While it had been rather uncomfortable at the start, to be restrained against another living being, despite the obvious lack of any hostile intent, the wolf quickly grew to appreciate it. It reminded it of hazy, barely comprehensible memories of doing the same thing with kin, so distorted and distant from what it knew, that it was half certain they were just some vague concoction of its dreams which the wolf fooled itself into thinking were memories.
Which was quite likely.
Regardless, the urgent need to move remained at the forefront of its mind, because it had finally found what it had been looking for this entire time.
An ending to this absurdly long pipe, in the form of some strangely large metal fan, cowering behind a rusted grate. That was the whole reason it had gone so far to check, which it suspected was the cause of the human’s delirious panic.
Eventually, her breaths evened out and her hold grew loose, so the wolf squirmed and wiggled off from its awkward position atop her sternum to start dragging her again.
They had about five hundred feet to go, still, which would take… a lot of time. Maybe a day, actually.
Where were the damn rodents when entertainment was needed…
With a heavy exhale akin to the human’s sighs, it bit into her garments and began pulling.
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It unhooked its canines from the human’s coverings and turned around, stomping one foot with its antennae brushing against the dusty, wet confines of the pipe. The complete and utter lack of any light down here really made it all the more appreciative of [Tremor Sense] and its antennae.
Unfortunately, it inhaled through its nose without thinking, leading to a minute long bout of uncontrollable sneezing, the human’s happy, barking yips oddly successful at lifting its mood, even if it was pretty sure she was having fun at its expense.
With a dry exhale from its nose, it moved forward a few feet, focusing on the idle machine a couple dozen feet from where it left the human.
It could just cut through the outer grate with its teeth, but frankly, that would both be extremely annoying, simply due to how much wet dust was clinging to the iron, and time consuming.
Maybe it was being too thoughtless, but it had been stuck dragging the human for… it had no idea by now. It was extremely, unimaginably bored, extremely irritated, and extremely impatient, feeling the beginnings of delirium starting to slowly settle. The tension and unease of constantly skulking through an endless pipe had long since worn out, especially after it straightened. It just wanted out, now.
So it lowered into a crouch, activated [Bloodrush], and charged at the grate.
It had enough room to turn so that its shoulder took the impact, so it did just that. The thick, criss-crossing metal wires bent and even broke apart at some points, but held. It hastily stepped back, and repeated the process, a deafening, short screech rushing through the tunnel and the giant room beyond the machine as the grate tilted back, only a couple fragile nails holding it in place as dust and rust powder flew everywhere, choking the air.
Even if it got through the grate, there was still a fan behind it, and then another grate.
Remembering the human’s Skill, it backtracked to her, and put its hind leg on her shoulder, lightly pushing her with a chuff, insistently poking her arm. After a couple seconds, she understood, and gave it the speed boost by tapping its thigh.
Its perception of the giant room beyond became clearer, sharper and with a hundred more details than it needed to know. It was a gigantic rectangle filled with all manner of trash and containers, its height cut into two equal parts by a thin floor of metal with staircases on either end, a few rods of thick sturdy iron running across the room to support the sheet floor.
And the outer grate hiding behind the rusty fan was a lot less shaky than the first, it idly noted.
It prepared itself for a nasty bruise, then charged again, dozens of feet of distance vanishing in an instant as it engaged every muscle and tendon it had at full force, the rusty iron below its feet breaking as its nails dug in for added traction.
The grate gave in instantly, caving in before detaching and slamming into the fan with the deafening, rattling boom of metal protesting its fate, before the thin metal rods holding the fan in place broke as well, sending the combined weight of the wolf and the shattered scrap slamming into the outer grate.
It was at this moment that the wolf realized it had vastly overrated how strong the outer grate was, and that it had put far too much power into its charge.
It hastily tried to throw a paw out to dig its nails into the pipe, but it was going too fast, and its capability of bending its leg sideways was as useless as ever, only barely managing to graze its nails against the edge of the pipe before it disappeared.
With a surprised yelp, it tumbled through the air for a second full of mild panic and uncertainty, only to smash into the rusty metal flooring shoulders first, its tailbone slamming into the sheet right after to accidentally transfer the impact, the concentrated force punching through the thin rusty metal to make a jagged hole that cut off at the middle of its back.
Its bottom half immediately plunged through, and its momentum combined with the weight of its lower body to yank its upper body through the hole, getting a thin cut on its chest from slamming into the sheet as its forelegs scrambled to find something to hook its nails into, to not avail, as it tumbled backwards.
The second drop wasn’t nearly as forgiving as the first, the hard stone not bending the slightest under its weight as it struck the ground with a meaty thud.
Its lungs expelled all the air out in a sharp, short wheeze. It could only lay on its side in shock for a moment at the sensation of impact travelling through its body to punch into its heart, prompting it to skip a beat before it redoubled its pace.
