The Extra is a Hero?-Chapter 289: THE PARASITES
Chapter 285: The Parasites
The cavern exploded into violence.
The Root Parasites didn’t attack like wolves or bears; they attacked like a liquid. A tide of chitin, clicking mandibles, and glowing teal eyes washed over the uneven floor of the root chamber, moving with a terrifying, synchronized intelligence.
"Hold the line!" I shouted, kicking a parasite away before it could latch onto my leg.
My steel sword flashed, severing the creature’s antennae. It screeched, disoriented, before I drove the blade through its thorax. Green, glowing ichor sprayed across my chest, burning slightly where it touched my skin.
Disgusting.
"There’s too many!" Leon roared from the center of the fray.
The Hero was a whirlwind of destruction. The [Breaker’s Hammer] was living up to its name. Every swing was a catastrophe for the insectoid swarm. CRUNCH. SPLAT. BOOM.
The heavy iron head smashed through exoskeletons as if they were made of sugar glass. The Impact Echo effect rippled through the tightly packed mob, turning one hit into three kills. He was painting the walls with them.
But for every one he crushed, three more scrambled over the corpse. They were climbing his armor, their mandibles scraping uselessly against the enchanted plate but weighing him down.
"Ren! Get the ones on his back!" I ordered, decapitating a parasite that tried to jump from the ceiling.
Ren moved like a ghost in the chaos. He didn’t use broad strokes. He used surgical precision. He would appear behind a parasite, drive his silver dagger into the gap between the head and thorax, and vanish before the creature hit the ground.
"Inefficient," Ren muttered, flicking slime from his blade. "They are endless."
He was right. The walls were still birthing them. The vibration of the battle was drawing every parasite in the sector.
"We need to push forward!" I yelled, glancing at the map in my head. The exit to this chamber was a narrow archway two hundred meters ahead. "If we stay here, we drown in bugs!"
"I can’t move!" Leon grunted. He was buried under a mound of writhing bodies. The weight was overwhelming his A-rank Strength. "They’re... heavy!"
One of the parasites managed to find a gap in his greaves, biting down.
"Argh!" Leon flinched. The pain cut through his adrenaline.
The Hero’s instinct took over. When physical force fails, use magic. It was the lesson taught in every combat class at Arcadia.
"Get... OFF!" Leon screamed.
He released the hammer with one hand and clenched his fist. A brilliant, blinding light erupted from his body.
[Skill Activated: Holy Nova]
"Leon, NO!" I screamed, realizing what he was about to do.
But I was too late.
The golden wave of holy energy exploded outward from Leon, blasting the pile of parasites off him. They shrieked as the holy fire cauterized their flesh, dissolving them into ash.
It was magnificent. It was effective.
And it was a catastrophic mistake.
The holy fire didn’t stop at the insects. It washed over the floor. It licked the walls.
The Ancient Roots, saturated with volatile, raw mana, reacted instantly.
FWOOOM.
The teal light in the veins of the wood turned a violent, angry crimson. The moss on the floor didn’t just burn; it detonated. A shockwave of magical feedback rippled through the chamber, shaking the entire structure.
The ground beneath Leon’s feet—a massive, interwoven section of roots suspended over the abyss—began to groan. Smoke, thick and acrid, billowed up.
"I... I got them," Leon panted, looking at the circle of ash around him. He smiled, raising his hand to cast another spell. "I can clear the path! I just need to—"
I tackled him.
I didn’t care about the parasites anymore. I sprinted across the burning moss and slammed my shoulder into Leon’s midsection, driving him backward just as the section of floor he had been standing on disintegrated into burning embers.
We tumbled onto a thicker, unburned root, rolling in a tangle of limbs.
"What are you doing?!" Leon yelled, shoving me off. "I had them!"
I grabbed him by the collar of his armor and slammed him against the wall.
"Look!" I pointed at the hole in the floor.
Through the smoke, Leon looked down. Where he had been standing a second ago, there was nothing. Just a sheer drop into the glowing, misty abyss below. The fire he had started was still spreading, eating through the structural supports of the room like acid.
"You’re burning the map, you idiot!" I roared, shaking him. "This isn’t stone! We are inside a living organism! You cast Holy Fire in here, and you trigger an immune response!"
As if to prove my point, the walls shuddered. The teal light in the roots above us pulsed rapidly, shifting to a warning red. The remaining parasites stopped attacking us and scurried away, fleeing the fire.
"I... I didn’t know," Leon stammered, looking at the spreading flames. "The roots... they’re flammable?"
"They are made of concentrated energy!" I released him, coughing in the smoke. "Put the magic away. Physical damage only. Unless you want to fall five miles to your death?"
"Understood," Leon said, his face pale. He grabbed the Breaker’s Hammer from where it had fallen. "No magic."
"Ren!" I called out. "Pathfinding!"
Ren appeared on a higher root, looking down at the inferno with a bored expression.
"The fire is blocking the main path," Ren said calmly. "But the structural integrity of the upper lattice is at 60%. We can climb."
"Climb," I ordered. "Go. Now!"
We scrambled up the side of the cavern, using the smaller feeder roots as a ladder. The heat was intense below us, the magical fire consuming the parasite carcasses and the floor alike.
We hauled ourselves up onto a wide, stable ledge near the ceiling of the chamber, collapsing onto the cool, damp moss.
Below us, the battleground was a lake of fire. The remaining parasites were screeching as they burned or fell into the abyss.
