Chapter 397: Elmo’s Not-So-Great Escape
Elmo wished he hadn't watched so many movies. At the moment, he had the theme from Mission Impossible playing in his head where before it was music he remembered from the move 'The Great Escape.' It wasn't necessarily bad, but it was rather distracting.
He hadn't come across an orc for a while, but he also had the distinct feeling that he was getting farther and farther away from the surface. Not that he had any idea where he was.
Some passages went up, some went down. He'd stopped trying to figure out how far each went and so couldn't say if he was deeper underground or closer to the surface at the moment.
While he hadn't seen any orcs for a while, he knew they were close because every so often one would get close enough that he could hear them.
He wanted to rest, and was in fact fighting to stay awake at the moment, but didn't dare in the event an orc came up on him while he was sleeping soundly. With how tired he felt right then, he doubted that he'd wake up enough to avoid getting taken back to the orc elders.
Elmo was so exhausted that he nearly walked into a cave that had several orcs guarding it. If they hadn't been paying attention to the other direction, Elmo knew that he'd have been caught right away. Though, on the other hand, being startled in that manner was enough to wake him up fully from seeing that. Or at least for a short period, that is. He was confident that his stamina had to be nearly depleted at the moment.
While they were paying most of their attention in the way that Elmo wanted to go, he couldn't rule out the possibility that one wouldn't look his way if he just stayed standing in the opening.
Elmo counted six orcs and hoped he still had enough MP to put them all to sleep. He hadn't dared used his absorb spell because he didn't want to risk jeopardizing his status among them in the even he did get recaptured. He wasn't sure what the elders could detect with his magic, but he had a feeling that if he directly attacked any of the orcs, that he might find himself on the wrong end of any of their weapons.
Still, he had a good feeling about this cave. It might not have sunlight shining through it, which would indicate it led to an exit, but it was at least a place that the orcs were more concerned about what would come from that direction rather than someone like Elmo wanting to go in that direction.