Chương 61: Tunnel beast

Blick stood up and brushed the dust from his fur as the stones settled around his feet. He turned to look back at the man with the huge bird in his shoulder staring at him through the hole in the tunnel wall.

"The bird likes you." He pointed out as Butler flinched having not noticed the thing landing on him during the chaotic tunnel break.

"It's getting a lot smarter lately. I think some of the mana is getting to its brain now." Blick finished before turning back around to examine the new tunnel system. It smelled musty and stale. There was a breeze flowing past him causing his fur to rustle a bit.

"There should be a tunnel leading up somewhere in there. They would have closed the entrance with some rocks from those piles out in the meadows." Butler clarified as he entered the new tunnels beside Blick. The bird hopped from the human to the slightly wider groks shoulder without a flap. Silently moving was becoming its new favorite trick. Blick looked over at the bird suspiciously. It really had made smarter choices since it got shot.

Was this evidence the of absorbing drops moving further than the central organs. The bird was still growing fast, but it had developed somewhat of a personality as of late. Shrugging he turned to ask Butler the plan beyond this point.

"Do your people need help?" Butler looked over at his furry captor and contemplated the answer. Yes was the easy response. But this beast man would scare the rest of the slaves more than their slavers currently did. If they saw him, they would most likely believe it was a trick to get them in the dinner table. Blick was terrifying to look at in the pale light. He seemed nice enough tho. If you forgave the punch to silence him, and the tackle, and the dragging him through a dark tunnel…

yeah definitely not a good idea to introduce him.

"Honestly Blick, we need the help. A lot of people want to fight back, but it's pointless with the cultivators around. We could probably take out the guards and flee. Just a single one of the cultivators would be able to hunt us all down within a few days. I've been absorbing a bit from each crystal but I've barely gathered a single drop. It will be years before I can compete with them and I am not a trained fighter. This tunnel escape was our best option.

We may be able to disappear fast enough to make finding us impossible. So yes we need your help. But Blick, you're terrifying. Those people are scared and weak. They won't follow you into the tunnels. They would run from you though." He paused coming to an interesting crossroad.

"How strong are you exactly?" He asked the big fur covered man with a smirk across his face.

Something moved in the dark just beyond the lantern lights. Claws on the rocks. A slow growling sound built as the picks stopped swinging. The men saw each other stop working and stopped themselves to see what was happening.

"Bret. Something is in here with us." Someone whispered. The men held their picks in front of their bodies and walked backward toward the end of their tunnel. Nowhere to go. Rock wall behind and beside them they stared into the darkness. The younger boys shuffled themselves behind the two older men in the crew. A rock clacked against the left floor of the tunnel a the men snapped their head to it as it rolled towards them in a clattering bounce. They didn't see the beast climbing the wall above them.

One of the men felt the small bits of dirt bounce off his shoulder and looked to the side bumping into his partner in the motion. The small commotion had the men up front turn around and they froze. Behind the young man in the very back of the group was a beast. Dark and wide with claws out reaching for the boy. Blick let out his fiercest "Roar!" The men and boys fell over each other in an effort to escape. And Blick couldn't help but laugh in his deep throaty way.

The men didn't hear the laughter and didn't stop when they came to the corner where the cultivator stood. They ran right past him as he yelled for calm. They ran screaming as they reached Butler and his team waving them off course into their own tunnel and in the dark panic with few light sources they didn't think enough to know which way they had headed. The commotion left other tunnel crews to quickly congregate in the junction where the cultivator and guards had remained.

They watched as the cultivator walked calmly into the dark tunnel before they heard his yell and a loud growl before the muffled conflict began.

Bringing the cultivator out by himself was the easy part. Blick was most concerned with the actual fight he would have to force. He didn't have a safe escape route like the time he was hunted by the three elites. But this man probably wasn't as well trained as them if he was out overseeing a slave mine camp. Like always he set his trap. He placed some crystals and picks in a pile near the wall really fast before dusting the lamps left behind throwing the cave into darkness.

