Strongest Scammer: Scamming The World, One Death At A Time-Chapter 211: Coming Across A Nest

Han Yu dropped to sit on a low rock, sighing heavily. The echoes of his breath sounded too loud in the cavern.

His last bit of rations—some jerky he had crammed into a side pouch—had long since dried out into something resembling salty bark. He chewed it now anyway, more for morale than nourishment. He swallowed it down with a grimace, then reached into his pouch again.

Empty.

"Great. Starvation in a labyrinth of dead stone. Just what every great cultivator dreams of."

He had scouted for anything remotely edible—fungus, moss, even mineral veins that could hold spiritual energy—but there was nothing. Not a single patch of mold or even a hint of condensation. The walls pulsed with dying energy, the veins of what was possibly fire-elemental rock having long since exhausted whatever heat they once had. It was a tomb, not a tunnel. freēnovelkiss.com

Han Yu dragged a hand down his face. If he didn’t find a way up soon, he’d be forced to backtrack and try to locate one of the older passages—assuming they weren’t collapsed completely.

"Why couldn’t this place just have a nice Fireborn Beast or two," he grumbled. "Big flaming chicken-lizard I can stab, get some ashes, maybe roast a leg. Nope. Gotta be a cursed maze of death."

He forced himself to stand. His limbs ached from the constant climbing, squeezing, crawling. His shoulders were sore from using his glaive as a climbing tool. He had slept little, just brief hours in tucked-away corners while keeping one eye open and his glaive close.

He couldn’t afford to waste any more time. He needed to get out. Fast.

"Alright. If I were an ancient, half-collapsed escape tunnel... where would I be hiding?"

He picked the next tunnel to the left, using his intuition—and, truthfully, a coin flip—and pressed on. The oppressive silence surrounded him again, save for the whispering scrape of his footsteps.

Behind him, unseen, something stirred.

Something that had been dormant for a very long time.

Something that had just awakened.

Han Yu stumbled forward on stiff legs, his eyelids heavy with exhaustion. The last three days had drained him in every possible way—hunger, thirst, disorientation, the creeping dread of wandering endlessly through a subterranean maze where even echoes seemed hesitant to linger.

But then—he saw it.

The narrow tunnel he’d been following opened abruptly into a colossal cavern, so vast it took his breath away.

The ceiling loomed at least two hundred meters overhead, its contours faintly lit by glowing red veins of stone and glittering mineral deposits that shimmered like dying stars. Stalactites jutted down like the fangs of some sleeping beast, and the air carried a slight shimmer from residual heat.

And there—cutting a gentle path through the cavern’s center—was a stream.

Water.

Pure, glistening, glorious water.

Han Yu didn’t waste a second. He sprinted toward it, nearly tripping over himself in his haste. Dropping to his knees at the bank, he cupped the cold, clear liquid and drank with abandon. It was frigid and fresh, like it had never seen the light of day. He drank until his stomach hurt, then splashed it on his face, sighing as the chill numbed his skin.

"Thank the heavens..." he muttered, nearly laughing.

For a moment, everything was perfect.

But only for a moment.

A sharp, acrid scent hit his nose, slicing through the bliss like a dagger. He froze mid-splash. The smell was faint—but unmistakable. A mix of sulfur and something foul... like rotten eggs boiled in a pit of hell.

Han Yu stiffened, the hairs on the back of his neck rising. He slowly stood up and scanned the cavern again, this time with the wary eyes of a hunter rather than a desperate man.

He couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed it earlier.

There, half-shadowed near the far wall, was a nest.

A massive one.

It sprawled across a portion of the cavern floor, built from jagged stone fragments that had been broken, hauled, and melted into a crater-like depression. The edges of the rock were warped and glassy, as if fused together by heat intense enough to liquefy solid stone. Ash and soot lightly coated the area, mingling with patches of scorched earth.

Han Yu’s breath caught in his throat.

"No beast I know of makes a nest like that..." he muttered under his breath. "And melted rock? That’s... that’s not just heat. That’s spiritual fire level heat."

His instincts screamed at him to leave—but the rational part of him urged caution.

He closed his eyes and extended his spirit sense outward. Its range was painfully small, no more than ten meters in all directions. He swept it across the area around him... but found nothing. No presences. No movement.

Still, he didn’t trust it.

Spirit sense couldn’t detect something that was hiding too far—or too cleverly.

Quietly, step by step, Han Yu approached the nest.

Every crunch of gravel underfoot echoed like a firework in the tense silence.

He crouched low and peered over the rim.

The inside of the nest was blackened and cracked, with several large scorch marks lining the interior. Strangely, it was empty—no eggs, no shells, no bones. Just residual heat and the remnants of something long-gone... or perhaps something that had just stepped out.

Han Yu’s thoughts raced.

Was this the beast that left the claw marks earlier? The dung?

That dung hadn’t been fresh, but it hadn’t been ancient either. A few weeks at most.

This thing lives here.

And more importantly—it might be back soon.

Han Yu backed away slowly, hand drifting to his glaive.

"This is way above my pay grade," he whispered. "Please don’t let it be a magma lizard... or a flame wyrm... or a volcano Ibis... or gods forbid, a Fireborn Sovereign Serpent..."

His voice cracked with tension as he slowly retreated from the nest, gaze flicking around the cavern for signs of movement.

It was time to find a way out of this place.

Before the real tenant came home.