Cthulhu Gonfalon

Chapter 154: Chapter 24

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

“I’ve never thought that I would ever visit a Mud Monster.” Looking at the grey swamp that came into his view, Sui Xiong only found it funny.

Junior was a mutated soft slime that lived in a gray swamp. As a famous legendary monster in the Ashes Woods, it had a unique appearance and was an independent creature in minds and actions.

Sui Xiong flew slightly closer and he saw its shadow. There was a huge puddle of mud that lied prostrate in the middle of the swap. Its body was dark and shone black, displaying a metallic shine that a mud shouldn’t have. The swamp underneath its body gave out a weird aura that wasn’t stinky, ferocious, poisonous gas. It was more like... hunger.

Sui Xiong had heard about Junior. The legendary monster was strong and greedy, but its diet was quite bizarre. It did not eat any known living creature, and had no interest in grain, vegetables, or meat. The only thing it was interested in was bone.

More interestingly, under the ground of Ashes Woods was inexhaustible amount of bones. Every night, there would be a large sum of skeletons that attacked the living things around them in a wild manner.

During the daytime, Junior was slept lazily on the ground. When the sky grew dark and it became hungry, it would send out a few mud monsters in each direction to wipe out all skeletons that they could find and feast on them.

Relying on him, in the depths of Ashes Woods, there was a safe zone where no skeleton moved. There were many spirits that lived around there. Among the spirits, those who were wise would refer the to huge mud monster as their patron saint. They built an altar in the swamp where it normally rested and bought magic beasts’ bones as sacrificial offerings.

The main source of these sacrificial items was Dragon-roar Town.

Dragon-roar Town, which held magic beast hunting as its main financial income, wouldn’t lack magic beasts’ bones. Wise creatures that believed in Junior purchased many different kinds of bones to honor it. They finally realized that the mud monster patron saint had very robust but simple requirement for its sacrificial items. The bigger the bones, the better. The bigger the bones, the more it liked them.

So, they shifted their focus onto larger scale magic beasts, to the point where the hunters in Dragon-roar Town formed a habit. If they hunted a large-scale magic beast, even it was tougher and more troublesome, they needed to bring back the bones or drag the entire thing back.

Honestly speaking, these living creatures were poor to the point where they had to rely on Junior to live. They couldn’t take out any proper wealth. But hunters in Dragon-roar Town were a bunch of passionate and hospitable people. As long as it didn’t cause them much trouble, they were willing to lend a helping hand.

Not only that, but there was power that planned to help Junior, that gave money to the hunters occasionally to let them continue to help the people.

Among them, there was Snow, who went by the alias “Arctic Tyrant.”

Junior’s believers were poor and could only trade the bones with timber and ore that was rarely seen; with help, they could still exchange quite a number of things, sufficient to maintain their lives.

Just when he got closer to Junior, Sui Xiong gradually descended to avoid the other party’s hostility. But he obviously thought too much. The mud monster was lying on the swamp that had almost fully solidified into ice. It was sunbathing without moving an inch and ignoring his arrival entirely.

A few wise creatures on the ground were holding on to their weapons, on high alert.

Sui Xiong looked at Junior’s creatures carefully. They looked very human-like, but their bodies were covered in black dust. This layer of dust had special magic powers, and could maintain their body temperature so that they could live normally in the world of ice and snow.

Their lower limbs were a little shorter while their upper limbs were longer. They looked strange. Although they had similar features like eyes and a mouth, there were no eyeballs. Only two pools of mud that were billowing, looking extremely weird.

It was not, of course, a situation that any living creature was supposed to have. In actual fact, only when they get close to Junior would they assume that look. When they left Junior’s side, they would turn into another look. The most common one was a barbarian cover with a thick layer of fur coat.

There were some mages that were amazing who once caught this barbarian for research, but found out that there was not much difference between their bodies and bloodlines of humans. But the formation of such weird phenomena would appear because they were too near to Junior, and were affected.

Near the legendary giant beast, the world itself was mutated and turned into the way it used to be. Those wise creatures that stayed that near it were mutated by its power which made an amazing difference.

These wise creatures were not strong enough to resist such mutation. So they did not realize their changes. From what they saw, not matter if they were closer or farther from Junior, they were still the same.

Even though they were communicating with the residents in Dragon-roar Town, and realized that they turned into barbarians that had long hair, they wouldn’t feel insecure or worried, but think that it was right and proper, not a big deal at all.

