Chapter 26: Worms in the System

There were a dozen caverns that were empty before another enemy was found. The cavern Trint sensed seemed to have many branching tunnels exiting the main cavern. But some of them were blocked after a short distance. As he got within a hundred yards, he realized he was mistaken. Some of the tunnels were filled with tube-like creatures. They were twice the width of the centipedes or about 5 feet in diameter, and if Trint was getting a clear picture, they were pretty long. They were stretching deep into the tunnels. He assumed that there could be more of them deeper in the tubes that seemed empty.

The worms were big enough to smash a car or building based solely on size. He didn’t know how to measure their mass, but he could tell their outer skin was tough. He thought he could probably easily fight them. Although Trint hadn’t yet determined his limits, he wouldn’t be completely reckless.

‘I might be able to withstand being smashed by part of a worm, but who knows what else they can do.’ Trint pondered. ‘They might bleed acid or pass poison gas. There is no way to know, right?’

‘Trint, I have records of these monsters, but I believe you need to learn and adapt. You are making me adapt by continually breaking system standards. It’s only fair that you too have some surprises in life.’ Again Pneuma teased Trint. Not offering the answers and yet encouraging Trint to figure it out.

Trint explained his understanding of the new enemy and his battle plan to Iliana. To be more stealthy, he had retracted the vipers and crushers to decrease his mass. Not wanting to ponder the physics of mass change and magic interactions, he shook his head and snuck closer. He slowly and quietly approached the worms’ cavern. Despite his efforts at stealth, the worms sensed his approach.

Of the five worms, he could sense, 3 of them slid out slowly from their tunnels even before he entered. Those three eventually got their hulking forms out and coiled like a snake. Their coils wrapped around and on top of each other so that they were approximately the size of a house and with the head of each one slowly orienting towards Trint’s location.

Knowing his approach was not a secret, Trint chose to reform his crushers. Lifting his head from 8 to 12 feet as he entered the cavern and stretched his vipers, he formed each end into something like a scythe or the end of a climbing ice ax. The blade extended two feet from the main arm. They looked like upside-down smiley faces but with a sharpened edge along the bottom. He intended to be able to either slice or even scale the worms. Even with his eye level at 12 feet and vipers up over his shoulders, he was still looking at the 3-story height of the worm’s head.

As Trint’s mass and size increased rapidly, the worms uncoiled a little and reached even higher. They also slowly opened the ends of their tubes. The tapered ends pulled back like a snake unhinging its jaw. Spread wide and revealed a set of jaws, very much like a dog’s muzzle.

Trint decided to avoid the 5-foot wide mouths. He used one crusher to step closer and onto a rock the size of a computer monitor. Heavy but thin. With the ends of the claws, Trint grabbed and skipped the stone to the far left of the vast cavern. The rock hit the floor as it bounced and rolled along, slowly losing momentum and slamming into the wall 100 yards to the left near an empty worm tube.

As the rock skittered across the floor, Trint’s hypothesis proved correct. Like a subterranean beast in a series of movies he watched as a kid, these beasts could sense vibrations in the ground. Each of the three coiled house-sized worms’ heads tracked the rock as if an invisible string was attached to the rock and their mouths. The worm on the left, closest to the rock, tracked and pounced at the collision sight on the wall. The other two moved to get a better position on the crash site. Trint remained silent as they all moved away to the left.

Having no other good ideas, he crouched and took a giant leap towards the worm closest to him. He was able to clear a long distance in one jump. As he jumped, the small explosion of shattered rock below his crushers caused the worms’ heads to all jerk towards the new tremors. The one Trint was aiming for lunged and passed completely below him. They were fast for their size. After about 10 yards, what must be a 100-yard-long worm had passed under Trint; with violent speed and power, he slammed his new scythe hooks down into the passing worm.

The 24-inch blade found only a moment of resistance on the thick skin of the worm before burying its whole length into the worm. With the moving worm below and moving behind him, Trint had hardened and strengthened his core not to be thrown head over heels with the momentum change and instead had extended his crushers to grab the passing worm just a moment after the vipers struck. The talons of the crushers found purchase but were unable to crush the worm. Its skin was too thick and its internals too dense.

Trint realized the issue of his crushers in this situation and decided to extend the talons on the fly. The size of the walking surface didn’t change, but the claws on the ends became huge, hooked talons like a velociraptor’s and big enough to wrap around a soccer ball. They extended, but before they could deepen their grip on the worm, it violently thrashed upwards to dislodge or crush the pest daring enough to hurt it.

Trint, sensing the fast-approaching ceiling, used his purchase on the worm to throw himself from one worm to the next. He had plenty of limbs and time to land tail first into another worm. Trint had stopped his fall and caught himself with vipers, crushers, and tail.

