My exhaustion was as forgotten as the Ruskel’s limping gait where we flew down quaking tunnels, an angered behemoth chasing at our heels. It wasn’t as quick as us, but that would only matter until we stumbled upon another dead end.

I had already emptied the rest of my magazine into the hulking monstrosity, but those armored bits on its face wouldn’t budge. All the thunder cracks achieved was spread the commotion deeper inside the network of tunnels.

With each second that passed, more skittering legs and chittering voices sprung to life down dark turns and twisting paths.

The monstrous insect hadn’t come alone.

“We need to find a narrower passage!” I yelled between ragged breaths, the cat-sized beetle I’d just punted into the wall having not been smushed quite the way I’d hoped.

Like a flipped turtle, it just wiggled a bit before getting back to its legs. There were countless more of them swarming about in the dark, coming our way.

They had emerged with that first ferocious roar that rattled these tunnels — a roar that was steadily getting closer, tearing up stone walls and shaking loose heavy rubble wherever it went.

“We need to find someplace where it can’t follow us!”

Mindlessly running ahead wouldn’t get us far, but Arus didn’t listen. The screaming Ruskel just kept stumbling ahead, wading through the swarm of insects in a panic even as they kept snapping after his ankles.

The worst part was, his armor protected him in ways I was not, and the further he pushed ahead, the darker my surroundings grew.

“Wait!” I yelled, but his own screams were too loud to overpower.

May that moron rot in the Void!

I needed to keep up with him, but I could barely see where I was setting my feet. The floor beneath me was swarming, and before I knew it, a pair of pincers had dug deep into my calf. With a pained grunt, I managed to smash it by falling upon it with my knee, crushing it with my weight. But the damage was already done.

Another staggered step, and my shredded leg gave way beneath me. I crashed to the ground just as Arus rounded the corner up ahead, leaving me in complete darkness a second later. All I could hear was the swarm around me, crawling and skittering — snapping after me with spiteful intensity.

The first few I met with my knife, stabbing and twisting as warm gore splashed over my hands. A fourth one bit my underarm, and then a fifth dug deep into my side.

With the Ruskel gone, I was a blind man wailing in the dark. I should’ve been, at least — fighting intangible shadows I couldn’t see. But that creature, I sensed approaching.

It was a subtle shift in my surroundings, and I snapped around just in time to see the armored behemoth come charging my way. I’d barely shifted the grip of my knife as it tore into me with a deafening roar.

The air was knocked from my lungs as its sheer momentum carried me down the tunnel, mandibles clenched like a vise around my chest. My ribs had cracked from the impact alone, and now, the jagged growths were straight griding through my shirt and skin.

Warm blood clung to my skin, I coughed, but even as my head had nearly snapped from the whiplash, my knife still found one of those glowing, mindless eyes that stared right through me.

Three times I was forced to jab my blade into that shallow socket before something within gave way, allowing me to bury the knife deep inside the behemoth’s skull.

Brain matter splattered forth, shortly followed by a trilling shriek that cut through my ears. An instant later, those mandibles had set me loose, leaving me to tumble straight into an unyielding wall of stone.

Flashes of light flashed before my eyes as I staggered to my feet – dancing stars and hazy images. It was a battle just keeping my balance as I saw the monstrous creature thrash back and forth before me.

Even in complete darkness, there was something there that allowed my eyes to make it out. A presence denser than the absence of light, pushing against my senses.

Wheezing for breath, I didn’t pause to ponder the matter. I just let the empty magazine of my gun slide out, before feeding my last bullets inside.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

All three of them, the first of which had just been chambered as the wounded monster realized my blade wouldn’t be so easily dislodged from its eye socket. All it could do was turn its rage towards me.

A massive head that found me where I weakly stood, leaving a single, unblinking eye to burn into my soul.

I raised my gun towards it, only for its mouth to flare open in another deafening roar that echoed across my surroundings. It caused me to hesitate, but not in fear.

Yeah, that’s an easier target, all right…

I didn’t even try to dodge as the hulking monstrosity charged straight towards me for a second time. Its mandibles slammed shut around me, breaking another few ribs in the process and shredding my flesh. Even so, I just grit my teeth as I shoved the gun deep into its open maw.

