"We captured them and sent them to the lair of King Zargorth the Crawling-Hand"
"It's been a long time since we had humans to eat! The king hasn't had a good meal in ages! He wants to roast the humans and eat them!"
Hearing those words made the murderous intent in Daniel's eyes grow even stronger. At any moment, his rage could explode.
The Lizardman felt a bone-chilling cold in every part of his body from Daniel's wrath. He knew this human could kill him at any second.
He was so terrified he didn't even dare to speak or beg for his life.
"How far is it from here to your king's lair?" Daniel's anger began to subside slightly as he started to look at the situation more logically.
He didn't know where the Lizardmen King's lair was, and if he killed this Lizardman, he'd have to spend a lot of time trying to find it himself.
But wouldn't it be better to have this Lizardman guide him?
"Yes, yes, I know!" The Lizardman nodded without hesitation. What a joke—betray the king? His own life mattered more.
Before mounting Vorak, Daniel gathered all the remaining Lizardman corpses. Then he got on Vorak, grabbed the surviving Lizardman by the head, and asked him where to go.
"Go straight through the path! The king's lair is inside the cave at the top of the mountain!"
Vorak immediately started running toward the location. Meanwhile, Daniel sent the coordinates to the other Fallen and told them to head that way.
The path wasn't very long—they could reach it in about twenty minutes—but unfortunately, it was filled with marshes. And each marsh was home to a group of Lizardmen.
Fortunately, there weren't many high-ranked C-ranks among them. Daniel and Vorak managed to take them down quickly. Daniel gathered all their corpses and stored them in his inventory.
Unfortunately, he didn't gain any EXP from killing them. Otherwise, he could've earned a lot of EXP and might have even reached mid-rank D.
From time to time, he would cut off the lower torso or arms of the still-alive Lizardman guiding them.
The regeneration speed of a Corrupted Beast truly amazed him and even made him wonder if he could find a way to gain such recovery himself.
Several ideas crossed his mind—especially the skill he obtained from the Transcendent Scripture. It could help him use mana to repair his limbs.
But unfortunately, the speed of that skill couldn't compare to the regeneration of a Corrupted Beast in any way. He started thinking about whether there was a way to modify and improve the skill.
"We should be there," Daniel said as Vorak stopped at the mountain peak and looked around. They didn't move forward and instead hid nearby.
There was a cave entrance, but two guards were stationed there—both peak C-rank.
Daniel dismounted from Vorak. Before focusing on the guards, he killed the Lizardman who had been guiding them and destroyed his core—just to make sure he wouldn't suddenly scream and alert the enemy.
Then he looked at the cave entrance. There were two of them—both peak C-rank. Even worse, they were corrupted Lizardmen, making them several times stronger than ordinary ones.
Even a regular B-rank Awakened human probably wouldn't be able to handle these two.
"This is definitely their den. There are definitely more Lizardmen inside—at least the same rank, maybe even stronger," Daniel muttered.
Even if he could beat these two, the fight would definitely create a lot of noise and draw the attention of all the other Lizardmen.
If just the guards are peak C-rank, then inside the cave, aside from their king, there are probably other B-rank Lizardmen as well.
What could he do? Charging in head-on would be a stupid move.
He closed his eyes and laid down on the ground. He needed to think and come up with another solution.
He started going over every moment since entering this dungeon—looking for any clue that might help.
And then something caught his attention—the smell of the marshes. Why did the marshes smell so strong? So strong that it even messed up Vorak's sense of smell?
Normal marshes might stink because of decaying organic matter—like plant leaves and animal corpses—and due to the presence of certain bacteria in low-oxygen environments.
But strong enough to completely disable the olfactory system of a monster like Vorak? No way. That wasn't normal.
The smell of a normal marsh, no matter how awful, at worst just reeks of a rotten egg. It can't even disrupt a human's sense of smell—let alone something like Vorak.
But there was one possibility: the corpses and remains of Lizardmen. If too many of them stayed in the marshes, their bodies would likely trigger some kind of bacterial mutation in the swamp.
Many marshes produce methane and hydrogen sulfide—both flammable and dangerous gases.
If his guess was right, then these foul-smelling marshes were definitely producing one of those two gases. What would happen if one of them exploded?
A regular fire wouldn't be enough—the air was too heavy to let it spread. But with an explosion, the blast would propagate and ignite all the other marshes.
That could destroy the entire mountain range and kill everything inside.
There were probably thousands of marshes in this mountain. Even B-ranks shouldn't be able to survive such an explosion. Unfortunately, these were corrupted creatures—death alone wouldn't be enough to truly kill them.
But it would at least weaken them enough so that Daniel and the rest of the Fallen could completely crush them afterward.
An opportunity like this is enough for him to even take down a B-rank.
He could use this method to conquer the dungeon and defeat the boss.
But the question was: how would he survive the explosion? How would his sister and her classmates survive?
Well, luckily for him, because of his semi-immortality, he wouldn't die. But the same couldn't be said for his sister and her friends. They wouldn't survive such a blast.