Runeblade-Chapter 210B2 : Fear, finale

Reaching the split in the cave, Kaius hurriedly peered down the tunnel that led to the surface. Straining his senses, he was relieved to hear no sign of howling panic or anger—the boggarts they had slain on their way in had yet to be discovered.

Just ahead and to the right, the cave split—angling downwards. The path they had yet to take. It was mostly similar to the other routes, a natural cave that had been roughly chipped at until it was mostly uniform in size.

Unlike the other passages they had explored, this one had no sign of any rooms that had been carved into its edges.

What that meant, he had little clue—but at the very least they would be able to traverse it far more quickly since they wouldn’t have to stop and check every room for enemies as they passed.

With the crossroads being empty, Kaius led their descent into the next tunnel. It was well lit, much like the corridor that had held the storerooms had been. He could only assume that meant that it was equally important.

Considering what they had seen of the warren had had far less occupants than he would have expected, he could only assume this was the path to the main living quarters. If all went well, they would be equally as poorly defended as the rest, and they could slip through and kill the boggarts in their beds.

If they were in close proximity, it would only be a matter of time before they were discovered, but with a little luck they’d be able to thin their numbers significantly before that happened.

Turn by turn they descended, the gentle incline of the tunnel continuing as they wormed their way deeper into the earth's embrace.

With every bend, Kaius expected a boggart to be lying in wait—some sort of guard or watcher—but his fears never resolved themselves into truth. Each clear section of corridor soothed his nerves, bringing his calm confidence back to the surface.

After another few minutes of descent, Kaius saw something new. Blue toned light, cutting through the soft gloom of firelight to paint itself on the outside edge of a bend in the passage.

Kaius waved at his team to halt, their hastened steps slowing as they stopped in a pool of shadows between the fires that dotted the cave.

“Stay hidden—I'll check it out.” he whispered, before setting off at a brisk pace.

Approaching the bend, Kaius pressed himself to the wall and peered past the lip.

The passage ended quickly, opening up into a wide cavern—though another kink in the cave's serpentine path obscured most of the opening, leaving only a sliver a few handspans wide through which he could see into the open cavern.

What he saw made him very glad that obscuring stone existed.

The cavern was immense—large enough he almost thought that he’d been transported back to the Depths. Easily five-hundred long-strides across, with a ceiling that soared high enough overhead that he could only see a small section of it on the far side, it was devastatingly well lit.

Not by fires, either. While they dotted the floor, they seemed to be being used as a source of comfort and heat. No, the soft blue radiance was coming from what looked to be crude ward lights.

They were large, and cumbersome—a dozen or so pillars of crudely carved stone that had been spread across the cavern, standing even taller than him. They were covered in the sharp and brutish glyphs he had seen on the leather armour of the bugbears, and none were smaller than a handspan.

It seemed that the shaman had not discovered a way to work with runes in miniature. Kaius was unsurprised—in all honesty, he considered it a miracle that such base creatures could work the runic arts at all. No doubt it would have been impossible without the aid of the system.

Still, the wardlights drenched everything he could see in a dim blue light—revealing a sight that flooded his veins with cold realisation.

There were too many of them.

Tents were clustered around fires, covering the entire floor of the cavern. Small, rustic things made of leather and wood—much like he had seen in the bugbears room near the larder. Each and every single one seemed to be housing the larger monsters—bugbears milling around fires, or sleeping within the tents themselves.

As for the boggarts, they seemed to have been relegated to the cavern walls. It was hard to see from his poor angle, but it seemed rooms had been excavated into the stone—the few he could see filled to bursting with the smaller members of the tribe.

That wasn’t all. The break in the cave gave him just enough space to see the far end of the cavern. Larger tents were set up there—on a small rise of stone where they could oversee all.

Closer to marques than single person sleeping spaces, they’d been constructed of leathers of a far higher cut and quality than the rest—even if it was still hodgepodge. At a cursory look, he saw bear, dear, and boar pelts—amongst other things he couldn’t place.

They’d been painted in runes—protections for the leaders of the plague, no doubt.

It was the leaders themselves that drew his eye—and their guards. Beefy looking bugbear guards stood alert around the tents, while two more draped in bone charms and headdresses sat outside one tent pouring over some spilled bones. Shamans, he could only assume, though not the head one.

That was undoubtedly the bugbear that stood in inaudible conversation with a hulking brute that outweighed even the heaviest of bugbears.

The pair looked fearsome.

Smaller in stature the bugbear shaman may have been, but it was covered in painted inscriptions—every scrap of its exposed flesh showing the same cruel shapes that he’d seen elsewhere. Its hair was matted, braided with the bones of a dozen kills—and its cruel mouth showed carved fangs with every muttered word.

The boggling—something Kaius had started to use in his head to refer to the lower race as a whole—that was listening with bored disinterest was obviously the warchief. He doubted it was a bugbear; he’d yet to see one of them come up to his chin, and the head of the plague looked like it was taller than him by a handspan.

Heavy muscles wrapped its bare chest and arms, revealing a visible strength of arm that looked more than able to heft the massive club of worked stone that rested against its throne.

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Kaius was at a loss for how to tackle the problem that waited in front of him. Centralised in a single room, with ample light and plenty of watchers to spot them as soon as they walked in, they would be discovered the second they stepped into the chamber.

Moreover, there were simply too many of them. He’d thought the estimates of the plague’s size were generous to the point it almost beggared belief, but now it seemed that if anything it was on the smaller side of its potential size.

