest. The "Iron Phalanx" had finally been deactivated. Vane was leaning on her spear, gasping for air. Skall was sitting on a rock, his face hidden in his hands, looking completely spent.

The ground in the center of the clearing bulged upward.

With a final, explosive burst of dirt and gray roots, Lena shot out of the pit. She landed in the center of the clearing, her black claws retracting, her red eyes slowly fading.

She stood there in the moonlight, her uniform torn and covered in gray dust, but her posture was as straight as a ruler. She reached up and smoothed her hair, then adjusted the cuffs of her sleeves.

Ollen, Vane, and the mercenaries stared at her in total silence. The forest around them was dead. The silence was deafening.

Lena looked at Ollen. She gave a small, professional nod.

"The source has been removed, Captain," Lena said, her voice steady and calm, as if she had just finished cleaning a dusty room. "I believe the Veth is now secure."

Then, without another word, she fainted.

Skall was the first one to move, catching her before she hit the dirt. He looked down at the unconscious woman, a strange, knowing smile playing on his lips.

"Secured," he whispered. "I’d say that’s an understatement."