A month later

"Faster!"

Viran's voice struck his ears, but Red didn't really listen to what he said. The man had a habit of providing obvious advice when he was least likely to put it into practice. Naturally he needed to go faster, but how would he achieve that when his body was already being squeezed for all it had?

Another stab came his way, which Red tried to parry as he had been instructed. It was to no avail, though; Viran's knife slipped through his defenses and cut into his cheek. The man followed up by charging forward and the boy could only throw himself to the ground to evade his attack in a desperate dodge. It was clear by that point, however, that he had already conceded too much initiative to his opponent.

A merciless kick came his way, which Red desperately blocked with his arms, the impact driving him back several meters. Before he could recover, Viran had already rushed up to him and pinned his knife hand to the ground with a swift stomp, staring down the struggling boy with a disappointed expression. As Viran made no further moves, however, Red realized the training session was already over.

"Not good enough." Viran shook his head. "You're not fighting a centipede here, any trained fighter would be able to take advantage of such a sloppy move." After that, he stepped away, walking to the other side of the room.

Massaging his sore arms, Red sat up, staring at Viran's back. This had become another familiar scene in their training sessions. The man would push him to his absolute physical limit every sparring match, and when Red couldn't keep up his defenses any longer and was forced to do a desperate move, Viran would press him into defeat and chastise him about how that had made a bad decision. The boy didn't know if this was supposed to teach him anything or if the man was just venting his anger on him.

Over the previous month, Red felt like he had improved a lot in his footwork and general endurance. While he could only hold out for less than a minute against Viran in the beginning, he had slowly started to adapt to the man's rhythm, lasting longer and longer. His movements had become more efficient and his reflexes developed drastically. As one would expect, just as Red was getting used to that level of difficulty Viran increased the pressure.

His strikes became stronger and more ferocious, and after a few weeks, they started sparring with the iron knives. The man didn't hold back his blows either, slashing the boy just hard enough to draw a fine line of blood from him every time Red wasn't able to dodge or block his attacks. The only proper thing Viran had taught him was the correct combat stance he should take while fighting in their very first training session. Other than that the youth was left to his own devices, learning mostly by trial and error and by copying his opponent's movements.

Red's progress was evident for anyone to recognize in this short month of training, but he couldn't help but feel that he would have improved even further had Viran offered any useful advice other than just screaming at him to be faster or stronger. When he had brought the matter up to the man, he was told that "experience is the best teacher." Red wasn't sure how much he believed that, but it was clear the old soldier was set in his ways.

Getting up, the boy sheathed the knife and made his way to a corner of the hideout, where he had stored his possessions.

"How's your progress?" Viran asked from behind him. It was immediately clear to Red what he was referring to.

"...I'm trying to open the 9th upper arm one." Red replied.

"You've slowed down." The man's tone was one the boy recognized very well. Annoyance.

He was right, though. Over the last month, Red had only been able to open two additional acupoints. His training speed had slowed for one single reason: he had refused to visit the dark creature since their last encounter. Red felt as if he had woken up from a long nightmare since that day, and the foreign danger the being represented made him extremely afraid of taking even another step into that chamber.

Clearly, however, without the assistance of the highly concentrated spiritual energy, his rate of opening acupoints slowed down quite drastically. Red could feel the mounting difficulty each new acupoint presented to him, and it was clear it would get even harder. At this rate, it would take him at least another month to open the entirety of his upper-arm vein and he wouldn't be surprised if the vein following that took him even longer. Perhaps half a year even. And what about the ones following that? Would they take years? Would one of them take even a decade?

This speed was excruciatingly slow and Red had never felt the limitations of his talent this clearly before, much more so now with the increasingly dire situation down in the mines.

"Another slave disappeared overnight." Viran spoke as if talking to himself.

"Did you discover anything?" Red asked.

"Nothing. No footprints, no blood, fucking nothing!" Viran angrily swiped his knife off of the stone desk. "I told these morons not to walk alone out there, but they're too stupid and greedy to listen to me!"

"Where did this happen?" The boy remained unaffected by the man's angry tirades, having seen them grow more and more common these past few weeks.

"A few hundred meters away from our meeting chamber. Whatever it is, it's growing bolder, and it didn't get caught in the other side of the tunnels."

