My Very First Stream: Deep-Fried Blade Centipede, Part 2
All monsters possess intelligence.
Of course, not many of them are high-intelligence sapient beings on par with humans.
Elves, dwarves, and beastkin who build civilizations within Erosion Dungeons are generally classified as high-intelligence humanoid races. Not only do they avoid unconditional hostility toward humans, but they also engage in various forms of exchange. Some even venture outside the dungeons to work as hunters, earning a living to support their trapped tribes and civilizations back home.
At any rate, Blade Centipedes possess intelligence as well.
Though their intellect is lower than that of a baby who hasn't even reached their first birthday, they still have enough cognitive ability to analyze their own primal emotions.
And so, on the outskirts of Rotten Mountain, a certain Blade Centipede was living peacefully among its kind today.
It was a Blade Centipede roughly ten meters long, boasting one hundred and twenty pairs of legs. It was currently in an excellent mood, having caught a plump sewer rat before the morning dew on the leaves could even dry.
Skrrrrt...
Blade Centipedes possess an incredibly efficient metabolism, requiring only one meal a week to sustain their biological functions without any nutritional issues.
Having eaten its fill, the centipede planned to crawl under its favorite damp, moss-covered boulder and sleep until it grew hungry again.
Unfortunately, when it slipped into the crevice beneath the rock, it found many of its kin already writhing and occupying the space.
Then again, Rotten Mountain was a dungeon where one could dig just a little into the dirt and find swarms of them.
Wherever there was moisture, its kind was sure to be there.
Under the shade of sun-blocked trees, inside damp caves, between wet patches of moss, beneath rotting tree stumps, and even in the nesting grounds of sewer rats—wherever you went in Rotten Mountain, creatures that looked exactly like it were crawling in droves.
The centipede squeezed through the clattering legs of its brethren and settled down in a reasonably decent spot.
Given its large size, it was stronger than most of its kin, which was a relief.
Barring any unforeseen events, it would be able to sleep peacefully for at least a week until hunger struck again.
As the apex predators of Rotten Mountain, Blade Centipedes faced no real threats.
If there was any danger at all, it was the occasional massive, frenzied centipede that would go on a rampage and try to cannibalize its own kind.
Those lunatics should just sleep peacefully after eating. I'll never understand why they throw such fits.
Muttering silently to itself, the centipede relaxed its body to drift off to sleep.
But in the next instant, it sensed something bizarre happening.
Rumble!
What was this? What was happening?
The boulder was moving.
In that moment, the centipede's instincts screamed that something was terribly wrong.
Its brethren still seemed completely oblivious, staring blankly without a clue as to what was happening.
But it realized that the very boulder it was clinging to for sleep was being lifted entirely.
In what felt like slowed time, the massive rock was hoisted up in an instant by some absurd, monstrous strength. As the boulder vanished and a cold wind rushed in, the other centipedes finally began clattering their legs, waking up and belatedly realizing that something was amiss.
"Hehe, found you!"
What was this...?
Rotten Mountain was heavily infested with Blade Centipedes, and many of them had never encountered a human before.
Although the Hunter Association occasionally organized subjugation raids to clear them out and prevent them from overflowing past the dungeon gates, countless centipedes still thrived deep inside. Naturally, some had never laid eyes on a human.
And so, the centipede saw it.
For the first time in its life, it beheld its natural predator.
Blade Centipedes are highly aggressive monsters. When humans invade their territory, they lash out in fury, swarming to devour the intruders.
As Sia lifted the boulder, the sheer number of centipedes writhing beneath it looked to be in the thousands.
While the ultra-high-definition drone camera zoomed in on the wriggling mass, causing the viewers to gag in disgust, Sia wore a bright, innocent smile.
Enraged by the disruption of their sleep, the centipedes simultaneously lunged at the insolent intruder who had destroyed their home.
Thousands of centipedes rained down on Sia all at once.
From the viewers' perspective, it looked as if a tidal wave of giant insects was bursting through their screens. Some faint-hearted viewers literally tumbled out of their chairs in horror, and even the sturdier ones were left utterly shell-shocked.
Clatter, clatter!
Skrrrch!
In an instant, before she could even try to dodge, Sia was completely buried under the mountain of centipedes.
Only a writhing, dome-like mound of insects marked the spot where she had stood just a second ago. Surrounded by thousands of giant centipedes—the smallest of which was over a meter long—the sheer visual horror was beyond words.
Since the floating drone camera was perfectly fine, the viewers had a crystal-clear view of the situation.
Because they were watching Sia get swallowed by the swarm in movie-like high definition, several people actually screamed at their screens.
Why did she lift that boulder so confidently only to get trapped and overwhelmed without putting up a fight?
The viewers feared they were about to witness a live broadcast of a hunter's gruesome death.
In fact, being swarmed by this many Blade Centipedes could kill an S-grade hunter, let alone an A-grade.
Each leg of a Blade Centipede was as hard as tempered steel. Just having them crawl over you would shred human flesh to ribbons, allowing their deadly venom to seep into the open wounds.
And this wasn't just one or two. It was hundreds, if not thousands.
No matter how strong a hunter was, getting buried under a swarm of that scale meant their survival was far from guaranteed.
It wasn't unheard of for hunter streamers to die during live broadcasts.
Generally, hunter streamers only broadcasted if they were extremely confident in their skills, hired higher-ranking hunters to protect them, or at least staged the content to ensure absolute safety.
However, dungeons were lawless zones that defied human common sense, and fatal accidents caused by sudden natural disasters or unexpected anomalies still occurred from time to time.
Even the most toxic viewers couldn't help but watch in horror as a beautiful, well-endowed female hunter—who had been the talk of the community all week—seemed to meet her end in the most grotesque way possible.
