“Sorry, I think I must have misheard you. Did you just say that the ten-meter murder worm is just the baby version?”

Zofia strolled over to the corpse, giving it a nudge with one booted foot before responding.

“Unfortunately darling, that’s exactly what I said. Now come and give us a hand. We need to get this thing out of the hole and chop it up for bait. If we’re lucky we can draw three or four more of them the same way.”

Ingunn knelt beside the cooling worm corpse. Avoiding the mucus still steeping from the horrid jaws, she tied a rope around the skull plates.

“Micky, help me haul this thing out. We need to clear the tunnel.”

Walking over to her, Micky wrapped his hand around the coarse rope. Following Ingunn’s instructions, he and Zofia managed to haul the worm free. With a wet pop, the corpse slipped free of the tunnel and its mucus lining.

These things are insanely disgusting,” Micky grimaced, attempting to wipe away the slime that had accumulated on his trousers during the fight.”

“Not worth anything much either,” Ingunn agreed. “It’s not even worth harvesting the armor plating.”

“Wait, so what do we do with this thing?” Micky gestured towards the fully seven-meter corpse.

“Zofia is going to hack a few chunks off and then rebait the tap, then we can drag it away so it doesn’t foul our footing. After we’ve cleared four or five we’ll douse the corpses in some of Tavish’s dissolving solution. Normally, we would burn the corpses, but you can probably guess why that’s a bad idea down here.”

“Yeah, a huge smoky fire in a cave system seems like a terrible shout.”

Several hours of what Zofia described as ‘fishing’ later, the group had managed to destroy four more juvenile matriarchs. The fights had played out much like the first, although Micky managed to avoid being smashed to the floor by the worms. After being distracted by Ingunn, and damaged by Zofia, it was easy enough for Micky to pin the creatures. Micky mentally reminded himself to thank Yan, as without the spear the plan would have been impossible.

Micky took a moment to focus on the system notifications he had ignored during the battles. He noticed all the fights had been condensed into a single message.

Congratulations, for slaying four Bobbit Worms you have been awarded 120 XP. As the creature was of a higher level than your own, this reward has been multiplied by 1.5. You will receive 180 XP.

After dispatching the fifth worm Zofia turned to Ingunn with a smile.

“Ingunn darling, I’d say we’ve just about tapped this well dry. What say you tie that rope around my waist and I go have a little look about down that tunnel?”

Micky turned to look at her incredulously. “Wait, you’re seriously going down the hole the creepy murder worms come out of? What if there are more of them down there?”

“Micky dearest, that’s very much the point. A Hive Mother can produce hundreds of spawn each week, and the female worms will develop into juvenile matriarchs over the course of a month. We could spend the rest of our natural lives at the end of this tunnel and barely dent the population. We need to find the Hive Mother and our best lead is that tunnel.”

Ingunn stepped forward at this point, wrapping a coil of rope around Zofia’s waist and securing it to her harness with a complicated series of loop knots.

“Do you remember the system?” Ingunn said with a glance at the rogue.

“But of course, one tug to check in every 25 meters, two sharp tugs for immediate retrieval. Three steady tugs is the all-clear signal”

“Good, I’ll play out the slack as slowly as possible to avoid any risk of falling.”

Zofia made a show of checking the climbing anchors and carabiners in the pouches of her vest, before smiling at the Ingunn. “Good to go here lovely.”

Ingunn stepped over to the pile of cooling worms. Withdrawing a thick stoneware container from her pack. As she pried the wax stopper free a thick astringent smell permeated the area. With exaggerated care, she poured the thick blue solution over the pile. Flesh began to bubble and melt. Armor plating became pitted and corroded, before crumbling away into chunks. In a matter of minutes, the corpses had been reduced to filthy smears on the stone of the cavern floor.

“Now we’re ready to go Zofia.”

“What can I do to help?” Micky asked as he watched Zofia step towards the lip, and lower herself in without hesitation.

“I want you to watch our backs, I’ll be focused on the rope, so you need to be focused on our surroundings.

The next thirty minutes seemed to pass with glacial slowness. Ingunn paid out the rope at a steady pace, waiting for Zofia to take up the slack as she moved further away. Sometimes single tugs of the rope would come within minutes, while at other times it felt like another tug would never come. The tension began to wear on Micky, his heartbeat quickening as the periods between tugs seemed to increase again.

