Chương 97: Darkness

The next few hours were spent in tense silence. I tore some strips of cloth from one of the dead scouts, and used that to plug everyone's ears. We couldn't handle another wave of thought worms right now, but I could prevent the next wave from slipping into our thoughts in the first place. At least, if my earplugs actually worked. Eyeing my craftsmanship, I felt some doubt about whether they would stop everyone's hearing in the first place, but they were better than nothing, at least.

Then, I laid with my head flat against the ground, hoping that I would somehow notice the vibrations of the cave floor if the Orukthyri noticed us and came to kill us too. Once my alteration essence reserves had recovered enough to fend off another wave of thought worms, I unplugged my ears to keep track of our surroundings. We couldn't afford to be surprised by anything right now. Which meant I needed to risk exposing my mind to another wave of attacks.

I jumped at nearly every sound, half-expecting another wave of orange-red souls to invade my thoughts with every single clunk that echoed through the caves. Every single enemy we met right now could be the end of us. Sallia and the Scout weren't even conscious, and I barely had enough alteration essence to fend off the weakest monsters we could encounter. And while I had plenty of manifestation essence left, I only knew second-circle spells.

Those would be nowhere near enough to win a fight with a truly dangerous enemy. Finally, after agonizing hours spent waiting and hoping for the best, Sallia started to stir. I felt a wave of relief crash over me. Sallia was okay.

"Sallia!" I whispered, gently shaking her shoulder.

"Mmra?" She slurred, mumbling as she seemed to try, and fail, to sit up.

"Whm… wrng," said Sallia, slurring her words as she flopped over. I started to feel a little nervous. Was there something wrong with her? I reached for my alteration essence and squeezed out a healing spell, removing almost all of the essence I had regenerated in the past few hours in order to throw a healing spell at Sallia. As the healing spell washed over her body, Sallia seemed to perk up a little more.

The floppy, disjointed movements her limbs had been making started to organize themselves, and she slowly sat up. While she wasn't exactly coordinated now, she was at least in better condition than she had been before.

"My head hurts," said Sallia, wincing as she slowly and carefully worked to enunciate her words.

"Stop shaking me." I immediately stopped shaking her, and Sallia groaned, reaching up to touch her forehead.

"God-Emperor's beard, what happened?" asked Sallia.

"My memories are hazy. Did we get really drunk last night? How much did I drink?" Then, she frowned.

"No, that's not right." She opened her eyes and carefully inspected herself, feeling her legs and arms, before shaking her head.

"That's right, I'm young right now. We were in the tunnels…"

"Something called a thought worm attacked us," I said.

"It used… some sort of mental attack. But it lived inside of our thoughts, I think. It was… weird." Sallia groaned in acknowledgement.

"No wonder my head hurts. Did you deal with them?" I nodded. Then, realizing Sallia might not be able to recognize visual cues right now, I whispered "Yeah. I extinguished them all. There were… a lot of them, but my rune ability and alteration essence took care of them." Sallia winced.

"Thanks for saving me, then. Fuck." She swore.

"Mental attacks. I thought with my improved mental stats, they wouldn't be an issue for me this life. I guess in the future I need to start devoting a rune ability or two to fending those off. Or buy an Ability for it." Then, she sighed.

"Is there only one scout left?" She asked as she scanned the cave.

"Just one scout. He's still unconscious." I hesitated for a moment, thinking of the sound of the Orukthyri chewing when I had tried to track down the Scout leader.

"The Orukthyri weren't harmed by the thought worms. I think their magic resistance kept them from getting killed by them. They're still around, but they're… eating the scout leader. Who died from the thought worms, I think." Sallia paused.

"Gods," she muttered.

"Good thing the scouts taught us how to get back to the city before we came here." I nodded.

"Otherwise we would probably wander through these tunnels until we starved to death. I can make water, but I seriously doubt your ramen noodle bowl would be enough to keep us going." Sallia nodded.

"How are our supplies looking?"

"None of the supply bags from the scouts were damaged, apart from the one the scout leader had," I said.

"We have enough food and water to last a month. If we can carry everything." Then, I paused, thinking about my {Storage Pack}. Thus far, it hadn't seen much use, but it looked like it was finally going to start pulling its weight.

"I can probably fit everything important in my bag, actually," I said.

"I'm very glad you brought that," said Sallia. Then, she tried to stand up… And crushed to the ground, like a bird with no wings trying to fly.

"My head is spinning when I try to stand up," said Sallia, and a note of fear started to enter her voice.

