novelraw Chapter 27: Worm King
Chapter 27: Worm King
Hot winds carrying sand grains swept across the Iron Fir Hills, producing faint whimpering sounds. Garoth slammed the Rockgrub worm heavily onto an open patch of ground, his dragon claws pressing firmly against the giant insect's head carapace, forcing the nearly twenty-meter-long creature to curl into a ring shape.
If not for the layer of insectoid armor covering its body, with its length and girth, the Rockgrub worm might easily be mistaken for a giant serpent rather than an insect at first glance.
"Rockgrub worms live underground. Digging tunnels is their innate talent, making them excellent at concealment and ambush," Garoth thought. "If I can tame one, I could have it steal black oil for me. No, it wouldn't really be stealing—the black oil deposits are unclaimed resources anyway. This would just be using my abilities to obtain them."
The Kamel Black Oil Field had tight defenses, possibly including underground protection measures. But the Ser Wilderness contained multiple oil fields, and some smaller ones had less stringent security, offering better chances to acquire black oil.
As for Samantha—her alchemy skills were currently unreliable. She hadn't yet learned to extract and refine black oil. Even if she could use alchemy to directly extract oil from monsters, the efficiency would be too low. Black oil naturally formed over extremely long periods through special underground reactions in monster remains. Unless one possessed exceptionally advanced alchemy skills, the process would require enormous amounts of monster material to produce small quantities of black oil, making the effort disproportionate to the yield. Natural deposits remained the primary source.
Refining black oil, however, was feasible. Though Garoth had never tasted higher quality black oil, he imagined the difference would be like comparing ordinary metal to hundred-fold tempered steel—refined black oil would undoubtedly be more effective.
His gaze returned to the Rockgrub worm. Garoth exhaled deeply, his claws maintaining an iron grip on the creature's head to prevent escape. Quasi-spell skill—Mind Link.
A white gleam flashed in his dragon pupils as Garoth closed his eyes to concentrate, extending intangible psychic energy to touch the Rockgrub worm's mind and sense its consciousness. The Mind Link skill was something Garoth had excavated from his bloodline after prolonged effort. Whether through luck or because his intentions were clear enough for his Adaptive Evolution talent to activate, he'd awakened this skill relatively quickly.
It allowed the caster to perceive the target's emotions while enabling the target to comprehend the caster's thoughts, facilitating limited communication through the mental realm. This gave Garoth a means to potentially tame the Rockgrub worm.
For fierce beasts like Rockgrub worms with low intelligence and limited communication abilities, skills like Mind Link were essential for interaction. Due to their disparity in mental strength, Garoth successfully activated the skill on the worm.In Garoth's perception, primal impulses like hunger and destructive urges flooded in first, followed by fragmented memories—the salty tang of kobold corpses encountered while gnawing mineral veins, the excitement of mating with other Rockgrub worms, the terror of being carried skyward away from familiar underground depths by a dragon...
The Rockgrub worm's consciousness remained simple and instinctual. A draconic silhouette representing Garoth's will manifested in its mental world. Surveying the surroundings, Garoth found the worm's psyche exceptionally dark, like lightless underground depths, with the worm's consciousness curled up in a pit.
"Submit to me, and I'll let you live while providing food," Garoth's voice resonated through the mental space in a manner the worm could comprehend.
"Eh." The worm responded indifferently, as though neither survival nor food mattered much.
Recalling its earlier excitement points, Garoth reconsidered and said, "Submit to me, and I'll grant you unlimited mating opportunities with other Rockgrub worms."
As expected, the worm's emotions immediately surged with enthusiasm. Apparently, this represented the most sacred and important aspect of its existence—even surpassing survival.
"I... will... obey," it replied haltingly.
Perfect—surprisingly simple. Garoth felt pleased internally. While Mind Link communication didn't equate to outright enslavement, given the worm's intelligence level, deception wasn't in its nature. As long as Garoth provided what it desired, the worm would remain loyal to its instincts and serve him faithfully. This resembled more of a mutually beneficial transaction.
Then something unexpected occurred.
Crack... The underground-like mental world suddenly trembled as the Rockgrub worm's consciousness became saturated with reverence, respect, and terror.
"What's happening?" Garoth demanded.
"King... comes..." the worm responded painfully.
Simultaneously, its mental form began quivering, cracks spreading across its surface before shattering entirely. From within emerged a much smaller but far more vivid and lifelike worm—so detailed it seemed physically present despite lacking visible eyes. Yet Garoth could sense its cold gaze fixed upon him.
As the Rockgrub worm's mental world started collapsing, the small worm gradually turned translucent before vanishing completely. Garoth reopened his eyes to find the physical Rockgrub worm convulsing briefly before going still—a soulless husk without visible fatal injuries yet undeniably dead.
"Taming Rockgrub worms might not be so straightforward after all," Garoth sighed, though he quickly regained determination. The world didn't revolve around him—setbacks were inevitable. The key lay in overcoming obstacles, making thorns bear flowers and rough paths smooth.
"The king comes... That final small worm must be the Worm King," Garoth mused. "It can directly determine its subjects' life and death by destroying their consciousness?"
He recalled the Worm King he'd once seen—its carapace gleaming with metallic coldness under sunlight, its hundred-meter length utterly terrifying, with a life level exceeding at least 12. Red dragons typically reached such life levels around age forty, iron dragons around fifty. Meaning the Worm King possessed strength equivalent to a young adult dragon—far beyond Garoth's current capabilities.
"Strange—my inherited memories never mentioned Rockgrub worm kings having such mental control abilities," Garoth pondered. "Perhaps this one underwent mutations granting unique skills unlike ordinary kings."
Later, he returned to the abandoned mines, using driven beasts as bait to lure out another Rockgrub worm for capture before repeating the Mind Link attempt. The same outcome occurred—Worm King interference struck again.
This made Garoth realize that without dealing with the Worm King first, his current methods couldn't secure Rockgrub worm services. "Ruining my plans—just you wait," Garoth mentally noted the troublesome king. Eventually he'd capture it and force it to exhaust itself daily mining oil and minerals.
As the saying went, heaven never seals all paths for a dragon. Where there's determination, alternatives always exist. While this particular Rockgrub worm colony proved difficult to tame, Garoth had other targets in mind.