After he woke up, he immediately ran through his mourning routine and logged back in. The only problem was he had no idea where the gecko was. Naturally, he had to wait and see if it was inside the cave or not, so he just continued waiting and drawing mana to the center of his torso.
It seemed that he was in luck, as the gecko exited the cave thirty minutes later. He waited another five minutes before he finally emerged from his hiding spot, after laying there for over half a day. He took his shield with him, and made his way inside the cave, looking for the perfect place for an ambush.
He knew that he needed to take the gecko by surprise and restrict its movements, now the main factor would be how the cave actually looked like. Would he find a good ambush location in time? By his estimations, if he had anywhere from thirty minutes to a couple of hours, it all depended on luck, so he had to work fast.
At first, he had to crawl through the half-meter-wide opening to enter the cave, but then it started to widen gently. When he was ten meters in, he could finally stand up and move. He could feel as he got deeper that the electricity mana levels were gently rising, and they showed no signs of slowing down.
After he had traveled down the tunnel for ten minutes, he was confused as the end was nowhere in sight. The tunnel had no side tunnels, it only had the main branch, and it was moving in a zig-zag path almost randomly, having sharp turns every which way. The tunnel's width had settled at a three-meters.
Tom decided to set up at one of such turns, as he didn't dare to continue on deeper because he had no idea of how far it would continue on for, and he had only limited time to do this. Also, he could feel that if he continued on deeper, he would really have to focus to keep the mana from penetrating into his body.
It was an as good position he would be getting, an over ninety-degree sharp turn, a perfect place to hide behind.
He got straight to work, giving himself a strict hour limit that he would have to be ready after, even that demanded him to have a bit of luck, but this whole thing would be pointless anyway if he couldn't set anything up.
The cave filled with noise as Tom started to work, hiding surprises to the best of his abilities with the tools he had, and after he was done, he readied himself for a long wait.
He stood behind the over ninety-degree turn in complete darkness, having turned off his light sources for obvious reasons. The gecko would have to be really close to him before it could see him, and he hoped that the gecko would be less careful in its own kingdom.
The minutes stretched, he was too deep inside the cave that he could see nothing, but he could listen. He was surprised after he had listened for a while, he realized that a gentle zapping noise was coming from deeper within the cave. However, he did his best to ignore it, focusing on the matter at hand, the gecko.
After thirty minutes, he had heard absolutely nothing from the direction of the entrance, the wait was starting to eat at him, staying still in complete darkness with only a gentle zapping sound in the background would drive anyone mad. It was like the cave was void of anything else than the zapping noise, no bugs, no nothing.
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Another ten minutes went by before to his relief he heard the sound of feet slapping against the stone floor of the cave. He patiently waited as they got closer and closer. Wholly prepared, having already run through his plan countless times while waiting, readying his whole body to act at a drop of a dime.
The steps grew closer and closer until he finally heard them just behind the bend.
As he heard the footsteps get next to the turn, they slowed down, clearly sensing that something was off. But before it could do anything, Tom sprung into action. He blindly swung one of his swords just at where he had last heard the gecko, hoping for the best.
His Aim was true, he felt some resistance at the tip of his sword, and it shortly subsided. Before the gecko could retaliate, Tom looked away and flipped a switch on the light stone in his hand, turning the cave temporarily into the day. At the same time, he pulled at two sets of lines at once, one activated another light source on the other side of the bend, making sure that it wouldn't blind him, but would still allow him to see. The other lines were the fishing line-like material, extremely tough, mostly see-through lines, that he spun around a nail he had hammered into the cave wall, stopping them from moving.
Then he turned the light stone in his hand off and turned back around to face the gecko.
Meanwhile, the instance Tom had blinded the gecko, it had turned around and ran away, or at least it tried to, as instead, it barged into two lines that Tom had just brought up.
The lines he had spun around the nail were set up so that there was one at ten centimeters of the ground and another at thirty centimeters, creating a makeshift cage. One was just behind the bend, and the other was next to Tom, creating around two by three meters space for them to battle it out.
Tom didn't waste any time, the gecko had delivered itself into his killing zone, and now he just needed to capitalize on it. He ran to its side while picking up his other sword and bringing them both down on the still-confused gecko that was wondering what had stopped its escape.
The gecko's scales were hard, but nothing Tom's advanced physique couldn't handle. He aimed for its head, hoping for a swift victory, and to survive the whole ordeal scratchless.
His sword sank deep into its neck. However, at the last moment, it managed to move just enough to escape the fatal strike. His swords were too short to cut more deeply into it, they went straight through roughly two centimeters of the gecko's neck, rewarding him with a literal fountain of blood.
However, before he could celebrate his soon-to-be victory, he started seeing as blue lines were starting to shine through the gecko's body. He didn't know what was happening, but he had a bad feeling about it. He immediately rushed forward, trying to kill it before it could do whatever it was about to do.
But before his swords traveled the whole way down, the gecko seemed to reach an unholy speed. One moment his swords were just about to cut into its neck, the next, it was spinning around, its tail coming at him at a ridiculous speed. Tom managed to just move his left sword between the tail and him, but it didn't seem to matter, as the tail battered the sword out of the way and sent him flying.
The next very moment, he found himself smashed into the wall, sporting at least multiple broken ribs and a broken back, as he was completely unable to move his legs. He saw in the low light that ricocheted from the other side of the bend that the gecko's skin where there had previously been blue lines, now only there were burn marks and smoke coming from them. The gecko was in rough shape, its neck still bleeding like crazy, and now its new burn wounds.
As he stood against the wall, pointing his swords at the gecko, watching how it was clearly trying to decide if it could save itself, or if it should take its assailant with it to the grave. However, its survival instinct took over, and Tom watched as his prize slowly scurried deeper into the cave, its speed fraction of what it used to be. It jumped over the line and left a bloody trail behind it, as it disappeared into the depths of the tunnel.
Tom immediately took the core out of his pocket and drew the rest of its energy into himself, not caring about the expenditure, wanting to get the gecko's core, and everything else this cave held for himself.
He pushed the mana into his ribs and spine healing them in record time, readying them for round two. By his account, he had come out on the top, now he just had to do it again before it could heal itself up.