[POV: Toru Makabe] [Location: The Deep Tunnels - Retreat Path]
Running.
That was all existence was anymore. Just the sound of boots slamming against stone, the burning of lungs, and the terror of knowing that if you stopped, you were meat.
"Keep moving!" Sora's voice cracked like a whip from the front.
"I can't... feel my legs!" Hinata wheezed, stumbling over a loose root.
"If you stop, they eat you!" Toru grabbed Hinata's collar, hauling the assassin forward. "Move, dammit!"
Behind them, the darkness was alive. The thud-thud-thud of hundreds of feet echoed off the cavern walls. The screeching of the goblin horde was getting louder, a cacophony of hunger and rage.
But there was another sound.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
It was a rhythmic, heavy smashing sound. Like a wrecking ball hitting a building. It was coming from ahead, to their left.
"Sora!" Riku yelled, checking his scanner while sprinting. "Seismic activity on the flank! Something big is tunneling!"
"I hear it!" Sora didn't slow down. "Eyes front! We're almost to the junction!"
They rounded a corner, the exit path finally in sight. Toru felt a surge of hope. If they could just reach the wider tunnel, maybe they could lose them. Maybe—
CRASH.
The wall to their left exploded.
Dust and rock shrapnel sprayed across the tunnel. Toru threw his arms up, shielding his face as a boulder the size of a car tumbled into their path.
Out of the dust cloud stepped two nightmares.
Hobgoblins. But these weren't like the one in the Bone Room. These were armored in jagged plates of scrap metal. One held a massive warhammer made from a concrete block on a rebar stick. The other held a tower shield that looked like a dungeon door.
They stood side-by-side, completely blocking the narrow tunnel.
"Trapped!" Mei screamed, skidding to a halt.
Toru spun around. The horde was rounding the bend behind them. A sea of green skin and rusty blades. And above them...
"Arrows!" Hinata shrieked.
A volley of black arrows arced through the air, blotting out the faint light of the moss.
"Forward!" Sora roared. "Into the Hobs!"
"Are you insane?!" Toru yelled. "They'll crush us!"
"Hinata!" Sora ignored Toru. He pointed his machete at the Hammer-Hob. "Achilles tendon! Right leg! Now!"
"I... I..." Hinata froze.
"DO IT OR DIE!" Sora screamed, his eyes burning with a terrifying intensity.
Fear was a motivator. Hinata didn't think. He moved. The Assassin dropped into a slide, his body a blur of motion.
Sora mirrored him, sprinting at the Shield-Hob.
The Hobs roared, raising their massive weapons to squash the little bugs charging at them.
But they were slow. And the floor was slick with slime.
Sora dropped to his knees, sliding between the Shield-Hob's legs like a baseball player stealing home. As he passed, he reversed his grip on the jagged iron machete and slashed backward with every ounce of Strength he had.
SHUNK.
"GRAAAH!"
The Shield-Hob buckled. Its massive hamstring severed. It crashed to one knee, dropping its shield.
Next to it, Hinata's daggers flashed. SNICK-SNICK. The Hammer-Hob howled, its leg giving out. It toppled sideways, colliding with its partner.
"Get behind them!" Sora commanded, scrambling up and diving behind the kneeling monsters.
Toru, Mei, and Riku dove after them, huddling in the small pocket of space behind the two massive Hobgoblins just as the arrow volley landed.
THWACK. THWACK. THWACK.
The arrows didn't hit the students. They turned the two Hobgoblins into porcupines.
The monsters roared in confusion and pain, turning to look at the goblin horde that had just shot them in the back. The horde, seeing their champions filled with friendly fire, hesitated.
"Chaos," Sora panted, wiping dust from his face. "Use it."
"The exit!" Toru pointed past the Hobs. "It's clear!"
They scrambled to their feet, ready to sprint past the confused giants.
But as they looked down the tunnel, the goblin horde parted.
A group of five goblins waddled to the front. They weren't holding swords. They were holding round, red metal spheres.
Riku gasped. "That's... that's impossible."
"What is it?" Mei asked.
