Chapter Twenty-Nine

Mister Greeny dug into the earth. His claws of thorns, attached to broad limbs the size of tree trunks, cut into the hard earth and dense stone as easily as loose sand. He had discarded his stag form, twisted his body, and expended some of his magical essence to take on the shape of the forest wyrm. It was a shape he hadn’t taken very often, as it was slow and unwieldy, but what it lacked in maneuverability, it made up for in sheer power.

In total, his body reached a full fifty feet long and stood ten feet at his shoulders. Admittedly, most of that length was a thick and heavy tail, but the rest consisted of four powerful limbs on a sturdy body and a broad, shovel-like head filled with crooked teeth that jutted in every direction.

He followed the stream of water pushing its way through the earth and out of the side of the hill. The deeper he went, the more saturated the soil became and the more magic he had to use to reinforce the walls behind him. He wasn’t overly concerned with being trapped under the ground should the tunnel he was digging collapse, but it would take him much too long to dig himself back out. It would be better to use a little of his mana to save more time.

He was a muddy mess, but his excitement was growing. The beating heart of mana he felt above ground was becoming stronger, and he could feel that it just wasn’t one, but many smaller pulses all beating together. He didn’t know what was down here, but discovering what it was was no longer his primary goal. It was faint, covered up by the pulsing mana, but it was there. A world vein.

The world was a living thing. Although it wasn’t sapient, it still had a will of its own. And just like all living things, it had a mana core linked to its soul. Mister Greeny was intrinsically connected to the world’s will; that was how he was created, after all. He didn’t know the exact details; he didn’t believe anyone did, but he knew he was birthed from the world’s will eons ago.

He paused for a moment as a sudden thought came over him. Could the world have created other beings to replace him and his kind during his dormancy? It was a possibility, one he should have thought of before. He started digging again. He would find out in due time; right now, the world vein was more important than his meandering thoughts.

World veins were where the world's crust was thinnest, allowing the mana from the core beneath to filter up and seep into the atmosphere. Once free, the mana would dissipate and spread out over the surface, supplementing the cores of every living thing. Of course, one must know how to allow the world’s mana into their cores to utilize it in any meaningful way. It was a skill that needed to be taught and learned. Using the world’s mana to expand one’s core was a much quicker method of increasing the capacity of your core, much faster than the usual way of expenditure and natural regeneration.

He would have to separate from his little one for a few days to absorb as much mana as possible, but once he had, he would be able to catch up to her quickly.

His musings were put on hold as he broke into a flooded cavern. No light permeated this far beneath the earth, but a simple flexing of his magical might produced a ball of emerald light that floated silently above him. Of course, the amount of silt and other debris floating in the icy waters made it almost impossible for even him to see, so the light was practically useless. He attempted to spread out his senses to see further than a few feet in front of him, but the concentrated mana bleeding off the world vein was just as obtrusive as the dense sediment, giving him no choice but to continue blind.

It was a hindrance, but not one that would stop him. He moved slowly as he felt around with his thick limbs and twisting vines, which he sent out from himself like undulating tentacles in every direction. He could only guess how large the cavern really was, but it must have been massive. He swam downward for ten minutes before he finally touched the bottom. Although he was slightly buoyant, his large body still sunk deep into the soft bottom of the underground lake and sent up billowing plumes of sediment, nearly blacking out the already dim light of his magic.

He didn’t wait for the silt to settle. It wasn’t as if he could see as it was.

Mister Greeny walked along the bottom of the cavern, scrabbling up huge, jutting boulders and sliding down slippery crevices that reached hundreds of feet further into the earth. The only direction he knew to go in was toward the strongest sense of mana. That would be where the world vein was and where he would regain his power.

Dark waters swirled around him as the current gradually increased into a raging tempest. The force pushing on his large body was so great that he had to anchor himself into the rock beneath his feet with thick, barbed vines reinforced with his magic. Consequently, the silt around him was being swept away by the powerful current of water bursting from a deep ravine before him, finally allowing his magical light to penetrate the darkness.

He peered over the craggy edge and felt a tingle of apprehension as the dark abyss greeted him. He was comfortable walking upon the world, not beneath it. But he had already come this far, and there was no sense in turning around now. Using his vines to cling to the rocky walls, he lowered himself down into the dark.

A pale light shimmered in front of him, and Mister Greeny lifted his head out of the pool of water to see what it was. He had only followed the dark ravine for a few minutes before he felt the mana he was chasing pouring out of a large fissure in the side of the wall. He immediately changed course and followed the twisting tunnels of the cave all the way to where he was now. Another cavern.

This one was much smaller than the previous one and filled with stagnant air instead of icy water. The domed walls were unnaturally smooth, with long gouges crisscrossing every inch. It was clear that this chamber had been excavated by something… big. Much bigger than even the form he took now.

He extinguished his light and allowed the pale glow of the world’s mana to light the damp chamber. It was beautiful, and he basked in it. The mana in this small chamber was so dense that he could feel his core humming with power as it struggled to regulate how much of the energy it was taking in. He had thought it would take several days to reach the capacity of his current core before he would need to consolidate his power, but now it felt as if he could reach that goal in a single night.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

He had to remain vigilant. Some creature had been here before him and dug out this space for itself. He would have liked to think he and his kind were the only ones capable of utilizing the world’s mana, but he knew that that way of thinking was foolish. It had been eons since he walked upon the world; many beings could have discovered the method during that time.

Mister Greeny hefted his body out of the water so slowly that no ripple disturbed its surface. Oddly enough, it wasn’t silent inside the chamber. He was careful not to make a sound, but a cacophony of muted squelching still reached his ears. He was dangerously close to what he felt before.

