Chapter 556: Depressing Start to the Journey

“Such a disgusting swamp. I feel like I’m beginning to grow mold. Couldn’t we have found a better place to open our portal?”

I pretended not to hear my silly cat’s complaints. However, I wasn’t feeling any better than she was, as my shoes were filled with murky water and I was drenched all over.

Ever since we entered this dimension, stinky rainwater had yet to stop falling. Not only was it disgusting that this rain fell upon us, it also made us want to throw up.

Just earlier, we were still walking in a warm and humid forest. Then, before we realized it, we entered a death-filled swamp. Traveling through any death swamp in the Chaos Abyss was something that would truly test one’s experience and vigilance.

“There’s all these damned black frog demons and snake monsters here. Could they please give it a rest? Can I ever have a break?”

I suddenly caught a tongue that shot out at me from underwater. I tugged on it and then sliced a croaking black frog demon in half. I then casually kicked its corpse back into the swamp. It had been impossible to even take two steps in peace on the way here so far.

In any other slightly more “cultured” dimensional level, once you proved your strength with slaughter and blood, all demons with Intelligence of at least 3 points would stop idiotically committing suicide against us.

But, for these magical creatures that only acted on pure instinct, they considered it a great fortune to be able to find some prey in this chaotic and humid rainforest. Their hunger and demonic combat instincts would make them attack anything they saw that moved.

In these trees and swamps, danger wasn’t about the low power level of these predators. Rather, these predators were all expert survivalists. They had camouflage, or would hide underwater or under mud. They also knew countless tricks and how to set small traps. The trees and swamps here were filled with all sorts of strange creatures.

Most of these swamp residents were cold-blooded creatures. Their desire for slaughter and blood wasn’t as strong as pure demons’, but they would never miss an opportunity to attack any prey that they found.

Snake demons, crocodile men, demonic lizardmen, bull demons, frog demons, demonic dragonflies, toxic mist bats, and other such relatively weak magical creatures here all had one thing in common. They always stayed in groups and were incredibly sly. Although their actual intelligence level would be considered idiotic in the mortal plane, they had incredibly sly and vicious instincts as expert survivalists and predators in this dimension.

Tongues would keep suddenly lashing out at me from the mud or water. Snake demons constantly disguised themselves as tree bark. The seemingly flat grass would suddenly sink under my feet to reveal a deep pit. As I traveled, these swamp residents “warmly welcomed” us in their own way.

Every tree, every patch of water, and every muddy area was hiding dangerous predators.

The stinky rainstorm obscured my vision and hearing. The magical forest and swamp’s stench further impeded my sense of smell. The magic power of the Chaos Abyss would make instincts unreliable. In such an area, experience would be even more important than power level.

It was possible for even a SemiGod Holy Knight to be lured into dying here in an endless swamp, facing a group of frogs with only instincts and no actual intelligence. It was possible for a great archmage to be suddenly devoured by an unexpected snake demon that pounced from underground. And, even the most veteran thief might suddenly step into a lizardman’s special swamp trap and then be dragged into the deep water toward his doom.

Hunting by laying traps and remaining hidden. This was how the magical creatures in the swamp layers between the 74th and 78th levels of the Chaos Abyss lived.

“Our luck is so terrible. I would have preferred being teleported to a bloody battlefield. At the very least, we would be able to talk things out with demons that can actually communicate.”

The enemies here were at some of the weakest power levels possible in the Chaos Abyss. It would have been lucky for novice adventurers to be teleported here as they could gradually get themselves accustomed to the danger level here. But for us, we had just been enjoying ourselves in the excellent weather of the mortal plane, yet now we were forced to trek through a muddy swamp in a stinky rainstorm. This was the absolute worst place possible for us.

I had waited at Starwood City for more than two months. Yet, in the end, not a single damned one of my companions came to join me. Although I knew that they were probably busy with their own things, I got bored of sword training and ended up heading down to the Chaos Abyss with only Harloys by my side, earlier than I had originally planned to set out.

“I’ll be waiting at the Dragontail Bar in the Ash Inferno of the 100th level in the Chaos Abyss. I’ll only wait another two months at most.”

I left this message behind as I took my cat first and left.

“I bet that you left because you heard that Elisa was almost here. You were being too much of a playboy with so many women and didn’t know how to face your official girlfriend. Isn’t that why you ran off earlier than planned?”

“Silly cat, I’ve heard that roast cat meat is quite healthy and good for keeping out the cold…”

I looked at Harloys in satisfaction while casually killing an idiotic frog demon which had its mouth wide open, waiting for me to step on it. These creatures that only survived on instinct were truly dumb indeed. Did this frog demon, which was more than three meters tall, really think that I wouldn’t notice it?

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While traveling down here in the Chaos Abyss by myself seemed rather reckless, it actually wouldn’t be much different from being with my companions.

