The morning came surprisingly late, given they had camped on the western side of the mountain. Jack let them sleep in for nearly two hours past sunrise, waking them with the sizzle of slabs of fatty meat fried in its own lard.

The big cat-bear creature had the misfortune of mistaking the nightbringer for easier prey during his night-time scouting.

He had ranged down the mountainside a few hundred yards, his shadow limbs making the climb easier than expected. The beast was nearly five hundred pounds, with long claws and a massive boxy maw. To Jack’s surprise, the creature had pounced on him from halfway up a thick tree. He had smelled the beast earlier and intended to scout it out to see how much danger it presented, but when he couldn’t find the thing, he finally looked up, only for a quarter-ton of claws and fur to drop on him.

It broke his collar bone and a half-dozen ribs when it slammed into him, but at this point, Jack could kill purely by Shadowcraft alone. The bear could’ve torn both his arms off and it still would’ve lost the fight. His Devouring Shadows immediately went to work, draining off the thylacor’s Health and using it to repair Jack’s body. The razor claws slashed at his armor, strikes fast and hard, the big mouth fighting to get a grip on his face.

All it had a mouthful of was squirming, razored darkness.

Sorry to bother you, Big O. Just gonna try something.

“Baptised in Darkness.”

To his perfect night vision, it seemed like the forest was suddenly filled with shadows, all of which immediately streamed into him, leaving everything once again illuminated in colorless clarity. Power filled Jack’s body, roaring away from him in thick drumming beats, and he felt the cool flow of his mana draining into the dark heart like a bottomless vortex. The thylacor immediately knew something terrible was happening and tried to disengage.

“Bad kitty. No donut,” the nightbringer’s voice echoed against the trees, its dual harmony filled with dark power.

Jack flexed his will and whistled as might surged through his Shadowcrafted limbs, doubling their size and causing the hazy, ghost-like substance to solidify into a writhing swarm of very real tentacles. He grunted with the effort of will again, and the great twisting horde gripped the beast’s head and squeezed.

The thylacor’s spine gave a satisfying crack and the beast was suddenly still.

WELL DONE.

“Thanks, big guy. Gotta go. Sun’s getting real low,” he chuckled, taking a deep, and wholly unnecessary breath.

I AM ALWAYS WITH YOU, JACK.

Jack took another breath and relaxed whatever part of his… soul, he guessed, created the connection between his body and the God of Night. He felt the divine presence recede and checked his panel.

“Twenty-eight mana left. Gotta work on that,” he blew out the lungful of air and went to work field dressing the creature and preparing it to bring back to camp.

-----

“Biscuits!” Erin bolted upright.

“Rory has ‘em in his storage. I have steak. If he gets up early enough, it can be steak and eggs,” Jack smiled.

The dreadnought rolled over and pushed up into a plank, then walked her feet up until they were a few inches away from her hands. She made a show of ratcheting herself up, placing her hands on her knees and pushing her torso upward with a groan and a few audible pops.

Then she pulled the salesman’s blanket back.

“Man, Darius isn’t the only one packin’ a serious set of club abs,” she turned and winked at Jack.

“We’ve all been burning body fat for months straight,” he remarked off-handedly.

“It’s cold, legs. Give us the blanket back,” Rory groaned.

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“No. Biss-kits,” she grinned.

His storage opened vertically, and he withdrew a box from Saffron & Sugar, as well as a small basket filled with individually cloth-wrapped eggs.

“You were awake?” Erin asked.

“Can’t smell Jackson’s cooking and sleep through it anymore. It’s like a bloody siren’s song,” he grimaced.

“Isn’t that the fucking truth,” Layla moaned from under her blankets.

The succubus threw back her covers and sat up, face painted in a pouty expression.

“Smells like a fucking three Michelin star steakhouse in here, and he’s cooking, what, cave bear or mountain moose in its own fat? Did you even have salt? I know you don’t have any butter. It’s all in Rory’s storage. You’re just… pan-frying fucking wild game and it smells like fucking wagyu ribeye. How the hell is that working?” she groused.

