The time it took them to get there was about 3 hours, it was very far away from their home, and deep into the mountains, Li came to a halt in front of a large crack in the mountain leading into the darkness. I could not feel the strong energy coming from this crack further away, only once stood right in front of it did I feel it wash over me.
"Weird.. that you can't feel it at all from further away... it's like it just stops being noticeable unless you are right in front of it..." I turned to Li who gave me a light shrug at that. "No clue, I kinda fell down here by pure accident and found it while I was running around above.
Fair enough, still it was curious. Maybe there was some weird magic going on here. But that was not something either I or her cared for as we stepped closer to the entrance, luckily both I and Li had really good dark vision, while neither of us could see colors we could at least make out most of the things around us with ease.
After a few steps into the crack, it turned into a clearly manufactured tunnel, not by human hands however, it was to ...perfect for that. At least that is what I thought the rock was perfectly carved out making a cylinder-like tunnel with an even bottom. After about 5 minutes of travel, we entered a large cavern, and if I say large I mean it.
It was so wide I could not see the other side at all, and there were many many other tunnels leading further into the mountains or to other exits. The Cave was not empty either. There were Rockmen, apparently called golems walking around, eating what seemed to be stone. They were made out of what seemed to be stone as well, each at least 4 feet tall with a rough humanoid shape.
The other more numerous cave dwellers were bugs. Well, they looked like bugs, or rather large ants, each about the size of a large dog, slaving away and working on a large central structure in the cave made out of what seemed to be some flaky organic material that they spat up. Gross.
Still looking at them made me excited, I could feel their cores, the energy saved in them already, each of these things was either as strong as me, or stronger! The Golems seemed even more powerful! And I could tell already that this was not even the main part..for there were bugs coming from an entrance further back that were far stronger, seemingly leading deeper into the hive.
Aside from the walking ants there were other creatures too, worm-like creatures wiggling around seemingly doing nothing, large wasp-like creatures flying in the air patrolling around, some of them would get involved in fighting some of the seemingly peaceful golems whenever they got too close to the hive. And then there were large beetle-like creatures that brought food from other tunnels, mostly dead animals but shockingly enough.. also humans and other humanoid beings, like Lizard-Men.
Exciting!
To be honest both me and Li wanted to just jump some bugs right away, but had enough sense to stop ourselves. "Jumping in will just get us swarmed.. we should shimmy around the outskirts and see if we can find any stragglers that ain't golems.." She said looking towards the towering 6ft tall rock creatures, they looked massive and powerful.
A quiet nod came from me, I did not feel particularly inclined to challenge the giant rocks myself, while I was weirdly eager to fight I wasn't that eager to get squished, and neither Li who had shrunk down to about my shoulder height at this point nor me thought we could take the Golems.
Honestly, it was quite weird like an underlying feeling. The same I had gotten from that old man Ironback and that frosty and angry girl back in the city. I couldn't understand why I could notice it like this, but it had probably something to do with cultivating, or maybe just instincts, who knew?
"Let's try to find one of them that is further away from the rest." I was keen on testing a few things, and there was only so much I could do sparring with my friends. So and Li were stalking around quietly, for a good half an hour around the outskirts of the large cavern. These bugs moved very much like clockwork, there was very little randomness or staying aimlessly going on. Which made it hard to find anything that we felt confident assaulting.
Opon coming closer we could also see weirdly looking Humanoid bugs, covered in thick chitin, they had a pair of legs and 2 pairs of scythe-like arms, they were the ones that would combat the Golems whenever the two faction's paths crossed. While they weren't as powerful and it would take many of them to just fight off one of the Golems, each of them was quick and very dangerous... for us.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Maybe we had bitten off a bit to much?
"Kou.. look over there, that's one of the worker bugs... alone over there!" Li whispered as I was staring at the combat in the distance, following her gaze I quickly found the bug. It had somehow got cut off from the other workers and was alone in a little pit in the ground, currently trying to climb out. Perfect. We approached, and there was some heavy combat somewhat nearby between guardbugs and golems, probably the reason this bug was displaced, but they were busy with each other.