"That," Leon wheezed, lying on his back, "went poorly."
"We survived," I said, checking my [Mana Toxicity] meter. It had spiked to 25% from the smoke inhalation. I took a swig of water to flush my system. "But barely. Next time, listen to the raid leader."
"Raid leader," Ren echoed, testing the weight of the word. He was sitting cross-legged, sharpening his dagger. He looked unbothered, not a hair out of place. "You seem to know the mechanics of this place intimately, Michael. Almost as if you built it."
I froze for a second, then forced a shrug. "I read a lot. The interaction between Holy Mana and Ancient Wood is documented in The Encyclopedia of Elemental Theory, Volume 4. You should try the library sometime, Ren."
Ren didn’t smile. He just stared at me with those dead, shark-like eyes. "I prefer field work."
"Quiet," I said, standing up.
We were in a tunnel now, a natural hollow inside one of the main arteries of the World Tree. The air here was cooler, the thrumming of the heartbeat slower. The chaotic noise of the parasites was gone, replaced by the heavy, suffocating silence of the dungeon.
"We need to keep moving," I said. "The fire might spread upward."
We walked for another ten minutes, the path winding deeper and deeper. The bioluminescence faded slightly, casting long, eerie shadows that seemed to dance in the periphery of my vision.
"Wait," Leon said, stopping suddenly.
He pointed his hammer at a shadowy alcove to the left of the path.
"What is that?"
I squinted. There was something white gleaming in the darkness. Not the white of snow, but the dull, yellowish white of old ivory.
I approached cautiously, sword drawn.
It wasn’t ivory. It was bone.
Huddled in the alcove, half-buried in moss and twisting vines, was a skeleton.
It was humanoid, but the bones were slender, delicate. It wore the remnants of armor—green leather that had rotted away, revealing ribs cage underneath. A tattered cloak, embroidered with silver thread that had tarnished to black, lay draped over its shoulders.
"An Elf?" Leon whispered, kneeling beside it.
"Judging by the bone density and the ear ridges on the skull... yes," I said.
"I thought you said the Elves don’t come down here," Ren said, leaning against the wall.
"They don’t," I said, crouching down. "Which makes this interesting."
I examined the corpse. The cause of death wasn’t age. The ribcage had been shattered from the inside out, and a rusted dagger was still lodged between the third and fourth vertebrae.
"Murdered," I noted. "Stabbed in the back."
"Friendly fire?" Leon asked, looking at the dagger.
"Or an execution."
I reached for the skeleton’s hands. They were clutching something tightly against the chest. A leather-bound cylinder. A scroll case.
The leather was treated with preservation magic, so it was intact despite the humidity.
I pried the bony fingers open—they snapped with dry cracks—and took the case.
"Loot?" Leon asked.
"Lore," I corrected.
I popped the cap and slid out a roll of parchment. It was brittle, but the ink was magical, glowing with a faint blue light.
I unrolled it. The text was in Elvish, elegant and flowing.
System Translation: Auto-Active.
"What does it say?" Leon asked, peering over my shoulder.
I scanned the text, my eyes widening as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. This wasn’t just a random flavor text. This was the confirmation I needed. The proof that my decision to skip the Diplomatic Arc wasn’t just a speedrun strategy—it was the only viable option.
"It’s a journal," I said. "Written by High Arborist Elandra. Dated... fifty years ago."
I read the first entry aloud.
"Day 4 in the Deep Roots. The Council called me mad. They said the Rot was a myth, a bedtime story to scare young saplings. But I hear it. The Tree is screaming."
I skipped further down.
"Day 7. I found the source. It is not a disease. It is a parasite. Not the insects... something older. It is drinking the Life Dew. Corrupting it. If the Dew turns, the Tree dies. And if the Tree dies, the Barrier falls."
I looked at the final entry. The handwriting was shaky, splattered with dried blood.
"They followed me. The Queen’s Guard. They aren’t here to help. They are here to silence me. The High Council knows. They know about the Rot, and they are letting it happen. They made a deal with the shadows. I have the proof, but I cannot leave. If anyone finds this... do not trust the Council. Do not trust the Capital. The Rot starts from the head."
Silence stretched in the tunnel.
Leon looked stricken. "The Elves... they knew? The High Council is corrupt?"
"It appears so," I said, rolling the scroll back up and tucking it into my inventory. "If we had gone to the Capital like the original plan, we wouldn’t have been greeted as heroes. We would have been arrested. Or assassinated."
I looked at Leon. "Validating enough for you?"
Leon nodded slowly, his face hardening. "Yeah. We’re on the right path."
I turned to Ren.
The assassin was standing a few feet away, staring at the skeleton. But he wasn’t looking at the bones. He was looking at the rusted dagger lodged in the spine.
For a brief second, a flicker of something passed across his face. Recognition? Fear?
"Ren?" I asked.
He snapped his head up. His expression was back to the neutral mask.
"A tragic story," Ren said flatly. "But the dead cannot help us. We should move before the fire catches up."
"Agreed," I said.
But as I turned to lead the way deeper into the gloom, I made a mental note.
Ren recognized the dagger style.
And in the game lore, the Puppeteer Demon often used corrupted Elves as his agents.
The dungeon was dangerous. But the person walking behind me might be worse.
"Eyes up," I said. "The air is getting thinner. We’re approaching the Chasm."
We left the skeleton in the dark, clutching its secrets, and walked toward the edge of the world.
