It was a series of caves.
Hundreds of cave entrances spread across the land, not so far from the prison’s main building, and not reaching outside the walls protecting the place.
The prisoners rushed there in a race against ti. It could be a waste of stamina, but it was better than a waste of health against the radiation.
And finally, they reached the cave series, every single individual entering a different entrance.
And among them were Braham and Kael.
"Hahahaha! You better run faster, Braham. I won’t share anything with you if you arrive late!" Kael mocked as he entered the cave first, surpassing the speed of most of the prisoners.
What the collars did was suppress their physical strength to reach a specific point that was supposed to make them vulnerable against most of the guards.
However, with things like bloodlines, traits, and passive abilities, a lot of prisoners bypassed that line too different degrees.
Of course, they were still weak against most guards, otherwise they’d have been sent into an anomaly cell, but the difference in strength was big enough not to be ignored completely.
Once Kael reached the cave, the first thing he saw was 15 different tunnels going underground. With no hesitation, he rushed into a tunnel, not even waiting for Braham.
Following the tunnel until the end, he ended up in a chamber with other tunnels leading downward. Once again, he entered one of them and continued running.
Then he entered the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth—relentlessly going deep into the ground.
The more he went down, the more he felt the radiation weakening slightly, as though it was struggling to pass through all those layers underground.
And that was why only the beginning of leaving the prison’s main building was the third most dangerous thing in this event. Once they went deep underground, the intensity of the radiation would reduce simultaneously, making only the beginning dangerous.
After a while of running, Kael finally reached his destination, but his expression quickly turned into a mix of sadness and disappointnt as his lips curled downward.
"It’s not there..." Kael clenched his mask firmly and almost tore it apart: "IT’S NOT THERE!"
What he looked at was a small hill of broken stones and pebbles. But that wasn’t the sa thing as in his mory.
"Where are all my beautiful radioactive minerals?! There were a lot of shiny gems here!" Unlike most people, Kael indeed scread loudly upon seeing that sight, not willing to scream internally.
"You son of a bitch!" Braham’s sounds echoed through the underground as he arrived sliding through a tunnel.
Once he saw the pebbles and broken stones, he covered his face with both hands and raised it slightly: "Ah... I told you we should hide them... I told you several tis we should hide them. Kael, I hate you, we should have hidden them!"
Instead of those useless stones, there were supposed to be tens of minerals waiting to be mined, which they wished to find.
But apparently, soone or sothing had taken them!
Kael sighed: "I didn’t know that soone would reach this point. We didn’t have enough space the last ti, and mining them with broken pickaxes to hide them would have wasted our ti, and we already weren’t in a good condition! How was I supposed to know that soone would be lucky enough to reach this point?!"
Braham sighed and pointed at a random tunnel: "It doesn’t matter now. No point in crying about the past. Let’s try to find sothing instead of wasting our ti here."
Kael nodded and led the way. However, unlike before, he was now moving carefully, firmly wielding his chainsaw.
All his arrogance and carelessness vanished in a second, replaced by absolute focus as he scanned every single detail in the tunnel he entered.
The ceiling that seed to be on the verge of collapsing.
The faint glows in the walls that illuminated his path.
The small holes that led to unknown locations.
The sll of old blood and the marks of brutal fights.
And the countless tunnels branching from the one he was walking in, leading to different unknown paths, so illuminated with similar glows, and others hidden by pure darkness that even Kael couldn’t see through.
Obviously, both of him and Braham avoided the dark tunnels.
"Oh, I see sothing." Kael whispered, pointing at sothing that was in the wall: "Sothing is glowing there. Prepare your pickaxe."
Braham nodded and wielded his pickaxe with both hands. Once they reached the desired spot, they saw a bunch of little blue shiny stones in the wall.
"Mine them quickly, I’ll protect you." Kael ordered and started watching all sides of the tunnel.
Braham’s muscles tensed. With one brutal move of his hands, he swung the pickaxe, aiming at the edge of one of the blue stones.
