A period of time passed.

I wasn't sure how long it had been, but it had been more than three months.

Months of toil, pain, and abstinence.

It's a never-ending circle of trial and error.

Today, however, is the big day.

I'm closer to my goal now than I've ever been.

The odor of the liquid inside the dragon pouch is no longer repulsive to me; it now smells like victory, like the sweats I've shed over the last few months.

Today, I finally felt like I was close to accomplishing something.

I've been training and organizing a lot of things for this moment.

I moved toward a massive net suspended just above the gaping hole between the ravine's two sides, which led straight to the bottom layer.

"I believe in you all; don't let me down."

My words elicited the response of hundreds of monstrous screeches.

I wasn't conversing with anyone, but that didn't mean I was alone.

I was having a conversation with some small drakes.

There are hundreds of them, to be exact.

They were ensnared in a net made of the same material as my tendrils. Things they could easily burn with their breath but knew would lead to their death.

They will not only fall to the bottom layer if they burn the net, but even if they do not, I will kill them. To make a long story short, they were trained, and I was their master.

What was I trying to teach them?

Only one thing: fire-breathing while drowning.

Only that.

It took a while, and the process was lengthy and painful, but they ultimately got it. I even regret having once called these monsters stupid because, after spending time with them, I realized how intelligent they were.

I descended to a platform 30 meters below, where a strong odor of blood greeted me.

I completely ignored it and proceeded to a location near the platform's edge where hundreds of monster corpses varying from Wyvern's to Drake's were stacked into small hills.

Killing Wyvern, killing Drake, training Drake, and finally feeding Wyrm was my daily routine for the past three months or so.

I wasn't feeding them for fun; I was feeding them so they'd swarming the place, and I needed them to be present so that they'd taste firsthand the fireworks I was preparing for them.

So, after the wyvern hunt and Drake training, I'd toss several monster corpses onto my new friends, the wyrms.

Today I stacked more corpses for them than I've ever done before, probably fifteen or twenty times what I usually toss onto them.

I'm sure they'll be overjoyed.

I took a deep breath as I prepared to begin what I had been planning for a long time.

I started pushing the corpse stacks with my tentacle to toss them onto the bottom layer.

It was heavy, but that didn't bother me in the least.

Instead, I was overjoyed with the entire situation.

As the entire mountain was sent to the wyrm in no time, I sped upward, toward the platform above the one I was on earlier.

I sped upward, toward the platform above the one I was on earlier, as the entire mountain of corpses was quickly sent to the wyrm.

I ripped the net that was holding the small drake, causing it to fall to the bottom layer.

They all let out a pitiful screech, but I didn't care one bit.

With my heart racing like a madman, I sped upward once more, this time to a platform full of what I had been harvesting for months.

Drake and Wyvern have liquid fire breath as well as gemstones.

I had disposed of them at the edge, so all they needed was a single push to fall directly onto the wyrm.

I had done so much preparation for this, but I was still stressed.

Of course, manipulating this extremely explosive material was extremely dangerous, which is why I decided to exterminate all living beings, particularly drakes, in this area as a precaution.

Every ovoid reservoir full of what I had laboriously harvested was tossed onto the bottom layer in less than five seconds.

I covered my ears, leaned against the ground, and formed an impermeable, multi-layered shell around myself with my tendrils.

I knew it was going to explode, and it was going to be intensely audible.

With that much of that liquid and gemstones collected I can’t even fathom how destructive and powerful it would be when set ablaze, I just knew it would be powerful.

I was about to remove my appendage barrier when I heard a deafening noise.

Maybe calling it deafening would be too mild; it wasn't just deafening; from the blast, I felt my entire insides tremble from the mere sound.

“Aaaaaaaaah!” I couldn’t help but scream with fear and anxiety all over the roof.

I even actually attempted to pray only to realize that I wasn't a believer.

The temperature climbed inexorably.

"What have I done?!?"

Some platform and giant cluster of earth from above ended up crashing on the platform above the one I was in.

I hurriedly and furtherly curled into a fetal position, tightening my tentacle around me as much as possible.

The temperature went beyond what one would qualify as “humanly supportable.”

The platform I was on, as well as the one above it, which is one of the largest and toughest platforms in the middle layer, were shaking like a leaf as a result of the detonation.

It was as if the sky was falling on my head.

The sky was literally falling on my head, so to say the sky was falling on my head was an understatement.

I was supposed to cause an explosion, not wreak havoc on the planet.

There was a good distance between the bottom layer and where I was, but I could feel the ripple of the explosion all the way to my core.

The explosion event was brief, but its aftermath did feel like an eternity to me.

After what seemed like an hour or two, I emerged from the rumbling that had fallen on me, left my self-made shell, and began descending to the lower stratum.

“Blergh!” I puked upon standing.

After calming myself after some time, I began descending to the bottom layer.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

It was supposed to make a loud boom, but not something like that.

The explosion's raw destructive power had knocked out or destroyed every platform beneath the one I was on.

The place was perfuming with a strange misty and musty odor of roasted meat and blood, hot steam leaking but bearable, and even the wall was crispy and incandescent.

I eventually reached a point about ten or fifteen meters above the water level of the bottom layer.

I had not been attacked by any Water Wyrms.

Yet.

Normally, if I got this close to the bottom layer, the wyrms' water blade would have turned me into minced meat.

I dipped one of my appendages into the water and found it to be slightly hot and steamy, but still viable.

"I hope that thing survives the blast; from what I know, it should be able to withstand a blast like this, but with my bad luck, anything is possible."

I took a deep breath and jumped into the treacherous water of the lower layer.

At the time I was blissfully unaware of what I had awaken and cause with that explosion.