I stretched, feeling a yawn well up inside of me as the morning sun touched my face. I wasn't even entirely sure when I had finally fallen asleep last night. After hunting down some burn cream, my arm had finally stopped screaming at me for what I'd done to it. It had already looked to be on the mend, but still, it had made sleeping rather uncomfortable at the time.
The sudden screams in the distance woke me up far faster than the sun had any chance of doing. Throwing myself to my feet, I chased after them. I wasn't the only one.
The yells were coming from the northwestern corner of the walls. We had decided to work on the assumption that the sun still rose in the east and set in the west. While I knew that wasn't necessarily true, there was no good reason to fight it right now. It made for an easy labeling system.
Several of the Greel Goblins were standing around a very large sinkhole. It was a sinkhole that now stood exactly where Tom had started work the day before. And to make it worse, several small acid slugs were climbing out of it.
The fact that the slugs weren't making it far out of the hole before they were dispatched showed that the slugs themselves weren't the problem anymore. It was whatever nest was actually down there. I had a sinking feeling that we had just found the actual source of the creatures, and that we'd done so the hard way.
“How many people are down there?” I asked, turning towards one of the main people who had been working with Tom. I thought his name was Glenn, but I wasn't sure enough about that to say it out loud.
“Tom, Glenn and two of the Goblins,” The man, who was apparently not Glenn, answered.
“What's the plan, Dad?” Ash asked, appearing next to me.
“The plan is you stay up here and I go down there,” I replied. I had no idea how extensive the tunnels down there were or what else might be hiding in any nook or cranny.
“Not happening. Floof is still recovering, so he can't go with you, which means I am.” The look on her face reminded me of any time I had ever attempted to argue with her mother. I had already lost this battle, and it hadn't even started.
Sighing, partially because she was actually right. It was best I had someone to watch my back, not to mention I wanted to push Ash further in her own growth. “Alright, alright, you've got a point. Grimbleflork, figure out what's going on up here if you could. Make sure nothing else is going to collapse. Round up the rest of Tom's workers and start shoring up the ground. Ash, go find some rope and join me down here once you have it.”
I didn't wait for any answers. Too much time had already passed with our people being lost to the darkness below. Instead, I leaped into the hole to the hard ground below. There was enough light shining through from above that I knew the drop wasn't far enough to hurt me, but I couldn't be sure about the others. Improved attributes or not, twenty feet was still a risky fall if you didn't know how to land correctly.
A System message greeted me as I landed.
__________
Adaptation
Springboard
Type
Reactive
Landing on your feet over and over has taught your body how to better absorb and mitigate damage from the impacts. As long as the distance to landing on your feet is less than 25 ft, your body will suffer no shock effects from the landing, and be able to immediately spring into action.
16/50 Recaptures Unlocked for Lost Hero Progression.
Adaptation Points (60)
__________
The fact that I was gaining adaptations faster again immediately after fusing the old ones continued to confirm my theories. What I really needed was some spare time to attempt to pass these adaptations over to Ash, but things kept happening. That wouldn't always be true. Eventually, we'd actually get downtime, but I had no idea how long that would take.
“Can anyone hear me?” I yelled out, peering into the darkness. The Cognizant Orb’s first-tier spell helped, but Area of Observation didn’t entirely overcome regular darkness. It would only let me see anything that might be trying to use it to hide. Notably, this meant it would do nothing to help me overcome normal pitfalls, such as falling down a cliff I couldn’t see.
With that in mind, I threw the rest of my spare points into Perception, while I hoped for a response. That pushed the attribute up to an even forty, now ten points higher than Spirit, and my third-highest attribute. It was always so much easier to pick where to put your attribute points while you only had the four base ones. Things would start to get a lot more complicated past level one-hundred.
With the instant boost in my senses, I could just faintly make out a clash of fighting far down a nearby tunnel. The boost was also bad enough to get a hazy idea of what the caverns around me looked like. Dozens of tiny tunnels led in and out of the larger chamber that the sinkhole had opened up into. There were three larger passages I could easily fit through, and one of those was where the sounds were coming from.
I knew one of Ash's aspects let her see through the darkness, so I wasn't too worried about her being able to follow me, and that meant there was no reason to wait. Especially not when someone was under attack down here. I was confident the Goblins could fend for themselves, even if cornered alone. I was not nearly so confident about the Human members of the Neighborhood.
