POV Jacob

  'I wonder if I should try and hunt more Sky lurkers? They had big crystals, and the announcement said the Cave Crawler crystals could be sold.' I rub my fingers over my nonexistent beard as I think about potential get-rich-quick schemes and finish dissecting the latest group of Crawlers for their crystals, armour plates and newly discovered venom glands.

  The last few hours had started off exciting but had become increasingly dull, as the monotone, maze-like caves' only entertainment was the increasingly easy-to-deal-with centipede-like monsters. They may come in slowly increasingly higher numbers, but they all died just the same. Ella heals away lactic acid and micro-muscle tears, Ava keeps us hydrated, and I fix up any weapons that get damaged. The only real threat was getting lost, but Mia had been mapping our route with religious zeal so far, her pets able to scout out multiple routes at once, even if we didn't take them.

  It was almost a blessing when Noah stumbled into a trap of a new monster. Its long, sticky appendage dangled in the dark and attached itself to his shoulder. It only managed to lift him a few centimetres towards its hideous teeth-riddled maw on the cave's ceiling before I cut its tongue, and it found a few arrows in its hideous flat body. Its slug-like corpse fell out of a cervus in the stone roof with a wet splat. We named it a barnacle, ripped out its crystal-like core, and moved on.

  More and more barnacles and Cave Crawlers filled the passages, but never more than three at a time, allowing us to storm through their ranks as we ventured into the depths of the Earth and collect crystals by the dozens with little effort. But the new stimuli quickly became repetitive in the dark gloom as we trudged through the uneven rock tunnels. And I was bored. It probably said more about me than the situation itself that I found the lack of challenge or change dull, even while the world crumbled around me. I'm sure people were suffering and dying out in these caves, and here I was, annoyed that I hadn't had a chance to eat the shiny gems to see what would happen.

  Despite my lack of privacy, or maybe in spite of it, I had taken to practising my states of matter ability at every opportunity and microdosing on Crawlers' venom extracted from their corpses. I used the time jogging between fights to create increasingly intricate needles and other venom delivery tools so I could subject myself to the painful, cramp-inducing toxins. It stung and made me stumble through the uneven tunnels, but if I could enhance myself in any way, I would take it. Within reason. I didn't plan to sell my soul. Yet.

  Regardless of my internal thoughts, here we were about to set up for lunch while I tinkered with magical nonsense beyond my understanding to the side, while the others unpacked cooking gear to make fajitas on a small gas stove. I was just about to see if I could alter the crystals when my thoughts were cut through by a distant scream.

  "Help…" A quiet cry for help rebounds off the hardened stone walls and echoes around us in a soft whisper. Sam jumps up and faces the direction of the call, his keen senses able to pick up where the cry for assistance had come from.

  "We have to help them," Sam and Ava say at almost the same time as the others start to look in the same direction.

  "It could be a trap," I state, putting my tools back into my inventory.

  "And it could be someone in desperate need of our help", Sam counters, spear already in hand and lunch packed away in a hurry.

  'His inventory must be a mess, focus, Jacob.'

  "Help…" another cry echoes through the caves, surrounding us in its plea for assistance.

  "We helping or what?" Noah asks, in indignation, as everyone else states their desire to help, and quickly starts tidying away the rest of their belongings so we can rush to the mysterious cries.

  "I wasn't saying we shouldn't help", I grumble, but it falls on deaf ears as everything is packed away in record time, so we can start to run into the endless maze of tunnels, following Sam towards the source of distress while Mia tries her best to frantically map our route so we won't get lost.

  After about 10 turns and 3 minutes, we finally reached an area that unexpectedly opened into an expansive room, doused in a soft green light. It was a stone chamber with a strange, glowing green moss.

  The cave had the same dull grey stone with a slight brown colouring as the rest of the winding tunnels, but it was easily 100m tall, with large stalactites hanging from the ceiling like deformed fangs of a monster waiting to fall and crush us under their might.

  Tall stalagmites rose from the jagged floor into stone pillars that obscured most of the cave, but they did allow me to see something with great potential. A green luminescent moss seemed to glow in the dark cave, giving off a soft green light and a pungent, sweet smell that filled the chamber.

