Eternal Hellfire

There was indeed nothing in this underground hollow.

No light, no water, no animals, no plants—only an ancient pocket of air that had been sealed away for who knew how long. It smelled like an empty tin can that had been kept shut for tens of thousands of years before suddenly being opened.

Just one small breath made his health bar drop a little.

A status effect even appeared directly on the system interface: "Poisoned."

"Cough, cough."

Li Qing coughed violently several times, his face turning pale.

He shook the mangled cockroach corpse off his fist and took two or three seconds to recover before finally coming back to his senses.

"Just as expected."

"You brainless thing followed me down here!"

Looking at the gigantic Meat Chunk that nearly filled half the hollow, Li Qing smiled.

This was the decisive moment in his battle with the Meat Chunk.

Theoretically, though, this was actually his final moment before death—the part in a work of fiction where a character was supposed to reminisce about their entire life before getting killed off.

After all, just as Giorno had worried.

There was nothing in this underground hollow, which naturally meant there was nothing to help draw its aggro.

Li Qing was the only thing that could move. The moment he tried to move or climb back toward the surface, the Meat Chunk would mercilessly devour him.

But if he stayed still, he would not only end up trapped underground with the Meat Chunk until they died; the toxic air stored in this underground hollow for tens of thousands of years, with who knew what in it, would be enough to kill him within minutes.

So.

Li Qing moved anyway.

At an unhurried pace, he walked to the wall, clung to the rock, and climbed toward the nearly vertical tunnel the Meat Chunk had just carved through its body—a passage linking the surface to the underground.

To take the shortest route back to the surface as quickly as possible, Li Qing even stayed close to the bloated Meat Chunk as he moved.

At that moment, he was only a few centimeters away from its twisted, grotesque body.

Yet the Meat Chunk ignored him.

"Hahaha."

"In the end, it really is just a brainless thing."

Li Qing slowly climbed the nearly vertical tunnel, chuckling to himself as he spoke.

"I lured you into this underground hollow, but I didn't come here to die with you."

"Although there's nothing moving in this underground hollow to help me draw your aggro, that doesn't mean there's nothing deeper underground."

As if to prove Li Qing's words.

The Meat Chunk completely ignored Li Qing as he quietly slipped away behind it. Instead, it threw itself wholeheartedly onto the ground.

It was digging, tunneling even farther down into the depths below.

"This is Mount Vesuvius, an active volcano with records of dozens of eruptions over the past two thousand years."

"The last eruption was only a few decades ago."

"Beneath the land around an active volcano like this, there are often magma chambers full of active lava, lying very close to the surface."

"That's right."

"Several dozen meters below this underground hollow is an underground lake—a lake of molten lava!"

"The enormous quantity of magma gathered underground surged back and forth through that lava lake like ocean waves—this is the bait that will draw away your attention."

Li Qing carefully controlled his pace as he slowly climbed toward the surface.

Meanwhile, the Meat Chunk headed in the exact opposite direction, continuously burrowing deeper underground.

One meter. Five meters. Ten meters. Twenty meters. Thirty meters.

The Meat Chunk finally found what it wanted.

It smashed through the ceiling of the underground magma chamber, breaking the seal that imprisoned the fire demon.

The Meat Chunk had suddenly punched such a huge hole through the magma chamber's ceiling, instantly disrupting the pressure balance.

Like an old-fashioned popcorn machine whose internal pressure had reached its limit under heat, the scorching lava that had been flowing quietly inside the magma chamber instantly found an outlet for its pressure and violently surged upward through the opening overhead.

Bang!

The underground world, silent for ten thousand years, suddenly rang with a muffled explosion.

The viscous lava, heated to over a thousand degrees, instantly swallowed the Meat Chunk and continued erupting upward through the passage it had carved.

Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle~

From the lava-covered tunnel below Li Qing came a faint sound like meat roasting.

The Meat Chunk's vitality truly was powerful.

Even now, Li Qing still did not know—

He had been running for his life before and had barely attacked it, so naturally, he had no way of knowing.

This monster's vitality had no upper limit. It could never truly be killed.

But Li Qing did know one thing.

The Meat Chunk's ability was not "invulnerability," but "hyper-speed regeneration."

In other words, its body could be damaged. It simply regenerated very quickly afterward.

Two or three bullets could hit it, and the Meat Chunk would immediately repair its damaged body.

But what if what struck it was thousands, tens of thousands of "bullets," as fierce as a raging storm and never-ending?

The endless lava underground was exactly such a "never-ending raging storm."

At that moment, Li Qing could sense it.

The Meat Chunk's utterly defenseless body was rapidly charring and withering beneath the lava's burning heat.

Yet with its terrifying vitality, fresh flesh rapidly proliferated over its body at an astonishing speed.

The old flesh was burned to charcoal and washed away by the scorching lava, while the newly grown flesh continued to wither under that endless heat.

The damage caused by the extreme temperature was immense. Nearly all the energy it absorbed was being used to repair its own body.

And so, the Meat Chunk's endless vitality and Earth's endless heat entered into a tug-of-war, one that seemed as though it would never have a winner.

"It still isn't dead?!"

Li Qing was slightly taken aback.

His original plan had been to use the lava's overwhelming damage to erase this monster completely.

But he had not expected the Meat Chunk's vitality to be so far, so very far beyond his imagination.

Still, no matter what.

The Meat Chunk was trapped at last—it was trapped within this endless sea of lava.

Its body continually proliferated and continually charred in the lava, and the end result was that it sank deeper and deeper into the limitless magma.

And the Meat Chunk itself was still delighted.

It did not notice in the slightest that its body was suffering immense, endless damage. Instead, the constantly surging lava in the magma chamber drew all of its attention.

There were flowing waves of lava everywhere, and every "wave crest" was a perfect prey that captivated the Meat Chunk.

The endlessly surging, endlessly rolling underground magma drew in the Meat Chunk, which acted entirely on instinct, luring it to swim deeper underground, toward greater heat and more lava.

"This thing can survive even in lava."

"It truly is a monster through and through!"

After witnessing the true extent of the Meat Chunk's vitality, Li Qing could not help but let out a lingering, frightened sigh.

Thinking about it carefully, he had nearly botched things just now and gotten himself killed along with Mother Earth.

Fortunately, luck was also a part of strength.

And Li Qing seemed fairly strong in that regard.

"Thankfully. Thankfully, the damage from the lava is great enough that it has to use all the energy it absorbs to repair its wounds."

"Otherwise, if I sent it into this underground magma chamber, not only would I fail to kill it, I would have helped it find 'food.'"

"So be it!"

"Since you can't die—"

Li Qing took one last look at the sea of lava below him, its "water level" rising ever higher.

"Then enjoy this eternal hellfire!"