He was facing away from the worm he landed on; if it weren’t dark, he would be looking right at the worm raised up and hitting the ceiling. He had dismounted and deeply skewered another of the first three worms. He was near the middle of the worm’s body length and still closer to the left side of the cavern.

Trint knew he needed a new strategy to take these things out. He started to reform the right viper. It went from a 2 feet long hook to a 5-foot-long blade. He did his best to make it as sharp on one end and dense and heavy as possible. The edge took a couple of seconds to form, and he used his other limbs to damage the worm he was on.

It quickly oriented its jaws towards Trint. With blade formed and jaws lunging towards his chest, Trint used all his strength to move to the right of the open maw. He managed to be clipped in the left crusher that was pushing off the worm below him. With his new blade, he swung down 5 feet behind where the jaws extended from the worm’s body.

Trint’s incredible strength and the leverage he generated in this form gave him enough force to slice the new blade clear through the nearly five-foot diameter of the worm’s head. Headless or at least without jaws, the end of the worm spilled blood and what might have been some of its last meal on the ground and walls as it thrashed around in pain.

Trint wasn’t sure if that would kill it, but he moved on to the third worm. He also sensed another two worms were aware and slowly working their way towards the battle. He had caused some damage, but the five enemies were all still alive. This was the most immense cavern, and it was beginning to fill with giant worms.

‘Pneuma, do these things have a weakness, or do I just need to keep chipping away at them?’ Trint wasn’t short on breath, but his mental communication was laden with frustration. Up to this point, nothing he’d fought seemed like this level of challenge.

‘Trint, these are equal to i8 enemies,’ Pneuma began to display his knowledge.‘They are currently level 36 Tunnel Worms. At level 36, they do have weaknesses. But their weaknesses should not be your focus. On the other hand, you need to focus on using your strengths. I can’t understand what your Sovereign status entirely means, but I know you have yet to realize how well our combined form can fight.“

“I have enjoyed watching you play around,” Pneuma teased Trint with a bit of sarcasm. “You have done well.” Pneuma said, getting serious, “Your Sovereign privilege is allowing you to fight well above normal thresholds I projected. Would you like some suggestions, or I could…take over for a while. You decide.’

‘Pneuma, do not take over!’ Trint emphasized each word. ‘Unless I need emergency resurrection because I’m passed out or something. Don’t ever take over. That was too creepy.’

‘It wasn’t that creepy.’ Pneuma countered. ‘I know you’re not used to being piloted like a puppet, but we are as one now. It would help if you got out of the mentality that we are separate. We are a combined entity now. You and I are both more than we once were. Do you trust me?’

‘Well, yes, I do trust you.’ Trint admitted. ‘It is just hard to give you full control. I think I can overrule your control, but before, I felt trapped in my own body, inside our body. That was a terrible feeling. Not to mention the fear at that moment. But yes, I trust you.’

Trint had been moving at incredible speed. Dodging and moving toward the third worm. The conversation had happened in a sliver of time. Silent communication with Pneuma was a mix of words and understood emotions.

It was evolving like a learning computer. The more time Trint and Pneuma were together. The less time it took for them to share information and converse. The unspoken ways they understood each other were growing. Trint wondered would he maintain his identity or would the lines blur.

‘Trint, I know you trust me.’ Pneuma confirmed. ‘So I will not interfere with your current form. Keep control of all the body and give me permission to alter and control the rest of the limbs and access to control our Spirit reserves.’

‘I don’t fully know what you mean by reserves.’ Trint frustratedly confessed. ‘We haven’t discussed Spirit a whole lot yet. I know you are a being of Spirit and Soul, but not much else has been explained. But yes, I give you the permission you request.’

Suddenly the control Trint felt over the vipers and the crushers were no longer his. The entire main body and tail were his to control. Very quickly, the limbs of the crushers and vipers became longer, and they forked from four to eight.

Their width halved for a moment, then expanded to a larger width, then divided again. Now 16 different limbs, each branched out from Trint’s hip, and his shoulder blades extended over 20 feet long. They were jointed like spider’s legs. But the last 6 feet of half the limbs were split into talons. They snapped and flexed open and closed with great speed, testing their movement and power. After only a moment, Pneuma was satisfied with the form. He then made another two limbs 10 feet longer than the others and added a dense mass to their ends.

He formed spiked balls of death using inspiration from Trint’s recent description of the sovereign hexagons. The added mass formed a 6-sided thickened portion of the limb. Each of the six sides had a razor-sharp crescent blade extending from its surface. The edges ran the mass’s length, each 3 feet long. It was like six ax heads facing away from a wrecking ball.

The formation of the new fighting form was rapid, and Pneuma dodged the worms nearest them and moved towards the wall. The worms were fast approaching as Pneuma used many clawed extremities to brace against the floor, walls, and even the curved ceiling. With so many contact points, Pneuma could reposition the core body and only sacrifice limbs if necessary. At least, that is what Trint’s plan would have been.