"Those are Thermal Detonators," Riku whispered, horror dawning on his face. "Grade-B explosives. Those belong to the Iron Hounds. They looted Grog's supply wagon!"
The lead goblin pulled the pin with its teeth. It grinned.
"Fire... in... hole," it rasped.
"NO!" Toru screamed. "If they throw those in this narrow tunnel, the overpressure will liquidate our organs!"
"We can't go forward!" Hinata panicked. "We can't go back!"
Sora looked around wildly. He looked at the wall of bombs in front of them. He looked at the arrow-riddled Hobs blocking the rear.
Then he looked at the hole in the wall—the one the Hobs had smashed through to ambush them.
"The breach!" Sora yelled, grabbing Mei's arm. "Go through the breach!"
"Into the unknown?" Riku argued. "We don't know where that leads!"
"It leads away from the bombs!" Sora shoved him. "MOVE!"
They dove into the jagged hole in the wall just as the goblin threw the sphere.
BOOM.
The shockwave hit them from behind, throwing them forward into the darkness. Heat singed Toru's hair. The tunnel they had just been in collapsed, burying the exit under tons of rock.
They tumbled down a slope of loose dirt, rolling and crashing until they hit flat ground.
"Cough! Cough!"
Toru sat up, spitting out grit. "Is everyone... did we make it?"
"We're alive," Mei whispered, clutching her cloak.
"Not for long," Sora hissed. He was standing near the hole they had just fallen through—now a glowing aperture of dust and light high above them.
Through the hole, a massive grey face appeared. The Shield-Hob, arrow-riddled but still alive, was trying to squeeze through the breach to follow them. It roared, reaching a hand down.
"It's coming through!" Hinata yelled. "If it gets in here, it clears the way for the horde!"
"Riku!" Sora didn't look back. "Do you have a shot?"
Riku scrambled to his feet, raising his prototype gun. His hands were shaking violently.
"One round!" Riku panicked. "I only have one round left! I can't kill a Hob with one shot to the head! The skull is too thick!"
"Don't shoot the head!" Sora barked. "Shoot the foot! The pivot foot!"
Riku blinked. He looked at the Hobgoblin struggling to pull its massive bulk through the jagged hole. Its right foot was hooked onto the edge of the breach, digging in for leverage.
"Leverage," Riku whispered. "Physics."
He aimed. He exhaled.
PHUT.
The steel dart flew. It buried itself deep into the Hobgoblin's ankle.
"ROAR!"
The Hobgoblin flinched. Its foot slipped.
Without its anchor, gravity took over. The massive upper body, already halfway through the hole, slid forward uncontrollably.
But the hole wasn't big enough for its shoulders.
CRUNCH.
The Hobgoblin became a cork. Its massive body jammed tight into the breach, effectively sealing the hole with its own flesh. It thrashed and screamed, but it was stuck.
"It's plugged!" Toru cheered weakly. "You plugged the hole with a goblin!"
"It won't hold forever," Sora said, his chest heaving. "But it buys us time. Let's go."
They turned away from the plugged breach and looked at where they had landed.
The cheering died in Toru's throat.
They weren't in a tunnel. They were in a room. A carved, finished room. The air here was heavy, humid, and hot. It smelled sweet—sickly sweet, like rotting flowers and musk.
And white slime.
The floor was coated in a thick, translucent white substance that clung to their boots. It pulsed faintly, like it was alive.
"What is this place?" Mei whispered, stepping back. "It smells... wrong."
Sora raised his torch. The light pushed back the shadows, revealing the far wall.
"Oh god," Hinata gagged.
It was a prison. But not made of iron bars. The cells were made of bone and hardened white resin.
Inside the cells were women.
There were maybe ten of them. Humans. Elves. Beastkin. They were stripped of their armor, leaving them in rags. They were emaciated, their eyes hollow and dead.
But their stomachs were swollen. Distended.
Pregnant.
And they were covered in the white goo. It dripped from the ceiling, coating them, keeping them stuck to the floor like insects in amber.
One of the women—an Elf with broken ears—looked up as the light hit her. Her eyes didn't track. She just opened her mouth and let out a silent, dry sob.
