The farther Roy went, the stronger the palpitations in his heart became.
For a moment, even Roy hesitated. He found that things seemed to be a little different from what he had guessed. The previous master of this ruin was probably not as simple as a demon lord…
If he had not seen those fossil eggs and knew that it had been a long time, he might have really turned around and left.
Roy forced himself to continue forward until he found that the magma river was becoming shallower and shallower, and the two of them gradually came to the surface of the river.
Finally, Roy and Benia appeared at the source of the magma river. It was a massive valley surrounded by towering cliffs. In the middle, there was a magma waterfall, and fiery hot magma gathered at the bottom of the valley and formed a river that flowed out.
On the other parts of the rock walls, there were rows and rows of densely and neatly arranged long insect eggs! At a glance, it might really cause people to suffer from trypophobia. There were millions of insect egg fossils embedded on the walls here. Other than some falling off occasionally and flowing along with the magma, the rest of the egg fossils were still standing upright.
Roy and Benia continued forward and looked at this scene in surprise. If, according to Benia, these insect eggs were all soldiers, then how terrifying would an army of millions of insects be?
In turn, how much magic power would it consume to arrange these millions of insect
eggs?!
The two of them walked forward cautiously and soon arrived at an enormous square. This place looked like the center of the ruin, and there were countless fragments of demon-made buildings scattered all around. Many collapsed and shattered statues even had traces of weathering, and they could no longer tell what their original appearances were. On the empty ground of the square was a gigantic, rust-red pentagram magic formation engraved there, but this magic formation was also badly damaged, and many demon characters were already blurry.
Roy and Benia looked at each other and then at this magic formation. They felt an immense and powerful sense of threat coming from there. When they arrived at the square, the sense of threat reached its peak.
“What should we do?” Benia asked Roy. “It seems like some existence is hidden here. If I’m not mistaken, it should only appear after activating this magic formation…”
Roy was also conflicted. After thinking for a while, he asked Benia, “Can you tell what this magic formation is?”
“I’m not sure, but I’m certain that it isn’t a sealing formation!” Benia said. “This is the Abyss, so it’s impossible for there to be any external enemies. Similarly, no demons are so stupid as to seal themselves, right?”
“It’s hard to say…” Roy said. “I can only feel that there seems to be a special alternate space here, and it’s not stable. I can even vaguely feel the unstable spatial fluctuations here… This means that even if this magic formation is hiding something, it’s on the verge of failing.”
“Then, can you open it without activating the magic formation?” Benia asked.
“To be safe, let’s use another method!” Roy looked around and picked up a big stone from the ground. The flames of the flowing brightness flames ignited in his palm, and then he quickly shaped the stone in his palm.
What he created was an eyeball-shaped object. After it took shape, he sent it into the system space and defined its attributes.
It was a space probe. Just in case, Roy did not give it any magic power. He only defined a camera function for it and then set it with the ability to teleport to a designated space and be summoned back.
After taking it out again, he carefully sensed the location of the unstable space and raised his hand to send the probe in with space magic.
After he sent the probe in, it started working and filmed the things inside the alternate space. After a while, he summoned it back. Then he began checking the recorded scenes with Benia.
In the end, Roy and Benia were shocked when they saw the scenes captured by the camera! “H-how is this possible?!” Benia’s eyes were full of horror. “W-what the hell is this?”
“I don’t know, but I can confirm that there shouldn’t be any danger…” Roy’s eyes revealed a thoughtful expression. He gritted his teeth, gathered his magic power on his hands, and directly used space magic to tear open the alternate space!
The next second, an enormous black object suddenly appeared on the square!
With the appearance of this black object, an astonishing magic power flooded the entire space.
Under the impact of this magic power aura, Benia took a while to regain her senses. She suppressed her fear and uneasiness and raised her hand to shoot out dozens of fireballs to illuminate the surroundings. Then the two of them finally clearly saw what was in front of them.
The thing that appeared on the square was a gigantic… insect corpse!
No, it was not an insect corpse. Roy and Benia realized that it was actually just an empty shell because there was a huge hole in the back of this thing, as though something had drilled out from the inside!
“Did it… molt?” Benia asked uncertainly.
“Should have!” Roy nodded and carefully observed the empty shell. But as he looked at it, his eyes became stranger.
Because he found that the insect-shaped shell in front of him looked like… a fly!
There was a pair of large eyes next to each other on its head. From the shape of these eyes, he could make out countless densely-packed visual receptors. On its lower body, there were six insect legs with innumerable bristles.