"Feels like there's something wrong with my brain. It's… it's not sending information to my legs the way it should." I frowned, before I leaned down and pinched her knee.

"Did you feel anything?" Sallia looked a little relieved.

"I still feel something. Maybe I just need another couple hours to finish shaking off whatever those creatures did to my body?" Sallia shuddered.

"How about you? Do you have any issues?"

"No, I'm fine," I said. I realized that the magic resistance Skill I had copied from the Orukthyri was much better than I had given it credit for. Even if my version of the skill was several times weaker, it was probably the reason I was just shaken by the attack, rather than simply falling to the ground before dying, the way most of the scouts had.

"That's good to hear," said Sallia.

"How is your fighting strength right now?"

"On the weaker side. I have about half my absorption essence left, and most of my Manifestation. but I have almost no alteration left after healing you, which means no extinguishes." Sallia grimaced.

"In that case, I guess we'll have to-" Our conversation was cut off when I heard something loud start to walk down a nearby tunnel, its heavy, echoing footsteps causing the ground to rumble in protest each time they took a step forward. Sallia and I stopped talking and sat in perfect silence, hoping that whatever was walking nearby didn't notice us. Then, Sallia's eyes widened, before she leaned over the scout and clamped one hand over his mouth.

I assumed it was just in case he made noise in his sleep at the worst possible time. Slowly, the footsteps crept closer and closer to us. I took a deep breath, my heart hammering in my chest, as I materialized my {Two-Purpose Training Sword} and prepared to unsheathe it for a final last-ditch attempt to live. I prepared to die… You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. Before the footsteps moved right past the cavern and moved into the distance.

I heard a few snorts as the footsteps crept past, confirming that the creature must have been an Orukthyri. Luckily, it hadn't noticed us. If we fought an Orukthyri right now, we would die. We waited for a few more minutes, listening to its footsteps slowly fade into the distance, before we looked at each other and the scout again.

"We can't stay here," said Sallia.

"It's too close to the Orukthyri cavern. We should flee further." I nodded.

"Can you walk yet?" Sallia tried standing up, and although she was wobbly, she didn't come crashing back to the ground this time. She shuffled over to the cave wall and leaned against it as she furrowed her brows in concentration.

"Not well, but I can at least move myself. But I'll be slow. Still, moving a little further away from the Orukthyri cavern is probably a good idea, so that none of their other hunting parties stumble across us when we go to sleep tonight. Can you carry this guy?" I hefted the man across my back, making sure not to accidentally dump him in my dress and drown him. Since he was much larger than me, I was forced to carry him like a sack of potatoes, and it was hard to stop his feet from dragging across the floor.

Luckily, even though it was difficult to grip him properly, he wasn't too hard to carry because of my high strength.

"Let's go," I said after I finished rearranging the scout. We began making our way through the tunnels. We had been cautious the first time we traveled through this area, as a group. But now that we only had three living group members, and none of us were in fighting condition, we had to stop every single time we heard a noise. Every single indication that there might be a monster nearby meant that we had to hide and hope for the best. We were just too weak right now.

Perhaps we're just too weak for a Tier 4 world, I thought idly to myself. Every single fight we had gotten into had been a dangerous dance with death. And that was with Orukthyri, who were somewhere around the middle of this world's food chain. I suspected that if I fought with a dragon, or one of the nightmares at the top of this world's food chain, I would probably die instantly. As time passed, Sallia's body began to recover, making it easier for her to keep up with me.

Soon, she no longer needed to lean against the cavern walls to move. I debated tossing another healing spell her way, but Sallia insisted I keep some alteration essence ready in case we ran into another threat that couldn't be fought using normal means. It took several more hours of slow, cautious travel for the scout to wake up.

"Whazzamulp?" Asked the scout. I tried to figure out what he was saying, before I gave up and settled on a basic report of the situation.

"The rest of the scout team died," I said.

"Dmmmm?" The scout seemed shocked.

"Mmmm…Hmmmmm…Dmmmmmmo," the scout slurred out of his mouth. He seemed increasingly frustrated as he tried and failed to communicate.

"Do you remember the sound we heard right before you blacked out?" The scout slowly nodded.

"That was some sort of mental attack. I don't know what it was, but there was some sort of… worm that invaded everyone's thoughts after the screech. It nearly devoured our minds. But luckily, my attunement was able to deal with them. So after I realized what was happening, I wiped them out. But I was too slow to save the other scouts: a lot of them died before I finished fighting off the attack on my own mind." The scout's eyes widened in a mixture of shock and horror.

