15:Tunnel Living

SCRAAAAAAK

Day 2?

Multiple Rand worms, the original creatures they were supposed to exterminate broke through the walls of the tunnels and lunged at the closest member of the group they could find. With most targetting Zephyr.

Not even bothering to look at them, he simply grabbed the two smallest ones and crushed them with his bare hands, the bigger ones he just stabbed them straight in the brain? Do worms even have brains?

Whatever. Cleaning off his knife he grabbed one of the larger Rand worms of the floor and carefully skinned it. Removing it's scales and it's skin revealing pinkish brownish meat underneath

Haah

When had everything gone wrong? No actually Zephyr knew exactly when but just thinking of it made him get chills again.

Their group was running through the tunnels when a fully grown Rand worms had appeared. Unlike their much smaller counterparts that were the size of Zephyr's arms at best these fully grown ones could swallow Zephyr whole with enough space for seconds!

It had smashed through the tunnels. Eating one of the uncoloured mages and simply left. Unfortunately, the massive size caused the tunnel to collapse and facing no other option other then turning back. The group decided to go through the tunnels created by the fully grown Rand worm.

After all, the Rand worms occasionally surface so the tunnel should eventually lead to above ground right? WRONG! The tunnel they entered simply led to more branching tunnels that led to more and in the end they were now lost underground. Mainly because so many of the tunnels overlapped and crossed into each other and not even all tunnels were made by the Rand worms.

The tunnels created by Rand worms were smooth whereas they occasionally came across tunnels that had much rougher walls and floors. Likely from the mandibles of the Scorants.

The only good piece of news was that they had met up with a few other members of the team.

One of them was part of the carrier team and still had an anti-grav backpack. Which basically meant the bag and everything inside it would have zero g and would basically be weightless which made their life so much easier. It still had quite a lot of supplies from previously which had helped them tremendously.

The other member was Rex, a warrior who was part of the shield wall. He was an E grade but unfortunately his shield broke and he didn't have a replacement. He was still pretty good with a weapon at least with his weapon of choice being a fang from a Rand worm.

The final member was Hylde, a mutant. He was one of the core members of their large area of effect exterminator team. His mutant ability was that his skin could secrete a sort of acid. He could make the acid clear so you couldn't see it, make it into a gas to be inhaled Anne he could change how dangerous it was from simply knocking you out to dying in an instant.

The only downside was that he couldn't control it that well once it left his body and as such the danger of friendly fire was extremely high.

Not that Zephyr minded much, his telekinesis could simply just push the acid away if his reaction speed was fast enough.

"Rand worms for dinner again Zephyr?"

Aether, who had woken up to the sounds of Zephyr joked at him. Aether was the D- mage who had managed to make the jump and was the one who cleared out the tunnels.

"Not much choice unless you want to eat Scorants."

Aether's face grimaced remembering the taste of Scorants. Zephyr almost gagged as well. The Scorants had venom in their stingers and it circulated throughout the whole body, luckily the venom only paralyzed and didn't kill. Arte, the fire mage got stung by it once and he didn't move for roughly 9 hours?

Luckily they didn't need water since Aether had a water mana circle and could cast water spells. Zephyr didn't know wether he could handle it if he had to drink Rand worm blood or something. He theoretically could since it wasn't poisonous but there was a limit even to Zephyr's will to survive.

There wasn't any way for them to track the time as they were so deep underground that none of them could communicate with above ground. Furthermore, their few headpieces were close to running out of battery so they had decided to shut them off and only turn them back on when necessary.

As Zephyr sliced up the Rand worm into several cubes, another member of the team woke up from the noise.

"Rise and shine Alex, breakfast is almost ready. "

"Is it morning now?"

Alex, full name Alexander was the white mage and was also Arte's brother.

"No idea"

Groaning, Alex slowly stood up and walked over to Zephyr butchering the Rand worm.

"Need any help?"

Zephyr nodded

"Mind getting the cooking utensils?"

"Alright then, by the way when is Arte coming back?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Still mapping out the tunnels probably. Think he'll be back soon"

...

Day 4?

"Rocks shall pierce your hearts!"

Massive spikes of rocks appeared from under the Scorants and went right through their bodies and up into the roof of the tunnel. Leaving their bodies stuck onto the roof.

Zephyr always felt weirded out whenever he killed these creatures. Sometimes these creatures were wearing armour and wielding weapons which made him think they were intelligent. Yet the way they acted was like mindless bugs.

The Scorants sometimes even had Armour or weapons made out of the Rand worms! In fact, one time their group bad stumbled upon several dozen Scorants farming Rand worms!

It seriously weirded him out. Plus they looked hella creepy as well!

...

Day 8?

Sounds of sizzling meat was the only thing that could be heard in their group. Today was a rare occasion as everyone was there. Usually a few would be out mapping the tunnels, finding more Rand worms for food, occasionally they would need to do a cleansing and kill a few stragglers in the tunnel network they claimed for themselves.

