Nevus, the little mole girl looks up at me with a focused look, she seems very young, but still very much knowledgeable and wise. Wearing a full tribal outfit with ornaments over her whole body, she doesn’t look very combat-ready, but she certainly looks like a real leader. Why mole people have built such a competent and complicated society down here, is a mystery to me, but maybe I’ll get to ask her. I’m an Earthling too in some senses, so maybe some comradery can be found here?
Joking to myself a bit, I am relieved to finally find someone to whom I can talk, “My name is Andy, I was kidnapped by some monsters on the surface and fell into a crevice during my escape, do you think you could help me find a way back to the surface?” The mole girl looks me up and down for a second before pointing out, “Oh, so can I presume you fell in the Forest of Giants? There is a large hole above it, we send expeditions there from time to time to investigate what fell. Although I am quite amazed that something survived the fall down here, normally everything that lands in the Forest of Giants is destroyed.” All right, I can’t tell her I’m a robot, so I’ll just act secretive, “Yes, I fell down in a forest with giant trees and mushrooms, I am a bit of a special individual so I won’t talk much about my survival, but I did survive the fall.
The mole seems to understand that I won’t share my secret with her, so she relents, “All right, then let’s discuss what we can do for you.” She guides me over to a small picnic bench made for mole people which I will never fit on, so I simply sit down carefully on the ground beside it. She begins explaining once more, “We Earthlings live in big underground societies like this one, we usually keep to ourselves and defend against threats of the underground. My father the village chief is currently out on a hunting spree with our hunters and will return in about 6 periods of sleep. He brought you with you during his last run about 1 period of sleep ago. He said he saw some blue light in the darkness of the underground and found you fighting the insects, he saw you pass out from exhaustion and took you with him.”
Oh nice, so some underground mole hunters just took me with them, nothing weird about that. “Yes, I did. Although I’m surprised that you’d just take people with you.” I comment. Nevus looks a bit sadly and says, “We wouldn’t take you with us under normal circumstances, humanoid races normally kill us on sight, because we’re still seen as monsters. We don’t have classes...” Oh, I get it. This is like discrimination against intelligent beings without a class system because many of them are hostile to humanoids. “You said you wouldn’t have saved me under normal circumstances, so why am I here now?” I ask. “That would’ve been my next talking point,” Nevus looks up at me with pleading eyes, “our village is currently being periodically attacked by the same insects you fought, please help us defeat their queen, in return, we’ll help you make it back to the surface.”
Oh, I see what they’re planning…But saving some mole people doesn’t sound like the hardest quest, so why not? I nod my head and say, “Sure sounds like a fair deal. I’ll help you with their queen.” I stretch my hand out for a handshake, but when I show it to Nevus, she doesn’t really know what to do and simply says, “Thank you! I’ll give you all the information you need to take care of their queen, the smaller insects should slowly die out once their queen is dead and disperse. So we won’t have a problem anymore.” Nevus shows me around the city and shows me the entryways to it that have been attacked by the insects, they’ve been able to repel them for now, but she’d rather have the queen dead than alive.
The cavern the moles used as their home might’ve been high enough for me to comfortably stand in, but some of the walkways out of the city are only high enough for me to crawl through, so I’ll need to make sure that I won’t get stuck in there somewhere. Luckily, I still have my Flashlight Face and the [Alternate Cameras] Skill, so I can simply use a Night Vision or Laser Camera to see. Nevus tells me a bit more about the Queen of the Insects I’d need to exterminate, their Queen is very large and looks like what I would assume from her description to be a Pill Bug, so it’s the same kind of monster I fought before.
Maybe this could be an easy job? I beat one of those guys before. I decide to wait off before going on the conquest and talk a bit more with Nevus, she tells me a bit more about the settlement here. They call themselves Earthlings and live in settlements like this to protect themselves from the variety of monsters that live in the darkness. Earthlings are similar to humans it seems, they are intelligent but aren’t very strong in exchange, they don’t interact with humanoid races because they are considered monsters, but they aren’t evil or malicious. They use weapons, but they aren’t able to evolve. That just seems evil, they’re forced to stay weak…
They primarily use hunting parties close to their settlement to search for monsters smaller than them to kill and bring back. From my perspective it just seems kind of terrible to live down here, they are forced to sit in a gated settlement all their life and fear everything because they are so weak. Nevus seems to agree on some points, but she also points out that Earthlings at least have the advantage down here, they have excellent noses and their eyes, while not good in comparison to humans, are miles better than most of the insects and other monsters down here. So in most cases, they can simply walk up to anything smaller and take it out easily using weapons.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
So, all in all, they are living comfortably down here? A bit surprising. With my worldview changed I hang around the settlement a bit more, it seems I’m feared by anyone other than Nevus. I tread carefully around the settlement, looking more carefully over the settlement, the stone igloos are erected everywhere, they’re even built into the walls and there are multiple walkways built in between them. It doesn’t quite feel old, so maybe they haven’t been living here for longer than a few years, maybe they even had to move some time ago. The number of moles walking around is scarce if anything, most of them are inside their igloos, if I had to guess how many Earthlings live here, I’d say 50 at most.
