I Evolve 10,000 Times Faster

The eastern trench was holding.

Barely, but holding. The monsters kept coming in waves, and Holden kept swinging.

The soldiers behind him had stopped cheering. They just stared.

Captain Venus had sent reinforcements to plug the gaps, and the line had stabilized enough that Holden could step back from the front without the trench collapsing in the next sixty seconds.

He walked back through the mud, dismissed his sword, and wiped ash off his face with the back of his hand.

Holden checked his System balance

[Current KP: 392,290]

He needed a lot more points. But the surface swarm was thinning for the moment, pulling back to regroup. The portal was still open, still vomiting darkness into the sky, but the immediate pressure on the eastern trench had eased.

Emric and Renna were resting against the trench wall. Renna had run out of arrows twice and had started looting dead soldiers’ quivers. She had fourteen arrows left and was counting them obsessively.

"Fourteen. I have fourteen. If I use two per target, that’s seven targets. Seven is not enough. What if there’s another wave? Seven won’t cut it."

"Then you use your fists," Emric said. He was leaning on his shield. A monster had clipped him during the third wave, but he hadn’t mentioned it.

"My fists are not arrows, Emric. That’s like saying a shield is a sword."

"They’re both weapons."

"They are NOT both weapons."

"You punched a monster in the face during the second wave."

"That was improvised."

Lyra stood nearby. Her spear was covered in monster ichor, the blade frosting over as her energy naturally leaked into the weapon. She had killed more quietly than the others, using no flashy techniques, just precise, efficient thrusts into weak points.

She looked at Holden. "How much longer before the next wave?"

"Maeve?" Holden said into his earpiece.

Just static at first. Then she answered, but her voice wasn’t its usual steady self. It was rushed and sharp.

"Holden, I need you in the bunker. Right now."

He straightened. "What’s wrong?"

"Just get down here. Bring the team."

She didn’t explain further. That was how Holden knew it was serious.

"Move. All of you. Now."

Emric grabbed his shield, Renna slung her bow over her shoulder, and Lyra fell into step without a word.

They ran.

The bunker was underneath the main command building. A steep concrete staircase led down into a low-ceilinged room filled with communication equipment, maps, and the constant hum of generators.

Maeve was sitting at the radar station in the corner. But she wasn’t looking at the main radar screen, which showed the surface swarm in red dots clustered around the Outpost walls.

She was looking at a water glass.

A single glass of water sat on the edge of the console, its surface trembling. Tiny concentric rings spread outward from the center, not from any vibration in the table.

Holden stopped in the doorway.

"What am I looking at?"

Maeve adjusted her glasses, her fingers trembling slightly. She wasn’t scared. She was just burned out from typing at a furious pace.

"The main radar tracks surface movement. Everyone is watching the surface. The wall, the trenches, the swarm." She pointed at the glass. "But the ground is telling a different story. Those vibrations are coming from directly beneath us. Something is burrowing its way up."

She turned to her screen. She had pulled up the base’s internal seismic sensor array, a system designed to detect tunneling attempts during siege warfare.

The monitor showed a three-dimensional map of the base’s underground structure. The fortress sat on a forty-foot layer of packed earth and reinforced stone, braced by twenty-four massive pillars drilled deep into the bedrock.

Beneath the platform, the wireframe showed movement. Dozens of red signatures were tunneling through the earth in coordinated patterns. They had already bypassed the outer perimeter, slipped right under the walls, and reached the main foundation.

"They’re not attacking the walls," Maeve said. "The wall assault is a distraction. The real attack is underground. They’re burrowing under the base."

"How many?"

Maeve counted the red dots. Her face went pale.

"At least forty. All Rank 2 signatures. Maybe higher."

Emric stepped closer to study the screen, his eyes scanning the wireframe as he ran the numbers in his head. "There are forty Rank 2 burrowing creatures right under the main support pillars. If they take out more than three, the whole foundation will shift. If they get five, the entire eastern wing collapses. And if they hit eight or more..."

He looked at Holden.

"The entire Outpost sinks to the ground."

Renna’s mouth dropped open. "We’re standing on top of a sinkhole and nobody noticed?"

"Everyone was watching the horizon," Maeve said. "Nobody was watching their feet."

Holden turned to the team. "Where do we access the underside of the foundation?"

Maeve pulled up the base schematic. "The armory. Lowest basement level. There’s a maintenance crawlspace that runs under the eastern wing. If the Burrowers are coming through, they’ll breach there first."

"Show me."

The armory was two buildings over. They ran through the compound, past soldiers who were too busy reinforcing barricades to question why a group of academy students was sprinting toward the munitions building.

The armory basement was a concrete box. The only light came from a single flickering bulb that swung from a chain overhead, casting long shadows across the walls. Racks of spare weapons lined the room.

Renna wrinkled her nose. "This place is terrible. Like someone built a dungeon and forgot to make it interesting."

"Quiet," Holden said.

He listened.

At first, nothing. Just the distant boom of cannons from above and the hum of the generator.

Then he heard it.

scritch. scritch. scritch.

A scratching sound came from below, rhythmic and relentless. The floor vibrated faintly under his boots, and the spare weapons on the racks rattled against each other.

clink. clink. clink.

Emric knelt and pressed his palm flat against the floor. "The vibrations are concentrated. Directly beneath us. Maybe fifteen feet down."

Holden walked to the center of the room. The concrete floor was cracked in one spot. He knelt, hooked his fingers into the crack, and pulled.

The stone tile came up with a grinding sound. Underneath was a layer of packed earth, feeling soft and wet where it should have been bone-dry and hard.

He dug. His Aether-Steel fingers carved through the packed earth like it was clay. Two feet down, his hand broke through into empty air.

A tunnel.

The smell that rose from the hole was indescribable: rotting earth, sulfur, and something organic and foul, like meat left in the sun.

Holden looked down into the darkness below.

"We’re going in."

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