Chương 154: What lurks in the Dark

Joe stared in disgust at the scene before him.

'Tell Esha, I'm going to catch her later and make her pay for this,' he pulsed to Corel as his expression twisted. Below him churned a rolling horde of putrid, bulbous, elongated, slimy, multi-legged slugs. He held his breath as the stench of bile and saliva washed over him in a suffocating wave. Thankfully, he still had the oxygen mask and tank from his underwater escapade with the brats and Alice. He pulled one out and strapped it on, relief humming through his nostrils as the filtered air flowed in.

Once he was kitted out, Joe peered toward the floating tokens in the distance. When he activated Farmer's Sight, pain stabbed behind his eyes. The cavern was saturated with mana. Every space above the shifting, groaning slugs was packed with dense, colourless energy. He leaned out over the ledge and brushed his fingers against it. The mana was solid, unmoving. He struck it with his staff. The impact was muted, the vibration barely travelling back into his hands.

There was a wide gap between the mana barrier and the ledge. Just enough space to drop straight into the slugs. Joe drew a steady breath and stepped forward. He fell into the writhing mass below. As Joe pushed his way through the living carpet, slime coated him layer by layer. It clung to his clothing, his staff, even his gloves. Progress was painfully slow. Every step felt like wading through a nightmare made of flesh. Throughout it all, Corel kept him updated.

'Esha and Alice have pinned Ark down inside a chamber within the water palace. He's furious, but contained. Gaston escaped the pit and is heading into the Aquarium. We are hot on his heels.' Joe felt a flicker of relief. They had things under control, and more than that, they were executing the plan well. The traps, arrays, and preparation had been worth every credit. He couldn't help feeling a small surge of pride as he slogged onward. As the tokens drew closer, inch by agonizing inch. The mass around him shifted.

It was subtle, almost too subtle. But Joe felt it. A warning whisper at the edge of his senses. Something in the darkness had noticed him. His barding sprang into place around his body, and at that same instant, a small flea leapt from a puddle of slime. As it cleared the surface, its body swelled to the size of a spider. It slammed onto Joe's leg and bit down hard on his barding. A strange substance flooded from its fangs, disrupting the mana that held his skill together.

The structure destabilized and his barding detonated outward. The forced collapse of the skill hit him like a hammer to the mind. Joe reeled and went down to one knee, the impact knocking the air from his lungs. He was forced to remove his mask to breathe unimpeded. Gore and entrails rained over him as nearby slugs were blown apart by the backlash. He had no time to wrap himself in mana. He gagged, coughing up a mouthful of slime, and stared in horror at his body, now completely coated in filth.

The revulsion barely lasted a heartbeat. Two more fleas burst from the slime around him, swelling to the size of his hand. Slick fangs snapped shut as they latched onto his arms. The bites lacked real force. Neither creature could pierce his skin. His twice-forged body held firm as the insects writhed, desperate to break through. Joe slammed one palm down with a wet crack, crushing a flea and adding another layer of gore to his arm. The second bounced away before he could finish it.

"Ack! This is horrible," Joe complained as he tried to scrape the slime off his gear. The effort was pointless. The substance clung like glue, stubborn and unyielding. He abandoned the attempt and pushed onward instead, wading deeper through the heaving mass toward the tokens. A short while later, Joe's bracelet flashed as Alice requested a switch. Joe glanced down at himself, slick with slime and viscera, and dismissed the request.

'Rel? You with Alice? Tell everyone I can't swap right now. I'm literally covered head to toe in slime and guts and wading through a sea of slugs. It's quite possibly the most disgusting thing ever.'

'... Okay,' Corel replied. Joe grimaced. They would only ask for a switch if one of the space mages was slipping their net. But he was in no state to help, so all he could do was trust them to hold on until he finished here. He looked up. The tokens were close now, close enough to taste victory, and he forced himself to move faster. The slugs finally reacted in earnest. Instead of mindlessly shifting around him, they began to block his path, heaping themselves together and climbing over his arms and legs.

