The tunnel was barely wide enough for one person. The walls were raw mud, scored with deep gouges where something massive had clawed its way through. The ceiling was low, pressing down and making every breath feel shallow and tight.
Renna hated it instantly.
"No. No no no. I don’t do underground. I don’t do small spaces. I don’t do things with too many legs in the dark."
"You’re Rank 2 now," Emric said from behind her. "Your physical capabilities exceed every creature in this tunnel."
"My brain doesn’t care! It still hates holes!"
Holden dropped through first. The tunnel stretched in both directions, dark and curving. The scratching sound was louder here, closer. He could feel it in his chest.
squelch.
The mud grabbed at his ankles. The air was thick, wet, and freezing cold compared to the surface, while water dripped from the ceiling in steady drops.
plink. plink. plink.
Maeve’s voice came through the earpiece, muffled as the rock and mud interfered with the signal.
"Holden, the seismic readings are getting stronger. They’re concentrated in the eastern section, near pillars seven through twelve. You need to move right."
"Copy." He turned to the team. "Single file. Me first. Emric behind me. Renna behind Emric. Lyra, rear guard."
"Got it." Lyra dropped through the hole and landed silently. Her spear glowed faintly blue, casting light across the tunnel walls.
They saw the first Burrower twenty feet in.
It was a centipede, an armored centipede the size of a horse. Its body was segmented, each plate covered in coarse black bristles that scraped against the tunnel walls as it moved. Its head was a solid plate of chitin with two mandibles the size of longswords, clicking together in a steady rhythm.
click. click. click.
It was eating a support pillar.
The massive stone column, one of twenty-four that held the Outpost above their heads, had been chewed halfway through. Gouges the size of dinner plates had been carved out of the stone. The pillar was still standing, but it was bowing, with stress fractures running through the surface and tiny chips of stone falling from the cracks with each bite the Burrower took.
Behind it, in the darkness of the tunnel, more scratching sounds. More Burrowers. More pillars being eaten.
"They’re eating the foundation," Maeve said through the static. "If they take down that pillar, the section above us is the armory. If the armory goes, the eastern wall loses its anchor point."
"I see it."
Holden summoned his Solar-Forged Sword. The blade appeared in his hand, and he instinctively channeled Hellfire Cleave. The steel began to glow white-hot, and the mud on the floor started to steam.
"STOP!"
Emric’s voice was sharp and desperate. Holden froze.
Emric grabbed his arm. "You can’t use fire here."
"The centipede is eating the pillar."
"I know. But if you use that in this tunnel, the thermal shock will vaporize the moisture in the walls. The steam expansion alone would create enough pressure to blow the tunnel apart. The ceiling collapses. We die. The foundation breaks. The Outpost sinks. Everyone on the surface dies too."
Holden looked at the glowing blade in his hand, then at the mud walls and the ceiling already groaning under the weight of the fortress above.
He sheathed the fire.
The blade went cold. The steel returned to its natural silver.
"Fine. No fire."
The Burrower turned. Its head swiveled toward them, and two black eyes reflected Lyra’s frost-light. It saw them. Its mandibles spread wide, and a sound came from its throat, a deep, wet clicking that vibrated in the tunnel walls.
gggrrrk. gggrrrk. gggrrrk.
Then it charged.
The tunnel was narrow. The Burrower filled it almost entirely, its armored body scraping both walls as it surged forward. The mandibles snapped open, aiming for Holden’s torso.
Holden sidestepped. The tunnel gave him barely enough room. The Burrower’s mandible clipped the mud wall, sending a spray of dirt across his face.
He drove his sword into the gap between the Burrower’s head plate and its first body segment. The blade slid into the soft tissue underneath the chitin, and the creature’s forward momentum carried it along the blade, impaling itself deeper.
The Burrower thrashed. Its body whipped sideways, slamming into the tunnel walls. The ceiling groaned, and chunks of mud fell.
crack.
The support pillar next to them shuddered.
Emric moved. He dropped his shield, lunged past Holden, and pressed his back against the cracked pillar. His Rank 2 body braced against the stone. His legs dug into the mud while his shoulders pushed upward against the section of ceiling that was starting to bow.
The weight hit him immediately.
Emric’s face twisted, his teeth clenched so hard his jaw muscles bulged. His glasses slid down his nose, but he couldn’t spare a hand to push them up.
