About 200 ters underground, Julius advanced with the fluid certainty of soone who commands the elent surrounding him.
His earth wolverine maintained a constant flow of perception through the ground, allowing him to detect movents and vibrations across a considerable radius.
Sothing didn't add up, though.
Since beginning his patrol after the worm incident, he had noticed strange patterns in the behavior of subterranean creatures. At tis, they seed to beco agitated as if responding to an invisible threat, moving in waves of panic that spread across different levels.
But when he arrived at the location, inexplicably, everything cald again.
"It's as if sothing is frightening them," he murmured to himself, his wolverine's essence rged with his skin in subtle ripples, enhancing his connection to the earth around him. "But when I approach to investigate..."
Nothing. That was the most disconcerting part.
Each ti he tracked these disturbances to their apparent origin, he found only silence and emptiness, as if the source of agitation had vanished monts before his arrival.
What he had detected, however, were weak but unmistakable traces of abyssal energy. Small pockets of that characteristic purple radiation, concentrated in cracks and recesses where it normally shouldn't exist.
His first instinct was to associate it with remnants of the Yino incursion four months ago, when enemy agents had attempted to infiltrate this Yano territory.
"Residue," he theorized while examining one of these concentrations.
Julius continued his thodical inspection, his wolverine's senses stretched to their limits as he moved through the earth.
It was then that he felt it.
A vibration more intense than any before. His wolverine roared ntally, all its perceptions directing toward the origin of that disturbance. For the first ti since beginning his patrol, Julius had a clear direction, an undeniable signal.
"This isn't normal," he concluded, his voice hardening while he began moving at great speed through the earth. His body seed to lt into the elent, moving as if it were part of the ground itself.
♢♢♢♢
Han's breathing accelerated while his fingers felt sothing through the threads. Sothing was entering the tunnel, sothing large and heavy that broke his fine but tough webs as if they didn't exist.
The purple glow intensified, painting the walls of the narrow tunnel with distorted shadows. The predator approached, and the light emanating from it transford their improvised refuge into a death trap.
A viscous, glowing tentacle appeared at the entrance, moving with unnatural precision as it explored the space. It slithered forward, testing the air, sensing their presence.
"No ti to dig further," Ren whispered, his light claws manifesting as he prepared for combat.
"No!" Han grabbed his arm with desperation, his fingers digging into Ren's flesh. "Don't fight, dig! I can feel it through the threads... it's too big, too strong."
Han's spider fully manifested, not as the shy presence it usually was, but as a desperate creature fighting for survival. From it began flowing an impressive amount of silk, much more than Ren had ever seen Han produce before.
"Hurry!" Han insisted while his spider created layer after layer of resistant material, sealing the tunnel with a plug that grew thicker by the second. "Keep digging!"
Ren hesitated for an instant, torn between his instinct to fight and Han's desperate plea. The certainty in Han's eyes convinced him. With a grunt of effort, he buried his diamond claws into the earth, tearing through the ground with renewed force.
Discretion no longer mattered. The vibrations that might attract other beasts no longer mattered. Even the comfortable size of the tunnel didn't matter, a small hole to crawl through would have to be enough.
All that mattered was speed.
Ren's claws ripped away large chunks of earth and rock quickly, his muscles burning from the superhuman effort. The mushrooms in his hair pulsed with frantic intensity, illuminating his work with erratic flashes.
"Faster!" Han gasped, his body trembling from the effort of maintaining silk production. "It's coming!"
Behind them, the creature was testing the resistance of the silk as if it were a ga, poking and prodding with casual malice.
Ren felt sothing through the earth, an irregularity in the density that could an...
"There's a tunnel nearby!" he exclaid, redoubling his efforts. His claws moved in a blur, earth flying behind him in dark sprays. "I can feel it!"
Han, following and still working to reinforce the barrier, suddenly shouted:
"Quick! It seems... It's stopped..." His eyes widened, hope illuminating his face for a fleeting mont. "Maybe it got stuck in the thick layers? Or lost interest?"
The silence that followed was deceptively calm, broken only by their ragged breathing and the sound of earth yielding to Ren's claws. For one second, it seed they might escape.
Then, horror.
Like lances of purple light, several tentacles pierced through the silk barrier as if it were wet paper. They moved with lethal precision, wrapping around Han before he could react, securing his arms, legs, and torso in their slimy grip.
"REN!" Han's heart-rending scream resonated as he was dragged toward the chamber, wrapped in his own perforated barrier, his body contorting in a desperate attempt to break free.
Ren didn't hesitate. He propelled himself backward, rolled, and leaped again. In an instant, he was beside Han, one hand gripping his friend. With the other hand, Ren unsheathed his dagger and began cutting the tentacles that coiled around Han.
The blade sliced with precision, but for every tentacle severed, two more seed to replace it. Worse still, where Han's skin had made contact with the appendages, pale, sunken marks appeared, as if his vitality and mana were being drained. His friend's face grew ashen, eyes dulling as the creature siphoned his life force.
"They're like the shadow stalkers!" Ren recognized the effect while continuing to cut frantically. "They absorb vitality and mana!"
The pulling force suddenly increased, as if the creature had lost patience with their tactics. With a devastating jerk, the tentacles dragged both boys through the destroyed silk barrier, pulling them into the main chamber.
Ren continued cutting even as they were dragged, his dagger moving with the precision born of desperation.
The last tentacle holding Han gave way just as they erged into the larger chamber from which they had tried to escape, both falling several ters before landing painfully on a floor covered with residue and bones.
The fall left Ren montarily on his back against the ground, the impact stealing his breath. Beside him, Han lay motionless,eyes wide open, his skin pale where the tentacles had touched him, but still breathing.
The purple glow that Ren had seen from the tunnel now bathed them completely, allowing them to see for the first ti the creature that had captured them.
What rose before them defied natural comprehension.
A colossal worm more than twenty ters long writhed in the center of the chamber, its segnted body pulsing with abyssal light that emanated from within. But what horrified Ren wasn't its size, but its impossible anatomy.
Dozens of long, thin legs, similar to those of a mimic insect, extended from its flanks, moving with an unnatural grace that barely disturbed the air around them and barely touched the ground, explaining the absence of vibrations that had confused Ren.
They twitched and flexed independently, giving the impression of countless separate creatures working in horrific unison.
Its body was covered by overlapping plates reminiscent of a living tunnel, interspersed with rocky protrusions typical of stone lurkers.
Each segnt seed to have been designed by a madman, fusing characteristics of different creatures into an abomination that shouldn't exist.
In the final section of its tail, an enormous luminescent ball pulsed with purple energy, similar to that of a shadow stalker queen, but grotesquely distorted. The orb throbbed with a sickening rhythm, like a diseased heart pumping corrupt blood.
But it was the head that provoked true horror. A nightmarish fusion of bat, insect, and worm, with multiple compound eyes that glowed with malevolent intelligence. Its mouth opened in several directions, revealing rows of triangular teeth arranged in concentric circles that rotated independently.
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