Chapter 24: The Caves

Miguel waited for a moment, hoping that his eyes would adjust to the dark. He was panting, and coughing occasionally, but soon he had recovered his breath and at least recovered from the shock.

At the very least, he told himself, he had escaped from Razor-lizard Rex again, as the last notification had confirmed, though a now-distant roaring could still be heard. He looked up, the small circle of light directly above marking where his spade had cut through the surface and caused him to plummet down into this cave below. A shaft of light shone down from that point now, hitting the water’s surface very close to where he stood, and he saw something flit past it, high up.

“Probably nothing,” he murmured to himself. “Just a bat, or something.“

Looking away, Miguel blinked around his surroundings. Purely by accident, he could see that he had managed to find exactly what they had been hoping for – a cave, somewhere that he and Aluna and Sid could use as a base as they gathered equipment and supplies. But how did it connect to where they had been before?

At least, he told himself, he still had the spade, meaning that he could potentially try to dig his way out to the mountainside and reunite with his comrades. If they were still alive, that is. Because it felt very likely that Razor-Lizard Rex would return for the unarmed pair, having been frustrated in its pursuit of Miguel.

Cautiously, he began to wade through the water. If only he could see something, but so far, his eyes hadn’t adjusted to the dark conditions. He could be walking straight into another danger, even risking falling deeper into the cave system, but he couldn’t really see what choice he had. There was nothing else for it – he had to find an edge to the current cave, and begin digging.

At least he could use to the spade to feel ahead of him.

Equip spade

Moving a few inches at a time, Miguel held the spade out in front of him like a cane, pressing at the ground before stepping on it. The surroundings smelled acidic, a little like vinegar, and he wondered whether the ’water’ was drinkable. For now, he wasn’t going to risk it, despite now feeling quite thirsty and hungry.

The water got shallower as he moved, he was fairly certain, and soon he had dry rock below him. Experimentally, he tried digging at the rock with the spade; this led to a spark, but nothing more – as he might have expected, the rock didn’t give way in the same manner as the very yielding earth above. He would need a pickaxe or something for that.

The brief spark had been enough for Miguel to get a brief glimpse of the surroundings, and he had seen that the rocky shelf he was on continued ahead with a rock wall on one side and the pool of water on the other. He didn’t see how far, but with a renewed confidence, he walked ahead, still using the spade to guide his way.

A minute later, he tried again to get it to spark against the rock, but failed. That must have been a fluke – and he was wary of damaging it. The spade was his only way out of here. He couldn’t risk damaging it.

As he walked on, he briefly pondered on the ’feat’ notification that he had seen. That was new to him, and felt a bit ridiculous. After all, he may have fallen a dozen yards or more and survived, but it had been an accident. All the same, the system had deemed it worthy of a reward. What other feats might get rewarded in a similar way? It had proved useful in the past to spend experience on hit points, and with twenty or more razor-lizards around, he was keen to do so again.

Just then he heard voices, and he froze. A man’s voice, and a woman’s...

“Sid? Aluna?”

There was a pause, the voices falling silent, and then the woman spoke:

“Miguel?”

“I’m over here. But I can’t see.”

“Wait there, then. We got torches.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, Miguel waited. Sure enough, a flickering light began to be visible ahead of him, an orange glow lighting up the cave walls and shimmering across the water

“I’m back here,” he repeated, beginning to walk towards the source of the light. The cave narrowed ahead, he could see, the ground becoming completely dry, and the wall to his left closing in towards the one on the right, so that it formed a passage around four feet wide. And there, as he stepped forward, he saw Aluna and Sid, just a few yards back, each holding flaming torches and apparently uninjured. Both of them smiled and waved, then hurried towards him.

“It’s really good to see you,” said Miguel, smiling back. “How did you get in here?”

“We tried digging,” said Aluna, but after you distracted that beast, we began to look around near the boulder. There was a small opening below a bush, and we crept inside on our bellies. Then pretty soon it opened up into this tunnel.”

“Wow. Wish I’d seen that,” said Miguel. “I fell in from above. This cave must be huge. Didn’t know how long I’d be stuck down here, and I couldn’t see a damn thing.”

“Well, after you led that dino away, we grabbed the torches,” said Sid, raising his torch slightly as he spoke.

“They seem to work as weapons,” added Aluna. “Did you see how that one reacted when you threw a torch? And the sweet smell of charred flesh. Ahh...”

Miguel nodded. “I saw. I got a couple of arrows into it, too. They can be killed if we work together, I think. But what now?”

They all looked to Sid, who gestured ahead of him, back the way Miguel had come from. “We need to get back and fight, of course,” he said, “but first let’s figure out if this place will work as a base.”

Ten minutes later, the trio were seated on rocks upon what they had established was the largest dry area in the cave, which otherwise was three-quarters covered in water – or at least, in liquid. They had wedged in the two remaining torches in between other loose rocks. Miguel also now noticed that one of the baseball sized drones was present, monitoring them.

Beyond the entrance that Sid and Aluna had used, it appeared, there was no other way in or out – at least, none other than the skylight-hole that Miguel had accidentally created.

They also rapidly established that the water was not safe to drink. Sid raised a little of the stuff in his cupped hands and sipped at it, and then scowled. “Uh... it tastes like sour milk.”

“In a bad way?” asked Aluna perkily.

“Yeah. And I just lost a hit point, too.”

“How many have you got, anyway?” asked Miguel curiously, recalling Sid’s ability to take huge number of hits on the earlier trials.

“That’s personal.”

Miguel shrugged. “Wouldn’t it be an idea for Madam Kampion to buy us all like a hundred hit points, or something? She must have plenty of drubes.”

“You can’t do that,” said Aluna. “When you first enter Demon Hunters, that’s you. You can only increase them through experience after that. And the first task always provides some limit. Where would be the fun if everyone was invincible.”