"Okay... I'll keep it down and you finish it off, alright?" I turned to Li who nodded slowly, at this moment she looked really cool, lowered to the ground, her eyes focused her entire massive body was tense and she really looked like a massive tiger, I sometimes forgot that Li was indeed a beast. She was far more knowledgeable about hunting and fighting than I was.
The moment we pounced was the moment the bug spotted us, it probably had good senses or something so our surprise attack was off by a bit. The first thing the creature did was spit a viscus green mass at us, but both Li and I managed to dodge, Li pounced onto the creature's back, clawing at the carapace, while I kept my distance for now, using my spear's length to stab at it's legs, precisely at the space between the segments where it seemed softest.
The creature clearly had just as little combat experience as me, it started to shake and bounce around spitting it's weird green stuff around, which to be fair to it was melting Stone upon contact and made me very careful not to touch it at all. But I also realized at the same time as Li that neither of our attacks actually did anything to it.1
So while the creature was clumsy and slow, it was also way too tough to actually do any damage to it, at least with normal physical attacks. Exchanging a glance with Li we both gave a small nod and jumped back, giving the beast some room. While fire was leaking out of Li's mouth I was concentrating on my own energy, slowly forming it around me as the temperature dropped. Kicking the ground and sending a streak of ice towards the creature, once it was hit massive 7ft tall ice spikes shot out of the ground, while they did minimal damage they did hold the beast in place for Li to jump back onto it's back and breath fire directly towards its head.
That did do damage, we could hear the beast screech in pain. But neither of us cared. I turned and half-circled the beast while making sure to reinforce the ice spikes that were slowly shattering against the beast's shaking, forcing it to be stational and allowing Li to continue breathing. Underneath my feet, there was a thin layer of ice allowing me to slide forward at greater speeds than just running. With the gathered speed aiding me I rammed my spear into its rear end while reinforcing it's tip with my ice energy, making the beast screech one last time.
It had perished, leaving both of me and Li breathing heavily, but excited. My head was swimming. It's been a while since I had any actual combat, and this time it was on my terms, and I could say that I enjoyed it. And Li seemed to be the same, she bounced off the beast and jumped up and down twice before clawing at the beast again, letting some energy out before looking back to me.
"Good Job!" We said at the same time before staring back at the beast.
Now for the ugly part. We both stepped closer, the creature was still twitching but it was very clearly dead. "We have to open it up to get it's core.." Said Li with some trepidation, clearly unsure of how to do that, given how hard the creature's shell was. "Well, nothing to it we gotta rip it open..." I looked a bit miffed but pulled up my sleeves nonetheless, this wasn't quite as thrilling as the combat had been.
About 10 Minutes later we had cracked it and Li had fished out its core, it was a hand-sized little orb with musky brown floating energy inside of it. "Do we like... split it in half or what?" My dumb ass asked making Li giggle a little bit and shaking her head while looking at it. "We probably can? But I think we should just keep count and go one at a time and split them evenly, for now, you just take the first one, you used way more energy than me with all that ice." That was true, while Li had used her fire breath quite a bit, it was a far less strenuous activity than summoning many spikes of hardened ice to hold the thing in place.
So while I certainly did not do the most damage here, Li wasn't full of herself for getting the kill for the most part, walking over I stretched out my hand, and a Pawfive followed. Then while Li went up and played scout, I sat down on some icy rock nearby and closed my eyes. I could feel the energy inside the Orb right away, the beast had 3 little beads worth of energy, and most of the energy here was earth-aspected and would not be too much help to me either way. But it would definitely be helpful to Mimi who apparently was very good at that.
So instead of crushing the Orb and absorbing all the energy myself I simply absorbed some of its energy, weakening the orb only a bit while recovering most of the energy I had spent. It was weird to be honest, thinking how the beast had so much energy but did not actually use any of it... Unlike Li and Lu who used it all the time...Maybe it's kind simply didn't work the way others did.
"Werid."
Once I had recovered enough I got back up joining Li above. Nothing had really happened and none of the other bugs had strayed near the spot again. Time to find more secluded bugs! I needed to make sure Li got an Orb too after all.. it was just fair.