Apart from not being able to see the wings, the shell in front of him really looked like a fly. But it was countless times bigger than a real fly.
However, the molted empty shell in front of him actually exuded an incomparably powerful magic power aura… The more Benia looked, the more surprised she became. She could not help but look at Roy. He also looked at her in surprise. Seeing this thing and the powerful magic power it still exuded, the two of them simultaneously thought of a name.
“D-Demon King Beelzebub?!”
In many human myths and legends, Beelzebub was known as the Lord of the Flies. People said that he was an enormous fly, and just like Demon King Samael, who represented wrath, he was also one of the most famous demon kings and was regarded as the embodiment of gluttony. Roy and Benia never thought that they would find… a shell that Beelzebub had shed underground!
Of course, this thing in front of them could not be Beelzebub himself. It was just an empty shell that he had left behind, and his main body had long disappeared.
“Does a fly… shed its shell?” Roy asked curiously. “Of course, a real fly won’t…” Benia said. “But Beelzebub isn’t a real fly. He’s just a fly-shaped insect-type demon…” “That makes sense…” Roy nodded and walked forward to stand in front of this shell.
His three-meter-tall body seemed tiny in front of it, but he still stretched out his hand and gently one of the legs of the shell.
“There’s no reaction!” Roy waved his hand. “The massive amount of magic power on it seems to have been left passively. With the protection of this magic power, as well as being hidden in an alternate space, this shell didn’t transform into a fossil like the insect eggs but instead looks new.”
Benia said slightly dejectedly, “It seems that Big Black could become so huge not because there are rare minerals underground, but because it devoured the insect eggs left behind by Demon King Beelzebub. Even though the insect eggs have turned into fossils, and their magic power is already very weak, it has been devouring them for a long time. In addition, it’s also an insect-type monster, so the eggs stimulated it into mutating.”
“Seems so. No wonder it didn’t dare to come here. It only dares to eat the insect eggs that float out to the periphery. The magic power of a demon king’s shell is enough to deter it,” Roy said. “I wonder if this shell was left behind when Beelzebub promoted to demon king… After all, if it’s merely something left behind by Beelzebub when he was a demon lord, this magic power is too astonishing.”
Benia’s eyes lit up after she heard what Roy said. “Darling, in that case, perhaps you can find a way to become a demon king from this shell?!
“How can it be so simple?” Roy shook his head. “If you can find a way to promote by relying on a demon king’s shell, then wouldn’t the demon lords be searching all over for similar things? But have you ever heard of demon lords doing this?”
“That’s not necessarily the case!” Benia said. “Don’t forget. In the entire Abyss, only Beelzebub is an insect-type demon king. There’s only one case. It’s impossible for other demon kings to shed shells and leave them behind like Beelzebub! The demon lords have nowhere to find them.”
Hearing Benia’s analysis, Roy could not help but be stunned. Then a strange feeling rose uncontrollably.
Yes, if what Benia said is right, and there’s only one case of Beelzebub’s shell, so why did I find it? When I chose this fragment world, I never thought that such a surprise would be buried here.
What is this? Is it providence in the dark? Or is it purely luck?
Or… is it Chosen One of the Abyss at work again?
Shaking his head, Roy threw out these chaotic thoughts and began thinking.
This shell was something left behind from an extremely ancient era. Although Roy had not seen Beelzebub with his own eyes, he knew that Beelzebub should already be at the very top, at the Deadly Sin Demon King level. This shell was not his clone and only had some of his magic power left. It was very rare and unique, but… Roy could not think of any real use for it.
Roy looked around and saw the dense-packed insect egg fossils. Suddenly, his heart stirred. With a flip of his wrist, a flesh seed appeared in his palm.
After the flesh seed appeared, it beat rhythmically like a heart. Benia had never seen this thing before, so she asked out of curiosity.
“This is the seed of the Red Sea Egg! I secretly took it from Lilith!” Roy replied as he poked a hole in the ground and then buried the seed. Then he relaxed the muscles on his palm and scratched his palm with his nail.
After the demon blood started flowing out, Roy dripped the blood on the place where he planted the seed.
A moment later, under Benia’s surprised gaze, the ground trembled slightly. The next second, countless tentacles surged out of the ground and quickly spread in all directions.
These tentacles were the flesh roots of the Red Sea Egg. Under the nourishment of Roy’s demon blood, they quickly grew and… spontaneously began moving toward the rock walls, intertwining and wrapping the densely packed insect egg fossils in them…