Tom was great at building, but outside of the night of the battle, he hadn't done a lot of fighting. As far as I knew, all the people working with him had only unlocked very basic construction classes, with none of them pushing past level six yet. That meant Glenn was in trouble, and I needed to find him.
The first tunnel led me surprisingly deep, and if I had my bearings about me at all, which there was no guarantee, as I wasn't the best at navigating while spelunking, I was far under the woods by the time I found the first clash of battle. Two of the Greel Goblins had small scimitars pulled as they were fighting desperately against a tide of acid slugs.
“Oh, thank the gods. Go find their damn nest!” one of the Goblins shrieked, spotting me.
There was something in the corner that might have been a nest, but I still didn't fully know how these acid slugs operated. Their description had suggested they came from eggs hatching, so where were their mothers, or, for that matter, the mature forms of these little beasts? And to that end, where were they even getting enough food to grow? We had been putting a stop to them at almost every turn. Were they just going to be a constant nuisance we were never free of?
The thing in the corner glowed with a deep yellow, pulsating light. I stabbed the runic blade straight through the heart of the glow. Immediately, the shape withered from my attack as goo poured from it, sizzling as it touched the ground. It had certainly been something tied to the acid slugs, nest or not.
Dozens of little creatures peeled away from the Goblins, turning towards me. I had gotten their attention easily enough. Sadly, for them, I was a lot stronger than the last time we had fought, and my sword made quick work of their assault.
“Any idea where the rest of the people are?” I asked as I worked, dispatching the rest of the monsters.
“A bigger one got a hold of Glenn, we all went after him, but we got separated in here. Not sure where it dragged him after that,” one of them replied.
“It was fucking massive. I ain't sure that was an acid slug. Maybe closer to an actual wyrm. Damn, man, what kind of monsters are in this integration?” the other said something a lot more nervous than the first.
“Considering I already killed a juvenile Leviathan, it's probably best not to ask. But head back down this way. It's a straight path, and they're working on ropes to get people out right now. Send Ash after me if you see her. And no, I don't want you to come in with me. You're both obviously still hurt from the airship crash, and this sure as hell didn’t help you heal at all,” I said, ordering them back.
While both of them gave me a grumpy stare, neither of them objected. I was sure they knew the truth. As ornery as a Greel Goblin could be, sometimes you could make them accept reality if you pushed them hard enough. Usually, at least, Grimbleflork was near impossible. But he had earned that right in his long life.
If the acid slugs were a juvenile form of some wyrm, this was going to be a much bigger problem. I was under no illusion that I was ready to fight a dragon. I had fought two in my entire life, and both of the battles had lasted weeks. Plus, neither of those battles I had fought alone. In each of them, an army had supported me, and we still barely emerged victorious, if you could call a treaty victory.
One of the things I had actually found strangest about the stories I had heard on Earth was those that concerned dragons. Somehow, they managed to both overplay and downplay how strong the creatures were. Most tales I had read put them at something a powerful knight could slay. And that was so incredibly far from the truth it was laughable.
When a dragon reared its head, entire star systems quaked in fear. An elder dragon was as powerful as a sun and much more cunning. They were the kind of beasts empires dropped wars and formed alliances in a futile desperation to stop the death that was certain.
Dragons were incredibly powerful and just as intelligent. They weren't beings of pure destruction. They had their own desires to rule, but what exactly happened to the systems they brought under their purview wasn't public knowledge. Draconic forces did not allow visitors into their empires.
Luckily, I very much doubted this was a dragon. Even a small one likely would have ripped through the crust of the planet and devoured all of the inhabitants of the valley. Though if it had been extraordinarily young, it was possible I was strong enough to get a few people away to safety, but still, it wasn't something I ever wanted to try.
I pushed away the fear of a dragon lurking somewhere in the darkness. I couldn't let myself dwell on that being a true possibility. Not when there were two men down here fighting for their lives somewhere. I needed to find them, and I needed to do it now.
Floof
Floof saw from a distance as the sinkhole ruptured, pulling the people downward. He rose from his bed, considering whether to join the king in his assault, but despite the healing from his grandfather, he did not think he was ready to descend into the depths of the planet yet. He was glad when he saw the princess so willing to aid the king in this battle.
Ultimately, the Tibetan Mastiff knew the truth of the matter: his value as a knight only increased if he allowed himself time to heal from his wounds. He could not charge into every single battle when there were others able to handle the smaller frays. Today, he would rest.
But should the king summon him, he would be ready.