"No..." Mei put her hands over her mouth, tears instantly springing to her eyes. "No, no, no..."
Toru felt bile rise in his throat. He recognized a piece of armor in the corner of a cell. A blue pauldron.
"That's... that's a Mithril Rank crest," Toru whispered, horrified. "That's an A-Rank adventurer. They... they caught an A-Rank?"
"This is a Breeding Chamber," Riku said, his voice devoid of emotion, pure shock taking over. "The Goblin ecology requires hosts for rapid reproduction. The Queens are rare, so they use... substitutes."
"Shut up!" Hinata screamed, vomiting onto the floor. "Don't analyze it! Just shut up!"
Mei ran toward the nearest cage. "We have to get them out! We have to help them!"
She grabbed the bone bars, pulling frantically. "It's okay! We're here! We're going to get you out!"
The woman inside didn't move. She just stared at Mei with dead eyes.
"Mei, stop," Sora said.
His voice was quiet. Flat.
"Stop?!" Mei spun around, her face twisted in rage and sorrow. "Are you blind?! Look at them! We can't leave them here! We're Heroes! We have to save them!"
"Yeah!" Toru stepped up, his fists clenched, though he was shaking. "Sora, we can't just walk away. That's... that's evil."
"We carry them," Mei pleaded, pulling at the sticky white resin. "We can carry them! We'll take turns! We just need to cut them loose!"
Sora walked over to Mei. He didn't look at the women. He looked at Mei.
"Look at her, Mei," Sora pointed to the Elf. "Look at her stomach. She's days away from birthing a goblin brood. Do you know what happens if you move her? The stress will trigger the labor."
Mei froze.
"And look at the others," Sora continued, his voice relentless. "They are glued to the floor. The resin feeds them nutrients. If you cut them out, they go into shock. They die in minutes."
"We can heal them!" Mei sobbed. "Ayaka... Ayaka can heal them!"
"Ayaka is miles away," Sora said. "Fighting a Boss."
Sora grabbed Mei's shoulders. He forced her to look at him.
"We have no mana. We have no weapons. We are being chased by an army that wants to do that," Sora gestured to the cages, "to you."
Mei flinched as if he had slapped her.
"If we try to carry them," Sora said, his voice hard as iron, "we move at a crawl. The horde catches us. They kill Toru. They kill Hinata. They kill Riku. And they put you in the cage next to her."
"You're a monster," Mei whispered, staring at him with horror. "How can you be so cold?"
Sora didn't flinch. He didn't blink. He absorbed her hate because he had to.
"I'm not a monster, Mei," Sora said softly. "I'm the guy making sure you don't become an incubator."
He let go of her and turned to the group.
"We are leaving. Right now."
"But—" Toru started.
"One sentence, Toru," Sora cut him off, staring him down. "If you open that cage, you don't save them. You just add four more bodies to the pile."
The silence was suffocating. The only sound was the dripping of the white slime and the muffled thumping of the Hobgoblin trying to break through the plugged hole behind them.
Toru looked at the women. He looked at Mei, who was broken. He looked at Hinata, who was a mess.
He knew Sora was right. And he hated him for it.
"I'm sorry," Toru whispered to the women. "I'm so sorry."
He grabbed Mei's arm. "Mei. Come on."
"No..." Mei resisted weakly.
"Mei!" Toru yanked her. "We have to go! Or Sora is right! Do you want to end up like that?"
Mei looked at the Elf one last time. The Elf closed her eyes, a single tear cutting through the grime on her face.
Mei let out a broken sob and turned away.
"Let's go," Sora said, turning his back on the horror. "We need to find Ren. He's the only chance any of us have of getting out of this hell."
They ran. They ran deeper into the nest, leaving the darkness and the silent screams behind them. But as they ran, the image of the cages burned into their minds, a scar that no healing magic would ever remove.
Sora led the way, his face a mask of indifference. But inside his pocket, his hand was clenched so tight around the handle of his machete that his fingernails dug into his palm, drawing blood.
I will burn this place down, Sora promised himself silently. One day. I will come back and I will burn it all down.
"Keep moving," he commanded aloud. "Don't look back."