CHAPTER 191

Tom glanced around the cave. It was littered with the disgusting bodies of the kobolds. Their thick, dark blood covering the ground and despite the sense of revulsion they generated in him they were the most noticeable feature he spotted. The rest of it was plain and uninteresting. It was like a large round room with only the single entrance to it. Part of him had been hoping for an emergency exit that they could retreat down and defend, but the world was not that forgiving. High in the back corner was a small hole that at some point a stream had trickled through and eroded softer stone to form the larger space. That exit was too small for them to use and a tweak of Remote Earth Manipulation told him it remained mouse sized for the fifteen metres that his senses could stretch. There was nothing that could be shifted to help deal with a horde of kobolds. Their only hope was the entrance.

“Keikain? Can we seal it off?”

The earth mage glanced over in annoyance. “Sure with conjured stuff we can do anything but with proper rock.” He shook his head. “I’m not convinced that it can be narrowed significantly.”

Tom took a moment to consider that option. Conjured rock was weaker than surface material, but enough of it could create a plug. His eyes studied the surrounding corpses. The kobolds clearly mimicked a tribal structure. This group had been a ragtag team of trackers and fighters. Their weapon layout and physique split them into the two types. There was even a higher ranked warrior, which had a necklace made of various teeth. There was definitely a faux hierarchy inserted into their makeup and that was visible even in a small hunting party. The main tribe if that was the right way to describe it would have other more senior roles. One of which would almost certainly be a magical role of some description, probably a shaman, but the type didn’t matter. The wider tribe would have magic and given they functioned in the underground they would have a method of blasting through artificial barriers.

“I don’t think that will work. They’ll have counter magic.”

“No shit.” Keikain responded immediately. “I’m trying to see if there is something more permanent we can construct by shifting the walls.”

Tom studied him for a moment. Keikain was carefully examining the entrance, searching for vulnerabilities. Tom’s mana wasn’t recovered yet, but they might have one chance to boost their defences. He left the ritual circle and jogged over to where the earth mage worked. His senses immediately delved into the surrounding rock.

The implacable sturdiness of the underground met his probe. Unyielding, unshifting and self repairing. Tom shivered even if they could move this stuff it would revert to its original configuration almost instantly. Unless they found flaws to exploit.

Tom remembered the rocks that fell from the roof and walked down the tunnel, stepping over the bodies while examining the ceiling. The results were disappointing. Rather than his lucky throw having revealed fault lines all it had done was trigger a partial cave in without creating any more structural issues. The remaining ceiling was a single fused piece of stone that would be absolutely hellish to work with. Even with Tom and Keikain working together he doubted they could force a collapse.

With that avenue closed, he swept the right wall and discovered a single fault line two-thirds of the way down the tunnel. Tom made a mental note of it and kept inspecting. He completed his sweep of the other wall and the floor. There were no other options. He retreated to the first flaw he had identified to explore its potential further and was not surprised to find Keikain standing next to it.

“It’s not much.” Keikain poked the wall. “There’s some mass to work with. If we build up pressure, cut some of the rock, it will shift. But…” his forehead wrinkled at the results of the mental calculations that he was running. “At best we’ll halve the width of the tunnel. Is that worth it?”

Tom hesitated. “It’s all we’ve got.”

“But strategically. I’m not sure it’s a great option. It will reduce our line of sight. Instead of being able to track them for five metres you will only get visibility for three before they make it to the main room. They’re not going to expose themselves when they don’t have to.”

Tom shrugged. He had already done the same calculations. That reduction in reaction time was not as impactful as halving the numbers that could flood through. “It will help.” He assured Keikain. “You saw how that second group almost overwhelmed us. We need to reduce the deluge of bodies.”

Tom stepped forward to start the process, but Keikain intercepted him. “You need to be ready to fight. I’ll let you support, but you have to promise that you won’t let your mana drop below eighty percent.”

“That is very specific and arbitrary.”

“You know what I mean. Maybe the number is ninety percent…” Keikain hesitated. “Everything I’ve observed tells me that you’re a calculated risk taker and I’ll let you set your own reserves, but the number, Tom… It’s not fifty.”

“Warning noted. You can trust me. I won’t overextend.”

Keikain relaxed. “Thank you.” He then went to work.

Tom channelled his own power on the edges of the other mages powerful working. Moving a large slab of the underground was not the same as the terraforming they had done on the surface. There was no flowing rock from one point to another. Instead, they were basically convincing a large single piece of stone to voluntarily shift.

Keikain did that bit, growing the internal stresses in the rock to force it to move. Tom meanwhile cut the connections between the boulder they were attempting to shift and the rest of the surrounding stone.

His job done he retreated, and he watched Keikain take measured steps backwards. There was a deep rumble. The stone under Tom’s feet trembled and the wall where they had been working bulged out and then it lurched forward and covered almost half of the tunnel.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Close to perfect.” Keikain congratulated himself in a self-satisfied tone.

“Can you do that from the other side?” Everlyn asked.

The earth mage lowered his head and wiped his forehead a look of disappointment on his face. “It’s the underground. My powers are crippled. This was the only thing we could do.”

She looked like she wanted to dispute the fact, to argue they had to achieve the impossible. Then Everlyn breathed in deeply, took control of her emotions and glanced at Tom for confirmation.

He shook his head. As much as he desired to do more, their hands were tied by their surroundings.

“Good job.” She said with false brightness. She resumed placing the camp stones.

A minute later Jingyi and Harry returned with the ritualist waving a slightly glowing pink Crystal around. “This will tell us if we’re discovered.”

The crystal was placed in the centre of the room.

“Now what?” Michael asked.

