CHAPTER 139
She slid down the thin fissure, bracing her back and using her legs on the opposite wall to moderate her speed. Tom copied the technique glad that his armour protected his skin from the rough rock.
Once he reached the bottom, his low light vision let him see the crack leading into solid rock. Technically, it was between multiple boulders, but the effect was the same. It screamed here is a portal to the underground, and the gap was far tighter than the one above.
“You’ll fit.” Everlyn assured him. She glanced pointedly at the spinning rocks. “They should be fine, too. Just push quickly through the tight spots.”
“Enemies?”
Everlyn shrugged. “There shouldn’t be but…”
“It’s Existentia.”
She flashed him a teasing smile. “And you don’t need to worry because I’ll be taking point.”
Before he could argue with her, the bow appeared in her hands and she disappeared through the gap. Tom turned sideways and slid in after her. He was glad he was not at his physical peak. His twenty-five-year-old body might have struggled to fit in here. It was a twisty path that went down and up and often forward. He remembered her warning to go quickly, so he pushed through in a manner that if Everlyn wasn’t ahead of him would have been reckless.
The small crack he was following opened up into a far wider area. Mentally, he whistled quietly in appreciation. In a moment, everything changed. How she had known to follow this particular fault line out of the thousands that were out there was a mystery.
“We’re no longer on the surface. This is the underground,” he whispered through party chat.
Everlyn had already teased that fact and he had believed her, but there was a difference in confirming with your own eyes.
“This is an entry to the underground.” He repeated.
“Maybe.” She answered back out loud not bothering to use party chat. Her sound mastery meant this close there was no need.
The actual space he was in was not that large, but the way forward appeared grand and foreboding, a giant’s playground. It looked like a series of giant steps descending into the ground. Each one was two metres long and high with the roof following the steps down with a smooth angled surface that at the closest only reached to within three metres of the steps. “You can imagine that at one point this was a perfect staircase and then the rock grew over time, removing the hard edges.”
Everlyn snorted. “Only if you squint really hard. I see a tunnel carved by knocking boulders out. Yeah, there are ledges and drops, but they’re common enough. Maybe not so many in a row, but it’s kind of plausible.”
“Created by nature, animal, sapient?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said simply. “If something made this, then it is long since gone.”
Tom nodded. Everlyn was right and when he looked at the steps more closely, it looked like it had been formed over millions of years and had never been subjected to tools. Even the step he stood on was actually created by the intersection of three boulders. “Do you think it was some type of tunnelling worm?”
“Maybe.” She had knelt down to touch the rock. “But for us, it doesn’t matter. We deal with what we find and it’s not like there are firm answers in Existentia. The GODs do what they want. They might have just wished this to be here, or borrowed it from one of the millions of universes they have access to. And if they did that they probably took the fossil record from that other universe with them. There is zero point thinking about.” Her head cocked sideways for a moment and a finger went to her lip and her bow appeared in her hand.
Instantly Tom manifested his spear, and he stepped forward next to her to protect her from any attacks.
Everlyn relaxed. “False alarm. There’s a ferret family below.”
“How many?”
“Small family unit and around nine or ten steps below us.”
Tom lowered his weapon but kept it out of storage. A ferret family, he thought slightly dismissively. That was not a genuine threat. Tom glanced over at the step. She said they were nine steps below and he could see barely two down. Her senses were impressive, but he already knew that. “I’ll take the lead as we descend?”
“Yep, and I’ll support you with my archery.”
Tom’s mind shifted to his battle approach. Each step was a potential ambush point. At least he treated it as such and tried not to rely on Everlyn’s presence next to him to spot anything. He would lean over and confirm it was empty, and then let himself slide down the side of the rock. A school of thought nagged at him, saying he should purchase extra levels or a whole host of skills like Acrobatics, but such purchases wouldn’t help with what was happening. It always took time to acclimatise to changes in attributes or a new physical Skill and when you could get attacked at any moment, it was not the time to do it. Plus, he was still reserving energy to upgrade his healing skills to protect Healing Tranquillity from getting ruined by an evolution.
The steps were just large enough to make them nontrivial. He had to focus on the landing each time he dropped the last metre. Bend the knees with each landing to absorb the energy of the fall and all the while he kept the spear out and in a ready position. While Harnessed Meteorite with three rocks still rotating around theoretically provided a lot of protection, he did not want to take it for granted.
