The tunnel scenery was rather poor to say the least. The only thing that was different about it from the cave entrance, was the pickaxe marks that were scratched into all of the walls around me.

It helped provide me with some extra grip to hurl myself through the tunnel.

I didn’t have a nose but I could metaphorically smell that I was getting closer, I had already travelled some hundred feet and manoeuvred my way around half a dozen twists and turns, I have to be.

It would have been a far easier thing for a human to do but I had to waste quite a bit of time manoeuvring around the bends and corners.

So much effort had been put into this base’s creation and for what? A defence force consisting of some hundred weak willed bandits.

Why bother going through all the effort of building this, if they were going to leave it so poorly defended?

Unless, maybe it wasn’t them who created it?

I was still very lacking in terms of general knowledge but I was at least aware of the fact that the Arthian Empire wasn’t exactly a stable nation.

They had endured more than one civil war and if I had to hazard a guess, I would place the number at something like ten.

It would make sense if one of these rebel groups fled to the East and made a base in the Emberlands, then over time they either disbanded or got assimilated by another group.

Or were wiped out of course.

Then the Rover bandits would have repurposed this former rebel base into their own.

If my guess was right then I ought to be even more cautious than I was previously. Who knows what sort of twisted weapons the rebels spirited away and which the bandits had liberated from storage.

Wait no, that was unnecessary caution, if they had anything powerful surely they would have used it now right?

And any rebel traps would likely have become broken by now or have been used up on the bandits.

I didn’t have enough time to take things slow, I was already starting to feel hungry.

Before I could muse more about what I should do though, I suddenly lost feeling in one of my tendrils and heard a faint plop as the severed end fell to the ground.

There aren’t a lot of things I can do in a situation like this, the best and only real option I have is to keep going.

And that's exactly what I do, charging around the bend I preemptively lash out a few of my tentacles to strike my assailants.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

And hit nothing but air.

Because the tunnel ahead of me wasn’t occupied by bandits. It was covered in dozens of murder holes, with deadly spearheads jutting out of each and every one of them.

At the end of the tunnel, a heavy oak door stood, blocking my path forward.

To get there I would first have to deal with the murder holes.

After a moment's hesitation in which I lost a few more tendril tips and hunks of flesh to the wide spearheads, I came to a decision on how to deal with this issue.

Uncurling almost all of my tentacles and tendrils on the front side of my body, I wrap them around the sharp spearheads and then squeeze tightly. Breaking them apart by splintering the wood.

Once the spears were broken I surge my tendrils through the now unoccupied murder holes to gore the bandits.

I lose almost all of them to vicious sword swings but my goal is complete. My path is clear.

And now that my path was clear and the murder holes had been largely dealt with, I could rampage straight forward.

Which was exactly what I did.

Pulling myself over the broken spears and picking up momentum before slamming into the heavy wooden door.

Surprisingly it withstood this slam comprised of most of my body weight.

All that did though was delay the inevitable as I started to back up and slam into it. Again and again. Each time, it cracked open a little more, each time I got a little closer to getting inside.

Unluckily by the time I had broken down the door, the defenders had managed to rally themselves to face me.

Oh well, it just means I have to spend longer killing them, nothing to really worry about.

At least that's what I thought until I had squeezed my way inside the large cavern.

That's when I felt a familiar presence.

A murderous, hate filled and utterly sociopathic type of presence.

One of the bandits to my right had an enchanted weapon.

It was a brutal and twisted mockery of a noble longsword, caked in dried blood.

Hurriedly I whip out three of my tentacles and grab onto the closest bandit.

Picking them up, before hurling them at the strong bandit.

I only manage to clip the strong bandit on their shoulders though. I didn’t even come close to knocking them off their feet.

But if there was one trait I didn't lack it would be my persistence, and so I quickly snatched up another bandit but before I can throw them, a grizzled nearby bandit deftly severs my tentacle with their axe.

And with a cry the captured bandit falls back down to the ground, before quickly picking themselves back up to face me.

Their helper may have saved their life but they couldn’t save their own, as I sliced through their throat with one of my tendrils.

The blood spray blinded their comrades and granted me the time I need to see if there was anything I could use to my advantage.

But sadly there didn’t seem to be anything of note, this was a natural cave but the stalactites had been broken, so it's not like I could cause a miniature cave in by bashing them down.

There were only around thirty bandits in this room and half of them seemed to sport an injury or two, so perhaps I didn’t need to be cunning and cautious about my strategy to deal with them.

The early bandits had been exceptionally easy to deal with after all.

Even if they had someone with an enchanted weapon, what was the worse that could happen?