A mage once spent money to buy a few slaves and sent them to stay near Junior for a period of time. Until they experienced changes, he would figure a way to get rid of the alterations. The experiment was quite a success; but those slaves recorded the images of themselves when they were weird looking back then, and didn’t find anything inappropriate. According to what they said, there was nothing weird about it.

The mage didn’t manage to suppress his fire of curiosity, and moved near Junior. He casted a bunch of defense magic on himself but it didn’t seem to work. After a few months, he turned into one of the monsters when he stayed around Junior, and a long-haired barbarian when he was elsewhere.

Luckily he still had friends, and his friends managed to pull him back in time and treat him.

His sacrifice was worthwhile. After the research, the magician finally confirmed that the area around Junior brought about changes like “Holy Kingdom”. The magnificent mud monster actually already possessed a god-like power. However, its intelligence level was too low for it to be transformed by its nature. Either that, or the transformation speed was very slow, to the point that it was not noticeable. Hence the formation of such weird phenomena.

Sui Xiong was of course curious towards his enemy. But firstly, he had to communicate with Junior’s believers properly to let them know that he was not an enemy.

In fact, it was very easy.

The huge jellyfish waved his tentacles while he took out a terribly huge thighbone.

The bone was not from any magic beast, but made by Sui Xiong himself. It was built of various kinds of minerals and nutrients; no different than building a house.

However, to Junior’s believers, it was a generous gift. They suddenly put down their weapons and touched the humongous thighbone that was almost their height when laid vertically on the ground.

“Master would like this gift very much!” A creature that seemed to be the leader said. “Guest from afar, Peace Swamp welcomes you!”

Peace Swamp was the name they gave the region.

It was very safe here if you didn’t mind turning into a monster and having your physical and mental state mutated.

Sui Xiong of course couldn’t be affected by Junior’s power. He landed on the ground and shrunk in size, and started chatting with the residents of Peace Swamp who now thought nothing was fishy. He also took out food to share with them.

These resident diet was not as weird as Junior’s, and they would still eat and drink like any normal living creature. In order to avoid the food and drinking water that was polluted by the negativity that was everywhere, they dug an underground storeroom and purchased magic material to build a warehouse that could shield off negativity for storage purposes.

Such building costs were not low, but to them, clean food and drinking water was a precious source. It would be okay if it was winter and the snow on the treetops was polluted lightly. It could turn into a reliable water source. However, there was no access to food but through purchase.

The batch of food that Sui Xiong took out was hunted from the sea when he made a detour, and the amount of food was sizeable. To these people who were living a poor life, it was considered an enormous wealth.

They lit up a bonfire happily and started singing and dancing. Although the actions were weird and creepy, the happiness was not fabricated. Sui Xiong lied down on a tree branch nearby and couldn’t help but smile when he saw them so happy.

As the daylight slowly passed, the night sky grew dark, and the believers of Junior used all kinds of tools to drag the extremely huge thigh bone onto the simple altar in the swamp. As the altar was not big enough, they could only put a side of the bone on it.

After that, they prayed and worshiped Junior. Then, they got into the underground cave.

The winter night in the north was bone-piercingly cold. Even with Junior’s favor on his followers, it was unbearable. Only hiding underground, which was warmer, could help them through the boundless winter night.

When the moon rose, the huge mud monster that was lying throughout the day without moving an inch slightly shook to shatter the ice that had formed on it, and wiggled until it changed shape.

On the middle of its body, there was a mud-like substance that was slowly moving and gathering into a human figure. But its head looked like a huge octopus, and the hands became four tentacles each. It looked quite weird.

The weird creature and Sui Xiong, who turned back into a huge floating jellyfish, looked at each other for a while, and sent out an inquiry.

The consciousness was unclear, slimy and soft, like a combination of glue and mud. But at least he could understand what it meant.

Sui Xiong smiled and gave out a friendly message, and indicated for him to notice the huge bone above the altar.

After Junior noticed the huge bone, it let out a happy growl.

Just when it was puffing and blowing, trying to eat the bone, Sui Xiong took out another to show that he had more.

So, the world’s most powerful mud monster, completely unaware of its identity as Peace Swamp’s patron saint, was easily bought over by a bunch of big bones.

When Sui Xiong bid farewell, the b*stard learned the first word in its life out of its nature:

Friend.

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