Chapter 91: Molting Horror
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"Cave-Slink!" Needle gasped. "This should be two-star scout beasts of this area, this one feels bigger."
Indeed, aura reading flickered to a three-star peak. Worse: more clung upside down like gargoyles along the ceiling, now unfolding.
Mia whispered, calm but fierce. "Shield formation, but don’t shout. We need out of this choke. Kai, you clear us a lane."
He gripped his spear, advanced. Spear-butt tapped once: right flank follow. Two Slinks dropped. Kai twirled the weapon, deflecting acid spit, then lunged. His spear pierced one’s chest; acid boiled along the shaft but his Tiny Tank layer shielded. He spun, flicking the corpse into the second to unbalance it; Shale’s follow-up hammer pulped both.
More hissed, bounding along walls with spider speed. The banner edged forward, fighting in near-silence, only wet crunches and grunt breaths.
At last a pale rectangle of daylight appeared ahead. Kai led a wedge charge; they burst from tunnel into blinding sun, scattering onto a sandstone shelf.
The moment they stepped out, the Cave-Slinks screeched and retreated. Daylight repelled them.
Cerastis Banner formed a circle, panting. Casualties: two bites (acid burns), one gash. No dead. Yet. From twenty they only lose one in earlier battle.
The relief didn’t last long. From below the shelf rose a bass rumble, an answering roar to the Slinks’ screams. Kai peered over the edge and his breath caught.
A canyon yawned beneath the shelf, perhaps fifty or sixty yards deep. No one could measure in this situation. Within it sprawled a labyrinth of hexagonal basalt columns. And crawling through those aisles, turning stone to gravel under its weight, loomed the mature form of the creatures they’d glimpsed just a second ago. It was a predator beast known as Cave-vereign, estimated aura 5-Star, newly moulted, hungry.