The black slit in the earth waited ahead of him, gaping like the mouth of some dead titan.
Asher stood just shy of it, helmet lights flickering against the resin-coated walls, his boots sunk ankle-deep in sand blackened by ichor. He should have been breathing triumph after killing the Spineguard, after gutting the swarm outside. Instead his chest felt tight, too heavy.
The desert wind whispered at his back, urging him forward. The nest seemed to whisper louder.
"Fuck me," he muttered, dragging a hand down the ichor-streaked plating of his chest. "I really have to gotta go spelunking in hell itself."
He exhaled hard and blinked his UI open.
---
Asher Veylan
KC (Kill Credits): 219
Strength: 2× Peak Human (Cost: 100)
Agility: 3× Peak Human (Cost: 200)
Endurance: 3× Peak Human (Cost: 200)
(Max: 50×)
Body Modifications: —
Bind Subjects: —
---
Two hundred nineteen credits. Enough to push his strength up twice. Enough to maybe hit harder, break chitin with raw force. Or…
He stared at Agility, the upgrade cost glowing faint on the UI. He could be even faster. Four times faster than any human ever had a right to be.
He let out a long, shuddering breath. "Alright… so do I want to hit harder or dance faster?"
His voice cracked with dry laughter. "Strength means I chop them quicker. Agility means they don't fucking touch me. Both sound real nice when I'm about to crawl into an alien termite mound where every wall drips with teeth."
He dragged both hands down his helmet, thunking it lightly against the resin wall. "Goddamn it. This is where sane men turn back."
He stared at the glowing numbers. Then whispered:
"…fuck it."
He slammed the upgrade.
---
Agility: 4× Peak Human.
---
The change ripped through him in an instant. His body felt weightless. His vision seemed sharper, the world slower, like every grain of sand hung in the air a fraction too long before falling. His muscles thrummed with raw efficiency, like his veins carried lightning instead of blood.
"Holy shit," he whispered, flexing his fingers, rolling his shoulders. "Yeah. Yeah, that's good. That's too good."
The nest hissed back at him, its dark mouth waiting.
And then the hissing grew louder.
Asher jerked his head. The sand in front of the nest bubbled. Cracks split wide. And pouring from them, like floodwater, came the swarm.
Gnashlings.
A hundred of them at least, rat-sized horrors scrabbling over each other, bone mandibles clattering like castanets. They poured from the nest floor and the ceiling above, a tide of segmented hunger.
"Ah, shit."
He drew steel. His blade gleamed in his helmet light, still crusted with Spineguard ichor. He didn't wait. He met the tide.
The first wave hit his boots, mandibles clamping against armor. He slashed downward, splitting three in a single arc, ichor spraying hot across his knees. He pivoted, faster than thought, stabbing through two more before they touched him.
Gnashlings climbed the walls, ceiling, then dropped down at him in sheets. He backed away step by step, every cut another burst of gore. They squealed when severed, their halves still writhing on the resin floor.
"Back, you little shits! You don't get to chew on me!" His voice cracked, manic with effort.
But they kept coming. Claws scraped his shins, teeth biting at his joints. He booted one into the wall so hard it burst apart. Another he grabbed mid-leap and slammed into the floor with a wet crunch. He slashed in wide arcs, retreating slowly, never letting them encircle.
And then the ceiling bulged.
Shapes dropped through resin holes, bigger, faster, snapping jaws like guillotines.
Leapfangs.
Six of them.
They landed in a circle around him, jaws gnashing, limbs coiled like springs.
"Oh, that's just perfect," Asher spat, raising his rifle. "Come on then. Let's see who jumps first."
The first Leapfang twitched. Asher's finger squeezed. His rifle barked fire, the creature's head exploding into mist before it could spring.
The others leapt together.
He turned, firing in bursts, his body a blur. One headshot. Two. A third caught mid-air, ichor splattering across his visor. He spun low, firing up at another, shattering its chest. The fifth tried to flank, he pivoted so fast it looked like teleportation, rifle cracking, blowing its torso out in chunks.
The sixth made it closest, jaws wide, momentum carrying it straight for him. He jammed the barrel into its throat and held the trigger until the mag clicked empty. Its body went limp, twitching at his feet.
The echoes faded. Only his ragged breathing filled the tunnel.
The Gnashlings still came. But without Leapfang support, they were fodder.
He dropped the rifle, blade flashing again, and waded through the vermin. Every slash split three, four bodies. He stomped and crushed, stabbed and ripped, his new agility letting him whirl and pivot faster than the swarm could react. The tunnel floor became a carpet of shredded corpses.
Then silence.
He panted hard, visor splattered black. He blinked open the UI with shaking hands.
---
Asher Veylan
KC (Kill Credits): 89
---
He laughed, sharp and bitter. "Eighty-nine? All that work for eighty-nine?"
Still, it was enough. He slammed it into Strength.
---
Strength: 2× Peak Human.
---
His grip on the blade steadied instantly. His arms felt heavier, but in the best way, like the weight of a warhammer was suddenly just a baton. He flexed his gauntlet until it creaked.