That was a horrible sensation, even if its body’s Endurance made sure the wolf’s body tanked the drop with only a bunch of bruises and a minor cut across its chest.
Flakes of rust and miscellaneous debris rained down on the wolf as it rolled onto its feet and started lightly coughing, trying to get its lungs to recuperate from the impact and start functioning normally again, even through the dust and rust powder utterly saturating the air.
It was under the impression that it had a few moments to take stock of its situation and recover, figure out how it was going to get the human down, maybe get a better understanding of the layout of whatever strange place they’d stumbled into.
That notion was quickly invalidated by the rapidly approaching taps of something hard impacting stone, making the wolf go rigid as it quickly bent its head down with its antennae out, tail stiff and pain forgotten as it strained to calm its breaths.
Like ripples of water in an ocean made of stonework, the vibrations travelled through the distant floor, crawled up the wall separating them and the entity, slithered between pipes and wires, then eventually reached the wolf.
Six tapering points would slam into stone before repositioning, leading up to a roughly oval-shaped segmented body, the added boost to its senses allowing it to feel how the vibrations moved through the entity's body before losing cohesion when they entered its almost… liquid insides.
Useless information. As it rapidly approached, the wolf ignored minute details and the human’s calls, focusing on what it could discern that would be to its advantage. The insectoid-seeming creature was fairly fast for being a little larger than the wolf, about twice as heavy, and covered in some sort of external skeleton, but nothing that could outrun the wolf.
Some primal part of itself, a feral animal that was always at the edge of its consciousness, grew fearful. In the dark, with its nose choked by dust and rust, with something it had never seen before steadily approaching, it grew stiff, unsure of what to do and overcome with the urge to hide or run.
And seeing as it didn’t have anywhere to run, it activated [Echoes of Oblivion], and gently lowered itself into a crouch, antennae still caressing the floor.
As it got closer, the wolf grew even stiffer, the sound of the creature’s steps unfortunately drowned out by the human’s calls.
It was very tempted to bark at her or something similar just to tell her to stop giving the enemy a clear direction to follow, but it didn’t wish to reveal its presence yet, focusing instead on what it could tell about the approaching threat.
The creature sped up, likely lured by the human’s increasingly panicked calls, and the wolf remained stock still. It recalled all it knew about insects, which was… more than most, it assumed, but not that much. This thing wasn’t a cockroach.
It had, frankly, nothing to work with.
The insectoid approached, and the wolf focused on the wall separating them, scanning for entry points. There were a few rectangular holes filled with broken shards of something on the top of the room, but they were far too high. The thing of most importance was the thin, metal door sitting on the right end of the room, something that the wolf was certain the insect could easily crash through.
As the enemy came closer, just a dozen feet from the wall, it seemed to suddenly stop, its acceleration suddenly vanishing as if in defiance of physics, a startling, unnatural thing to feel. Its legs definitely took the force of a sudden stop, as the wolf felt that through the floor, but it was still just… A tiny bit too unsettling to feel like a natural movement.
Or the wolf was simply uneasy about its lack of sight and projected that emotion onto random details, that felt equally possible.
For a long couple seconds, its legs changed position, showing the wolf how it seemed to be swinging its body side to side a little, as if observing the wall with eyes it shouldn’t have, considering the absolute void of light so far down into the earth’s guts.
Then it resumed, but its movements had changed, the frenzied pace replaced by a steady, predatory prowl that made the hairs on its back stand up in a bristle. It approached the wall, then seemed to get up on its two hind legs, its four frontal legs settling against the wall.
And after a second of inaction, it started crawling up the wall.
The wolf’s antennae froze in place, its mind sputtering in confusion.
…That thing was at least twice as heavy as the wolf, or so it felt like. Probably almost as heavy as the human. There was no way it could just… walk up a vertical wall. That didn’t make sense. How? Mana Skills?
Its antennae resumed their frantic writhing, noting that the insect was losing that cautious hesitance in its steps, moving faster and faster, quickly crawling up the twenty foot wall, yet there was a strange pause each time it put one of its legs against the wall.
The wolf focused on that pause, and noted how the pull of its weight would somehow be dispersed along a flat, circular area at the tip of each foot. That area would then slowly retreat back to the tip of its leg, and the insect would reposition it higher before spreading that circle of influence again.
And once it got through the holes on the top, it would be on the iron floor above the wolf, with a clear and simple path towards the human.
There were stairs on both ends of the room to lead up to the metal floor above, so the wolf quickly bound over to them before gingerly, and with the utmost attention paid to the vibrations at its feet, moving up to the second floor.
The Skill might make it soundless and sightless to others, but its weight still had impact, it still caused vibrations, so it needed to get into position as fast as possible lest the insect notice lingering aftershocks, assuming it had some kind of vibrational senses like the cockroaches it had consumed.