"Just kill them faster!" he shouted, his voice strained and thick. "I can hold this, but not for long!"
Lyra was already moving. She pressed her hands against the mud walls and pushed frost energy outward. Ice spread across the tunnel walls in thick sheets, freezing the mud solid and stabilizing the loose earth. The walls stopped crumbling and held firm, at least temporarily.
"I’ve got the walls. But Emric is right. The ceiling is shifting. Whatever you’re going to do, do it now."
Holden stood in the dark tunnel, surrounded by the horrific sound of scratching mandibles and groaning stone. He couldn’t use anything that might trigger a collapse and bring the entire Outpost crashing down on top of them.
His 10,000x processor activated fully.
The world slowed down. The Burrower in front of him moved like it was swimming through honey. The particles of falling dust hung in the air, and every detail of the creature’s body became visible under his enhanced perception.
He could see the armor, every plate, every segment, every overlap. And in every overlap, he could see the gaps: the thin lines of soft, unarmored tissue that connected the chitin plates.
They were tiny, millimeters wide, invisible to a normal eye in this darkness.
To Holden, they were lit up like a map.
He made his move.
His blade became a scalpel. Each strike was precise, controlled, and minimal. No wide swings. No explosive force. Just the tip of the sword sliding into a gap, severing a nerve cluster, and pulling out.
The first Burrower dropped. Its legs stopped moving, its mandibles went slack, and it died without a sound, collapsing into a heap of armored segments.
He moved past it.
The tunnel widened slightly. More Burrowers. Six of them, clustered around two more support pillars, chewing through stone.
Holden walked into the middle of them.
The first one turned. Holden was already behind it, his blade sliding into the gap at the base of its skull.
The creature dropped instantly.
The second one lunged. Holden stepped left. The mandibles snapped shut where his head had been, and his blade found the joint between the second and third body segment. The creature’s rear half went limp, while its front half thrashed for three seconds before going still.
The third and fourth charged simultaneously. The tunnel was too narrow for them to reach him side by side, so they jammed into each other, their armored bodies scraping and grinding against the walls.
Holden stood between them and put a blade in each one’s neck gap.
Two kills in just two seconds.
The fifth tried to retreat. It turned and started burrowing back into the wall. Holden caught its tail segment, pulled it back, and drove his sword through the top of its head plate.
The sixth was the largest, a Rank 2, 8-Star. Its armor was thicker, its mandibles longer, and its eyes glowed faintly red in the dark.
It reared back and lunged at his face.
Holden didn’t move. His processor mapped the trajectory of the strike to the millimeter. The mandibles came within an inch of his skin before they reached the limit of their reach. He stepped inside the creature’s guard, placed his blade against the soft tissue of its throat, and pushed.
The Burrower shuddered. Its legs curled inward, and it collapsed at his feet.
Silence.
The scratching stopped.
The tunnel was full of bodies. Forty Burrowers, all dead, without a single explosive technique.
The pillar Emric was holding groaned. He adjusted his stance and pushed harder.
"Are they gone?" he asked through gritted teeth.
"They’re gone."
"Good. Because my arms are about to fall off. And I mean that literally. I think I felt something in my shoulder actually detach."
Lyra pulled her hands off the walls. The ice held. "The frost structures are stable for now, but they’ll melt in a few hours. We need to get engineers down here to reinforce these pillars permanently."
[Subterranean Swarm Eliminated! x40 Abyssal Burrowers Defeated!]
[+15,000 KP!]
[2x KP Booster Active! KP Doubled!]
[+30,000 KP!]
[Current KP: 422,290]
Holden dismissed his sword and wiped Burrower fluid off his blade hand onto the tunnel wall. The liquid was clear and smelled like ammonia.
He looked up. Through the ceiling, through the mud and stone, he could feel the faint vibration of cannons firing above. The surface battle was still going. The Outpost was still standing.
Because of them.
"Let’s get out of this hole," he said.
Renna, who had been pressed against the tunnel wall for the entire fight with her bow drawn and her eyes wide, exhaled so hard it echoed.
"Yes. Please. Before anything else with too many legs shows up."
Emric peeled himself off the pillar. His shoulders made a sound that shouldn’t have come from a human body.
pop.
"I need a medic. And a new spine."
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