Chapter 290: Fighting the Dungeon Boss (3)

Reaching the flat top of the mountain, he crouched down and squinted his silver eyes, scanning the vast desert arena. The dust from their previous clash had finally settled, and the wind only disturbed the loose sand across the bedrock, leaving the air perfectly clear.

There was nothing obstructing his view. He kept his spear firmly charged with silver aura, fully prepared to hurl the weapon and fish the worm out the exact second he spotted a disturbance in the dunes.

"Where are you hiding, worm? You can’t escape me." He muttered. "No one can."

Down below, the severed half of the worm’s body still lay on the desert floor. It oozed a thick, highly corrosive liquid that actively burned the surrounding sand, creating toxic, foul-smelling bubbles. The severed tail was also visibly shrinking and drying up, rapidly losing its mass.

"That is one crazy boss," Solomon muttered to himself, watching the toxic puddles form. "Even after losing half its body and being completely incapacitated, it can still cause environmental damage."

He waited patiently for several minutes, fully expecting the wounded sandworm to breach the surface and launch a desperate, vengeful ambush.

However, it didn’t make a single move. There was no sign of the beast.

Solomon raised an eyebrow. "Did it seriously just run away?"

He frowned deeply. "I have to find it and hunt it down quickly. I can feel the giant’s power slowly leaving my body. I probably only have about five minutes left in this form. Maybe a few more minutes if I heavily restrict my aura usage."

He let out an annoyed sigh. "It is hard to spot something hiding in the sand at night. But then again, if I was fighting this thing during the scorching day, the heat exhaustion would have made this fight infinitely more difficult."

Just then, Solomon caught a faint glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye. A subtle, unnatural cloud of dust plumed in the distance near a canyon pass. It could have been the worm, or it could have been a natural rockfall. But, Solomon did not take any chances.

He jumped down from the mountain, landing on the bedrock, and sprinted directly toward the canyon. As he closed the distance, he spotted distinct, chaotic trails of destruction carved into the canyon walls.

It looked exactly as if the shortened sandworm had tried to swim through the narrow pass but couldn’t maneuver its newly truncated body properly, violently crashing into the stone walls and leaving deep gouges in the rock.

The tables had completely turned. The apex predator was now the prey, and Solomon was the hunter. The worm had clearly realized that its biggest environmental advantage, which was its massive size and swimming momentum, had become a fatal disadvantage in its injured state, forcing it into hiding.

Solomon followed the fresh trail of destruction. The gouges in the stone led directly into the gaping mouth of a massive, dark cave structure carved into the canyon wall.

Solomon stopped at the entrance, his grip tightening on the spear.

’I am honestly not convinced that the worm would just blindly leave a trail leading straight to its hiding spot,’ Solomon reasoned, analyzing the dark tunnel. ’That beast clearly possesses a high battle IQ. This could easily be a trap. It might have prepared an ambush or a collapse trick to use the moment I step inside.’

He stared into the pitch-black cave. There was no other way to reach the worm. He could choose to wait outside and try to starve it out, but he was rapidly running out of time on his giant transformation. Given the beast’s abilities and corrosive attacks, fighting it in his normal, human-sized form inside a cave would be a suicide.

"I guess I am walking into the trap," Solomon decided. He lowered his center of gravity, raised his aura-coated spear, and stepped cautiously into the dark, cavernous structure.

Solomon stepped cautiously into the cavern, and immediately realized the structure was nothing like a standard cave. It was a massive, sprawling nest. The interior was riddled with dozens of smaller, perfectly circular tunnels bored directly into the solid sandstone.

The smaller tunnels were everywhere—bored into the ground, carved into the side walls, and even plunging straight up into the ceiling. The entire structure and pathway design of the nest was completely mind-boggling. The twisting, unnatural geometry could easily disorient an intruder, causing a severe psychological effect that made moving forward nearly impossible.

The claustrophobic, alien design was enough to trigger latent phobias a person wasn’t even aware they possessed.

And the sandworm was nowhere to be seen.

It was clearly hiding deep within one of those smaller tunnels, patiently waiting for Solomon to make a single wrong move so it could strike from the darkness and kill him.

’I am not going inside those smaller tunnels,’ Solomon decided instantly. ’If I go in there, I will never come out. The worm could simply collapse the entrance behind me and chase me down the narrow shaft. I wouldn’t even have the space to swing my spear or dodge. It could kill me just by grinding its spiked body against the walls and crushing me to death.’

Just then, a brilliantly destructive idea sparked in Solomon’s mind. He could simply flip the trap and do exactly what the worm intended to do to him.

He gripped his aura-coated spear. He would simply smash the tunnel entrances and destroy them, collapsing the solid rock to seal the worm inside.

If he blocked all the exits, the beast would be permanently buried alive. His ultimate plan was to seal every single tunnel inside the nest, step out of the main cave, and then bring the entire mountain crashing down on top of it.

Unlike the loose desert sand, the worm could not just effortlessly swim away through solid, compressed bedrock. It would be trapped.

"It’s either you or me now, worm. But I don’t plan on dying like this, so you gotta die." He took a deep breath and prepared himself for the final battle with the dungeon boss.