Chapter 7

It was noticeably easier to see in the cave with the extra 2 points in perception. The fact that the sun was shining overheard probably helped a little, at least for the first hundred feet or so. It quickly got to the point where Luke could no longer see things in color, but he could still distinguish between shades of gray to navigate. The actual distance he could see dropped steadily as he got farther from the entrance, which did nothing to soothe his nerves.

The cave system presented another challenge: climbing. As much as Luke had gotten used to hauling around his collection of sticks and his grocery bag full of water bottles, he was forced to admit that he needed two hands now. There was just no way he was going to be able to keep all of his stuff with him, so he stashed it far enough back from the front of the cave that nothing walking by outside would see it, slid a single bottle of water into the inner pocket of his coat, and tied off the goblin sashes holding his swords around his shoulder.

It wasn’t a perfect solution, but his coat was leather and the swords weren’t that sharp. With a little bit of luck and care, it wouldn’t be a problem. He climbed the sloping tunnel on his hands and knees, his fingers groping around almost blindly for new handholds. The slope itself only went up maybe fifty feet before it leveled off.

Luke climbed back to his feet and looked around. The tunnel opened into a cave, one that had a ravine carved through it. He’d arrived on the ground level of that ravine and could either follow it until it sloped up again or attempt to scale the walls, which were probably twenty or so feet high. Luke thought he probably could manage it with the physical advantages stats gave him, but at the same time, he wasn’t in any sort of hurry and it would be safer to hike up the sloping floor of the ravine than to try to scale vertical walls.

That was what he thought until he made it up to the top and realized there was a group of creatures sitting there. They were roughly human-shaped, though with long gangly limbs and a hunched over posture that made Luke think they’d be easily eight or nine feet tall if fully upright. It was hard to tell without light, but he thought their skin was pale and colorless.

That was only until he saw one of them move and realized they didn’t have skin at all. Or, if they did, it was hidden under a collection of chitinous plates, like some sort of massive human-shaped insect. One of them turned slightly and reached out a hand-like appendage to rip off a chunk of flesh from what Luke assumed had once been a bear or giant boar of some sort. It stuffed the meat, fur and all, into its mouth, which was itself set between a thick pair of mandibles.

Whatever the hell these nightmare-fuels were, Luke didn’t want to fight them. Their bodies were all armored, they were all bigger than him, bipedal, and there were five of them. The best course of action was to retreat and accept that he wouldn’t be paying his respects to his brother’s final resting place.

One of the cave monsters on the far side of the carcass turned to look at Luke, giving him a clear view of a face with five eyes laid out in a semi-circle above the mandibles which flanked an unadorned hole that flapped open and closed as something that could loosely be described as teeth ground the meat apart. Its chewing slowed, then stopped, and it rose up from its crouched position to loom over the rest of the group.

The other four noticed, of course. There was no way they couldn’t, and one at a time, each turned to face Luke. “Oh fuck me,” he whispered, eyes wide and his hands going to the hilt of one of the swords he carried. The only goal was a defensive retreat. If he could back away without being pursued, he’d leave them to their gruesome meal. If not, the scenario which he personally considered far more likely, he was hoping to blind them with the flashlight trick again while he ran like the wind.

That plan went to shit the second the closest one crouched slightly, leaned forward, and leaped twenty feet to land on the ravine floor behind him. Luke had been in a few fights growing up, usually one-on-one, but sometimes two or three kids ganging up on him. He knew better than to let the albino cave monsters surround him. As soon as he realized the first one’s trajectory, he tore the sash off one of the swords and grabbed his flashlight with his other hand.

Squinting to help preserve his night vision a bit, he clicked the flashlight on and shone it directly into the creature’s eyes. Maybe it was some function of having so many eyes, or a level difference, or just the creature didn’t rely on sight so much. Whatever the reason, it barely reacted to the bright light. The only thing Luke accomplished was getting a real good look at the smooth exoskeleton plates that covered its arm when it tried to grab him.

He did note that the joints, of which there were three on the arm alone, weren’t armored like the rest of the creature’s body and that up close, its limbs seemed even more spindly than before. 8 agility gave him superhuman accuracy, or at least peak human accuracy, and it was more than good enough for him to slash through the wrist joint and lop off the hand trying to grab him.

The creature didn’t make any sort of sound or flinch. It merely retracted the limb and looked at it as if confused as to what had just happened. Luke didn’t stop to explain either. He dove low, more than willing to trade a bruise or two if it meant getting to the bottom of the ravine faster, and rolled. That was tricky to do while maintaining his grip on the sword and the arguably more important flashlight, but he managed.