Over a hundred bugbears, easily—just based on the narrow slice he could see. Who knew how many boggarts there were packed into the cavern's edges.

A plague in truth. His heart sat heavy in his chest, dragging at his confidence.

They’d have to retreat, pull back and come up with a different approach of attack—if it wasn’t already too late. While he was confident that they would be able to take any one of the monsters with ease—excluding the elites with unknown capabilities—the simple volume of them would bleed their resources dry in an extended confrontation.

Taking a slow breath to steady his nerves, Kaius rushed back to his team. If they wanted any chance of making it out of the caves before the alarm went out, they’d have to leave now.

At the very least, there was hope that if they vanished like ghosts into the night, the discovery of the slain bodies would delay the boggart’s eventual migration. It was likely hunters would be sent after them, but that would just mean more targets for them to remove.

Rounding the bend, Kaius found his team huddled where he had left them. He rushed over.

“We have to leave, now. The plague is bigger than we realised, and they’re all in a single cavern—we have no way of thinning them out without being discovered immediately.” Kaius whispered in a low hiss.

To Ianmus’ and Porkchop’s credit, they didn’t question his decision—only nodding, grim determination in their eyes.

They made haste, retracing their steps through the firelit corridor.

His chest thudded with every step, heart pounding as he slipped into a state of rigid focus and awareness. Try as he might, he heard nothing but the crackle and flicker of the oil lanterns.

Still, the lack of noise was a good thing. Maybe they’d done it—would be able to slip away without discovery.

Then Porkchop barked a warning, words transmitted directly into Kaius’s head.

“I hear them! Four bugbears coming towards us—they’re already in the passage, we’ve got no way to avoid them.”

Kaius’s stomach dropped, cold dread settling deep in his chest. They’d been pinned, with how lit the tunnel was they had absolutely no chance of slipping past the monsters undetected.

Mind racing, Kaius’s eyes slid across their short section of tunnel, desperately looking for something that could twist fate in their favour.

A simple lip in the stone, right before the bend ahead, was the best found.

“We hide there—ambush them hard as soon as they are around the bend. We hit them quick and strong, but regardless, as soon as they’re dead, we run.” Kaius pushed along his bond.

Porkchop nodded, the impression of his words being shared with Ianmus crossing back over.

Racing forwards, Kaius pressed himself to the lip of the stone. There was a chance they could still do this. Between Slip Step and his Bladerite, he was a dervish in battle—far faster than anything the bugbears could hope to match—not when his stats were almost certain to be twice their own. They might be able to silence them.

He wouldn’t assume they would. Even as he strained his senses to hear the oncoming threat, his Glass Mind went to work—Campaigner’s Reasoning leveraged as he searched for a way to give them a chance against a potential tide of unending monsters.

The dark, he realised—the boggarts couldn’t see in the dark. If they could make it to those narrow stretches of pitch-black caves closer to the surface, they might have a chance. The natural choke point would reduce their numbers to a manageable level, and even if they brought torches, the low light would leave them confused and vulnerable.

It might give them a chance—though they’d have to ration their Resources like a pauper in winter.

The thought was driven from his mind as he heard the soft thuds of multiple feet. His hearing was sharp, but not sharp enough to tell how close they were. They needed to be precise—strike right when their enemies would have no time to react.

Kaius looked at Porkchop.

“Not yet.”

He tightened his grip on his blade—forcing himself to steady through the jittery tension that raced up his spine, the wait more tortuous than a sword in the gut.

“Wait.” his brother urged.

Kaius didn’t want to wait. He wanted to run and stab and cut.

He held himself steady all the same.

The seconds ticked down, each one bringing the huffing boggling’s a step closer to discovering them. They sounded so close that Kaius would have sworn they were simply standing on the other side of the lip in the passage.

“Now!” Porkchop yelled in his mind, bursting into motion.

Kaius cast Slip Step before Porkchop had even finished speaking. Blue sparks showered the tunnel in a silent light show, his body melding into a halfway point between worlds.

He took a step, reaching the corner.

The boggarts were there—stiffening at his sudden appearance.

Another step took him past the frontrunners, appearing right by their backline. He’d have to trust Porkchop to deal with the others.

The first bugbear died before it could even blink, A Father’s Gift glowing with inner fire as he struck its head clean from its shoulders.

**Ding! level 64 Bugbear - Heavy Slinger slain - Experience Gained! Bonus Experience for slaying a foe of Significant Strength!**

A tight twist spun him on his lead foot.

He lunged into a thrust—space collapsing before him as he crossed an impossible distance. The honed point of his blade erupted from the back of the second bugbear’s skull.

**Ding! level 59 Bugbear - Spear Raider slain - Experience Gained! Bonus Experience for slaying a foe of Significant Strength!**

They both died silently. Behind him, Kaius heard a body collapse with a crunch and a soft gasp.

One more.

He sidestepped, blade hurtling through the air with deadly intent as he appeared before the last bugbear.

It screamed.

A warcry, a rallying call, a final desperate vengeance. It seemed to hang in the air—carrying for impossible moments as his sword cleaved through the bugbear’s jaw, spraying hot blood through the air.

**Ding! level 61 Bugbear - Primitive Fighter slain - Experience Gained! Bonus Experience for slaying a foe of Significant Strength!**

Kaius’s heart froze like ice.

All of them stood still as the dead—the impossible noise nailing them in place.

Only for a cacophonous choir of cries to rush through the tunnel behind them, hitting Kaius like a physical blow to the ribs.

They’d been heard.

“Run!”