"Uuuump! Uuuuuup!" He wrestled with his uncooperative tongue, trying to force out words that he simply couldn't form. I winced. I had rescued Sallia before focusing on the other scouts. As a result, the surviving scout seemed to have taken an even heavier dose of damage than Sallia. I once again considered tossing some healing his way, before sighing. I really wished I could generate alteration essence faster.

The scout continued trying to force out incoherent noises and sounds for a few minutes, before he finally gave up with a strangled gurgle of frustration. I was pretty sure he was trying to communicate something to me, something that might be important. However, I needed to save my alteration essence. I felt bad for the scout, but while he was trying to say something, he didn't look too frightened or terrified.

If he had looked like he had realized something was about to kill us, I would have healed him in a heartbeat to see if we could run away in time. However, even as I watched, he seemed to resign himself to the fact that he couldn't quite move his mouth the way he wanted to yet, and simply settled down to grumble in irritation. I nodded to myself. Whatever the scout had realized, it didn't seem urgent, at least. It could wait until we set up camp for the night.

Sallia looked at the scout, and seemed to come the same conclusion as me. A few moments later, she squatted down, near the scout's head, and addressed him directly.

"Is it urgent? Miria might be able to spare a healing spell for you, but that will also leave us vulnerable to an attack. Make one sound if it's urgent, and two sounds if it can wait for you to heal naturally."

"Mmm mm." I nodded.

"All right, let's keep moving." Several more hours passed as we worked our way through the darkness. Then, Sallia froze.

"Stop. I hear something," said Sallia. I froze, and the scout tensed up as well.

"Sounds like it has… a lot of legs. But it sounds much heavier than the acid drinkers," said Sallia, frowning.

"I don't want to fight anything we've never seen before. Especially when we're this weak." Sallia looked a little disappointed, but after looking at her own unsteady body, she sighed and nodded.

"Fair. Let's go that way," she said, and pointed down another side passage. I immediately followed Sallia's suggested direction, moving us deeper into a side passage as we waited for whatever creature was nearby to move on. Several tense minutes passed as something moved past us, its skitters cutting through the silence like a knife cutting through hot butter. Meanwhile, just like before, we huddled in the darkness. Finally, it passed by us. Sallia made us wait a few more minutes, before she nodded at me.

"Gone. We can move now." Our journey resumed. Finally, with a few more interruptions, we reached a cavern that looked like a good place to spend the night. There were three entrances, meaning we had a way out if something found us, and the entrances were small enough that most larger underdark creatures wouldn't be able to follow us in.

Best of all, it also had a few marks on the wall that let us know where we were relative to our own city, meaning we would be able to easily orient ourselves when we woke up in the morning. I gently set the scout down, and he worked his jaw a few times. Then, seemingly delighted, he grinned, and started slowly and carefully enunciating every single word he spoke.

"Can you understand me?" He asked. His speech wasn't entirely clear. However, with a little thinking, I could make out what he was saying now. I nodded.

"Good. The thought worms you killed were outsiders." I paused.

"Outsiders? You mean the creatures from the other dimension?" The scout nodded.

"The ones that came with the black sun. Things from our own dimension are very… physical in nature. Anything that seems more… odd tends to be from the same dimension as the black sun." I frowned, before I slowly nodded. All of the denizens of the underdark we had seen so far had been pretty normal-seeming monsters. The thought worms had been very different. Their biology had no physical components at all, which made them incredibly difficult for Sallia to deal with.

If my attunement hadn't been able to affect them, they would have killed our entire group.

"Are all creatures from the other dimension like that?" I asked. The scout seemed to try to shrug: his shoulders awkwardly rolled around as he tried and failed to move.

"I think so. I have no idea why that's the case. You would need to ask a scholar. But sometimes, a few scouts survive an encounter with an outsider and return to the city alive. It happens maybe once every couple decades." Then, the scout paused.

"Speaking of other scouts. I know you said that almost everyone is dead. But am I really the only one left?"

"The others are dead," I said, nodding.

"I'm sorry." The scout's eyes widened, and for a moment, a look of grief appeared on his face. It sounded as if for a brief moment, he was choking back a sob, and then he nodded.

"Let's get back to the city. We at least killed three Orukthyri. For the city, at least, it's a victory. The scout leader would be proud of the fact that this mission killed three Orukthyri at the cost of only five people. And we can also report everything we saw. The white dragon might intervene if outsiders are too close to the city, if it wakes up on time. We can hope, at least." The man's slurred speech became even harder to understand as he spoke, and he sniffled a few times.

With that final thought, the three of us set up a watch rotation and went to sleep. With any luck, we would return intact.