Dimensional coordinates were constantly moving. If there was a Dimensional Door on both sides between dimensions, then that would allow for a fixed teleportation point at a specific location. But since this Dimensional Door wasn’t connected to any other Dimensional Door, the dimensional teleportation would be completely random for everyone who was sent through.

Since everyone would be teleported to different random locations regardless, leaving early by myself and meeting up with the others later would equate to the same thing.

By now, I no longer knew which specific level of the Chaos Abyss I was on right now, since the snake demons and other residents weren’t even capable of speaking the most basic demon language. Still, I knew that I was probably somewhere between the 74th and 78th levels. Back when we had contact with Sophocles the Deceiver, it could be seen that he was in swamp terrain. So, all we had to do was keep going down.

“If we’re lucky, we’ll be out of this damned swamp by going down a single level. If we’re unlucky, we’ll have to go up at least four levels. That would mean staying here in this swamp with nothing other than unintelligent demons for more than a month.”

The Chaos Abyss was quite different from level to level. It could be said that each level of the Chaos Abyss was similar to a separate floor in the same tower. And, rather than independent dimensions, these levels were probably dimensional shards torn off from various worlds which were then demonically transformed to become part of the Chaos Abyss.

The Chaos Abyss also had the nickname of the Endless Abyss. It was unknown how many levels it exactly had, but there would definitely be at least seven or eight hundred. The great majority of demons would live in the first six hundred levels, for the farther you went down, the more treacherous the dimensional traveling would become and the more dangerous the dimension. The lowest dimensions would be filled with dimensional cracks. Not even the demons would be willing to go down to such death-filled locations without good reason.

Also, all maps of the Chaos Abyss would forever be inaccurate as the Chaos Abyss was constantly changing. An unstable dimension could suddenly become stable, while a certain entire dimensional level might suddenly disappear one day.

The most agreed-upon theory was that the will of the Chaos Abyss was periodically giving birth to new dimensions. Any dimension that the will of the Chaos Abyss viewed as worthless would be tossed out into the endless void, together with all its residents.

And, without the guidance of the Chaos Abyss itself, it would be almost impossible to find any specific person inside the Chaos Abyss. As long as I remained careful and low-key, I highly doubted that any Demon Lord down here would know that I was here anytime soon.

“Let’s find a place to rest.”

The silly cat sent out a dozen of her clones, transforming them into sparrows which then set out in all directions to scout. I also stopped activating my aura of ice.

All the way here so far, I had been maintaining the lowest possible level aura of ice. While that aura of ice would be unable to kill these annoying magical creatures, it would help me to learn all their locations. The side effect was that the ice trail I left behind would take a while to disappear, meaning that I might be tracked down by a more powerful demon.

Well, I was no expert in the thief job class (and no thief would dare to enter the Chaos Abyss without being ranked Legend at minimum). I was more than willing to accept this consequence in exchange for preventing all ambushes upon me.

“Tsk, there’s a black dragon nest directly in front of us that’s less than three kilometers away. It seems that all those lizardmen who tried to attack you today didn’t die for nothing. At the very least, they almost succeeded in luring you into this trap. Ha, you’ve already become famous in this district, oh revered slayer of lizardmen.”

I felt rather helpless about this. Most of the magical beasts in this dimensional level didn’t even have language or words. Lizardmen and snake demons were two of the slightly more intelligent species since they at least knew how to build houses and villages. That was why I often went to their villages to avoid the rain and “ask for directions,” along with “borrowing” their homes and beds to sleep in.

Maybe due to their lack of understanding of the demon language, or maybe simply because they wanted to taste fresh meat, even though I clearly used the demon language to tell them that I would pay them money, it would always end up in a one-sided slaughter… Cough, I must have accidentally gone overboard. The lizardmen had come up with the nickname “slayer of lizardmen” for me. I felt that this was the weakest and most pathetic nickname I had ever received.

“There’s a lizardmen village to our left, approximately ten kilometers away. The lizardmen who attacked us today were probably from that village. Shall we go ‘ask them for directions’?”

As expected of the silly cat, she already knew what I liked best. But today, I felt that we had an even better choice.

“…That dragon nest which is such an obvious trap is a lot closer, right?”

“Yep. Dragon nests are also far more extravagant than lizardmen villages. It’ll be a lot more comfortable to sleep there, and we can even obtain some treasure. Why don’t we rob that place tonight?”

“No, I would never do something like robbery. I only want to go there to ask for directions! At the very least, an intelligent dragon should know which specific level of the Chaos Abyss this is, and where the entrance to the next level down is.”

“…And then you’ll rob the dragon afterwards?”

“No! I wouldn’t rob even an evil black dragon. We’re only going to ask for directions, and stay for the night!”

“…And then when the black dragon attacks you, you’ll claim self-defense and kill it. In the end, isn’t it still the same as robbery? Why whitewash it so much?”

“…Do you know the phrase ‘curiosity killed the cat’? Harloys, you know too much!”