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The pipe where the human was yelling from was at about the middle of the room, along with two others on either side, equally spaced out near the ceiling, parallel with the rectangular holes on the other side of the room where the insect was about to go through.
The wolf gingerly tapped at the rusty iron below its feet to locate where the supports were hidden, and hopped from one to the other, the thin sheets they were supporting obviously unable to take any weight at their center. It had to get to…
It paused, its legs still tense for a jump.
It didn’t know where it wanted to be. Why was it even up here? What was the plan, how was it going to ambush a creature when it didn’t have a single clue where its vitals or weakpoints were, much less what senses it had?
It was going to be fighting something it couldn’t see, and after the fight had started, vibrations, hearing and smell wouldn’t help it all that much. It would be fighting something while effectively blind. Something heavy, foreign, and dangerous, in territory it was unfamiliar with.
But what was the alternative? To just… let the insect eat the human while the wolf smashed through the door on the bottom right of the room before it ran for its life?
For a moment, it considered it.
The sound of crunching glass only made its breaths deeper, anticipation, dread, and a hesitant sense of eagerness bubbling in its chest.
It could just run. The human was making a racket, it could easily slip away, trundle through endless corridors and tunnels until it found its way back to the surface.
The room was filled with sudden banging, the tapping of the insect growing frantic for a moment as its leg punched through a sheet of metal and it hurriedly righted itself, before cautiously testing the terrain with every step, slowing it down even further.
The wolf could run away. The creature was still on the other broad side of the room, almost fifty feet away, and stuck in a grid of rusty pitfalls.
But why would it?
Why should it just let whatever fancied itself as a predator threaten its pack, bizarre as it might be? Why should it continue to be timid in the face of genuine danger, only hunting within its comfort zone and running with its tail between its legs whenever it faced something new?
Besides, it had spent hours on end fantasizing about getting something to fight, getting to feel that adrenaline rush again, that tension and exhilaration it had felt when wreathed in screeching rodents, that sick rush that danced the finest of lines between ecstasy and despair where one wrong move would lead to death, simply to alleviate its boredom in that endless pipe.
Not to mention all the things it could gain from eating this thing. What if the wolf could learn how to just walk up walls?
A bone-deep greed urged it to tear this insect apart for its own benefit.
The creature was twenty feet away, minutes passing in what felt like seconds as the wolf stood still, frantically contemplating.
The human’s clothes scraped against the pipe as she slowly, and with a lot of struggling, dragged herself towards the mouth of the pipe, the observation only a mild background process as its thoughts continued to race while the foreboding taps crept closer.
It couldn’t detect many more details, despite the close range. Segmented chitin plates, tear-shaped body, six legs, and two chitinous fangs on the front. No antennae it could feel. Very little to go with.
Until it realized something obvious. For it to be following the human’s voice, it obviously had ears of some sort. It could have come here from the vibrations caused by the wolf’s fall, but if that was the case…
The wolf, muscles tense and lips curling into a soundless snarl in preparation, tapped the metal with its paw.
The creature didn’t react, continuing its prowl in a straight line towards the human. No vibration senses. Its lips fell to cover its teeth again.
A plan began to form. A crude, haphazard one, but it didn’t have all that much time for thinking at the moment, as the insect moved past the wolf, ten feet in front of it and only a couple feet from the wall. The human was still only halfway to the pipe’s exit, thankfully.
It tapped a paw, visualizing the grid of metal supports and where the plates were at their weakest, idly noting a small rusty canister a foot to its left, among the other bits of useless debris littering both floors.
Its thoughts lingered for a fraction of a second on the can.
The wolf stretched its neck and weight as carefully as it could manage, bit through the can’s circular corner, and with a flick of its neck, sent the can crashing and rolling across the floor behind the insect, to its left.
The creature stopped in its tracks, one of its legs no longer touching the metal, sitting frozen in the air.
A stalemate.
The insect had definitely heard that, but it had no real information besides thinking that something was at its left side, while the wolf was actually positioned at its right side. So it just froze, despite the obvious prey just a few feet in front and above it making a racket with her grunts and huffs.
A far smarter foe than the stupid rats.
But it didn’t matter, because it had coincidentally stopped exactly where the wolf wanted it to, right beside a six foot wide square of wobbly iron. A heavy enemy with a hard exoskeleton on fragile terrain? It was just asking to be exploited, and if the wolf made it crash on that plate with enough force, it would probably fall through.
A ten foot gap stretched between them, with an awkward running start but then a clear path.
Its boosts had already faded during the tense, long minutes it took for the insect to climb up the wall, down, and crawl across the metal floor. [Bloodrush] was ready and begging to be used again, so the wolf obliged, its nails partially cutting through the supports for added traction as it charged forward, putting its feet only where the support rods would support the sheets and its weight.