“Getting close to +20 cooking, and all the abilities I have scale. But I did have salt and peppercorn in my rucksack and foraged some wild onions,” he chuckled. “You guys should eat well. We’re gonna be walking downhill for a long ways. With the Flame element, I can cook underground without worrying about smoke, but we don’t know what the smell might attract. I plan to butcher and cook the entire thylacor before we head out. Can we store it all, Rory?”

“I’ve got something like a hundred-twenty pounds of space left,” the salesman replied.

“Alright, I’ll start cooking and you let me know when I should stop. Once we get to a hundred pounds of cat-bear, pull out the rest of the gator-fish and I’ll go ahead and cook that too. No sense in taking the risk while we’re down there,” he shrugged.

Erin took the box of baked goods over and sat down next to Jack, then opened it and retrieved a pair of breakfast biscuits. She munched happily for a few minutes, then looked around the camp.

“Hey, why isn’t Maggie up?” she asked.

“She’s been up for hours. She went down into the tunnel to scout ahead. Said she’d be back for breakfast,” Jack replied. “Rory, go ahead and gimme some butter, a few pounds of mapras, some of the hot peppers, and Erin, can you hand me the rest of the onions over there?”

“What’re ya cookin’ with beggars’ mash, laddie?” Maggie called from the shadows of the tunnel, her steps just now audible.

“Cat-bear pan fries, probably. We’re gonna cook up most of the raw rations we have and drop ‘em in Rory’s storage to keep ‘em fresh, so we don’t have to cook while we’re in the tunnel or the… Underneath? Right?” he replied as the dwarf walked out of the shadows and up to the campsite.

“Aye. That’s smart, lad. The tunnel intersects wit’ the Underneath a few times on the way down, and ‘ccasionally, critters come sniffin’ ‘round. A fair few of the gribblies down here have pretty sharp noses,” she replied.

The rest of the morning and into the afternoon was spent cooking a steady procession of dishes, with Jack attempting to give their fare as much variety as possible. Maggie revealed that mushrooms would be plentiful in the Underneath, and they could strike out into the larger caverns to forage, as long as they didn’t roam too far.

The Underneath was far more dangerous than the surface, but most of the creatures below would be within the Chosen’s capabilities. Creatures in the second and third tier were ubiquitous, and more powerful monsters in the fourth and fifth were common enough. Anything stronger than that largely made itself a lair and only struck forth to hunt or challenge invaders to its territory.

There were five major intersections between the access tunnel and the Underneath, and only one of them, the last, was within miles of the nearest apex creature’s territory. The monster in question was a sixth tier elite of comparable strength to weaker Guardians in the same tier.

“So, what’s this big bad monster near the bottom like?” Layla asked her as they were striking camp.

“Ghosin, the Dreadfang, or somethin’ like it, perhaps her offspring, has been the apex o’ that cluster o’ caverns since the days o’ me gran’father’s father. Legend says she’s somethin’ like a basilisk, a great serpent, some twenty stride long, with fangs as long as me forearm, full o’ venom that’ll kill a defender stone dead afore he hits the floor,” she explained.

Erin stopped packing.

“It’s a giant snake?” she asked.

“Yeh afraid o’ snakes, lass?” Maggie asked.

“Nope. I had a five-foot ball python after I graduated college. She died of old age,” Erin responded with a smile. “But this one’s venomous?”

“Aye. There’s lots o’ stories ‘bout how her venom got so powerful, but nobody really knows,” Maggie replied.

“How strong are we talking?” Rory asked.

“If’n Ghosin bit me once, ah might live without havin’ ta use me magic. If it were one o’ yeh, likely would’nae be able ta save yeh without usin’ me powers,” the dwarf responded grimly.

“Shit,” Erin whispered.

“Aye,” the dwarf breathed out.

The dreadnought went back to her bags, then stopped again.

“What are the odds we actually run into it?” she asked.

“Fucking one-hundred percent, now that you asked,” Layla groaned.