He continued to descend.
Everlyn’s hand touched his shoulder and when he looked at her, she held up three fingers.
Tom looked down. There was a sharp angle on the descent here. It was like he was on a spiral staircase, but worse. The floor of the steps three down was probably right underneath where they stood. It was a family of ferrets, and he was defended with the meteorite skill. He was confident that he could take on six or seven solo, and if it was more than that she would have warned him.
He jumped down.
The sounds of his landing were too loud to his ears just like every other time with the leap taking him out of the range of Everlyn’s sound cancelling ability.
Spear ready he faced the next ledge with his ears straining but hearing nothing.
With exaggerated slowness, he moved forward with small steps to preserve his ability to react at the slightest provocation. While his landing had not been clumsy, it had been loud in the oppressive silence of this section of the underground.
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Tom glided ahead. Thankful that there were no sticky rocks from the surface causing issues down here. The stone was clean, and he didn’t need to watch his footing as much as was required above ground. Here everything was old and worn down slightly while on the surface everything was all new, which meant more sharp edges, gaps and general hazards for his feet. Cautiously, he poked the tip of his spear and then his head over the edge of the next step.
He was ready for an ambush.
At any moment, something was going to attack. It was almost unnatural to travel this far in the underground without being challenged, but possibly the ferrets, fellow invaders from the surface had cleared the immediate area.
Nothing pinged as dangerous.
This time he did not immediately jump down instead he probed the shadows below. A dark area from a depression in the rocks, fungus, a stain of some description or darker rock, and another fungus. There was nothing there that was a problem but his battle instincts were still on full alert.
Everlyn slid into position next to him. Her bow was also out, ready to eliminate anything that moved below.
He was not the only one unnerved by the underground emptiness.
“It’s clear.” She whispered to him through the party chat. His physical ears heard nothing, despite how close she was. With her trait, the party communication might as well have been a hundred percent telepathic, as opposed to only, mostly.
Tom examined his surroundings one last time. They were underground, but his eyes worked as if it was daylight. Everywhere was visible because of the slight fluorescent fungus lines that cris-crossed the roof. If he lacked his spell, it might have been full darkness apart from those bands of light, but he had the tools, and they lit the place up so much that it was like the sun was shining above him.
Checks completed he jumped down. This time, he did not bother to hide his approach. His early attempts had been too noisy and this close to the ferrets they would have heard him even if he attempted to stay silent. Alerted was alerted. He might as well be loud and scare the crap through them and make them wonder how something as clumsy as him had got so near without them realising sooner.
The moment his feet were on the rock his spear poked forward and he took two quick steps away from the wall as he wanted to preserve the ability to retreat if he got attacked.
“Loud.” Everly said with amusement also not bothering with party chat now that he had as good as screamed to anything listening that they were coming.
“Shut up.” He joked back.
She laughed apparently not affected anywhere near as much as he was by the tension of the situation.
All of his focus was on the step lip. He was expecting the ferrets to respond and if they did, then he was prepared to explode into violence.
Seconds ticked by.
Nothing.
They were below him. One step. When he poked his head over the edge, they would attack him.
Everly dropped next to him.
This time when he moved he put everything into being silent. He padded across the stone, wishing as he did so that he wasn’t wearing his boots. They made this more challenging than it needed to be.
Tom approached the step from the left side and looked down.
He froze.
Everlyn had not being lying. He could see the ferrets and her description of a family was accurate. Two adults, four juveniles and at least one baby that was no larger than his foot. The entire family was huddled in a dense group below them, so they rested in the natural space formed by the wall and the two sides of the step. If he had approached from the right instead of the left, he would have been standing directly over them.
Instinctively, he moved his position by squaring his shoulders and pointing the spear so it was between him and them.
Everlyn noted his stance and shifted hers to cover an attack from the same direction. Tom took a step forward to let her move in behind him.
She assessed the situation.
“Firing on three.” the words were hushed even on party chat. She completed the count down.
Crack.
There was a flash of light and the ferret that had been in position to leap up at him jerked backwards as an arrow hit the backbone. It tried to lunge forward, but its legs weren’t working.