Just then, a viewer spotted something out of place.
From the middle of the writhing mound of centipedes, something pure white emerged.
It was an arm.
Sia's hand, clad in a pristine white sleeve and boasting skin even paler than the fabric, suddenly thrust out from the center of the swarm.
Like a hidden pyramid rising from the desert sands, her arm slowly emerged from between the clattering legs of the centipedes.
The hand that emerged from the swarm was incredibly pale, clean, and completely unharmed.
It gave a casual wave, as if to say, "Hey, I'm totally fine."
Then, she splayed her fingers wide toward the drone camera.
One by one, she began to fold them down in a countdown.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
The moment her fingers fully closed into a fist, the clattering of the centipedes abruptly stopped.
No, it wasn't just the centipedes.
All ambient sound captured by the drone camera cut out, replaced by a sharp, high-pitched ringing noise in the viewers' ears.
Holy Body Ruin
A sacred, echoing voice, like the decree of a god, reverberated through the air.
BOOOOOOM!
The explosion lasted only a fraction of a second.
Rather than a fiery blast, it was a massive, concentrated shockwave.
A blinding white light erupted from the center of the swarm, instantly vaporizing the monsters. The thousands of centipedes that had been trying to tear Sia apart vanished without leaving a trace of their existence in less than a second.
The white light vanished as quickly as it had appeared, leaving only Sia standing in the frame of the drone camera.
"Were you worried about me?"
With the corners of her lips curled into a slight smirk, she looked incredibly beautiful and holy—yet somehow deeply unsettling.
Sia was completely unscathed.
As if refusing to allow a single speck of dust, dirt, or monster fluid to touch her pristine white clothes and pale skin, she stood at the epicenter of the blast, casually holding her hands behind her back as she looked up at the camera.
"Unfortunately, there aren't any A-grade Blade Centipedes here."
Suddenly, a writhing, tooth-gnashing tentacle burst from Sia's waist and began snapping up the shredded, scattered remains of the centipedes, devouring them in single bites.
Crunch, munch!
Gulp.
"Sorry about that. I wanted to make deep-fried centipede for the stream, but my little friends here were throwing a tantrum because they're hungry. I had to feed them first. But since I haven't eaten anything myself yet, this still counts as a cooking stream, right?"
After a brief, stunned silence, the chat exploded.
At first, it was sheer disbelief,
followed by denial of what they had just witnessed,
and then, collective sighs of awe.
The chat was filled with pure, unadulterated hype.
Getting swarmed by thousands of centipedes only to trigger a massive explosion and emerge without a single speck of dust on her was a sequence more dramatic and visually stunning than any CGI movie effect.
As the chat burned up with wild reactions, Sia smiled.
In her past life, Sia had once slaughtered a Demon King's army that was raiding a village.
The villagers, who were utterly traumatized by the monsters, were initially terrified of Sia when she suddenly appeared. Watching her control grotesque, writhing tentacles to brutally butcher the demon army, they first saw the deceased saint not as a savior, but as another monster.
However, that suspicion and fear turned into roaring cheers the moment Sia cleanly crushed the skull of the demon commander.
She was feeling a very similar emotion right now.
"Do you guys like this kind of stuff?"
Gathering them up and blowing them away in one shot.
And she hadn't gotten dirty at all. Not only was it amazing that she didn't have a single scratch after being buried under thousands of centipedes, but the fact that her delicate white sleeves weren't even torn was even more fascinating.
Just then, Sia spotted a large Blade Centipede wriggling at the edge of the crater she had just created.
It was quite long.
While the other centipedes were between two to four meters, this one looked to be over ten meters long. Its segments were thick and plump, meaning it had plenty of meat on it.
"...*Gulp*."
The viewers watched as the surviving centipede crawled out from the rocks, glaring at Sia. Its dark compound eyes stared at her, its antennae and venomous fangs twitching.
"It looks so delicious..."
Shriek!
The moment Sia muttered those words, the Blade Centipede flinched visibly, as if it understood her, and immediately turned to flee at full speed.
"Ah?!"
While Blade Centipedes weren't entirely brainless, they were still insect monsters. Normally, they couldn't gauge the strength of their opponents, meaning they would mindlessly charge to sink their venomous fangs and blade-like legs into any threat.
Yet, this Blade Centipede was running away?
"Where are you going?! Don't run! Fight me!"
Sia felt a wave of disappointment as the centipede fled from her like it had seen a ghost.
How strange... Why was it running away?
Moreover, it was incredibly fast. Sia wasn't slow by any means, but since her speed was based on raw physical strength and leaping power, it was surprisingly difficult to catch up to a creature naturally built for rapid scurrying.
The ten-meter-long Blade Centipede was running with everything it had, pushing past its limits to survive.
It was burning through the energy from the sewer rat it had just eaten, and even tapping into its own life force to maintain its frantic pace.
Though it lacked the intelligence to speak, if it could, it would surely be screaming at the top of its lungs:
"Aaaaack! What kind of monster is that?!"
She had vaporized thousands of its brethren in the blink of an eye without leaving a single trace, all while remaining completely clean and unharmed. If that wasn't a monster, what was?
To make matters worse, that terrifying monster was looking at it with clear hunger. Those bloodshot eyes were locked onto it with pure, insatiable appetite.
For the first time in its life, the centipede felt the true terror of death.
Clatterclatterclatterclatter!
"Stop right there! I'm only going to fry a little bit of you!"
"Wait up! Just let me eat a little bit! I even brought a deep fryer just for you!"
Clatterclatterclatterclatter!
And so, the ten-meter-long centipede's desperate run for survival was clipped and posted to the hunter forums, quickly becoming a viral sensation.