  'A potential renewable light? Oh, and there's a very sickly looking man being attacked by two undead about 100 metres into the cave, standing within a small clearing of stalagmites conveniently in view of the entrance.'

  "Are you ok?" Yells Sam as he rushes over with the others coming over to help him.

  'Wonder if we can take the moss with us and…Why is that guy alone? He managed to get this deep, but can't deal with two undead.' I look at the situation closer and notice that there is no blood or visible wounds as the sickly 30-year-old looking man pushes back one of the undead.

  "Please help me!" The unnamed man calls in distress.

  "Why didn't you run away? Undead are slow." I ask as I slow down and look around.

  "I twisted my ankle," He says after a brief pause. I look at his feet but don't see any uneven weight distribution. "How?" I ask simply as I stop moving towards the man and put my hand on the hilt of one of my many kitchen knives, but my friends ignore the questions and continue to hurry towards him.

  "Will you just help me?!?!" He calls out in anger. By this point, my friends were almost at the man's aid, but I wasn't convinced; something smelled off. The air reeked of something masked by the cave's pungent odour. Something I couldn't place but knew spelt trouble.

  This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

  "And you made it this far with a twisted ankle." I grew more paranoid as the situation unfolded, only to be interrupted by the stranger, who called out in annoyance. "Fuck it, just kill them, and bring me their corpses!"

  As if summoned by his words, undead growls began to fill the dripstone cave, quickly followed by the abominations shambling out from behind the maze of the stalagmites, blocking the exit and completely separating and surrounding us.

  'Well then, that is unfortunate.'

  "You little bastard!" I hear Noah call out in anger, quickly followed by the crack of his sledgehammer caving into an undead's skull. I hear other cries of outrage from my friends as the distance between us is filled with stumbling corpses that stop moving once in position, as if they are purposely cutting me off from my friends.

  "Undead control, hmmm?" I mutter to myself, "Better remove the leader then." I started mapping out a route to my friends and the sickly man. But as I was about to launch myself into the fray, the strange smell filled my nostrils and finally jogged my memory of faint, ghostly spirits crying out in pain as they were twisted and torn apart, only to be stitched back together for the process to begin again. Twisted monsters hunting me through the red.

  "The fucking spirit realm," I spit out, as an invisible force grabs hold of me and throws me deeper into the maze of stone and walking corpses, causing me to slam into a stalagmite before I could gather my wits. Breath breaks free from my lungs, rotting arms grasp at my stunned body, and a tall, scale-clad woman swims through my blurry vision.

  It was impossible to tell her age through the burgundy scales that covered her from her face to the tip of her very long, serpentine tail that merged seamlessly with her humanoid torso. Her dirty blonde hair fell onto a broad shoulder that held what looked to be a sharpened weight-lifting bar that dripped a sickly green liquid. But it was her eyes that truly made me pause, for they were the same toxic red that permeated the realm of damned souls, slitted into rage-filled irises.

  'That's...not ideal.' I half expected a monologue from such an eccentric-looking individual, but her improvised spear made no small talk as it rocketed towards my unguarded head at frightening speeds. Stone liquifies, bodies fall in a frenzy of blades and rotting teeth, but only I stand back up as the dead holding me lie lifeless on the resolidified floor, blackened blood bleeding from their punctured skulls.

  But my little performance doesn't stop the spear-wielding snake woman; it only makes her miss her first strike, and the second one is already on its way to pierce my heart. I dart to the side and slide my rose-steel blade against the sharpened steel rod, but my power fails to penetrate it. My eyes widen, and I'm pushed to the side with the force of the redirected blow, making me stumble on the unmoving corpses. More undead begin to circle around me like sharks with blood in the water as I struggle to dodge or block the lightning-quick blows that hit like Noah's sledgehammer. Every strike forced me back into the encroaching wall of undead, their outstretched arms trying to grab onto me. It was all I could do to trap their feet with my powers while my body fought off the endless onslaught of rapid spear strikes.

  'Why couldn't I get through to the spear?' I stumble backwards again and send a pulse of liquifying energy through my boot to the undead behind me. 'What is that green stuff?' I duck under a wide sweep, but have to jump to the side as more of the green slime shoots out of the snake woman's mouth towards me. Its foul smell wafts past my head as I narrowly avoid the surprise projectile. 'Ah, snake powers got ya. Now, how is it stopping me?'