Clank!
The sound of his pickaxe hitting the stone tore throughout the tunnel, shattering the silence that lingered for so long.
With hesitation, Braham swung his pickaxe as fast, as strong, and as precisely as possible, hitting the best spot to get the stone with the least number of hits and the least amount of ti spent.
With every single strike, both of his and Kael’s hearts pounded through their ribcages. They were sweating heavily, trying to end that in ti.
Creeeeck!
All of a sudden, the worst happened.
"Damn!"
From one of the holes in the tunnel, two beasts crawled outside... or was it one?
They were blue armored centipedes with countless legs that spread ice across whatever they touched.
However, those legs were more unnatural than they seed.
Unlike most centipedes, their legs weren’t coming only from the sides.
And unlike most normal beings, they didn’t have their own bodies.
Rather, they shared one!
One centipede was at the bottom normally, and the other was rising from its back!
The second didn’t have a lower half, as the first centipede was its own lower half. They were literally fused together, not attached by force.
Their legs erged from many different spots—from the sides, their stomachs, their backs, and even their faces! It wouldn’t be an overestimation to say they could crawl using any of their sides.
Their faces had three mouths facing different directions, and each of them had only one green eye in the middle of their foreheads.
Kael couldn’t even call it a normal mutation. What kind of mutation would fuse two beasts from the sa species?
And they weren’t an exception, because during his ti in this prison, he had seen many beasts with similar disfigured properties.
"Man, I hate this ssed up place." Kael smiled bitterly, pressing a button on his chainsaw: "Co to , bitches! And you better finish mining that quickly before you attract more insects!"
"I’m trying!"
GRRRRRRRRRD!
The tossed edges of the chainsaw began to move once Kael pressed the button, producing a sound that tore through the air continuously like a mix of a roar and a scream.
Spat!
The upper centipede spat blue balls from its mouths, aiming all of them at Kael, the source of the high-pitched sound that annoyed it.
Kael’s eyes sharpened as he dodged the first two and slashed the third. On the impact, a layer of ice spread across the chainsaw, but it was shattered imdiately by the spinning power.
The dodged attacks exploded on the floor, causing a small eruption of sharp ice that looked like spikes.
Creeek!
The bottom centipede finally closed the distance between itself and Kael, showing the true height of its body.
If the height of the upper centipede was included, they reached 5 ters tall, and their heads alone were big enough to bite Kael’s waist completely and cut it in half.
At the speed of lightning, the centipede charged toward Kael with killing intent and intense hunger. However, Kael sidestepped at the last second and evaded it.
Before the centipede could react, Kael’s chainsaw cut a dozen of the centipede legs, penetrated its durable exoskeleton, and reached its soft at.
The centipede kept charging forward as it struggled to slow down in ti, getting different thoughts from two brains which caused it to fail in stopping.
As for Kael, he strained his muscles and forced himself to keep standing against the force of the centipede. His chainsaw was still inside the centipede body, and it kept cutting it further the more the centipede charged forward.
Several legs attacked Kael. The majority of them were dodged, so of them were blocked by either Kael’s durable body or so kicks, but a few of them landed.
His body bled heavily, pierced by a few legs, but he kept holding his place and was unfazed by it.
Finally, after less than a second, the centipede stopped.
But the reason wasn’t because it wanted to.
It was because it was dead. The side of its body was completely wide open, bleeding the centipede to death and revealing all of its organs that were cut by the chainsaw.
Creek!
The upper centipede left one last scream before dying alongside its second half. It tried to spit one last attack, but it wasn’t fast enough.
He looked at Braham, who had an entire leg piercing the wall next to his head.
"Oh, sowwy." Kael smiled and scratched his head embarrassedly.
"At least we got them." Shaking his head helplessly, Braham revealed the shiny blue stones.
They were smaller than Braham’s fist, and they had two full backpacks to fill.
At least that was the plan. Every single prisoner had the sa plan, but not all succeeded.
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