CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR - WORMS OF THE EARTH

"What's the layout of this place?" I asked, keeping my voice low as I swept my rifle from left to right. I had the longer-ranged sight flipped to the side. Annoyingly, it obscured some of my vision if I was aiming down the reflex sight. Poor design, that.

Then again, Luna Corp... yeah, I had some fondness for the company, but it had never been much of an innovator, or even a company that invested too much in good gear and good payouts. It was about as middling as it got without falling apart.

"Straight dungeon, maybe two or three side-passages," Eldur said. He reached over and turned on a small flashlight on the front of his gun, splashing more light ahead. There was no stealth here, not from Squad B. We were going in loud and bright from the start. "Eyes up, remember."

"Got it," I said before scanning the ceiling.

It wasn't long before I saw something, though it was after Terry and Eldur did. They both stopped and raised their guns, pointing at a gap in the walls above that looked like it had been carved out by hundreds of small scratches, each one maybe as wide as a finger.

"Movement," Terry said.

"Pull them out," Eldur said. "Watch your eyes."

I squinted one eye shut and closed the other entirely while Terry prepared a spell. She flicked a tiny buzzing ball forwards and the moment it was near the crevice it flashed, like an old-timey camera going off.

A monster hissed, then leapt out of the hole with a sudden, fast motion. It ate half a dozen rounds while in mid-air, then landed, rolled, and then coiled around itself before striking towards us.

The stone below it rose up in the shape of a grasping hand, grabbing the monster around its body and squeezing.

The monster screamed. It looked like that spell wasn't enough to crush it, but having it pinned was enough. We opened up on its face, then Eldur moved to the side as soon as we stopped shooting.

The monster's upper body crashed to the floor with a splat.

Eldur aimed down at it and fired, then fired again and again, one shot every foot or so along the entire monster's body.

When he was done, he ejected his magazine and switched it out. "Reload. Terry first, then you newbie, then Erde and Dharti."

We reloaded, one after the other. I'd only fired six or so rounds, so I kept that in mind as I replaced my magazine with a fresh thirty-rounder.

"That's one ugly worm," I said as I moved a bit closer to it.

The monster had a three-segment mouth, each... jaw filled with large teeth that looked more like inwards-facing horns than normal teeth. It didn't have eyes that I could see, though there were large, hard spikes all around its head.

The body was just a worm. A massive one, maybe two yards long, with big segments across its body, but still just a worm.

"They're annoying," Terry said. "You can zap them dead just fine, but they sometimes won't die to a few shots."

"Try to avoid hitting the head from now on," Eldur said. He kicked the downed monster's head, sending some surprisingly human-looking blood spurting out. "There are a lot of valuable materials in it. And aim for the lower part. They're less valuable and the scales are thinner." He tapped the 'lower' half of the monster with the end of a boot. The scales there were slightly lighter

"Noted," I said.

The others seemed to know what was up already, so we moved on, leaving the body behind.

The next ambush had two of them. One coming in from the other side of the room, another from above and to the left. I fired at the nearest, my shots hitting it in the mid-section. Just as I was starting to worry, a wave of water washed up around the monster and then froze in a snap, dragging its head down.

I nodded to Erde in thanks, then did as Eldur had done, plugging rounds into the body until my magazine ran dry.

"Reload," Eldur said. "Newbie, you know how to load mags?"

"Yeah, sure," I said.

"Cool. We'll cover you."

I had the experience of laying on my knees next to one of the ammo cans Eldur had carried with him. 1,000 rounds turned into... less than that as I reloaded everyone's half-empty magazines.

I think it was a bit of a waste of time. Why couldn't we just carry more magazines with us? They couldn't be all that expensive, right? Maybe it was a weight issue? It did give the others time off for a few moments, which I supposed was important.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Bit of a tense one, huh?" I asked.

"We're fighting ambush predators," Eldur said. "I have a Tremor-Sense spell running, but it doesn't always pick them out. They can be subtle, and sometimes have their own magics to counteract that."

"Damn," I muttered.

With the magazines all reloaded and passed around, we packed up, and then headed out.

Three more rooms. Each one with more enemies. They struck from the shadows, from above, and in one case came out from a narrow hole in the ground just large enough for one of them to fit within all coiled up to strike.

Eldur's Earth magic was a hard counter to most of them, and Erde's water and ice combo was an excellent shield. Mostly though, we just filled them with lead and they died relatively easily.

I had to wonder how well I'd fare in this one solo. The monsters were larger than I was, and armoured. Pretty fast, too. There weren't all that many, however. Fewer than the kobolds in that first portal I solo'd.

Would my sword cut them? Probably, if I struck with the edge just right, or stabbed them. But they didn't go down to one wound. Some bullshit redundant biology kept them alive.

My revolver would probably punch a hole right through them, but that wouldn't guarantee a death. Two, three shots each?

Shadow Bolt wouldn't help much, and I didn't want to get into CQC with any of them. Though they didn't have the fangs of a snake or the wide bite of one either. Apparently they were more of a strike-then-wrap kind of enemy.

We found a small side-room soon after, one filled with treasure... of a sort. Lots of old, rusty armour, some weapons, a few old pouches and bits of clothes and a lot of bones. Terry shifted through the pile, but none of it was magical according to her, and I trusted her senses more than my own. Still, there were some historical oddities there, and the corp would resell them.

Mostly, the money from this portal came from the monsters. Their innards weren't worth much, but the teeth were for some reason, and their skin was similar to alligator skin, but tougher in some parts. Worm-leather accessories were a thing.

We'd killed seven of them, and they were longer and fatter than alligators, I think. Basically, that was a lot of purses.

And then we were in the boss room.

Unsurprisingly, the boss was a worm.

Also unsurprisingly, it was very large.

I was expecting a long, drawn-out fight, but we mostly stuck to the sides and Eldur and Erde restricted the boss' movements with walls of earth and blocks of ice while Dharti hit it with some nature spells that fucked it up and Terry struck it with lightning.

Also, we all shot it a lot.

The boss went down, and I didn't feel particularly exhilarated by the fight, or proud, but... yeah, job done.

We picked up the supplies from the boss' chest (a large scally tooth, and a very ratty grimoire with some Earth cantrip that was already public domain) and then headed out the way we came, making sure to flag the bodies that we passed and checking over every crack and crevice along the way for any worms that might still be hiding.

When we left, I took a deep breath, then sighed. No portal-end bonus. But still, a few hours of killing things in a portal, some practice with my new spell, and some teamwork practice. It wasn't a loss. A few hundred days like this would probably get me to C-rank. If we did this daily I'd be there within a year, even.

"Ah, darn, it's so late," Terry said.

I jumped, then looked at the time. It was four fifty. "Oh, shit!" I said. "Guys, I have to go."

"We need to debrief," Eldur said.

"And I need to shower. I have a date in an hour!" I said. "And I'm not gonna show up smelling like gunpowder and cooked worm... even if that sounds hot, it's actually kind of gross."

He didn't argue too hard on that point, but by the time we were back and HQ and I'd changed, it was five thirty already. I had just enough time to Save and then start breaking speed limits before I was late, and I still hadn't changed into my Deadline gear... which was hopefully not too dirty.

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