“We wait.” Everlyn answered simply. “All of us stay in this room. The camp stones should protect us, but try to stay quiet. There is a risk they’ll find the trail of the hunting party, but with our precautions it’s unlikely. Personally, I’m going to get some sleep.”

“Sleep?” Keikain asked.

“There are two ways this plays out. The first is that the kobolds discover us and we’ll fight, but…” she shrugged. “A group of thirty almost overwhelmed us and while you narrowing the tunnel will help it probably won’t be enough. Second option is that they don’t investigate or Harry’s ritual holds. In that case, we’re resting here for six hours.”

“But once the kobolds go past we can follow them, like we’ve followed the other monsters.”

“Keikain, we’re resting.” Everlyn snapped. “Jingyi and I both need it. We’ve been doing a lot more work than you guys and we’re exhausted.”

“Agreed.” Michael stated firmly. “It’s too dangerous to push with tired scouts.”

“We can buy potions for the exhaustion. I can fund it.”

“Keikain, it’s not that simple.” Everlyn interrupted him with mounting frustration. “We’ll see what happens, but the kobolds closing in on the cauldron stompers will throw the entire ecosystem out of whack. I don’t know what that means, but it’ll get ugly. The battles might keep going outside our cave for weeks.”

The earth mage’s face paled. “Weeks?”

“Hours, days.” Everlyn clarified. “I don’t know. No one knows, but for now we’re sleeping and you can take first watch.”

With jerky, angry motions, she unpacked her bedroll and set up on the left side of the cave where the fighting earlier hadn’t reached and settled down to sleep.

Jingyi pulled his gear out in the same spot but separated by a good metre. But rather than immediately settling down he scoffed some rations. He looked a little guilty. “I know you feel we should keep pushing. But she’s right. The underground has a way of causing people to push too hard. They get tired and then make mistakes. Surviving down here is as much about forcing yourself to get the rest you need as it is about skill.” With a wave, he rolled over faced the wall and went to sleep.

Whether Jingyi could force himself to sleep like Everlyn could was a mystery. But the point they were making was clear enough.

Tom was used to existing with a headache caused by tiredness, but having the topic spoken about made it many times more oppressive. Falling asleep himself was suddenly a priority. There were no clean places for his bedroll, which weren’t next to Everlyn. With a sigh, he got up and started moving bodies to clear a sleeping area. He could pick them up easily with one hand. They must have weighed less than twenty kilograms and he shifted them and piled them up against the back wall.

The others jumped into help and all the corpses were moved in minutes. It would be nice to be able to deal with the corpses more permanently but they couldn’t bury them for obvious reasons, a funeral pyre was out because of both stealth and ventilation concerns and they didn’t own any potions that could dissolve the bodies and nor would they waste credits on such a thing. Worse case, it would be a few days of living with the bodies’ stench, which was a sacrifice they would all be happy to make to save the credits. Hopefully, that sacrifice wouldn’t be needed. If everything went well, they would be out in six hours before the bodies started smelling.

Tom set up on the opposite side to where Everlyn was sleeping.

He fell asleep quickly and was swamped with relaxing dreams of him, weaving through ranks of kobolds avoiding their vicious strikes. It was peaceful.

He transitioned. The shift to a True Dream was, like always, abrupt and jarring.

He sat on the ledge looking down upon circular eight.

Tom as always in this situation assessed the body he was in. He got an impression of a small size. At least eight eyes, because the creature was focusing on multiple points at once. A glimpse of a hand revealed furred skin and an impression of great strength. It was a long drop from where it rested to the ground below, but the mind he was in was confident he could both survive it and the monsters that were tearing everything to bits below him.

The large tome next to him had been put aside. It was there to record the migrating parties’ type and size and since the circular had broken scientifically noting numbers were pointless. More importantly, his personally funded and owned recording crystal was permanently capturing all the details of what was happening beneath him.

The signs of a break had been building for months and there were only so many locations where it might happen, so he had cashed in favours to be here. Ten days of boredom were more than he had hoped, but the chaos of the pattern breaking down was a thing of beauty.

He pulled out another of the cheap talismans and triggered and instantly his eyesight improved dramatically, allowing him to zoom in on the action and pick up on details in the far reaches of his peripherals. In the corner wedged against the wall, a single cauldron stomper still lived. It had lost two legs or else it would have tried to run and got butchered, but without locomotion it had crouched down and defended its position. Amongst all the chaos, nothing had been willing to make the concerted push to destroy it. The remnants of the other initial forces had also survived. There was a pocket of kobolds propped up by their core magic users and elites. They were far stronger than their raw numbers suggested and the bat gliders ruled the skies.

It was this unusual mix of dominant monsters that he wanted to study.

His current recording crystal was getting full, so he activated a second.

It was rare that he got a chance to witness the collision of forces and it hadn’t started like he expected. The kobold’s catching the cauldron stompers hadn’t been a surprise and nor was the ease they had defeated them. That was a twelve percent likelihood in the academy’s models, but the bat gliders coming back to prey on the suddenly available kobolds that had been a surprise.

No one predicted them and only the discredited paper by Eraatc Tonalong had even referenced that type of backtracking.

It was a fascinating discovery, and unlike Tonalong he had recorded proof.

And now that there were these small domains of resistance the flow of the circular would probably be broken for days. Each new in flood clashing with the creatures that were already entrenched… The newcomers each time would probably win against the exhausted broken remnants of the previous groups but by the time that happened the group behind them would catch up and the process would repeat endlessly.

It might even last for weeks… no that stretched the bounds of credibility, but if he was super lucky, the break would extend for a week. Historically, that was a five percent chance, but at worst he guessed he had another two days of this. Breaks that had gathered this much momentum almost never broke sooner.

It was a gold mine for his research.

The chaos would probably reign for days and he would happily record it.

Tom woke abruptly.