Zack Krum twisted and looked down the tunnel toward the tight entrance to the cave system. One corpse had staggered past the blockade before succumbing to its significant wounds, but most were piled up in the thin crevice that provided an entrance to the tunnel. Corpses became the stopper that trapped them in this ‘bottle’. Blood oozed downward along the stone floor, but no monster managed to penetrate their defenses.

Several thorny roots undulated back and forth in the opening, a part of the grand reach protecting all intelligent life on Expira while the Ghosthound went about his business today. For now, they were safe and protected. But the leader of the Werewolves had noticed the sudden defenses and pulled his troops back. Now they waited and plotted.

These sharp-eyed and hungry enemies would surely notice when the roots withdrew.

“We cannot stay here,” Zeta chirped. It was using a rag provided by the goblins to thoroughly wipe the mechanisms of its arms clean. The original beige rag was now an ugly brown. “Setting aside the issue of food and water, there are no natural exits and I am not equipped for excavation. When the Ghosthound’s protections end, the monsters will have the capability to force their way in and slaughter us. We need a plan avoid death.”

Krum grunted and glanced over at the other three individuals sitting in the front room, while most of the goblin people and a group of exhausted humans huddled in the deeper caves. The leader of the floppy-eared goblins, Oaressel, looked forward with exhaustion etched into every line of his face as he leaned against the cave wall. He had already explained that while there were thousands of the goblins, the individual strength of his people were quite weak. Before they had discovered this cave, they had already lost about half of their number to the constant waves of monsters that plagued Expira.

They, too, were battered and exhausted. The morale in the cave was disturbingly low.

Which only made Zack Krum feel worse; he didn’t need Oaressel to point out that they had exposed themselves in order to protect the group of humans.

Meanwhile, Todd continued to Scrawl across the missile-sized hunks of stone that the goblins had begun excavating for this exact purpose. By now, he had marked around fifty; his hands shook as he continued to force his thin arms to work. Krum couldn’t help but be impressed by the kid’s Mana Regeneration. They only had a small amount of moss spirits that clung to them when they left Kharon, so he could only manipulate a few at a time. However, if the werewolves did try and force their way into the cave…

That tight entrance to the cave could be forcefully clogged with stone, at least for a time.

Although he saved her for last, Krum felt his eyes immediately drawn to Luciana, the last individual in the forward cave. She had insisted that she participate in the planning, due to the fact that it was her brother Coso’s exclamation that had revealed their position in the streambed. Krum had agreed, if only just to keep her away from the silent Henrik Vaas. That man glared balefully at the dark-haired brother-sister duo whenever they were nearby. Krum could sense that the pressure of the last few days had destabilized the man’s thoughts.

But shit, we don’t have time for that…! Krum twisted again to look at the entrance to the tunnel. In twenty-four minutes, their protection would expire. Likely the Greater Werewolves lurking outside the tunnel would cautiously wait for a few minutes after that before investigating, but the possibilities of the next hour made Krum sweat. He could hold for a while without running out of Stamina, maybe fifteen minutes at most. But considering how many Greater Werewolves he could sense-

“Did you not understand my words?” Zeta asked in its solemn manner. Its brass neck pivoted its head back and forth. “Why has no one offered a plan? As I understand it, humanoids possess excellent abilities to think up unconventional plans.”

“It’s not that simple, Zeta,” Krum said tiredly. Then he looked over at the goblin again. “Sir Oaressel, how many more arrows did you say you have…?”

“Thousands. But considering the hide of these creatures…” Oaressel waved his tiny hands above his head. “If we set up only about a hundred archers in this tunnel, they will last for quite a while. But if even a single one of the Greater Werewolves breaks through…”

The goblin’s expression crumpled. “All of our warriors sacrificed themselves for us to escape an early ambush. To think… we escaped the doom of our planet, only to arrive at another planet being consumed by war.” Then the goblin began to speak more quietly, almost to himself. “Perhaps Nrorce was correct. At least we would have passed gracefully in the old world.”

Zeta’s arm reassembled itself into the normal hand appendage. It waved the limb around to test its mobility, then walked up to Krum. “In combination, we will be able to hold out for a significant amount of time against the base soldiers of the Greater Werewolves. Even the Calamity Touched variety you are able to handle. However, that last roar we heard-”

“I know, Zeta,” Krum said through gritted teeth. His heart was pounding; his thoughts spun in circles as he tried to pry out a possibility of escape, only to find no sudden inspiration waiting for him. The more he thought, the more exhausted he became, the less traction he was making on trying to think his way out of this situation. His lips were chapped. Everyone was looking at him and it made him lightheaded. He was very aware of Luciana’s nervous expression. “We just… we can just-”

“Trouble!” A voice shouted. A burly goblin rushed forward from the deeper caverns. It’s eyes were wide and panicked. He saluted toward Oaressel and had to take several breaths before it could speak. “Sir, in the deepest cavern… one of those mysterious formations appeared.”

Todd froze for a second. Then he looked up and his eyes seemed unnaturally large through the magnification of his glasses. “A rift is opening behind us? The sort that spits out hundreds of monsters?!”