Crack.
A juvenile mid jump got torn out of the air and pinned to the ground.
Another adolescent leapt.
Power Strike infused his spear, and he thrust forward.
Crack.
Tom missed where that arrow went, as he was already withdrawing his spear to fend off the leap of the second adult. His probing spear tip and one of his defensive meteorites forced it to spring back down just as it was cresting the edge of the step they were on.
Crack.
Tom moved ready to repel any other.
Crack.
That arrow took out the second adult. Everlyn hit the bullseye, taking advantage of the puncture wound his spear had left on the neck. As a result, it was a mortal blow straight through the brain.
Crack, crack.
Arrows rained down and finished the remaining enemies.
Tom did not relax at all.
“Five minutes,” Everlyn said quietly. “We will hold here for that long in case anything stronger responds.”
Tom agreed with the reasoning, though to his mind it was a toss-up of whether to stay here or to retreat up a few steps. If he was by himself, he would have left, but Everlyn, with her scouting skills must have felt confident staying.
They kept watch.
A single maggot like monster appeared.
Crack.
The arrow that hit it had a yellow glow to it and when it sunk into the enemy creature, the flesh bubbled and the maggot barely thrashed before it died.
“It was hunting the ferrets.” Everlyn told him. “It was why they were so clumped.”
They waited a further two minutes.
“We’re clear, for now.” Everlyn said finally. “When we go down,” she nodded at the dead ferrets. “Try not to get any blood on you.”
Tom smiled. “I know that.”
Then he frowned as she effortlessly leapt off the top of the ledge and landed on one foot close to the next step, and then bounded over the dead ferret to disappear over the next edge.
That was…
Tom examined his options, and his frown deepened. While their battle had been brief, there had been five very active enemies on a platform that was only slightly larger than two metres by two metres and blood had sprayed everywhere.
Duplicating Everlyn’s feat was out of the question if he tried he would slip and end up face planting into the furthest ferret, which would sort of negate the attempt to keep blood off him..
Unfortunately, there weren’t any spots large enough for him to land in.
“Are you coming?” Everlyn asked through their link in amusement.
He would have to keep blood to do this his way.
Tom jumped down like he normally did. Lightning feet activated, and he landed amongst the sizzling of blood. Then he stepped quickly to the spot that Everlyn had been in and with lightning feet feeding into his actions he leapt.
The landing on the other side was less elegant than he would have liked, but with his enhanced physical stats something that he could easily manage.
Safely away from sources of fresh blood, Tom made a point of checking his boots. He beamed.
“Cheating.” she muttered as the active skill had burnt away all the blood.
They continued on and six steps later they exited into a narrow cave. Tom did the mathematics and worked out that they were almost forty metres underground, but this was Existentia for all intents and purposes. They were in a different world from what was above ground.
“Natural dungeon or more, what do you think?” Tom asked finally.
“It feels natural.” She pointed at the cave walls. “We’re not in ruins, and there are no artificial sources of light. Also.” She sniffed exaggeratedly. “The air’s not fresh.”
“Well, hopefully it’s not occupied.”
She grinned at him. “Are you scared of a few cave monsters?”
“Am I scared of running into things well above my rank. Absolutely.”
She nodded seriously at that. “I can’t sense any life.”
“Undead.”
“Can’t smell them.” She stuck out her tongue at him. “My guess is shadow or earth element types.”
There was no real discussion about it being empty. Tom had explored thousands of underground system and the number that had been uninhabited added up to exactly none and the ferrets didn’t count; they had been ring ins from the ecosystem above.
Mentally, he checked his preparation against the two likely enemies. Shadow elementals would be countered by lightning spears. It was not a perfect counter, but it was a solid one. Power strike was also useful against them, though his earth magic would be useless.
Earth elementals, while hardly vulnerable to physical force could at least be taken out with it and that is what his throw rock abilities were good at delivering. Unless they were significantly higher rank, he should be able to outpace their regeneration with his damage output.
“We doing this?” he asked.
She smiled. “I am. You wait here.”
“What?”
Her helmet disappeared, and she gave him a quick kiss. “Yep, I’m going. I’m the scout. You’re the cute muscle.”
He rolled his eyes.