Over the past month, the number of monstrous insects that appeared near the slave's living spaces grew substantially. Gigantic centipedes, spiders, beetles, and other ungodly creatures wandered into their camps with increased frequency and casualties started to mount faster than the replenishment rate of slaves being thrown into these caves. Hunting had been completely suspended by Viran once their team suffered another ambush like the one with the centipedes back then, and the man ordered quite a few tunnels leading to the depths to be blocked by as many rocks as the slaves could find.

Although these measures kept them alive against the monsters, they reduced the number of moonstones the slaves could collect, and in turn, the amount of food they could exchange with the guards on the surface. Many of them already complained about hunger and their attitude towards Viran, their supposed leader, started to sour ever so slowly as his authority over them slipped away despite his great strength. But Red knew that the man was not bothered by this. If need be, he could kill half of those slaves, and then there would be food for all of them. No, it was those insects that worried him, on top of these mysterious disappearances that happened right under his nose.

"Have you ever heard about a creature like this?" Red asked.

"What, one that can hunt humans one by one without leaving a trace behind? Certainly heard of them, but those that are capable of doing it are all so strong that they wouldn't be bothered to hide from a bunch of ragtag slaves." Viran replied dismissively. "No, whatever or whoever is doing this is quite deliberately hiding their traces. Two times might have been a coincidence, but five disappearances without a single track or clue left behind? This is the work of a smart creature. Even when I put myself as bait by walking alone where it had hunted before, it never attacks me!"

Red more or less understood what the man was experiencing at the moment. It was something the youth was completely familiar with since he started interacting with the soldier. Helplessness. Viran was extremely strong and intelligent, but even he was not capable of tracking the thing that was kidnapping all these people. The entire social structure he had built inside this mine and more importantly, his plans to escape were now in jeopardy and there was nothing the man could do about it.

"Have you talked to the guards about it?"

"What use would those idiots be?" Viran complained. "They don't care about what happens down here and refuse to come into the caves. The only moment this creature becomes their problem is if it tries to exit the mine. No, we'll have to deal with it ourselves..."

"So, what can we do?" Red asked. The situation obviously also concerned him. If something happened to Viran or his plans the boy didn't believe he would fare very well with whatever would be left of the mine and its inhabitants.

Silence settled in the room, as the man stood in deep thought.

"...I have a plan." Viran finally replied. "But we'll talk about it later. We will need the help of the others too." At that, the man picked up his knife and sheathed it to the side of his waist. "Come, I need to check up on those idiots."

Red exited the hideout and Viran once again blocked the entrance with that giant rock. Soon, they were walking side by side through the tunnel. Along the way, the boy noticed that the entrance to the chamber he had slept in a month ago was blocked by a large number of rocks. After a long walk back to the slaves' area, they started to hear panicked conversation echoing from far away. Viran frowned.

"Hurry." Was the only thing he said before he picked up his pace.

Red followed behind and soon was greeted by a well-lit chamber, where a bunch of panicked slaves gathered around something in a circle. His vision was obstructed though, so the boy struggled to see what they had found.

"What the fuck is going on here?!" Viran's loud voice drowned out all others and the slaves were instantly thrown into silence, surprised at his arrival.

Soon the circle parted, and a slave passed through it, heading in the man's direction. Red recognized him as Gruff, who had unfortunately survived all of the perilous situations in the mine over the past month virtually unscathed.

"They... they found something boss." The big man, uncharacteristically, seemed to be out of breath. "Said they found it in one of the deeper tunnels connected to our meeting chamber." For some reason, Gruff stole a quick glance at Red as he said this. "It's Bertel, boss. I'm sure of it. It's just..." The man hesitated, a look of fear crossing his expression.

The boy recognized the name. It was one of the people who had disappeared not so long ago.

"Enough, let me see it." Viran unceremoniously pushed the big man out of his way as the rest of the slaves parted to give him space. Red followed from a bit farther away, as Gruff stared at him with a hostile gaze.

In the center of the gathering, a cloth had been spread and a round dark object rested on top of it. It was not until Viran carefully rolled it over with his foot that Red was able to recognize it. A human head. Or what had been one at least.

The head looked completely desiccated, taking a strange grey shade as all the moisture and blood had been sucked out of it. The eye sockets were empty and only small tufts of hair remained on its scalp. A clear hole had been made in the middle of his forehead, roughly the size of half a fist. Viran crouched down and examined the incision, shining the moonstone light inside of it.

Red was able to observe it even from afar as the green glow reflected off of the inner side of the skull. The brain was missing, and the head was hollow.