Duskbound

Velik had never been underground before, but he had a high mental stat and the racial bonus from [Duskbound] to help him see in the dark. In the past, those had been enough to see clearly. Even a moonless night kept no secrets from his eyes, but he was quickly learning that there was a difference between the dark of night and an utter absence of light that came with being underground.

For the first time since he'd gotten his hunter's cowl, the [Night Vision] enchantment on it was doing some good. Color was the first thing to go as he went deeper, and fine details had started to blur into shadows soon after that, but then the cowl got to work and those details popped back out in pale white outlines. It wasn't as good as he was used to, but it was more than enough to navigate by.

The tunnel itself was somewhat disgusting. The give in the floor as flesh dimpled under his feet disturbed Velik more than he cared to admit, like he was stepping on a boardwalk of living bodies all lashed together. The fact that the walls occasionally twitched and quivered did not help matters. The smell, though, that was the worst of it. It wasn't quite rotting meat, but it was foul nonetheless.

Like being stuck in a prison pit full of criminals who haven't seen a bath in a year, he thought to himself. And no rain to clean them up, either.

That was it. A sour, sickly stink of unwashed flesh tickled his nose and his mind. He'd smelled that stink somewhere before, but he couldn't for the life of him place it. The smell grew stronger the deeper he went. It never changed, though, not even when he stabbed the fleshy walls to confirm the thickness hadn't changed.

His eyes might have relied on his cowl's enchantment to see, but his hearing wasn't hindered by being underground at all. If anything, the heightened sensitivity over a baseline human made it worse. He'd thought his footsteps were silent, so much so that he'd ranked up [Stealth] several times and then folded it into another skill, but in the fleshy underground tunnel, he could hear the echoes of his own steps coming back to him.

He paused at the first fork he came to. To this point, there'd been no other options beyond forward or back. It was impossible to get lost so long as he didn't get turned around, and even then, that would merely result in returning to the surface. Velik wasn't worried about that happening; he had an excellent sense of direction and knew precisely how far he'd walked down the tunnel. Admittedly, he wasn't a pro at sensing changes in elevation, so he wasn't sure how deep he'd gone, but a simple reversed direction going back two miles would see him under the night sky again.

With a fork in the tunnels, however, he now had to make a decision. His compass was difficult to decipher—the settings runes were completely invisible with [Night Vision]—but he could see the arrow pointing slightly to the left. He was just about to put the compass back in his pocket and take that fork when the arrow twinged to the right. Frowning, he looked down each tunnel to see if there was anything moving. Nothing. Probably. I don't hear anything, though, so… What's wrong with the compass?

Velik stood there for a minute, watching as the needle mostly pointed to the left, but occasionally flicked over to the right for a second before slipping back to its old heading. The only thing he could think of was that there were multiple monsters in close proximity and the compass was having trouble deciding which one had more mana. It was either that or the damn thing was broken again.

Standing around would get him nowhere, so he shrugged to himself, pocketed the compass, took up his spear, and started down the left fork. A few thousand feet later, he hit a four-way intersection and again consulted his compass. Now it was swinging wildly from left to right and giving him no indication at all of which way the monster was. All it could tell him for sure was that going back wouldn't get him closer to his goal.

Son of a… This thing's useless.

If the compass wasn't going to guide him, he'd just have to find the monster himself, the old-fashioned way. His mental map of the tunnel network was far from complete, but he had a good idea of where he'd been and figured he knew where he was going. He'd just have to be thorough until he found what he was looking for.

This tunnel to my right curves back the way I came. I bet that leads to the first fork, but it might have some other side tunnels in it. I'll check that first just to confirm, then see what my other options lead to.

* * *

At first, he didn't hear the scratching sound over his own footsteps, but when Velik paused at the entrance to a wide cave to make sure he wasn't walking into a trap, it became clear. There were too many echoes of something that was too soft to track anyway, and he couldn't tell if the noise was in front of him or behind him, but he suspected the answer might be both.

Two enemies would have the advantage in the tunnels, where he'd be forced to fight turned to the side to keep an eye on both of them. His reactions would be slow and he'd be reaching across his body with every attack. It would be better to move into the open cavern where he could put his superior maneuverability to use.

However, if this was where the champion's domain was, the last thing he wanted was to engage it while dealing with additional enemies. A quick check of his compass showed him that the mana source he was looking for was… everywhere, apparently. The needle was spinning all the way around in a continuous circle.

There was only one solution: backtracking. If there was something behind him, he'd hit it hard and dispose of it before anything else caught up. If it was ahead of him, then he'd deal with it when it caught up with him. If there were more than one of them, then he'd made the right call.

Decision made, he swiftly retreated from the cavern. Every few hundred feet, he paused to listen for the scratching sound, which was steadily growing larger. Getting a lock on its location was tricky with the echoes, which were weirdly distorted by the soft, fleshy walls. Velik wasn't confident he could have followed them even in a normal tunnel, though, so he didn't worry about it too much.

As it turned out, he didn't need to worry about tracking the source of the scratching sound. It found him. A monster came trundling around a curve in the tunnel, a foot tall, four feet long, and with a curling tail twice that long sticking out of its back end. A wickedly curved stinger topped that tail. Small pincers, barely big enough to give a decent hand shake, came off the front, and it had six skittering legs to propel it.

Every step it took produced the scratchy sound he'd been hearing, and with so many legs, it was no wonder he'd had a hard time figuring out what he was hearing. It approached fearlessly, cutting across the tunnel and angling straight for Velik. How does it see? This thing doesn't even have eyes.

There was a mouth between the arms that ended in pincers, but no other features beyond that. Eyes, nose, ears – all were absent. There wasn't even an antenna of any sort to guide it. Unfortunately, Velik didn't get any more time to study it before it was on him, its leading pincer reaching out to clamp onto his leg.

He faded back a step and started to bring his spear down in a sharp stab, only to spin it back up to deflect a swift jab from its stinger. The tunnel wasn't really wide enough to give him the full range of motion he was used to, so he shorted his spear and switched to a style of lunge-and-retreat motions designed to strike at the monster while it was recovering from its own attacks.

Velik wasn't sure if that stinger was venomous, but he wasn't eager to find out. Even if it wasn't, it wouldn't do him any good to let the monster poke a few holes in him. It seemed to be far clumsier with its pincers than with the stinger, so he flicked his spear out, extending its length three full feet as he moved, and stabbed the head into the base of the tail.

Severing those muscles seemed to do the trick. Its tail flailed back and forth wildly, the barb at the end whipping through the air with a soft whistle, but without the needed motor control, it was only a matter of a few seconds before it flopped down to drag behind the monster.

Now with only its pincers to deal with, Velik had a far easier time jabbing his spear into its armored carapace. A few applications of [Kinetic Charge] were enough to finish it off, though even after death, it kept twitching.

[You have slain a black hide scorpling (level 33).]

Velik wasn't sure what a scorpling was, but he hoped they didn't get much bigger than that one. It wouldn't have been a particularly challenging fight above ground, but being forced to rely on [Night Vision] and fight in cramped tunnels was a bit of a handicap.

The fight had only taken thirty seconds, which was good because he could still hear scratching sounds coming down the tunnels. The scorpling he'd killed finally stopped twitching, but the noise didn't end. If anything, it was even louder than before.

No chance there's only two of these things, is there? he thought with a sigh.