Seven or eight kilometers southwest of the Old Factory District lay a swamp where acid and venom pooled.
During the Monster War, this had once been one of the most fiercely contested battlefields.
The black swamp surface gleamed with a sinister purple light, bubbles constantly rising. Whenever one burst, bluish-green Poisonous Fog spread through the air.
Not a blade of grass grew around the swamp, yet bizarre fungal filaments flourished there, swaying in the wind like the tentacles of demons.
The Crimson Dragon Army had cleared this swamp many times.
The military had dropped vast quantities of Incendiary Bombs, trying to burn the swamp clean.
However, tens of thousands of monster carcasses lay buried in its depths, their decay and fermentation forming humus.
Even if the surface acid, Poisonous Fog, and fungal filaments were all burned away, as long as this humus was not dug out, once the rainy season arrived and large amounts of water gathered in the lowlands, a new swamp could form within twenty-four hours.
This area was not one of Dragon City's main directions of development.
As time passed, the military simply let it be, setting up an isolation zone in the distance as long as the poisonous swamp did not spread.
At this moment, within the swamp, where theoretically no life could survive, bubbles began rising with increasing frequency.
Hundreds of bubbles gathered together, turning into rings of ripples that spread without end.
Then, at the center of the ripples, the water surface bulged upward, like an enormous tumor swelling from the depths of the swamp.
With a pop, the tumor burst. As sticky, glittering acid, venom, and sludge slowly flowed down its body, the tumor became a humanoid figure like a demon.
The black humanoid staggered ashore, stripping away the oxygen tank on his