The press of bodies turned suffocating, wet weight dragging at him from every direction. He tried to Space Jump, slime and bile be damned. The skill fizzled. There was nowhere to jump to. That answered a long-standing question. He could not accidentally jump into a solid mass and tear himself apart. Space Jump simply refused to activate unless there was room for his body.

"Good to know," Joe mumbled darkly. He drew his quarterstaff and forced his way forward, no longer sparing the slugs. He hacked and smashed a path through them, driven by urgency rather than disgust. Somewhere above, the others were fighting for time, and not knowing how they fared gnawed at him. As usual, violence had consequences. The cavern shuddered as the real trap awoke. Fleas burst from the writhing mass in waves, hidden predators roused by the slaughter of their food.

Joe felt the ground vibrate as an uncountable swarm leapt toward him. He had just enough time to yelp before the first wave hit. They latched onto his clothes and skin, biting and clawing, trying to tear their way through him.

"Fuck!" Joe shouted, slapping at the crawling mass. One or two were nothing. Dozens were manageable. Hundreds were a problem. They were everywhere. Clambering over his legs, arms, torso, and crawling into every fold of fabric. Each second brought more weight, more movement, more pressure. The slime coating his body worked against him, turning his motion sluggish and clumsy. He crushed handfuls of fleas, but for every one he killed, eight more took their place. His jog slowed to a stagger. Then a crawl.

Within minutes, he looked less like a man and more like a moving mound, bugs layered thick over his body as he forced one leg forward at a time. The pile grew heavier, denser, until he could no longer see through the mass clinging to his head. He stopped. His senses dulled, smothered by crawling bodies and the oppressive mana just overhead. He shook, crushed dozens of fleas, felt them bust under his hands. It did not matter.

The swarm filled the gaps again, relentless, patient, and hungry, as Joe stood buried alive beneath chitin and slime, the tokens still just out of reach. He tried to activate his Mana Stream, but the bugs clung to it the instant it formed, ripping the skill apart in a violent backlash. It felt as if their entire existence was designed to deny skills. He tried to plant seeds. Nothing took. The ground was too deep, the cavern itself engineered to reject growth.

He had used seeds underground before, but this place was different. A strangled, visceral sound tore from his throat as he tried to shake himself free again. It did nothing. The fleas kept coming. Their weight began to matter now, dragging him down as he fought to take even a single step. No. He couldn't fail now; he was so close. He paused, forcing himself to stop struggling. Panic would kill him faster than the swarm. He needed to think. He needed a way through.

__ Elsewhere, the ladies of Landradad were running out of options. Corel stared at Ark, his body encased in a strange metallic barrier that shrugged off every strike and skill they threw at it. She could feel something building inside that shell, a coiled intent meant to shatter their hold and let him escape. She glanced at Alice, who had dismissed her beasts and was reinforcing a barricade around the only entrance to the chamber.

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"I'm going to switch with Tevenny and come up with a plan," Corel said, tension sharp in her voice. Alice nodded. A heartbeat later, Tevenny appeared at her side. Corel reappeared beside Esha on the hoverboard as they chased Gaston through the aquarium.

"Slow down, Esh. We need a new plan," Corel said, gripping her friend's shoulder.

"Fuck!" Esha snapped as they came to a halt.

"We can't split our focus anymore," Corel said, frustration bleeding into her words.

"With Joe occupied, we don't have the strength to pin both of them down."

"Fuck," Esha said again.

"You're right. They're too strong. Too many skills we can't shut down." Neither of them voiced what they were both thinking. Alice and Tevenny were not past the bottleneck. Their movement skills were still imperfect. They were fighting above their weight, scraping by on coordination and grit, and both had come terrifyingly close to losing their stars already. One clean hit would send either of them home and cripple their chances.

"Which one should we focus on?" Esha asked, glancing toward the direction where she could still sense Gaston moving.

"Ark," Corel said.

"Joe was convinced he was the greater threat, and we still have him pinned down." She glanced down at her bracelet.