Morale was down and so they decided to all have a 'feast' If you could consider it as one.

Zephyr was the chef today, because he was the only one aside from Arte who could make it taste palatable instead of pure vomit inducing sludge like when Aether tried.

"Dinner is served. For starters I made roasted Rand worm with a side of fried Rand worm plus for desert I even made shaved ice with Aether's help! "

Zephyr had to admit, his ingredients may be bad but the skill was there!

He had carefully extracted as much fat from the creatures by searing them and had used the said fat as a flavouring and to fry the smaller Rand worms. He had carefully cooked each piece to a perfect consistency of chewy without being rubbery and each piece had a perfect sear with a nice crispy crunch to it.

Perhaps he should open a restaurant after this? That sounded nice, he could just stay in a kitchen and cook gourmet meals for VIPS without needing to fight.

But if he did, he would be missing out on the benefits of being a super. There's a reason supers always throw themselves into combat. Without an external stimuli, your growth would get severely stunted.

The clinking of silverware rang put throughout the tunnel, followed by the sounds of rigorous chewing

Pak

Alex slapped Rex in the back of the head. Who spat his food out back onto his plate

"The hell was that for?!"

"Eat with your mouth closed you brute!Or at least look somewhere else!"

Rex grumbled and turned his chair 180 degrees to face elsewhere.Mumbling under his breath the whole time.

"stupid mage thinks hes all smart an-

" what was that Rex?"

Unfortunately, most of them were supers and had extremely good hearing.

Haah

Sighing, Zephyr quickly finished his food and went to go study the book Trevin gave him. Good thing too because the moment he looked away he could hear them start yelling at each other.

Sitting cross legged on the floor. He opened the book and slowly immersed himself in learning.

...

Day 10?

"S-save me.....

Those were his last words. Zephyr didn't even know the name of the carrier. He didn't speak much and he didn't do much. His voice sounded coarse.

His corpse looked horrible. Entire bites were taken out of him and he had grasped Zephyr's ankle with his last breath, begging to be saved.

A few patches of his skin looked pristine, from Alex trying his best to heal him but in the end. His injuries were far too severe.

Their ragtag survivor group of ten had now dropped to nine people. A whole ten percent gone.

Zephyr didn't know what he was feeling. Rage? Grief? Happy that it was him who had died and not Zephyr?

He couldn't tell anymore. Nor did he want to know.

....

Day 15?

'Testing mind link... 1,2,3.If you can hear me say Yes'

'Yes'

'Yes'

Two yes's replied back to his mind link while the other three remained silent.

'Arte, say something. Alex, repeat what Arte says'

For now he focused on the two individuals who could hear each other. Alex and Arte.

Alex, looking at Arte sent him an invisible message and Arte looking back at him likely sent him back one as well. The only problem was that no one else could hear it!

Haah

He sighed deeply. Zephyr had been practicing how to mind link with others for several days now and had barely managed to get his foot in the door.

Mind link allowed him to do some wondrous stuff. He could act as a sort of link between multiple people's minds allowing them all to communicate with each other with close to no delay. He could send discreet messages without the knowledge of others. All in all, it was an amazing ability that was out of his league.

Furthermore, even just trying to maintain it burned through his energy like nothing else! Zephyr estimated he could probably only maintain one for about 8 minutes and that was if it was only between Zephyr and one person. When he tried to stretch it out to everyone in the group, he almost suffered from energy fatigue and he doubted he could hold that for longer then 30 seconds.

Haah

He sighed again.

. ..

Day 17?

AHHHHHHHHHH

Rex was screaming his heart out. Frantically punching and kicking the tunnel walls with a fury like none other Zephyr had ever seen.

Not that Zephyr blamed him much. Living like this was a punishment that could be considered torture at best and hell at worst.

No one knew how long it had been down in the tunnels. They had attempted to retrace their steps to go back to the original tunnel where they were from to no avail. It was thoroughly blocked out.

Arte looked lifeless as well. He ran out of his powder days ago and was unable to use his x-ray vision spell to check for living beings.

Hylde was lying down on the floor. He was missing significant areas of his clothes and armour from his own acid and his eyes looked hollow.

No one spoke a word anymore. The four uncoloured mages had turned into three. Dropping their groups numbers again. They didn't tell the others how he had died but everyone knew.

He had committed suicide.

Zephyr didn't know the names of any of the uncoloured mages.The four of them mainly spoke to each other and only talked when necessary.

Zephyr felt tempted to wallow in depression like everyone else was. To just sit and stare lifelessly.

'Dammit! Not like this!'

No, he had only one life and after Zephyr awakened he had pledged himself that he would accomplish his goal. His dream. His everything.

And now that everything would crumble if he died.

Abruptly standing up, Zephyr started digging a new tunnel with his telekinesis. One going in a diagonal upwards.

'Im not gonna die such a dogs death in here!'