We slowly climbed down from the ledge to the entrance of the lair. Only Rik stayed above in case something happened.

Grognar gave some sort of sign at Torgal, who went in front.

The wolf man turned around to talk to us in a hushed voice. “Now, if the [Ground Drake] died yesterday, we shouldn’t expect anything dangerous inside, but we’ll go slowly to make sure. You’ll both stay behind me, and if I tell you to go back, you go back. Understood?”

“It is dead. We haven’t lied to you, we brought you to the [Ground Drake]’s lair as promised!” Gaëlle responded.

“Shh. I know, I know. But sometimes lairs are reclaimed by other monsters. Can I trust you to listen to me?”

“You can trust us about that.” I responded, not wanting to lie to him completely.

It didn’t escape my sister’s notice, who rolled her eyes at me. Nonetheless, she answered him as honestly as she could as well. “We’ll flee if we have to, Grognar. I didn’t want to get angry at you, I apologize.”

“No worries young Elle.” He turned his back to us. “Torgal?” He didn’t say anything else; he just moved his hand and the two hunters moved forwards.

We stayed close behind. The tunnel was just like we remembered it, dirt quickly gave way to melted rocks and obsidian, with jagged edges everywhere. There were still some fires slowly consuming the rocks, but there were far less than the day before. As we descended in the hill’s bowels, a rancid smell was starting to become more and more pungent.

You have entered the lair of Gorover the Hoarder (reclaimed)

“…Grognar…” I whispered very slowly at reading the prompt. My sister had immediately stopped dead on her tracks.

The wolf man hushed me, just as I heard something else than our footsteps and the flicker of flames cracking stone.

I had no idea what the noise was, but I knew I didn’t want to meet what was making it.

“Grognar!” I tried again.

“Hush girl, I think I heard something…”

“The fucking lair has been reclaimed!”

“What?” He turned to look at me. “How do you know that.”

“Didn’t you see the system prompt!?”

“Yes, we entered the lair of Gorover, I gained experience.” He looked at me, then back at the lair, clearly hesitating if he needed to listen to me or if I was hysterical and needed to be silenced.

“What about the reclaimed part!?” I asked in disbelief. No way we were favourited by the system with extra descriptions.

“You can read the system prompts!?” He raised his voice.

My sister couldn’t help herself. “You can’t!?”

“No, only what I was thought by my family and Anna, how…School. You two went to school!”

“Oh my god we’re in a system world full of illiterate people…” My sister swore.

“What?” Fortunately, Grognar didn’t seem to understand her.

“Yes, we can read the prompts, it just told us that the lair had been reclaimed!” I cut him off.

It took a few seconds, but the wolf man finally seemed to realize the gravity of what I was telling him.

“Torgal! Get back here!” The young man had continued his way forwards, for his part clearly thinking we were doing some hysterics.

“Chief?”

“The lair is occupied, we need Rik.”

“But…” The young hunter didn’t have the occasion to complain, as he was cut off by the noise coming from deep inside the lair. It was more distinct now, louder. It almost seemed like little rocks sliding on each other. “…Shit what was that?” Was Torgal’s end to his sentence.

It seemed everyone heard this, not just me and the wolf man.

“Back. Rik.” Grognar ordered.

“Yes chief.”

So we went back to the entrance. Whatever was inside fortunately didn’t chase us.

“Chief?” Rik peered over the edge. Grognar looked up. “Get down, we need your eyes and knowledge. The lair is inhabited.”

“[Ground Drake]?” Rik asked.

My sister gave him a pissed off look, that only I saw, but I had to admit that I understood her. The vote of confidence that these guys were giving us was starting to really feel insulting.

“No, it didn’t sound like that.” The wolf man answered him.

“Ok.” In one swift move, Rik descended to our level, then entered the lair, alone.

“Why are we making him go there on his own?” I asked.

Grognar seemed to hesitate, before finally answering. “He has the highest perception stats out of all of us, and his clan knew the monsters of this forest better than anyone.”

“Oh. I see.” I looked back to the tunnel. His clan knew. Past tense? I couldn’t worry about the elf’s backstory right now, not as he himself was facing whatever was down there. The scout quickly went out of view after he reached a flatter part of the slope down.

We waited in silence.

