The Paladin in the Abyss-Chapter 377 - 391 The Demons’ Kitchen
Chapter 377: Chapter 391 The Demons’ Kitchen
Lancelot paid no attention to the troubles he had created for the Demons and ran straight down the stairs that had just been blocked, coming to a lower layer of the castle. The stairs ended here, and Lancelot had no choice but to enter this area to look for a way to continue downward.
The scene around him made him wonder if he had already arrived at a dungeon—countless flayed corpses were hung from the low ceiling, and the wet, slippery ground was covered with thick, coagulated blood. The sight was so bloody that the mere smell in the air could drive an ordinary person to mental collapse.
“Bottomless Abyss, oh!” The skull couldn’t help but speak up directly, “This place is too disgusting…”
Even for a veteran like Lancelot, it took a good while to calm his mind. Suppressing the discomfort, he carefully observed the corpses and soon discovered anomalies— there were not many mortals among them; most were Prime Demons and Coward Devils, common fodder for the Demon Legion.
Their bodies, suspended in mid-air, had been skinned, their limbs chopped off, and their bellies sliced open, with all internal organs scraped clean. It seemed that such treatment could prevent the Demon corpses from decaying rapidly. This was probably not a dungeon but a storage room for a kitchen.
What exactly were those group of Coward Devils blocking the entrance looking forward to? It’s possible that he had actually saved them…
...
He and the skull carefully made their way through the room filled with hanging corpses and entered an even worse place—those corpses lacked internal organs, right? All of them were piled up here: livers swollen with tumors, lung lobes riddled with cysts, and unusually large digestive organs.
These disgusting organs were piled up into small hills, emitting a smell a hundred times worse than the previous room. Cromwell even shed tears from the stench since the only place on his body with flesh was his eye sockets.
But what truly made one’s spine tingle weren’t these dead things, but what was perched atop them: a line of obese, pale-yellow worms. These worms were over five feet long, with segmented bodies thicker than Lancelot’s waist, and the most disgusting part was their heads—although severely deformed, they still bore distinguishable features of mortals, giving these repulsive creatures a bizarre appearance.
Looking at this revolting scene, Lancelot suddenly felt grateful that his stomach rarely contained food after his Foundation Establishment.
He knew these were Soul Worms, and if a mortal fell into corruption without the influence of a Fiend’s temptation, they often would end up like this after death. The night witches of the Grey Wastelands would collect these worms, and the Demons and the Demons would purchase according to the Soul Worms’ alignment tendencies—for use as food reserves and casting materials. Moreover, these worms served as reserve forces for the Fiends, replenishing the endless casualties of the blood war on both sides.
He had seen these pitiful creatures elsewhere, but seldom ones this large, which clearly had to do with the way they were fed and the purpose behind their breeding. The bodies of these worms were divided into more than ten segments, but only the three segments near the head had six hook-like claws similar to a centipede’s legs, which made their movements quite clumsy. Fortunately, they didn’t care at all about anything other than feeding and were indifferent to Lancelot’s presence.
“I think we might have taken the wrong stairs,” the skull’s dry voice rang out again. “First a storage room, then a breeding pen, what’s next? A slaughterhouse?”
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“Would the Demons specifically set up such a place?”
“I was just kidding, no harm done.”
Lancelot nodded and was about to say something more when he suddenly sensed something. He gestured to Cromwell, who immediately fell silent, and then both of them quickly retreated, hiding behind a few broken wooden crates.
The heavy footsteps gradually approached until each step caused a slight tremble of the ground. Lancelot activated his cultivation techniques of “Turtle Breathing” and stealth, minimizing his presence as much as possible, while focusing part of his divine sense in the small black spot on his right wrist, ready to use “Shadow Jump” to escape immediately if the situation turned sour.
Finally, a gigantic figure appeared at the doorway. Lancelot fixed his gaze and saw it was a giant much larger than any ogre he had encountered, its pale skin embellished with metal rings and spikes, making it look like a monster sewn together from numerous corpses.
The monster’s head was covered with a filthy hood, its original color indiscernible. The hood only had two small holes near the eyes, which certainly limited its vision, but Fiends did not always rely on sight to perceive their surroundings.
Fortunately, it walked straight past the clutter Lancelot was hiding behind, completely unaware of the intruder, which made him quietly breathe a sigh of relief. Judging from its aura, he felt he could handle the creature, but he really didn’t want to fight here. The worms looked quite juicy, and the internal organs scattered on the floor seemed easy to kick up. If he got covered in something during the fight, that would be utterly disgusting.
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The monster was dragging a cart with seven or eight ‘processed’ bodies, seemingly preparing to hang them in the room they had just left. Lancelot seized the moment, moving silently in the opposite direction, slipping out through the entrance the creature had come from.
He realized he was at the end of a corridor, with many half-open rooms along the way. His “Spirit Perception” indicated no living creatures nearby, so he boldly started running, quickly distancing himself from that hellish place he had just left.
The rooms on both sides seemed to be storerooms, filled with things that were not on Lancelot’s menu. He guessed he was in the kitchen area of the Demon Castle, and perhaps down one more floor would be the dungeon area.
The corridor forked at the end, leading in three different directions. One of them carried the uninviting scent of food being heated, most likely the location of the kitchen. The destinations of the other two were harder to determine, and Lancelot might just have to try his luck.
“How about this path on the right?” Cromwell suggested, “When you’re navigating a maze, if you keep to the right, you won’t get lost…”
“Good idea,” Lancelot nodded. “But why don’t we just ask someone for directions?”
“Huh?” Cromwell was once again confused by his master’s strange statement, “How do we ask?”
“Come on up,” Lancelot patted his own shoulder, “I promise to control my strength better this time, so I won’t scare anyone away again.”