Two, three bounds, and it turned its head, ready to shoulder-slam the insect into a ten foot drop, hopefully to injure it enough to bleed out, or whatever it had in place of blood, or at the very least disable it somewhat.
Instead of smashing into its legs from the side however, the wolf found its shoulder smashing into the insect's abdomen, its pointed legs curling inwards from the impact and assisted by the insect itself to stab through its fur and skin, one at its left shoulder and the other at its right side while the others flailed for purchase.
But it didn’t have the leverage to bite the wolf with its weird chitin fangs, and its legs were barely half an inch into its flesh, so in that fragment of a second before the insect was launched away, the wolf was certain its plan had worked, only to be disproven yet again when something goopy and unimaginably sticky came out of the insect’s legs in an instant, pulling it alongside itself as they tumbled over eachother back onto a fragile sheet of metal that bent and cracked under their weight.
On top of a writhing mass of chitin, the wolf bucked and twisted, struggling to get a grip on something or at least try to bite a leg off, but the insect quickly yanked it around by the shoulder and side, not allowing it to orientate itself nor properly twist around to bite it, the wolf’s legs simply flailing in the air.
Its struggles became even more desperate as four more legs stabbed at its fur, one on its chest and the rest on its sides, secreting that sticky goop and pinning the wolf even more. Maybe if its fur was more fragile it could have simply twisted until the goop tore it off to allow the wolf to maneuver, but its body was so tough because of Endurance that it simply did not have the strength to, only able to twist its upper body away from the searching fangs of the insect.
The metal underneath them made another cracking sound as it bent outwards even more from their struggle, and the wolf deactivated [Echoes of Oblivion] to snarl as loudly as it could and buck its hips up, then down, with enough strength to feel its muscles burn and protest.
The sheet finally broke, and the wolf fell for the third time, pinned in place on the insect’s hard underbelly.
An underbelly that cracked alongside its back plating when they quickly slammed into the floor, the impact once more stealing the wolf’s breath.
The human was yelling something, questioning, while the insectoid didn’t let out a single sound as it pushed the wolf off its belly into the air, before swinging it to the left, then the right, its goopy liquids spreading over the wolf’s writhing limbs and body. It slowly built momentum while the wolf snarled and struggled, and with a particularly wide swing, it used the wolf’s weight to turn itself over onto its side, the wolf's ribs smashing into hard stone.
Despite having contact with the floor, the wolf could barely even move, the goop moving as if sentient to restrain it, even working against its every movement. If it curled its spine inwards, it pulled outwards, if it curled outwards, the goop pulled it inwards, and combined with the insect’s legs, it couldn’t even try to brace its legs against the ground.
Its lungs burned, its eyes bulged, and its breaths came out in snarling pants as the goop on its chest crawled up its throat, fear and panic starting to claw at its mind as every movement became harder by the second.
The human’s yells gave it a single second of clarity, and it quickly gathered air in its lungs and infused them with mana, a sense of desperation and fear, before letting its vocal cords shape it into a loud yowl towards the human, hoping that she’d have… something, some way of helping it.
The slime reached the middle of its forelegs, pulling them together before connecting, tightening them against its chest while it let out sounds of panic, snarls and whimpers as it uselessly tried to twist its neck to bite something, anything, each sharp crack of its teeth vainly slamming into each other feeling like another nail in its coffin. It couldn't even reach the leg that was digging into its chest.
Something like a complex network of ropes were running through the sticky goop and tugging the wolf into whatever position they wished, giving the slime far, far more durability than something of that consistency should have.
The rush it had felt when the fight started had turned into nothing but naked dread, the encroaching possibility of death scraping at its mind like jagged shards of glass, higher thought flaking off with every scrape as it wriggled in its bonds, barely able to move.
The insect curled its legs in, dragging the wolf closer to its fangs.
In a moment of panic, it poured every single drop of mana it had into a [Sonic Blast], the air coiling in its lungs like a serpent ready to strike, then slammed the ball of air and sound through its throat, once again tearing out its vocal cords in a spray of blood.
With its mind and proximity keeping the air and sound compressed into a tight ball, the wolf tilted its open maw towards the insects face, up and to the side, its snout almost brushing against the creature’s fangs, and barely managed to maintain cohesion in the blast for long enough to tilt its head away before it detonated, wrenching its head down to almost smack into its own chest as something went 'crack-pop' in its spine, causing its limbs to spasm in their restraints before going limp.
A sharp crack of thunder rumbled throughout the underbelly of the third floor as the rusty metal above them exploded outwards with a deafening cacophony of sound that it couldn’t hear, entire sections of the metal flooring above having lost or bent their rusty supports from the overpowering blast.
A moment before unconsciousness consumed its damaged brain, it felt the straining press of a single fang struggling to pierce through its skin and fur to pump venom into its neck.
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