Blacksmith: The Tempering Begins With One’s Flesh - Chapter 35

Chapter 35: Battle in the Sewers

The soft but scampering sound was magnified and made several times louder in the narrow sewers, as though it was playing right in Lin Feng’s ear.

After he calmed himself down and focused, however, he realized that the noise had mysteriously vanished.

That left him feeling somewhat frustrated.

He looked around him and examined his surroundings carefully using the rays of moonlight that came through the sewer covers. Just then, he frowned.

Taking a few more steps down the narrow sewers, Lin Feng slowly crouched down and picked up a clump of fur between his fingers. It smelled strongly of rot. He examined it carefully.

A while later, Lin Feng threw the fur onto the floor, his expression solemn,

The stench of rot on the fur was stronger than the overall smell of the sewers, and there were even pieces of what looked like flesh mixed up in it.

Lin Feng had an idea about what was going on now.

His expression shifted between disgust and helplessness, and he eventually sighed with a shrug.

“Whatever… I already took the mission, so I can’t drop it any more than I can an order of weapons…”

He tried to console himself as he strode even deeper into the sewers.

The path became gradually muddier. Lin Feng looked at the gunk that had risen higher than his ankles and sighed again.

Now he kind of understood the real reason why this sewer investigation job had no takers despite the relatively lavish rewards.

After he proceeded for another hour and forty minutes, Lin Feng narrowed his eyes and leaned on one of the sewer walls.

Once he turned around this corner, he would reach one of Grimm’s main sewage collection ponds. Lin Feng could already smell that nauseating odor before he even reached it properly.

He was almost certain that the thing he was looking for, the one making those strange noises in the sewers, was up ahead.

As expected, there was a heavy rolling noise, and something seemed to be crawling inside the sewage pond.

Lin Feng tightened the piece of cloth wrapped around his nose and mouth, finally leaping out of hiding.

The moment he stepped past the corner and toward the pond, he saw a revolting creature covered with differently-sized lumps of meat and a variety of warts.

It was a demonic beast!

A Grade-2 demonic beast!

Right now, however, Lin Feng’s expression was unnaturally solemn.

If it was just a normal Grade-2 demonic beast, he was more than strong enough to decimate it.

However, the Grade-2 beast before him now had some traits that would make his upcoming battle several times harder.

“I knew it, so it really is a Grade-2 Sludge Carrion-eater…”

The corners of Lin Feng’s mouth twitched.

He was somewhat familiar with this type of beast. After all, he had been a blacksmith in Whitewing for several decades, so he had heard his fair share of information about mankind’s worst enemy, the demonic beasts.

The Sludge Carrion-eater was one of the Grade-2 beasts that adventurers hated the most.

Although it was only about Grade-2 in terms of strength, it was as hard to fight as a Grade-3 demonic beast.

Lin Feng reacted quickly, attacking as soon he saw the Sludge Carrion-eater.

His feet never stopped moving, even as his hand gleamed with something iridescent.

Fast as lightning, he held the Grade-3 fire-type longsword he had forged on a whim before and slashed at the beast with it.

To his surprise, the Sludge Carrion-eater broke cleanly and instantly into two the moment the sharp gleam of the Grade-3 weapon touched it.

It was made of several chunks of meat to begin with, and now that it had been cut into two, the rotting mud that connected its pieces together oozed with a pitch-black goo.

Lin Feng’s face twitched and he instinctively took several steps back, retreating all the way back to the edge of the sewage pond before he could recover from the reek of the goo.

The Sludge Carrion-eater’s secretions were extremely corrosive and had a foul odor that left people disoriented.

With just a glance, Lin Feng saw that the earth wall next to him was smoldering in some places where the Sludge Carrion-eater’s secretions had splashed onto it.

“This thing really is a pain to handle…”

Lin Feng muttered to himself, frowning deeply. Suddenly, his eyes twitched.

The Sludge Carrion-eater’s two halves were already starting to come back together.

The slash wound inflicted by Lin Feng’s fire-type Grade-3 longsword was already beginning to heal at a visible rate.

“This is going to be troublesome…”

Lin Feng laughed wryly to himself and swung his sword. For now, he just could not think of a way to destroy the Sludge Carrion-eater, since it regenerated so rapidly but dealt considerable damage at the same time.

However, while Lin Feng could not do anything to the Sludge Carrion-eater right now, the Grade-2 beast was starting to pay Lin Feng real attention.

Lin Feng had not hurt it very seriously, but the fire element emanated by the longsword he was holding made the Sludge Carrion-eater quite uncomfortable. It was used to living in the dark and damp underground, after all.

As soon as the two halves of its body came together, it immediately stretched out its mandibles and sprayed a foul-smelling black liquid at Lin Feng.

Lin Feng would not let the liquid hit him, of course. Applying some force in his calves, he burst forth across the sewage pond, which was covered in mud and vile liquid. The next second, his body had become nothing more than afterimages in the air, thanks to the power of his Grade-3 muscles.

Since he could move so quickly, he was once more in front of the Sludge Carrion-eater in the blink of an eye.

He held his breath and his focus, using his muscles to swing his sword more than a dozen times in quick succession.

The crimson blade slashed in a cross formation and at the speed of lightning. The Sludge Carrion-eater with its weak defenses could not put up any inkling of a fight before it was reduced to chunks of meat on the ground amidst Lin Feng’s barrage of attacks.

However, Lin Feng’s brow was still knitted in a frown. Holding his sword, he took a step back to avoid the sour-smelling black liquid all over the floor.

The next moment, the meat chunks began to wriggle madly.

“What, it’s still not dead?”

Lin Feng was properly astonished this time.

Although he had heard on the grapevine that the Sludge Carrion-eater was as troublesome as a Grade-3 beast to fight, he had not gotten into any further details after that.

Right now, this Grade-2 monster had clearly been reduced to chunks of meat after his sudden attack, but at this rate, the pieces would probably gather back together within half a minute.

“No, this can’t be right… This thing has to have a weakness somewhere…

“If physical attacks don’t work, could it be that only elemental attacks can deal any lasting damage to it?”

Something clicked in Lin Feng’s mind and he raised his sword once more.