After some time checking out the settlement, I see Nevus calling me from the distance, when I return to her home, she takes out a giant bowl, “You’re probably hungry, right? We’re having a feast tonight! Feeding you is a challenge I’m ready to accept!” Nevus is looking at the giant bowl she’s carrying with a glint in her eyes, but I shoot her down, “Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t need to eat or sleep, ever. I’d happily watch you have a feast, but I couldn’t even eat anything if I wanted to.” When she hears what I said, she looks at me a bit disappointed, “Oh…All right, guess we won’t need to have a feast anyway…”
Dragging the giant bowl back into her home, she slouches into her home with a sigh. Looking around me, I see all kinds of Earthlings walking back to their huts in disappointment. Guess these guys love their food. “Um, Nevus? Why don’t we still have that feast and simply divvy up my share between everyone in the settlement? I mean aren’t you supposed to celebrate visitors?” Nevus twitches at my comment and looks at me with stars in her eyes. She shoots up to my leg, clinging to it, “Really?! I’d love to hold a feast in your honor! Yes, yes! That sounds like an excellent idea! Let’s do it!”
The other Earthlings around us celebrate in unison, they like their food, don’t they? They set up a festival ground in record time and put me in the king seat, when I look at their food selection my nonexistent appetite grows even smaller. “To our first peaceful visitor! Cheers!”, Nevus yells out a celebratory cheer and all the Earthlings answer in unison. Roasted Bugs of all kinds dot the tables, the Earthlings are ripping into them like they’re the most delicious thing in the world! If I could throw up I would… Another lucky feature of being a robot! It reminds me of the lobster and crab restaurants back on earth, just that the restaurant's only customers, aka the Earthlings, have the table manners of wild hyenas.
I watch the Earthlings stuff themselves with food like they’re possessed. The food before me slowly reduces until all of it is gone and the Earthlings look satisfied with themselves. Nevus and all of them tuck themselves into bed while I keep watch. When the Earthlings wake up again, I decide to finally kill the queen, I get seen off by everyone in the village.
The opening I leave through to get to the queen is pretty tall actually, so I don’t need to crawl around the floor. Considering that the insect queen is giant too, I just hope that I won’t need to crawl around much. As I walk around, I turn on the night vision and laser vision. Your average night vision camera uses Infrared Light to see in the dark, laser vision, on the other hand, shoots out lasers from a sensor on me and receives them back, by measuring the time it takes for the laser to return the sensor can predict how far away objects are.
There are issues with both, night vision needs some kind of light, and if a cave has no way for light to enter, even infrared light, then I won’t see a thing regardless. Laser vision has the problem of either updating too slowly or only updating a small cone of influence because sending out thousands of singular lasers per millisecond just isn’t feasible, it’s similar to seeing through the printouts of a shoddy dot-matrix printer. Luckily my face gives off light, infrared light too, so currently I rely mostly on night vision.
As I walk through the cave, I see small groups of insects once again, this time they don’t seem to be stalking after me, but simply attacking me. Maybe I’m slowly coming closer to their nest considering they are now defending themselves. As I exterminate more and more bugs, I get closer and closer to their nest, their groups keep getting bigger and bigger, and I know I’m getting closer. I walk into another walkway of the cave and when I get there, the entire floor changes from sheer stone and rock to an array of leaves and plants.
Bugs and Insects are crawling all around me, they scutter along the floor in all directions. Now that I’m so far inside they don’t seem to even care about me anymore, maybe they have some kind of hierarchy system with workers and warriors? They don’t want to fight, I won’t mind, now I just need to find the queen!
As I keep walking between the waves of bugs and insects the scenery around me slowly changes and warps into a beautiful green underground jungle, there is still a ceiling, but now vines and bioluminescent mushrooms are dotting the place, if I wanted to, I wouldn’t even need the night vision. The cave slowly opens up, revealing a giant colony of bugs and insects living in an open cave system.