Zeta hummed as it did some of its internal calculations. “Hum. Such an event… has decreased the probability of our survival by nine percent. Which brings the ultimate chance that we will manage to escape below acceptable thresholds for sharing with biological beings. As I said, a plan is needed.”

Zack Krum felt like he was suffocating. This… I wanted to make a difference, but in the end-

Then he blinked. He looked at Zeta. He looked at Todd. “Wait. The rifts… they have to allow monsters to pass through, right? So maybe we can use that to escape. And although there will be hundreds of monsters unleashed, that’s better than the tens of thousands waiting outside of the cave.”

Everyone turned and looked at him. The goblins were confused, but Todd and Zeta seemed to understand what he was suggesting. Zeta buzzed again as it tried to estimate this new possibility. “There is no data on what lies beyond the rifts. But logically, the rift should connect to a world of monsters. The world that is the source of the Calamity.

“But even more problematic,” Zeta continued. “A short-term rift gathers energy for an hour before opening. Which leaves us… with a half-hour after the defenses descend that we will need to defend against the Greater Werewolves before we need to destroy the invading monsters in a very short amount of time and escape into an unknown portal.”

The cave was silent as everyone processed that information. Zack Krum cracked his knuckles.

“Truly, I did ask for an insane human plan,” Zeta shook its head. “But this-”

“It sounds like something the Ghosthound would do,” Todd said with glittering eyes.

*****

Randidly was eventually shooed out of Neveah’s cottage by an exasperated Neveah, who informed him that he was ‘perfectly worthless in his current state' and that he really needed to ‘listen to the needs of his body’. Some part of him still wanted to push himself to help with the Engraving, but he knew that she was correct. So he sighed and returned to the Shaft.

For the first time in a while, Randidly forced himself to let go of those desires and simply rest.

Not that it was easy; at even the slightest impulse, his mind exploded with thoughts and emotions and fears and stressors, all causing his mental engine to rev upward. Only through pointed focus on nothing and deep breathing did he eventually lure the beast of his guilt and grief to fitful slumber. He smothered his emotional flare-ups one by one. And when his mind finally relaxed, Randidly’s body soon followed.

Congratulations! Your Skill Absolute Timing (Ru) has grown to Level 199!

Almost exactly sixty hours later, Randidly came back to himself. He felt like shit, but it was a dreary and soggy emotional shit, not a mental shit that had been baked into thinly sliced shit chips by a seemingly endless series of lightning bolts. Randidly twisted and stretched in the dreary Shaft to get his blood flowing through his body. Gradually, his physical state recovered to its peak, even while his mood remained depressed.

Randidly allowed himself one bitter smile up toward the Nexus. I buried her and said my piece… but grief isn’t a simple thing, is it?

Then he checked in on his images and body, while simultaneously sending Neveah a message. Randidly had moved on to thoroughly parsing apart the flow of significance through his Nether Core by the time Neveah replied.

The protections around Helen’s gravesite are now in place; right now, no one on Expira has the power to break them aside from me. Well, perhaps Alana Donal, but I doubt she will try and bust down the seal. I’m almost finished with the formation for Claudette’s image refinement. Sydney has been an invaluable guinea pig in improving the formula; I believe the processes that Claudette wanted to use meant well, but most include safeguards against overstraining the Refiner’s body-

Randidly snorted. Yea, that won’t be a problem.

Exactly. Neveah briefly flashed some very intricate patterns of Engraved lines to Randidly to show the differences between the original version and the shapes after her adjustments. He believed he understood about fifty percent of what he was seeing. I’m finalizing the details right now. I should be done by tonight.

Randidly drifted away from the connection and considered what he should do next. If most of what he needed was going to be mental strength as he combed through the details, he didn’t want to face the monstrous problem of a Nether Ritual to pull out all the observational Aether constructs quite yet; that would need to wait until after the image refinement as done. And as he was currently with the time dilation of the Shaft, he should not need to worry about the Nexus recovering its observational apparatus quite yet.

But to be sure, Randidly created a tentacle of significance with Nether to send a message out to Octavius, telling him to give Randidly a heads up if anything changed.

Then Randidly contacted DiOrtho Vant and brought the ram demon out into the shaft once more. He knew asking this was a mistake, but Randidly still said, “How much of the first layer do you think you can handle?”

“I gained a lot of Skill Levels from the training, so adding one more layer to the earlier regimen should be fine.” DiOrtho Vant said.

Randidly sighed inwardly as he examined his subordinate’s serious expression. What the hell is happening. When did I become the type of person to worry that someone was ignoring their emotional problems…?

But even if Randidly was aware that it was happening, he didn’t try to dissuade DiOrtho. A similar grief was smoldering in both of their guts. He unleashed six levels of electromagnetic radiation on the man’s body, soon transforming him into a twitching approximation of a humanoid. Then Randidly allowed the other fourteen to ineffectual squeeze at his muscles while the painful blast of light radiation from the second layer began to sear through to his internal organs.

Congratulations! Your Skill Yyrwood Flesh of Yggdrasil (L) has grown to Level 420!

Congratulations! Your Skill Grit of the Ascendant Bane (T) has grown to Level 417!