“So, do you have any armor in here as well, or no?” I asked as I fired away straight into its gullet.

𐫰 𐫰 𐫰

I lay in darkness, a haze of pain and exhaustion crushing down upon my mind. Those skittering things were getting closer, accompanied by eager pinches and snaps of creatures I couldn’t see.

I wouldn’t have been able to fight them even if I did.

One of the great downsides of felling hulking monstrosities at point blank range is that, well, you can’t really control where they fall.

The massive insect had toppled right over me, leaving me smushed there against the floor, right arm trapped inside its maw, and left hand weakly scraping for any loose rocks nearby. My intent was to crush as many as I could of those first insects that dared get too close.

I didn’t have any hopes of holding out for long, but I didn’t want to embrace death with open arms either.

It was there, with my bloodied fingers weakly scraping across unyielding rocks, strained breaths rasping in my ears, and a jackhammer-like ache slamming into my skull, that I found my last way out.

Much as I hated the feeling of being strung along, I didn’t fancy the thought of death either.

“Fuck it,” I grunted as I flexed my right wrist, leaving the harvesting needle to shoot out deep inside of the heavy insect. Let’s see where this path will take me…

That was the last thought that passed through my head before that jackhammering ache turned into a mind-erasing pain, deleting everything else from existence.

Something deep within me, stirring.

Genome Registered:

Insectile Evolution B3-99XF

Origin B%”@k!#

Error…

Error…

…

Options Available:

Harvest Genome

Extract EXP

Integr&t3…

…

…

WARNING!

WARNING!

C0n7ing3N││ Awak3ô░qÇ…

𐫰 𐫰 𐫰

Arus did hear the human’s yell behind him, but there was simply no time to respond. The guard-man had longer legs than he did, and he was nimbler and faster. He would keep up.

All Arus needed to do was find a way out of there as he kept charging down those tunnels, barreling through the swarm of skittering nightmares. The human would take care of the rest.

Or so Arus had convinced himself, at least, until he tripped over a stone protrusion in his haste, smashed his nose into the floor, and began yelling, “Help! Help!” at the top of his lungs.

All he found as he covered the back of his head with shaky hands, however, was some fat bug slowly crawling onto his back, and there was no one there to brush it off.

Another quivering, “H-help?” and Arus began to realize how quiet his surroundings had become. Most of the skittering from earlier had faded away into the distance, and the faint clicking upon his back didn’t sound all that threatening. Not threatening at all, in fact…

Rolling over onto his back, Arus found that the insect that had tried to eat him was no larger than his palm. An ambitious pygmy that now found its swift end beneath the Ruskel’s clenched fist.

It barely had the time to let out a terrified shriek before it was smushed against the floor.

“By my father’s rocks, how embarrassing…” Arus muttered as he brushed himself off, painstakingly getting to his feet. At least there was no one to see him. No one at all. “Human boy…?”

Arus was all alone in that tunnel. All alone within that dark underground where murderous monsters lay in wait.

Before the Ruskel could even begin to consider retracing his steps, however, a terrifying roar had echoed up the path he’d just fled down.

The sound alone caused the Ruskel to stagger back, all to trip on that same protrusion once more. N-no helping it. Arus though as he fell flat on his ass. The human is dead, leaving me here, all alone with Ruskel hungry insects…

The realization had only just begun to set in as the cracking echoes of several gunshots went off down that tunnel, leaving a faint hope to ignite inside of the Ruskel once more.

Another moment of silence, and just as Arus had started to build up enough courage to go check on his guard, it happened.

Exactly what it was, however, the Ruskel couldn’t explain.

As most of his kin would, Arus had been blowing up sheds and mole hills since he was a toddler. In fact, he fancied himself as being quite apt at the noble art of blowing things up. That shockwave, however, cutting straight through those tunnels was like nothing he’d ever experienced before.

While it didn’t really affect his body, it brushed against something deep inside him, nearly annihilating from within.

It wasn’t pain as much as an attempted erasure of his existence. Blood began gushing from his nose, and before he knew it, Arus lay face down upon the rock, twitching as his shrieking mind struggled to stay intact.

Something very bad had just happened. Even a man who’d dedicated his life to blowing things to smithereens could tell.

Something even worse than damp wicks and miss-weighed powders. Something that could end them all.