Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Three - Solo Delving

The opening room of the portal was a dark, poorly-lit space. If it wasn't for the portal a step behind me, the entire room would have been so dark as to be impossible to see in. Even See Darkness only helped so much.

It actually reminded me a lot of the first portal I'd ever tackled solo, that little one with the lizard guys in it. Damn, that had been less than a month ago, real-time.

Just like in that one, I needed some tools to see with. I reached up to the front of my coat and clicked on one of the lights I'd brought with me. It created a cone ahead of me... more or less. It was actually pointing off to the side a little, but I could live with that.

The second light was on my belt, and it was more diffuse, with a shitty plastic cover that made it so that the light spread out a lot more. I shifted it so that it was on the hip opposite the light on my coat, and that helped a little.

I was now a little island of light in a sea of partial darkness.

Damn, maybe I should try writing poems or something? Or... maybe not, actually. The last time I'd done that had been in middle school, and it hadn't been anything worth reading. There was a level of edginess that was too far, and I strived not to reach that.

I was just getting situated when the first bugling of the portal noticed me. It stood up on its rear four legs and opened its mouth wide, making a dangerous clicking noise.

The bugling, standing up as it did, came up to my hip. It was a bit bigger than a large dog, and covered in its spikey carapace and blending in with the dark as it did, it was on the spookier side.

I shot a Shadow Bolt into its face and the strange clicking cut off with a cough.

That wasn't enough to kill it. These might have been lower E-rank monsters, but it would take more than the equivalent of a weak punch to take one down.

Still, it distracted the monster for the three seconds it took me to whip my sword out and lunge towards it.

The tip of my sword bit into the monster's chitin, splitting the tough material and digging an inch or two into the flesh beneath.

The monster squirmed, its entire body snaking around left and right to try and dislodge the sword.

It managed to free itself, but not before I was close enough to swipe its legs out from under it, sending it crashing onto its side. I stabbed down again, pinning the monster in place even as its many legs scrambled. I didn't want to get caught by its scrappy little claws.

So I stepped on the side of its head, right over its oversized brain, and I pressed down hard.

My foot crushed through the exoskeleton over the bugling's brain and ripped into the ripe, juicy insides.

"Oh, ew, ew, ew!" I said as I jumped back. I'd felt that squish. It was like stepping on a cockroach only a million times worse.

I wiggled my foot, dislodging bits of monster gunk from my boots and the hem of my pants. Shit, some of it had leaked into my boots.

Why did these disgusting monsters have such runny brains? Who needed a brain that wet?

I hopped over to a rocky pillar nearby on one leg, then laboriously removed my boot and emptied it out. The monster's brain smelled like meat left out of the fridge for a week. My stomach protested at the smell, but I kept it in.

Right, I was all for being stealthy and quiet, but I really didn't like these guys and didn't need more brain on me. Guns out it was.

After getting my boot back on and retying it, I switched things around so that I had my sword in one hand and my revolver in another. Obviously the revolver was overkill, but I didn't really care all that much.

Now gunk free, I decided to continue to explore while taking a few mental notes. We'd probably want more lights. Especially if we were going to go loud to begin with. I could see Fran being subtle, but her magic wasn't, and Becky...

Stolen from NovelBin, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

No, Becky was about as subtle as a kiss on the lips.

The main opening chamber naturally led down a slight slope in the cave towards a larger, wider room. There were two pillars here, reaching up to the ceiling not so far above. I thought there was just one route onwards, but on leaning to the side, I saw a second path to the left.

So, a fork.

And there were more buglings here. Three of them, in fact. They were... squirting some juices onto a large padded thing made of interwoven fibers. One of them seemed to be knotting the fibers up into a sort of crude mat, and the other two were squirting their stuff onto it.

Next to them was a pit in the ground. I couldn't tell how deep it was, but it looked dangerous enough.

Right, that wiki article had mentioned how buglings sometimes laid traps. Pitfalls were about as simple as traps could be, and with their ability to make simple tools, they could disguise them. I'd have to be careful while moving around.

One of the buglings raised its head and turned my way, either hearing me or seeing the ring of light around me. It opened its larger mandibles, then started to clack them and the smaller set together, creating a two-beat sort of sound.

An alarm, maybe? It certainly warned the other two, who dropped what they were doing and whipped around to look my way.

I hesitated for a moment before firing a trio of Shadow Bolts. It was the fastest I could cast the spell, one after the other, with no time in between. It was surprisingly mentally taxing. I had to practice casting quickly.

In any case, the buglings didn't get to see any of my inner thoughts, not when I nailed all three of them in the kisser. They flinched back, and one of them almost fell into the pittrap it was standing next to.

Then all three charged and I readied myself. First, I shot the one in the lead, with my revolver this time. The cave made the already loud bang echo much harder. The round took the upper half of the monster and pulped it, sending bits of exoskeleton and innards flying all over and the bottom half rolled across the ground, boneless.

The next two shots went centre-mass on the second monster spraying more gunk around, and, importantly, covering the third in bits of its pal.

I lowered the gun, then just kind of pointed my sword at the third while channeling some magic through the blade.

The monster ran into it, headlong.

I had to drop my revolver and grip the hilt better. It was that or snap my wrist because the bugling's weight came down weird and I didn't want to just let go.

The reflex was a little stupid, but it worked, the blade skewed into the monster's forehead, digging in deep, and once it stopped moving forwards, its only motions were a few spasming twitches.

"Damn," I muttered as I pushed a boot against the monster's face and dislodged my sword. I scooped my revolver up, then reloaded while standing there and looking around.

If the buglings had even moderately good hearing, then they'd have heard that bang across the entire portal, probably.

Nothing for it. I finished reloading, then continued forwards. I made sure that I could see the ground ahead of me, and I had my eyes peeled for traps, which is how I found one, no more than a yard or so from the pitfall that these three had been covering up when I arrived.

The patch of discoloured ground was almost perfectly camouflage, only the colour was slightly off, and the texture wasn't quite right.

I leaned closer to the cap, then poked it with the end of my sword. It took a few poked to bring the whole thing down. It collapsed, revealing a hole about three feet deep, maybe four. It was lined with sharp-edged stones and the bottom was covered in small spikes made of broken rocks.

That'd suck to fall into.

It wasn't the most complicated of traps, but yeah, it was clever. And now I'd have to be careful wherever I went in this portal.

Fantastic. I loved having to be paranoid.

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