The chamber stayed quiet after the Devourer swallowed the man whole like he was a chocolate bar or something.

The survivors near the wall didn’t even bother to react anymore after the screaming stopped. A few looked away. Most didn’t even do that much.

One woman sat against the dirt wall with both arms wrapped around her knees while tears slid silently down her face. Beside her, a teenager stared blankly at the slime-covered floor like he had mentally checked out several days ago and simply forgot to take his body with him.

And yet, not a single person ran, and I think that was the part kept bothering me.

The zombies around the room had shifted most of their attention toward me the second I entered the chamber. There were gaps between them now. Openings. The tunnel behind me wasn’t blocked anymore. If these people ran together, at least some of them probably would have made it back upstairs.

But not one person moved.

At that point, the zombies weren’t the things trapping them anymore.

Fear was.

The creature shuddered again, its thick folds of pale flesh rippling slowly while something moved underneath its skin near the middle of its body. The human-shaped bulge disappeared deeper inside its mass while the creature’s tiny black eyes stayed fixed on me the entire time.

"You smell alive," it grunted. The voice sounded wet and uneven, like it had learned words by swallowing people and listening from the inside.

Well.

That was an unpleasant mental image.

I crossed my arms loosely while looking it over again... the sight hadn’t improved even after a big meal like that.

"You’re uglier than I expected," I informed it honestly, and the creature’s mouth twitch as if it was trying to smile.

Then it laughed.

Or at least tried to laugh. The sound came out wrong like he was gasping for air instead of laughing and a low gurgling sound came from the back of his throat like a fountain bubbling or a brook gurgling.

"Mine," it repeated as one of it’s baby arms pointed at me. "Mine."

Yeah.

That still wasn’t happening.

One of the zombies near the wall suddenly lunged toward me like it had been given a command.

I didn’t even fully turn toward it. The baby vine shot from my wrist and punched straight through the zombie’s eye socket before the corpse got within arm’s reach. The body hit the ground heavily beside me while black blood spread slowly through the slime.

Another zombie moved.

Then another.

The creature watched carefully while its little army closed in around me from different sides of the chamber. They didn’t try to grab me or rip me apart. Once again, they were trying to herd me closer to their boss as if that was the best choice of action for everyone.

But it really wasn’t working for me.

That was when it hit me. The creature itself barely moved, whether it could or not was besides the point, the point was that it didn’t need to lift so much as a finger. The zombies fed it, protected it, they went out and collected food and brought it directly to its mouth like little worker ants serving a queen buried underground.

I didn’t know why I didn’t see it sooner. This entire section of Rongdu wasn’t a hunting ground.

It was a farm.

"Oh," I muttered quietly.

The creature’s smile widened as saliva started to pool at the corner of its mouth, dripping down its chin like it was already thinking of eating me.

"Devourer hungry."

Huh, the creature had a name. "I gathered that," I replied, raising an eyebrow. "But I’m afraid that I’ll choke you if you try to eat me."

The zombies kept moving toward me carefully, forcing me farther away from the tunnel entrance one slow step at a time while the survivors pressed themselves tighter against the far wall.

And still, no one tried to escape even now. It was deeply depressing, but their survival wasn’t on me. If they wanted to live, then they needed to move. If they didn’t care... then that was on them.

A zombie reached for my shoulder and I caught its wrist, twisted hard enough to snap the joint sideways, then drove a wooden spike that appeared in my hand directly up through its jaw and into the brain. The body collapsed immediately.

Another one grabbed for my arm.

A vine tore out of my palm and through its throat before the corpse fully touched me.

The Devourer watched all of it with those tiny black eyes while the rings of teeth deeper inside its mouth rotated slowly against each other.

"Strong," it gargled.

"I know," I replied. It was the truth. I knew just how strong I was, and these zombies didn’t stand a chance against me.

The creature shifted slightly forward through the slime.

The movement looked wrong for something that large. Its massive body rolled instead of crawled, thick flesh dragging wetly across the ground while the tiny arms flexed uselessly near the front.

The survivors flinched immediately when it moved closer.

One man actually whimpered.

The Devourer’s mouth widened slightly.

The man went silent so fast it looked painful. It was a textbook fear response conditioning. This thing really had been keeping people down here alive just long enough to break them properly.

"You eat a lot for someone with arms that tiny," I commented while another zombie stumbled toward me from the left.

The baby vine bit through its throat and the corpse dropped twitching onto the slime.

The Devourer made a low unhappy sound, not because I killed the zombies, but because I was damaging his resources. He didn’t look at his army as anything more than things that would bring him food. That was all they were to it.

"You stop food."

"Oh no," I deadpanned. "Whatever will you do without your Uber Eats delivery service?"

The creature stared at me blankly for several seconds. Apparently sarcasm wasn’t part of its evolutionary development.

Fair enough. Not everyone could appreciate the finer things in life.

The zombies moved again, faster this time. They now understood that I would not be herded toward my death. They now understood that I was a threat.

I killed them one after another while slowly circling sideways through the chamber, wooden spikes punching through skulls while vines snapped necks and tore apart limbs. None of the zombies fought intelligently. They simply kept coming because the Devourer kept sending them forward.

But these were nothing more than puppets trying to please their controller. The real danger sat in the center of the chamber watching me carefully while slime dripped slowly from its oversized mouth.

Not once did it stop eating.

That was the part that felt wrong.

Even while directing zombies.

Even while talking.

The rings of teeth inside its throat kept moving constantly.

Grinding.

Waiting.

Hungry.

"Devourer eats," it said proudly.

I looked at the half-digested shape slowly moving beneath the skin near the center of its body, and I could actually see the hand of the man pressing against his fleshy coffin as he was slowly being digested.

The last zombie between me and the tunnel collapsed with a vine through its skull, its black blood spreading slowly through the slime-covered ground while the chamber finally went still again.

And still, the survivors remained huddled against the wall.

At that point, I was pretty sure the Devourer could have politely excused itself for a bathroom break and these people still wouldn’t have tried to leave.

The creature’s tiny black eyes stayed locked on me while the rings of teeth deep inside its throat continued rotating slowly against each other.

"Devourer eats," it repeated like this was the most important part.

"Yeah," I replied while looking around the chamber again. "I noticed that whole personality trait."

The thing shuddered happily.

Then it moved.

Fast.

Far too fast for something that large.

Its massive body rolled sideways through the slime with shocking speed while the earth beneath it split open like rotten wood snapping apart. Dirt and broken concrete exploded upward as the Devourer disappeared straight into the ground.

I stopped moving immediately.

Oh.

Well that seemed significantly less fun.