"I'll inform Alice before you switch with her. Can you tell Tevenny?" Esha nodded.

"I'll tell her to keep hunting clues and avoid Gaston. Just in case the farmer can't secure all the tokens." Corel vanished as she traded places with Tevenny. She reappeared beside Alice and quickly pulled her aside.

"Change of plan. Esha and I are focusing on Ark. You and Tevenny return to clue hunting, but do not approach Gaston." Alice nodded, though Corel could see the strain in her eyes. She felt like she was being sidelined. Corel squeezed her hand gently.

"Don't be disappointed. We've all done more than Joe ever asked of us. Making it this far is already a victory. We kept them separated, and the competition isn't over yet. We'll regroup in the next area and continue with that part of his plan," Corel added with a small chuckle. Alice forced out a soft laugh, the tension easing from her shoulders.

"You're right. I needed that. Good luck. And tell Esha good luck, too." A moment later, Alice vanished. Corel turned back to the barricade, bracing herself alongside Esha for what they both knew would be an uphill fight. They were buying time, nothing more. Then the ground trembled. Corel froze and extended her senses back toward the chamber. Ark was still sealed inside his metallic shell. This tremor was coming from somewhere else, far away and violent. She exchanged a look with Esha.

"That isn't…" Corel began.

"Of course it is," Esha groaned. __ Joe had always been known for his audacious, ambitious ideas. Even he had to admit that this one probably should have gone through Corel first. Hindsight, he thought dimly, was a cruel blessing as the entire cavern erupted. The problem had been space. He needed room to move. If he could Space Jump even once, he could shake the bugs off, regain momentum, and reach the tokens that were agonizingly close. But the solid wall of mana above his head consumed nearly all available space.

He had tried to jump into it. That failed. So he turned to mana manipulation instead. He began feeding his own mana into the structure, disrupting it, contaminating it, breaking the delicate bindings that held it rigid and intact. What he had not fully considered was what would happen when that much compressed mana lost its cohesion. The result was simple. The mana destabilized and then it detonated. Now came the second problem.

He could not activate his barding or his Mana Stream while he was still coated in bugs, which meant there was only one option left. He had to endure the explosion without protection. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if the thousands of bugs clinging to him might act as some kind of living armour. They did not. The instant the explosion reached them, every single bug liquefied into nothing, flash-vaporized as the air around Joe superheated.

He shut his eyes and braced himself, unable to even take a breath before the air vanished. His face was coated in liquefying slime and chitin, and then even that was gone, replaced by flame. The cavern became a roaring inferno, a hollow sphere of fire with Joe trapped at its heart. His clothing burned away in seconds. His skin blistered as the surface scorched, every hair on his body incinerating until he was left as smooth and bare as a newborn. He could not breathe. He could not move.

Fire surrounded him from every direction. Yet somehow, impossibly, the damage stopped at the surface. His flesh burned, but it did not fail. The pain was overwhelming, a white-hot agony that drowned out every thought. Time stretched. How long he remained there, he could not tell. Eventually, the flames weakened, collapsing inward as fresh air thundered down into the cavern. Joe dragged in a breath, choking, but alive. He did not open his eyes at first.

He waited, crouched low, until the heat receded enough that he trusted he would not blind himself. When he blinked, crusted residue cracked and flaked away from his lashes. The worst of the pain had dulled into a deep, throbbing ache. He swallowed a healing pill and slowly straightened, taking in the devastation. Fire still burned in scattered patches. Smoke filled the cavern, thinning as it poured upward through a jagged hole blasted clean through the ceiling. Nothing moved. Nothing lived.

All traces of slime, bile, slugs, and fleas were gone, erased so completely that only blackened scorch marks hinted they had ever existed. Except for one thing. Ten tokens floated calmly in the air, untouched by flame or smoke. Joe laughed weakly. Maybe it had not been such a terrible plan after all. He stepped forward and felt cool air brush against his bare skin. Glancing down, he saw his body coated in cracked, blackened residue. He wiped at it, flakes falling away to reveal fresh, sun-darkened skin beneath.