He padded across the rough cavern floor and toward the center of the room. He hadn’t noticed it from the water, but in the center of the room was a deep, bowl-like depression, and filling that bowl were countless wriggling… things covered in a viscous coating of yellowish mucous. They were as large as horses with only two arms on the front of a long, sinuous body and a head resembling a bullfrog’s. Their tails were flat and wide, with a single long fin running along the upper and lower edges like an eel’s, which would help them much more in the water than on land.

Mister Greeny had never laid eyes on any creature like this before, and a sense of revulsion surged through him before he could tamp it down. It wasn’t fair of him to judge other creatures based solely on appearances, but he was finding it difficult to do, especially as his emotions developed in different ways over time. He observed the large and ugly creatures squirming and wriggling over each other like a soup of living noodles. Just from the way they were behaving, he could tell that they were still relatively young and were eating the sickly-looking mucous as if it were providing them sustenance.

What could have possibly spawned them here, and what effect would the world vein have on them? The creatures might not have been able to absorb the world’s mana into their cores without conscious effort, but that didn’t mean the abundance of mana wouldn’t change them in unknown ways. He didn’t have the time to find the answers to any of those questions. He would only stay here long enough to recoup his power and be on his way.

A slight tremor ran through the ground. Mister Greeny swung his wide and heavy head to the side, his emerald eyes scanning the gouged walls. Another, stronger tremor shook the ground and sent tiny ripples spreading over the surface of the many little pools of water pockmarking the cavern floor. He stepped back from the bowl-like depression while scanning the area around him; the writhing group of two-limbed beasts started to vibrate in agitation as they, too, sensed something approaching.

Perhaps he would have to make this a much shorter trip than he thought.

Mister Greeny slowly returned to the flooded tunnel he used to reach the chamber. The tremors shaking the stone floor grew stronger with each passing moment. Just as he reached the edge of the pool of inky black water, a giant head with bulbous, fishy eyes appeared from a hidden crevice on the other side of the cavern.

He froze. This monster was obviously the adult form of the smaller ones inside the mucous-filled nest and was much, much bigger than they were. Its head hung ten feet above his own, suspended between fleshy shoulders that propped up the rest of its flabby body on two pillar-like arms. It pulled itself into the cavern, its throat bulging like an over-inflated balloon, letting out rumbling croaks that caused the air to vibrate around him.

A thick layer of mucus coated its body and dripped off of it in large globs, hitting the stone floor in nauseating plops. It wasn’t the same yellowish snot that filled the spawning pool but was clear and used for lubrication as it pulled its mammoth body along dry land. It pulled itself along slowly but, with its large body and wide gait, was still able to come to the middle of the room in only a few waddling strides.

It lowered its head to the rim of the bowl, its fishy eyes rolling underneath a transparent membrane glistening in the mana-fueled light. Mister Greeny was curious how well it could actually see. Its eyes were large enough to trap a significant amount of light, and with no eyelids to protect them from the sun meant that it spent its entire life either underground or deep enough underwater that the sun couldn’t reach it. Once positioned over the bowl, it opened its mouth until it was a yawning maw of thousands of tiny shark-like teeth that nearly scraped the ceiling and started the heave.

Its flabby body, coated in mucus and pallid, rubbery skin, shook in great waves as its muscles worked to expel whatever it held within itself. A wave of yellow mucus rushed from its open mouth, and along with it were hundreds of pounds of meat, gristle, and bone. Almost all the sickly mixture made it into the spawning pit; the rest splashed and spattered across the cavern floor, but any sound the mess would have made was drowned out by the ravenous squeals of the spawn fighting each other as they feasted.

Mister Greeny thought there had to be a few fatalities as they fought but was confident that any that occurred would be eaten as well. He was familiar with how other spawning pits were with other creatures and knew that everything was food during a feeding frenzy such as this.

Mister Greeny watched all this with an air of curiosity and a twinge of hesitation. He was not looking for a fight. Mana radiated off the beast in waves, a symptom of spending so much time next to a world vein, and if it were to attack, he wasn’t convinced he would be able to win. The best thing he could do was stay absolutely still until it finished feeding its young, and then, as soon as it returned the way it came, he would do the same.

Mister Greeny even went so far as to darken the area around him with his magic so that the dim light given off by the dense mana wouldn’t betray his position. That was a mistake. As soon as the light shifted, the giant beast swung its frog-like head in his direction and charged. The movement was so sudden that Mister Greeny was taken by surprise and lost one valuable moment before he dashed into the inky water behind him.

He knew the tunnel he had taken to get here was large enough for the monster to fit, but only barely. Surely, once it knew it had successfully chased him away, it would stop and return to the chamber, but that wasn’t the case. Without looking back, he could feel the turbulent water behind him surging with the beast's frantic movements as it pursued him. It wasn’t gaining on him, but neither was he outpacing it, and he knew that once he reached the underground lake, it would easily catch him.

He sent a pulse of mana out from his core and into the tunnel's walls surrounding him. Thick spikes of stone exploded from the walls and slammed into the opposite sides, locking the tunnel behind rocky bars several feet thick. Mister Greeny made sure to leave enough gaps for the water to flow freely; he didn’t want to disrupt the habitat of whatever was chasing him.

The entire cave shuddered as the beast impacted the obstacle in its way. Without any light whatsoever, he doubted it could see what was in front of it and must have hit the stone at speed. With any luck, it would be deterred from going further, but once again, Mister Greeny underestimated the monster's doggedness when pursuing its prey.

The cave quaked once more, then another time as it broke through the stone bars separating it from a meal using its forelimbs as battering rams. By this time, Mister Greeny had returned to the deep ravine and used the powerful current to shoot himself up and away from the twisting cave and the monster behind him. It didn’t look like it was going to let him go, and it would be suicide to try and fight it here.

He had to get back to the surface.