Torgal had his eyes looking to the darkening sky, it was beyond dusk now, and the surrounding darkness was falling especially fast and heavy. He broke the tension a few minutes later.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“The Upperseas are empty tonight, chief. We stay outside any longer and we’ll need torches to see our feet.”

“That is out of the question. I’d rather wander in the dark.” The wolf man was categorical.

The conversation didn’t continue.

We waited for a few more minutes, until we saw the shadow of the elf come back to us. I saw him way before everyone, even before Grognar, which told me that my perception stats were higher than his. Somehow, I was beating the wolf man in vision and hearing. And maybe even smell, as he hadn’t reacted to the rancid odour coming down from the lair.

“…Ah, Rik.” The wolf man finally noticed.

“Chief. Bad news, that’s a [Tooth-Bear]. Seems young, but I don’t know if we can take it. It’s big.”

“Lord.” Grognar swore simply. Torgal’s words were much more expressive.

“What is a [Tooth-Bear]?” My sister asked.

She was promptly ignored.

“Let’s try to smoke it out while we’ve still got some light. Rik, you make point, girls, you come back up with us and help us get some wood.” Grognar started ordering.

“You want to smoke it out how exactly? Have you seen the tunnel? The smoke will never go down there!” I pointed out.

Grognar sighed. “We’ll close it off somehow. It can work, do as I say and stop questioning me.”

It took all my patience to not roll my eyes at him. I didn’t know if he’d understand the Earth gesture in the first place, so maybe my great self-control had been unwarranted.

“Can you believe these guys?” My sister told me in English.

“I can’t. They are rude. And dumb.” I answered after deactivating my Speech skill.

“Well, rude is obvious but dumb? It’s their job, maybe they’ll manage to smoke it with a skill or something.”

“I very much doubt so. They are in panic mode, L.”

“Get up and stop talking!” Torgal rushed us as he lowered himself to pull me up.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I looked at him in anger and took his outstretched hand. I tried to use my partial night vision to help me find a grip for my feet, but then fell on my butt, coming dangerously close to the edge. Torgal had suddenly stopped helping me.

“Holy fuck did you just try to kill…” I began shouting in English. Then stopped. As I looked at the foreign appendage inside my right hand.

It was another hand. Connected to an arm. Connected to nothing.

“What?” I said, not understanding what I was seeing.

“CAW!”

I heard a flutter of very big, very heavy wings, air slashing at my face. Then someone pulled me inside the tunnel.

The deep growl of the wolf man made me emerge from my confusion.

I was holding on to Torgal’s hand. He…Something impossibly large and dark had swooped down and made him disappear in a geyser of blood. Most of it was covering my face.

“Daniel! Daniel! You’re okay! You’re okay! We need to move inside!” My sister was shaking me.

“Yeah. Yeah.” I answered, my mouth dry.

I let go of the dismembered hand and followed my sister. I looked behind me to see Grognar look at the night, true hatred filling his eyes. His growl was deep and terrifying.

“Grognar. I’m so sorry.”

He turned back and followed me. “Don’t be. You didn’t bring it here; it was attracted by the lights of the fires. We need to move; it’s not going to be satisfied with just Torgal, but it won’t be able to follow inside the lair.”

Rik, who we just passed, had a very worried expression on his face. “What happened?” he asked.

Grognar almost bit off the next words. “The [Dark Crow], that is what happened. Torgal is gone.”

Rik’s expression became almost as scary as Grognar’s. “What are we supposed to tell his mother? First her oldest son, now her youngest?”

“Let’s worry about surviving first.” The wolf man shut him off.

“Yeah, about that. What about the [Tooth-Bear]?”

“Him or the [Dark Crow], you decide.”

Rik didn’t answer, he simply went deeper inside the lair.

We stopped going further forward when we saw the bottom of the pile of treasure.

“The [Tooth-Bear] is at the back.” Rik whispered. “Looks young and unharmed. I don’t know how it found the lair as fast as it did. Either the [Ground Drake] died a long time ago, or the [Tooth-Bear] was attracted here by something. How do you want to go at it, chief?”

I was slightly shellshocked. I had seen much worse being done on myself, and had stared at death before, but that almost made it worse. Lila had gotten time to say goodbye. Benedict’s death was much more violent, but that was just extra entertainment for my eyes. I liked reliving that memory at night.