He knew a man was coming in, but the man didn't know what he was going to find. Blick had a slight advantage in surprise. This man wasn't like the miners. He was a killer if the stories of runaways was true. That and he was holding people against their will. Blick wasn't too mixed up about ending him. It would allow him more time to escape as the others would be less interested in chasing a group that somehow overcame a solid core individual.

And if it went well enough he could scare enough of the guards that he could just walk out of the tunnels with only one fight. Hanging from the wall in the darkness he listened as the men's screams disappeared into the distance and the steady tap of boots on rock and dirt slowly closed the distance. The man was hold in a lantern and when he got just under blick he threw a small pebble into the lamp, shattering it.

Enveloped in darkness neither could see aside from the very soft green blue glow of the crystals in the distance. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. With the light out the man let out a surprise scream and Blick moved in fast. Reinforcing every movement because he was fighting someone surely stronger than him he made contact fast. He swept the man's legs first by dropping low and grabbing him by the leg with two hands.

The man caught himself from the fall with two hands right as Blick lifted him and threw him head first into a rock wall. The cultivator was absolutely it expecting to be thrown by his ankles but still managed to wrap his arms around his head before impact. Blick followed the flying man and he lashed out with a kick from the ground having seen Blicks silhouette in the dim light. The kick connected with Blicks leg sending him sprawling forward with his own momentum on top of the downed man.

A chaotic brawl began with reinforced fists flying. Nobody could block what they couldn't see. Blick stood up slowly whipping the blood from his split cheek. The man did not stand. Blick had a stronger body with fur to pad the blows. That and the unlucky slaver was not fighting another human so his fists went to random places not knowing where the beast attacking him began or ended. A broken hand and some deep bruised ribs was all the real damage Blick sustained in the melee.

He had fought enough humans to know a few solid blows to the head would take any of them out. After he finished the fight he grabbed the man by the boot and drug him close to the junction. Before entering the light from the men holding lanterns he lifted the man's body and with reinforcement he threw the lifeless corpse into the waiting men. Guards and slaves alike were bowled over in a chaotic pile of bodies.

And as they tried to right themselves Blick ran out of the dark tunnel on his hands and feet snarling like a maddened beast. That was plenty to send the remaining curious people into a frenzy. Some even went down the wrong tunnels. The guards shoved the weaker slower slaves out of their way to escape, and up ahead Butlers crew stepped aside to let them pass. Butler and his few friends waved down nearly every slave and sent them down their own tunnel.

When Blick made it to them he doubled back and had to scare the remaining three who had went down side tunnels. He was much faster than them and their screams were pretty easy to follow. By the time he had herded all the slaves to the correct path he nodded to Butler before they both disappeared into the escape tunnel. The bird was calmly sitting in the crate when Blick arrived and Butler stopped to make sure he knew the plan.

"My crew should be leading the slaves to the exit we busted open and out into the meadow beyond. I'll make sure we didn't lose anyone on the way before following. I can't thank you enough for your help, but I have to ask if you can close this back up before following us out." Blick responded.

"That should give your people time to get clear so they don't see me exit the tunnels and set off a new scene match." Butler chuckled before adding.

"You scared the dog shit out of them hahahaha." The two shared a hearty laugh at the chaos that just went down before Butler laid a hand on Blicks broad shoulder.

"Thank you Blick. This means more than you can imagine." He turned and ran off into the darkness with some small laughter and the light of a crystal to guide him. Blick stood and watched his light disappear around a corner before turning and nudging the bird to climb on his shoulder again. He fed the thing a few more berries before moving rocks and dirt up against the hole.

Sealing the hole was quite annoying as he needed to pack the rock and dirt back into a shape it didnt naturally lay in, but he eventually got it figured out. The trip out of the tunnels was relatively uneventful as he took his time to search for any glowing down each tunnel. He did manage to find enough crystals in random places to form another drop inside his core and decided to wait on absorbing it until he left the darkness of the tunnels. Blick was already sick of the darkness.