  I wasn't trained to fight, but neither was the reptilian woman; otherwise, I would likely be dead ten times over in our quick exchange of sharpened steel. But that didn't mean I was utterly useless; the dead became trapped in droves and were used as walls of flesh to keep between me and my assailant. Glass pearls flew into the air, only to break and create temporary force fields, but the woman moves like liquid, dodging my poor aim and reaping the lives of my unliving wall like a scythe through wheat.

  Muscles tore as I struggled to keep up with the menace; red plastic beads fell into my gullet, allowing toxic power to push my body faster and further, but it was barely enough to dodge the next flurry of strikes and jabs. Until finally, I was able to scrape away the green coating in a sloppy parry that pushed me to the floor. But it didn't matter; the green was gone. It was a gamble, but the slime was stopping me somehow, whether it was through being alive in its own way or through having its own defensive energy, I don't know, but it had to go.

  Orange sparks fly as my knife scrapes against pure steel. I struggled to regain my footing, but that brief moment was all I needed. Power surges through me, its current coiling around my blade before infecting the metal like a parasite. Pale blue light worms its way through the weapons structure, melting it from within and freeing me from its deadly reach. The weapons' destruction paused the fight as the woman stared at her now empty hands, while I scrambled to my feet and shook my numb arm in an attempt to get some kind of feeling into it after blocking the blow.

  But if I couldn't celebrate my small victory, if anything, it just seemed to make things worse. The stench of miasma starts to radiate from the woman, and her eyes roll back into her head, revealing the white orb slowly becoming corrupted by the toxic red that has begun to bleed down her face. Her scales grew more rugged, and her hands began to unravel; her flesh peeled back as bone and scales burst free from her fingers, forming blackened claws with pulsing red veins.

  Seeing the unnatural power-up cut scene for what it was, I rushed forward with knives drawn, only to be whipped by a tail that had grown as thick as my torso, its rough scales cutting into my armour as if I were struck against a grater. I fly through the air, leaving a trail of blood from my punctured chest, and crash back into a stone pillar. I try to push off against the uneven rock, only for the invisible force that threw me into this mess to wrap around my neck in a thin cord, pulling me back in a choking gasp. Clenched hands drop their knives in a panic as they rake across my neck, trying to free myself from the invisible wire, but my gloved fingers couldn't find it, and my vision was beginning to darken.

  In a burst of panic, power strikes out from my gut at random, churning my insides with nausea as my organs shudder at its indiscriminate attacks, but it allows me to limp through the now liquid pillar, removing the pressure on my neck, and into the waiting arms of the undead. I raise my arms up only to notice the distinct lack of blade, and am forced to push it back with a clumsy jab as my hand blindly scrambles until it finds another sheathed knife that quickly finds a home in the walking corpse's skull.

  By now, the screeches and roars of the transforming woman behind me were echoing around the cavern, almost drowning out the cracking of bones and scales. I turn to look at the monstrous human, only to freeze at the sight of the beast that took its place. The once-smooth scales were replaced with jagged knives of keratin; its eyes now glowed a deep red, seeping back into its skull, highlighting the veins and bones that made up its face. But most concerning was its shadow that stretched up and up a stalagmite in a clear display of the supernatural, and its shape? A humanoid made from a forever-unravelling mass of sinew.

  The fucking Wraith I trapped all those…Hours ago? 'Fuck me, it's been a long 24 hours hahaha.' I grin slips onto my face as a low chuckle breaks free from my mouth. "I didn't know I had a stalker, and a stupid one at that. How the hell are you meant to turn with knives sticking out of you? Snakes are smooth for a reason, you fucking dumbass."

  "Thisss coil, needsss not live long." The deep gravel gargling hisses fills the space between us as we stand off staring at each other.

  "And little Miss danger noodle is ok with this arrangement?" I ask, generally curious, only for the face to twitch, its expression fighting the plastered sneer as a wave of panic and fear struggles to remain on the face before being crushed by a scowl. 'Going to take that as a no.'

  "That isss irrelevant, Number 39856" A grin stretches across its face as my eyes widen at the mention of my forgotten soul number. "The consssumer. One of the ssseven. One of the dying. One of the forgotten. One. With. Me."