He was streaked with soot and ash and desperately needed a bath, but he had no lakes nearby and only small canteens in storage. That would have to do. He rinsed his face, then pulled out a mirror and stared at his reflection. Bald. Soot-streaked. Burned and reborn.

"Fuck," he muttered. He gathered all ten tokens, feeling very tired and questioning every decision that had led him here. It took an hour before Joe reached the surface of Augusta Prime and set a course for the next area's entry point, which was marked clearly by a massive arrow hanging in the sky. At first, he thought that was a blessing. He was wrong.

Hundreds of competitors loitered around the entrance, clustered in loose groups, all waiting for someone else to arrive with tokens so they could steal them rather than waste time searching on their own.

"Gentlemen! Seriously?" Joe called out, as dozens of eyes turned toward him.

"Not a single one of you thought to find your own tokens?" A murmur rippled through the crowd.

"Feormere!"

"The bounty target!" Shouts erupted as recognition spread. Several competitors reacted fast, activating skills and trinkets and fleeing the moment they saw him. Those were the smart ones. The rest drew weapons. Joe laughed, the sound echoing through the valley that housed the entry gate.

"Gentlemen. You have made a terrible mistake." Less than thirty minutes later, Joe sat on a stone ledge, staring down at six bound bodies. They were the only ones still alive and present. The rest had either been sent home or killed outright. A few had been marked as Harbinger targets, forcing Joe to end them where they stood. He truly despised that cursed seedling. The six captives groaned and cursed, glaring up at him with a mix of fear and confusion.

"Don't look at me like that," Joe said mildly.

"You're the lucky ones. Well, four of you are. Those four have volunteered to help me bring my friends here for a reunion before we enter the next area." He clapped his hands once.

"Now. Who's first?" Joe sent Corel a pulse.

'Hey. You busy?'

'Yes! We are fighting Ark! Can you help?' Corel replied, tension sharp in the pulse.

'Even better! Disengage. I'm bringing you all here.' Joe smiled as he pressed the green button on the bracelet now wrapped around one of the captives' wrists. The rockman's eyes widened just before he vanished in a flash of light. Corel appeared in his place. She stared up at Joe in disbelief, clearly having expected to see someone else where he stood.

"Huh? How? But who just…"

"No time to explain. Bracelet quickly," Joe said, already grabbing Corel's wrist.

"Who was with you?"

"Esha. But why? Wait! What are you…" Joe did not answer. He peeled the bracelet off Corel, slapped it onto his second captive, and pressed the red button. A heartbeat later, Esha appeared. Joe smiled at her.

"Bracelet. Quick." Esha did not move. She just stared at him. Her mouth slowly fell open.

"Esh! This isn't the…"

"Hahahahahahahaha!" Esha collapsed onto the ground, clutching her stomach.

"What…. hahaha… happ…. hahaha.. hair…" Joe pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Really?" While Esha wheezed and rolled, he pried the bracelet off her wrist and snapped it onto the next very confused volunteer. Two flashes later, all four women stood in the Earth sector. Or rather, lay on it. Every single one of them was on the ground, laughing as if their lives depended on it.

"Seriously?" Joe protested.

"Ladies! It's not that funny!" Corel tried to respond and failed, burying her face against Esha's shoulder. Alice was gasping for air. Tevenny had fully given up and was just pointing at him while making helpless noises. Joe sighed, defeated. He waved a hand and released the remaining captives, deciding it was not worth the effort to break their stars. He sat down on a rock and waited.

"We don't have time for this," he mumbled. It took almost ten full minutes for the laughter to die down. Mostly. Esha was still giggling every time she looked at him.

"I can't help it," she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

"You look like a very angry egg."

"I hate you," Joe said flatly. He shoved a token into each of their hands without ceremony and turned away. Before any of them could say another word, he walked straight into the next area, bald head held high and dignity left somewhere back in the slug cave.