“True. So you have...?”

“I’ve got twenty five, I don’t mind telling you!” she replied with a grin. “How many did you lose falling in here?”

“Three,” Miguel replied. “To be honest, I find it a little hard to keep track of those, and experience, and all.”

She shrugged, grinning again. “Well, you could check your stats. Just say ‘profile’, you know?”

“Oh... I didn’t know that.”

He mentally shouted ‘profile!’, and in response to the command, Miguel saw the following, appearing much as he saw experience points updates:

Strength: 14 Speed: 18 Melee: 4 Ranged: 14 Spirit: 1 Agility: 4 Hit points: 16 of 19 Experience points: 400 Hunger: 40% Thirst: 35% Fatigue: 14%

“Hmm...” murmured Miguel. “I’ve got enough experience to add a couple more hit points.”

“Then do it,” said Sid. “Those beasts are brutal.”

“You don’t think I should up my other stats? My spirit stat sucks, and I’m clumsy, too.”

He glanced around at Aluna, who nodded. “Up to you. But I don’t think you want to risk tripping up when a razor-lizard is chasing you. Better agility could be worth more than a couple of hit points.”

Miguel nodded, recalling his own sense of panic when he slipped more than once on the rock-strewn hillside while being pursued by the monster – and the previous tasks where his clumsiness had caused problems, such as leaping around the underground islets. “I think you’re right.” He then focused on speaking another command: spend all my experience on agility.

You have added two points of agility at a cost of 300XP; your agility attribute has now been updated, agility: 6; 100 XP remaining.

Nodding decisively, he looked at the pair. “So, what now?”

“I think this can work as a base,” said Sid. “It’s secure, with just one well-hidden entrance. But the water’s foul, and we have nowhere to sleep. We are going to need to go hunting, and get food and clean water in here. Perhaps we could find some way of getting that chest in here, too. We could be here for a day or more. Before all the monsters are killed, that is.”

“Ah, that reminds me,” exclaimed Miguel, now unslinging the backpack that he had gained from the chest. “I got backpacks for you both, and there was some bread, too.”

He passed out the backpacks, and gave them a loaf of bread each. They all examined and nodded appreciatively at the box of tools, which contained:

1 small hammer

1 flint and steel

1 wire saw

1 file

2 spoons

2 50m lengths of paracord

1 plastic sack

“Useful,” murmured Aluna, picking up the set. “Perhaps we can use the cord to trip the beast, then slash its throat.”

“I found weapons, too,” said Miguel suddenly. “Look.”

Unequip hand axe

Unequip dagger

Unequip dagger

“I guess you’ll want the axe, Sid?” he added.

Sid picked up the axe, turning it in his hands, and pursed his lips. “It’s a bit small, but better than nothing.”

“I like these,” said Aluna, tucking the tool set into her jacket and then taking up the daggers, eyes gleaming.

“There’s a bow, too, and eight arrows left.”

“Then we need more arrows,” said Sid. “We can go hunting now, and defend ourselves. But do you think we can take down that creature?”

“For sure!” said Aluna, flipping the daggers in her hands.

“It’s wounded, that’s something,” said Miguel. “But we don’t know how badly.”

“You need to say ‘enemy stats’ when you are facing it,” said Sid. “Try it. You’ll see how many hit points it has left.”

“Huh! I wish I’d been briefed with all the commands.”

Aluna looked around at Sid. “Wasn’t that your job?”

Sid shrugged. “You already know how to equip weapons,” he said. “And you’ll probably find that ’Inventory’ is a useful command to use.”

“Noted,” said Miguel. “Anyway, we can’t just hope that the big one is running low on hit points. We need a plan. It’s clearly damn tough, as well as huge.”

Incoming message from team headquarters: Bratislav here. Please ignore previous message from Rishi. The boss wants to see you stay alive. Be strategic, and make sure you win this thing.

“Uh...“ Miguel nodded thoughtfully for a moment as he digested the message from Bratislav. He had no way of knowing if the timing was a coincidence, but it felt like an endorsement of his previous comment.

“The plan is that we stay together, anyway,” said Sid, standing, and turning the axe over in his hand. “Hopefully that creature has moved off now, and we’ll get a chance to find more gear before we have to face it. But if not, then we attack from all sides. Use our better mobility to keep away from attacks, and wear it down. It doesn’t like fire, so we take the torches, and try to pick up the one that you threw at it, Miguel. Agreed?”

“Let’s do this,” said Aluna, and Miguel nodded.

Miguel and Sid each took hold of a torch again, and together they began to walk back towards the entrance tunnel. Just then, though, Miguel was aware of movement out of the corner of his eye, as if someone had thrown a rock. He ducked down, just in time for a dark shape to swoop just past his head.

He spun around, looking the way it had gone, only to see it bank and flap its wings. He lost sight of it for a moment, and then felt a thump at the back of his head as it hit against him, accompanied by a sharp pain.

You have lost 3 hit points You have 13 hit points remaining

“That goddam bat,” he said out loud.

“Bats,” corrected Sid. “Weapons out, folks.”

And as Miguel looked around, he saw that there was a circle of the creatures flapping around above his head as a swarm. First one and then another dove down, aiming for one of the three companions. He raised the torch high. “We need to get out of here!” he called out.

“No – this is our base!” called Aluna. She was stabbing out frantically with the daggers, but there were a multitude of the bat-like beasts around her. “We have to defend it. Kill the little shits!”

Miguel slashed the flaming torch at another of the bat-like attackers, causing it to bash against the cave wall and then fall smouldering to the ground.

Notification: You have gained 5XP

It was a small success, however. The creatures might be vulnerable, but there were surely too many for the three of them to take down...