SSS-Ranked Trash Hero: I Was Scammed Into Being Summoned-Chapter 86: The Worm Mother

"I’m going in," she said.

Ollen looked at her. He looked at the thick wall of gray plants known as the growth. Then he looked back at her. He rubbed his face with a dirty hand. He looked exhausted.

"Now," he said. It wasn’t a question. He sounded like he already knew the answer and didn’t like it.

"Now," she said. "The swarms just pulled back. They are regrouping. The growth is as empty as it’s ever going to get. If we wait until the men are rested, the window closes. The next swarm cycle will start, and we will lose our chance. We can’t wait for morning."

Ollen was quiet for a long moment. She could see him thinking. He was a man who liked to plan, but he was running out of options. He looked over his shoulder at his camp.

"You just watched three of our positions get hit at the same time," he said. "My men are sitting on the ground because they can’t stand up anymore. They are bleeding and tired. And now you want to walk in there alone."

"I want to walk in there alone because one person is quiet," she said. "One person moving through the brush looks like nothing to whatever is living in there. A group of ten tired fighters making noise is a problem. If I go with a squad, the swarm will come for us. I need to see the pattern before it gets messed up. I need to find worm mother and i want to see what it actually looks like." She paused to let that sink in.

Ollen looked at her for a long time. He wanted to refuse. He didn’t want to be responsible for the death of a Demon Prince’s butler. But he knew she was right about the timing. They were losing this battle against worms and they needed to find the Worm Mother to win.

"Two hours," he said.

"Two hours is plenty of time," she said.

He didn’t look happy. But he stepped aside and gave her a short nod.

Lena turned away from the camp and walked toward the growth.

The change happened fast.

Outside, even with the sun down, there was a sense of space. She could see the sky. She could feel the wind. She could hear the sounds of the estate and the tired men behind her.

But as soon as she stepped into the growth, all of that vanished. Within twenty steps, the tall, twisted trees blocked out the sky. The light disappeared. The air became still and very heavy. It felt like walking into a basement that hadn’t been opened in years.

Sound changed, too. The world became muffled. Her own footsteps sounded loud and close, as if the trees were leaning in to listen to her. The ground was soft and damp, covered in a layer of rotting leaves and gray moss.

She moved slowly. She didn’t want to snap a branch or trip. The undergrowth was thick and tangled. Pushing through it would make too much noise, so she took her time. She looked for gaps in the vines. She stepped over roots carefully. It was slow work, but she was making almost no sound.

The first thing she found was a carcass.

It was a small animal, maybe the size of a dog. It was lying to the left of a narrow path. There wasn’t much left of it. The bones were white and completely clean. They weren’t chewed or crushed. They were just stripped. Every bit of meat and skin was gone. It looked like it had been cleaned by thousands of tiny mouths working very fast. She looked at the bones for a second, felt a chill, and kept moving.

As she went deeper, she started to see trails in the dirt. They were long, smooth channels pressed into the soft soil. There were dozens of them. They all ran in the same direction, like a set of roads. She realized she was moving against the flow. She was headed toward the place where the trails started. That was good. It meant she was going the right way.

Then she started seeing the casings.

The first few were small. They were translucent, empty shells left behind when the creatures grew too big for them. They were brittle and thin. They looked like giant insect skins scattered around the roots of the trees. She stepped over them and kept going. But the further she went, the larger the casings became.

The difference was scary. The offspring she had seen attacking the guards were about the length of a human forearm. But the casing she was looking at now was twice that size. It was thick and tough. If the things in here were growing that fast, Ollen’s men didn’t have a chance.

She stood up and kept moving. The air was getting harder to breathe.

The smell hit her next.

It grew stronger with every step she took. It didn’t smell like rotting meat. It was thick and oily. It felt like the air was full of tiny particles that stuck to the back of her throat. It was the smell of a hive.

Then the trees opened up a little bit, and she saw it.

Lena stopped moving. she didn’t even breathe.

The Worm Mother was much bigger than she had imagined. The shed casings had warned her, but seeing the real thing was different.

The top half of its body was above the ground. It was as wide as a large tree trunk. Its skin was the color of old ivory and covered in deep ridges. It didn’t reflect any light, but she could see it clearly because it was so massive.

The body coiled around itself in heavy loops before disappearing back into the dirt. She could see the earth pushed up in big mounds around it. Most of the worm was still underground.

The head was resting flat on the soil. Its mouth was closed. It didn’t move at all, except for a slow, heavy pulse. A ripple went from the head all the way down the body and into the ground. It was like a heartbeat. It was deep and steady. It felt old.

Along the sides of the body, she saw the membrane sacs. They were translucent and bloated. Inside them, things were moving. Lena saw the shapes of the offspring shifting behind the thin skin. She counted seven sacs just on the part of the body she could see. There were probably dozens more buried in the dirt.

Around the Mother, the offspring moved in loose circles. They weren’t attacking anything. They were just there. They stayed close to the Mother, huddling near her body like they were looking for warmth. They looked like small, pale ghosts moving in the dark.

Lena stood perfectly still for a long time. She was recording everything in her mind.

She measured the distance between her and the Mother. She looked at how many offspring were in the way. She looked at the mounds of dirt and tried to guess how big the whole creature really was. If the visible part was this big, the rest of it must be enormous.

She thought about her skills.

She had made a promise to herself the night before. She had decided not to use her special abilities until she understood them better. She didn’t want to make a mistake. That decision had felt smart when she was sitting by a fire. But standing here, looking at this monster, she changed her mind. If she came back here to fight, she couldn’t hold anything back. She would have to use everything she had.

She just had to figure out which skill would actually work on something this size.

She memorized the layout of the clearing. She noted the easiest way in and the fastest way out. She had what she came for. It was time to leave.

She began to back away. She was even more careful now. She didn’t want to die here in the dark. She retraced her steps exactly. She passed the large casings. She walked past the white bones of the small animal. She stayed on the gaps in the vines. Her heart was beating fast, but she kept her movements slow and steady.

The growth let her leave. The trees thinned out, the air got lighter, and she stepped back into the open space near the estate.

Ollen was right where she had left him. He hadn’t moved. His arms were crossed over his chest. His guards were behind him. Some of them had fallen asleep while sitting up, their heads resting on their knees. One hour and forty minutes had passed.

Ollen looked at her face as she walked up to him. He didn’t speak at first. He just watched her.

"Well?" he finally asked.

"I found it," Lena said. She felt cold, even though the night wasn’t that chilly.

Ollen waited for her to say more.

She looked back at the wall of gray trees one last time. Then she looked at the tired captain.

"It’s bigger than I expected," she said. "Much bigger."