Dungeon Prowler : One Man Army

Chapter 217: How stupidity annihilated a clan

Dealing with as many scorpions and manticores as possible to replenish the mana stores as well as feed the armour and Yunan himself into having the attributes of the scorpions, not forgetting to map out the floor even if it was nothing but shifting sands it was worth keeping the habit.

During his travels looking for the boss has found a two peculiar things, there was no Queen be on this floor and second there was no Putrid maw either, something that Yunan found even in the underwater floors, so he therefore very curious about what would do that role in this floor, it took him three months to reach that answer, inside a cave with a buried entrance that Yunan found by luck when he activated his sonar out of habit instead of the mana scan.

After observing the cave for a while Yunan saw a bunch of small scorpions drilling through the buried entrance and swim through sand to the surface and return later on with their bodies bloated like balloons from overeating, Yunan followed these scorpions and found what he was looking for, it was a sickly looking scorpion that was thrice as big as the rest but not even half as big as the smaller scorpions in the surface.

The sickly scorpion had a very sinister looking stinger that dripped into a pool, from the pool behind it, the pool was liquid venom and it was where a very healthy looking scorpion swam and played in elation, Yunan watched as the smaller scorpions would belch out what they had digested in front of the sickly scorpion that ate everything offered to it, while the healthy scorpion seemed to enjoy feeding on the venom pool that the sickly scorpion dripped for it.

After careful consideration Yunan decided to go outside and look for similar nests if he found 4 more he would exterminate one of them, upon looking for the nests Yunan also came across the boss, it was also buried beneath a dune, it seems like the sands shift in this place could even make the boss inaccessible and that caused much delay for many in this place, knowing earth shift or sand shift was very much a must if one wanted to fight in this place.

Leaving the boss aside Yunan found many more nests of the sickly scorpion and choose one of them as his target. Once he was inside, Yunan activated his hiding ability and made sure to be as stealthy as possible, he used his feelers to spread sleeping gas around the underground cave, and every time a scorpion fell asleep he would kill it using his tail, when only the sickly and the healthy scorpions left in the next he attacked with full force killing both like judgement from the grim reaper.

Yunan made sure to send the dead scorpions in this cave to the lab as well as the pool of poison and processed to study them. The stinger of the sickly scorpion had the same gland like the one he encountered at the hanging palace however it did not create poison but instead a highly nutritious milk like drink, its sinister look comes from the fact that it was the result of digesting mostly rotten corpses and left overs left behind by the other scorpions, as for the healthy scorpions, it had no toxin gland in its stinger, even its pincers were week, however, it was full of eggs.

It seems that the sickly scorpion would act like the worker's bees and produce honey from the materials brought back by the soldier bees and the healthy scorpion worked like the queen, laying eggs and raising the larvae. After looking at and trying a few things Yunan found how the poison gland from the hanging palace was created. It was living and lively flesh and nutrients.

The sickly scorpion was not sick or dying, it was naturally decaying and with dead body tissues due to the effect of its diet and when Yunan put the gland in a sample of living flesh it started mutating immediately and the highly nutritious milk was now rank and foul poison. Yunan understood what happened to the young master, he must have found such a nest and after finding the effect of the substance created by the sickly scorpion, someone gave him the brilliant idea of implanting that gland into the heart, that way it has ample supply of blood and nutrients to produce the nutritious milk and inject it back directly, however, things have gone south to the point the young master fell to the attack of a scorpion resulting in such hideous wounds.

All Of those present knew not talk about things like that, although they might attribute the sudden weakness of the young master to the gland absorbing the nutrition from his blood, thus him getting weak without proper food and never thought about such a brilliant idea would be the bane and end of the whole hanging palace. Yunan made his findings know to the guild and noted that the milk itself was still deadly for human consumption and needed filtering and much work to be considered edible, making it not worth the effort.

The guild issued a warning to all adventurers in the desert floor to be aware of these scorpions and the futility of such action, the warning also included how to find the nests and how to avoid them. When the news reached the newly enslaved master of the hanging palace and his two retainers he almost went mad with grief, he had to pay this kind of price because his stupid son couldn't help but do stupid things killing his whole clan in the process.

As part of the same transaction with the guild Yunan gave the guild a substantial amount of antibodies for the scorpion venom on the 41st floor and even though the guild did not need to buy the antidote, they still bought it simply because it was encouraging to the producers of such items to work more and better in the future.