"Now we're talking."
He picked up his rifle, reloaded, and stepped into the nest.
---
The tunnels swallowed him whole.
Resin walls slick with slime stretched in every direction, branching into dozens of black passages. They pulsed faintly, alive, like veins under the skin of some monster. The air was thick with rot and ammonia.
Asher stopped at the intersection, staring at the endless forks.
"Fuck me," he muttered. "It's a goddamn maze."
He picked one at random and started walking.
The tunnel was narrow, claustrophobic. His helmet light carved a weak cone through the dark, revealing walls crawling with smaller vermin that scurried away from his boots. His footsteps echoed, too loud, making the hive sound awake, listening.
Gnashlings poured from side fissures now and then, snapping and gnawing. He cut them down with contemptuous ease, one slash splitting five, one kick sending them bursting against resin walls. His agility let him slip through their lunges like smoke. His strength made every counter fatal.
He whispered to himself as he fought. "Hundred feet down, maybe more. Can't even tell anymore. If a swarm cuts me off from behind… I'm a dead man."
Still, he pressed deeper.
Minutes stretched. Hours maybe. His endurance kept him steady, muscles never faltering, lungs never gasping. But his nerves frayed. Every shadow looked like a Leapfang. Every skitter made him flinch his blade up.
And then—light.
The tunnel widened, opening into a cavern so vast his helmet light barely touched its ceiling.
Asher stepped to the edge of a precipice and froze.
The chamber spread wide like a cathedral, resin bridges spanning across a bottomless pit. The bridges pulsed, grotesque, made of woven webs and hardened slime, veins of glowing ichor running through them like arteries.
And the swarm filled them.
Thousands of insectoids scurried across, not in battle frenzy but in panic. They weren't rushing him, they were rushing toward the center. Toward a growing rift in reality itself.
A portal.
It shimmered like oil on water, colors twisting, light bleeding wrong.
Asher's jaw went slack. "…what the actual..."
The portal bulged. Split. A massive limb forced through, clawed and armored, gripping the resin bridge hard enough to crack it. Then another limb shoved through, wider, forcing the rift open.
Asher's stomach dropped.
"That's… that's a Titanwarden. No fucking way. No fucking way."
Titanwardens were nightmare juggernauts. And if one was pushing through, that meant others were coming.
"Portals," he whispered, voice breaking into disbelief. "They can make portals now?"
His hands were already moving, ripping his pack open. The bomb's casing gleamed, dull and menacing. His fingers flew over the arming panel.
"No..." His voice shook but hardened. "You're not crawling through."
He shouldered the pack, primed the detonator. He sprinted across the resin bridge, weaving through panicked insectoids, cutting down anything that lunged too close.
He reached a ledge close enough to feel the portal's static buzz against his armor. He drew back his arm, ready to hurl the bomb.
And then froze.
The Titanwarden stopped.
Its limbs withdrew. The rift pulsed… then an eye appeared.
Huge. Larger than the entire body of the titanwarden. The pupil a vertical slit, the iris a swirling abyss of colors that made his head ache just to look at.
Asher staggered, nearly dropping the bomb. "What… the fuck are you…"
The eye looked straight at him.
Terror gripped him like ice water down his spine. His knees almost buckled.
"Fuck you," he hissed, voice breaking. He hurled the bomb with all his strength. It clattered across the resin, rolling to the rift's base.
The eye flared brighter.
Asher turned and ran.
The tunnels screamed with him. Gnashlings poured after him in a living tide. He hacked and slashed as he ran, his speed blurring him through swarms, ichor spraying behind. His strength crushed every creature that leapt at his back.
Then a roar shook the earth. Not the roar of a Spineguard, not the shriek of a Leapfang. Something deeper. Planetary.
The tunnels cracked. Resin shattered. Behind him he heard it, the stampede of thousands, the hive itself emptying to chase him.
"Move, MOVE!" he screamed at his own legs, sprinting harder, boots blurring across resin floors.
The entrance drew close, light spilling down the tunnel. His heart hammered. His HUD screamed warnings.
Then—
The bomb detonated.
The world turned white.
The shockwave hit him like a titan's fist, hurling him bodily through the tunnel. He slammed against walls, tumbled, rolled, then burst out the entrance in a cloud of sand and fire.
He hit the ground hard enough to crater the dune. His armor screamed damage, but his body, his endurance held.
"Ugh... fuck…" He groaned, forcing himself up. His legs shook. His visor flickered. But he was alive.
He staggered, then turned to look back.
The desert convulsed. The entire hive chamber collapsed, sand sinking as if a god's hand had pressed it flat. For a moment, he thought it was over.
Then the ground split.
And from the cracks poured insectoids, crawling up through the sand, shrieking, endless.
Asher's voice broke into a laugh, half-mad, half-exhausted.
"…Of fucking course it's not over."
He tightened his grip on the rifle. His blade dripped ichor at his side. The desert horizon burned violet above him.