After what seemed like an eternity the rope jumped in Ingunn’s hands. Once, twice. As Micky sprinted towards Ingunn to help her haul Zofia free the rope jumped a third time. Breathing a sigh of relief, Micky sat back as Ingunn began to heave away. Ensuring no slack was left in the line, Ingunn reeled Zofia in. In less than fifteen minutes Zofia emerged, streaks of mud and grime smeared through her bright blond hair.

“Well that was tremendously unpleasant,” the rogue muttered, wiping her hands over her leathers in a vain effort to shed her layer of mucus.”

“Did you find the hive?” Ingunn was all business, recoiling the rope around her forearm as she spoke.

“The tunnel leads down and into another large cavern. The whole place is simply full of worm leavings. The hive is definitely nearby.”

“Good work, can we get at the hive that way?”

“I doubt it, it’s more than I can clear alone and I can’t see Tavish fitting through here.”

“We’ll have to find another way in. Let's get back to the others, Gwilym needs to know what you’ve found.”

“Yes, I hate to imagine how poor Yan has been pining in my absence.”

Zofia led the group back to the edge of the first cavern, retracing the now-familiar route. As they arrived back at the staging area Micky was astounded to see the progress Tavish had made. The portable electric fence was surrounded by a squared-off tench about a meter deep. The sides of the trench were cut sharply and the bottom was covered in a layer of viciously sharp, barbed caltrops.

“Tavish mate, you’ve made a terrifying fort here, what’s going on?” Micky asked as he walked to the edge of the trench.

“Th' bobbish worms hae git tae sloch something laddie. A'd lik' tae avoid any nicht time visits fae th' wee beasties.”

“Oh BLEEP, I didn’t think of that. Ingunn, what do the murder worms even eat?” Micky asked, turning to Ingunn with a pained expression.

“They’re ambush predators, and they’ll eat pretty much anything. In an environment like this, I would expect them to prey upon a range of troglobites. Potentially some large spiders or other creatures adapted to live on the funguses that can grow down here.”

“Troglobites are things that only live in caves right?”

“Sort of,” answered Ingunn, “it means things that live their entire lives in the caves. Bats or those Bobbit Worms which leave the cave to hunt aren’t exactly troglobites.”

“Wait a minute, so the BLEEP snapping murder worms can actually leave the caves? That seems like kind of a problem, right?”

“Exactly right byt,” Gwilym chimed in, “which is why the Xenophon Inc. team were supposed to eliminate any hives after they closed the convergence.”

“So they BLEEPED the bed, and now we’re climbing into it?”

“That’s the glory of being a salvager Micky. Pretty much all your beds will come pre-BLEEPED from here on in.”

After Zofia delivered her report Gwilym consulted with Ingunn about the best course of action. They both agreed that any resource excavation would have to wait until the Bobbit Worm issue was sorted. As such, finding a path to the hive would be the priority.

Zofia was to scout down the three passageways leading off the main cavern, while the others continued to secure the staging area.

“So we’re sleeping down here tonight then?” Asked Micky as he help Gwilym set up a canvas tent in the center of the fenced-off area.

“That’s the plan. It won’t be as comfortable as the base camp, but I don’t want to waste the hours trekking backend forth to the surface each day. The faster we find those worms and eliminate them, the faster we can start making some actual money.”

Zofia returned to the camp three hours later, having found evidence of the hive down the rightmost tunnel.

“The central tunnel collapses after a few hundred meters, we would need heavier equipment to brace the walls before we started moving the rubble. The tunnel to the right is where we need to focus our efforts, I found slime trails leading back to a cavern at the end of the passageway, it looks like the same cavern I passed into through the ambush tunnel.”

“Excellent work Zofia,” Gwilym replied. “Any idea how many worms we are looking at?”

“I’d say less than a hundred all told darling. I’m guessing the Xenophon boors missed one of the junior matriarchs and a couple of the males. The matriarch was able to establish a breeding pair and begin repopulating the caves.”

“That’s the best-case scenario.” Gwilym looked around the cavern frowning slightly. “I’d say we’re all too tired to fight them today. We’ll set a double watch tonight and move on the hive tomorrow morning.”