Torgal… He had been an asshole. But from what I had understood, he had just lost someone. I empathized with his behaviour entirely. And he didn’t have time. I truly hoped that he didn’t suffer. It should have been too quick for him to feel anything...

“Daniel. Snap out of it. There is nothing we could have done. I need you.”

“I’m there. I’m there.” I responded to my sister’s weak smile.

During my thinking, it seemed that the two remaining hunters had decided on a plan.

“Girls, listen to me.” Grognar began. “I’m going to be frank, even with Torgal a young [Tooth-Bear] would have been quite the challenge. It’s probably going to be under level two-hundred, but…”

“Two-hundred!?” My sister did her best not to scream.

“Yes it’s…” The wolf man sighed. “You don’t even know that. You can read but… monsters and Sapiens don’t level the same way, a level two-hundred monster is low. Of course, it is well enough to rip your head off, but nothing quite like what we saw this damned crow do!”

“Grognar…” Rik tried to keep the chief’s voice down.

“Yes. Sorry. Anyway, monsters sometimes drink the Blue water without purifying it, and as such, if I can see it I will be able to [Identify] it. So I’ll be able to see its stats and level. If I could read, I would have been able to see its skills as well but…It doesn’t matter anyway, I wouldn’t have the time to read through it all. That will be the first part. We need to act, the four of us. I saw how fast Elle could run, do you think you can match her, Nielle?”

Me and my sister exchanged a glance.

“I believe I should be able to…” I answered him.

“Good. Your job won’t be the fun one, but it is essential. You two will act as bait.”

“I don’t like this.” My sister said.

“There is nothing to like, girl.” Rik intervened.

“…fine, if that’s the only way.” She finally agreed.

“You two will try to make it run circles around the pile of treasures. While you do that, me and Rik will riddle it with arrows. Once I’m out of arrows, I’ll attack it with my spear.” He emphasized this by moving the weapon he was holding. The spear was large and tall, well-crafted, with a metal shaft connected to a massive arrow-head-like spike. He then continued his explanation. “Rik will have more arrows than I do. Once I’m fighting it in close quarters, you need to make yourself scarce. Do not get in my way or you’ll get hit by an arrow or worse. You understand?”

Both me and my sister nodded.

“Speech off.” I then heard her whisper. She gave me a quick look. “If we see a way to the door, we’ll take it. We don’t die because of strangers wanting to make us act as bait, alright?”

I winced. My sister was being ruthless, but I knew she was right. “Speech off. If we can help without taking too many risks, sure. If it gets desperate, we’ll leave them.”

“Nielle. They’re making us take all the risks, that’s obviously too many.”

“Are you ready?” The wolf man was eyeing us with suspicion.

“Speech on… Yes, Grognar. We’re good.” I tried to smile, but only managed an anxious grimace.

“Then we go, the more we wait the more chances it awakes to hunt for the night.” He rose, Rik on his tail, and we followed him inside the former lair of the [Ground Drake].

Inside was the large pile of treasure, ores, rusty swords and some other interesting-looking trinkets, the door to the station, our salvation, unmoved on top, and a bear.

Now, it looked like a normal brown bear. It didn’t even look remotely as crazy as some bears you would see in horror movies. It was a big, cuddly bear. Now, none of us were Russian, so I doubted we could tame it easily, and it could definitely kill us all, but it honestly felt a bit weird to make all this fuss for a bear.

KR KR

The noise of stone on stone echoed in the room. It sounded uncanny, and coming from the sleeping bear, especially so.

“The hell…” Swore my sister.

“Level 211. It’s a green [Tooth-Bear]. Higher than I thought, but at least just an uncommon monster. It won’t have any special skills. We’re going to take cover in shadows and begin shooting, when it wakes up, wait for it to open, then run. Don’t run towards us. Ready?”

“Wait, if it’s sleeping, we could try to reach for the door! Grognar…” My sister began. But she had forgotten to reactivate her [Speech: Common Overworld] and Grognar ignored her, thinking she was talking to me.

“…Shit…”

“L. Shh. Too late now, we should have thought about that before.”

“It was a bad idea anyway. We can’t just invite random people inside a hyper-powerful space station. It could destroy entire worlds.” She rationalized. “What did he mean by ‘wait for it to open’?”

I saw through the shadows as Rik and Grognar prepared to shoot.

“I don’t know, but I think we’re going to very soon.”