What he didn’t pull off was getting to the bottom before another of the bastard love children of Gollum and a jumping spider landed on top of him. It was surprisingly light, which Luke used to his advantage to roll and fling the monster off. His sword flicked out against its leg as it tumbled, but the chitin turned it aside.

Whatever the hell these things were, they weren’t that coordinated or that smart. In a one-on-one fight, he was confident he could take them. That just meant he needed to engineer a situation where it was one-on-one.

The first one leaped again, coming straight towards him, but even on the sloping ravine floor, Luke was able to scramble aside. It spread its arms, minus one hand, to catch him, but he swung his blade at its shoulder joint and pushed through. The blade got caught on something and tried to twist out of his hand halfway through, but 9 points in strength was more than enough for him to force it steady.

The thing landed, now with only three limbs and a sort of pale, snot-like substance dribbling out of its shoulder. “That’s nasty,” Luke told it. “You need a tissue maybe?”

In response, its face shot forward to snap at him with its mandibles. When Luke tried to dodge backwards, its remaining hand smacked against him and sent him tumbling ass-over-end all the way down to the bottom of the ravine.

“Fucking. Ow,” he snarled, regaining his feet. He’d lost the sword he was holding in the fall, but his back up was still secured with the sash. Luke unraveled the knot in one smooth pull and let the strip of cloth fall away.

The flashlight was still on, about fifteen feet away on a chunk of rock on the ravine’s slope. The light was even pointed in Luke’s direction, which wasn’t much of an advantage to him since his own eyes had also grown accustomed to the darkness. 8 perception was good enough to overcome that though, and when the shadow of the albino monster swept over the ground, he was ready for it to land on him.

Luke saw the angle, took a deliberate step backwards, and smacked that son of a bitch right at the hip joint. The monster’s leg went flying away into the darkness to crack against the ravine, and he nimbly backstepped away from the monster itself as it tried to fall on him. Once it was down, he decapitated it with a single slash.

The sword bounced off the stone floor, probably chipping it again, but it wasn’t like it could be in much worse condition and he had other things to worry about. So far he’d only been dealing with two of the monsters, but there were five of them total. Even with the light shining in his eyes, he could see one still on the slope above and another one picking its way down to join its companion.

He needed one of them to be bold, to run ahead of the rest of the pack so he had a few seconds to fight it solo, but the only two in sight had learned some respect for him. That, or they were trying to keep his attention while the rest of their group ambushed him. He pushed his perception stat for all it was worth, trying to listen for the sounds of movement he knew had to be above or behind him.

Tense seconds stretched out, marching along one after another, and then he heard it: that slight scrape of something hard against the stone wall beside him, just overhead. “Got you,” he said. “Come get some fucking dinner if you’re so hungry.”

Luke spun in place and swung upwards, adjusting his aim on the fly to attack the monster clinging to the wall. It was scurrying down face-first, its three-fingered hands somehow holding its weight while it descended. There was no weak point in its chitin for him to easily reach, so instead he wielded the sword like a club and smacked it right into the monster’s skull.

The chitin cracked and the sword bounced off, causing Luke to stagger back a step. His attack also made the creature’s whole body spasm and it fell to the floor. It was still twitching when he moved in to finish it off, only to be distracted by both of the monsters on the slope charging down to attack.

Their whole strategy seemed to revolve around a lot of lunges and grabs and attempts to pin him, which he supposed made sense given the span of their arms. It didn’t seem like something that would work on a bear though, and he was wondering how they’d brought it down. Hell, he was wondering how they’d even dragged it back into the cave. Bears weren’t light.

Despite their quickness, it was relatively easy to dodge their clumsy attempts. The two got in each other’s way so much that Luke was starting to think it was easier to fight them together than separately. He even managed to get them tangled up long enough to circle around and finish off the one on the ground.

It was now a two-on-one, and he liked those odds. Even better, he’d maneuvered around them so that the flashlight was behind him. If they had any sort of pack cohesion, he’d have been dead. They could have caught him between the group and picked him apart. That hadn’t happened though, and he had enough sense to take advantage of that fact.

He got lucky on one pass and took off another arm, and then a few seconds later a leg off the same one. That made it almost impossible for it to defend itself, and its companion didn’t really go out of its way to block him from finishing it off. Now there was only a single one left standing in front of him.

He’d forgotten one thing though: there were five of them in total, not four. He was reminded of that fact when something landed behind him with a heavy thud. He turned and saw the last one, perched on the back of something big and ugly and solid. Whatever the hell it was riding, that thing was an absolute unit.

“You tricky son of a bitch. You went for reinforcements.”