"Out," Red commanded. "Get out of the tunnel. Now."
Krug hesitated. The blood of the first kill was still hot on his hands, and the bronze pickaxe felt powerful. He wanted to push forward.
'YOU CANNOT FIGHT THEM IN THE DARK,' Red projected, his voice sharp with urgency. 'THEY ARE MANY. YOU ARE FEW. MOVE.'
Krug gritted his teeth, but the conditioning of the Divine Presence held. He barked a retreat order. The Kobolds scrambled back, dragging the three dead Molekin bodies with them, retreating from the cool darkness of the mine into the harsh, grey light of the surface.
They didn't run far. They stopped at the impromptu fortress they had built at the cliff's base, which a collection of thorny barricades and punji pits.
"Three days," Red muttered, looking at the time log. "It took us three days to march here. That means the gun is loaded."
He checked his [ SSS-TRAIT STATUS ].
[ CAUSALITY CHARGE: 300% (OVERCHARGED) ](Note: Trait has been idle for 72 hours. Next activation will have increased potency or duration. You can select the output amount.)
The ground beneath the cliff rumbled.
From the fissure, the sound of marching echoed. The clank-clank-clank of bronze on stone. Gorr wasn't waiting. He was sending the janitors to clean up the mess.
Red zoomed in.
Twenty-five Molekin emerged from the darkness. They were larger than the laborers. They were Soldiers. They wore breastplates of dull bronze and carried heavy, rectangular shields.
But as they stepped out of the cave, they faltered.
The sun was high. Even through the eternal grey smog of the Seventeenth Continent, the light was blinding to creatures evolved for the deep earth. The Molekin hissed, shielding their milky eyes. Their movements, swift in the cave, became sluggish and unsure.
"They can't see," Red noted. "And they're heavy."
The Molekin captain roared, pointing his hammer blindly toward the smell of the Kobolds. The phalanx locked shields and began to march forward. They were tanks. The Kobolds' wooden spears would snap against that bronze wall.
Red hovered his spectral hand over the stretch of cracked, dry earth between the cave mouth and the Kobold barricades.
"System," Red said. "I want a Miracle. [ SOFTEN EARTH ]."
[ COST: 1,000 DP ]
"Apply the Stack," Red ordered. "All three days of it."
[ TRAIT ACTIVATED: 300% OVERCHARGE ]
[ CALCULATING... ]
[ EFFECT: LIQUEFACTION ]
Red snapped his fingers.
The ground turned soft as the molecular bonds holding the soil together simply let go. The dry, cracked earth beneath the Molekin phalanx instantly turned into a deep, churning soup of mud and silt.
It wasn't a puddle. It was a sinkhole.
The Molekin screamed as the ground swallowed them. Their heavy bronze armor, their greatest advantage, became their coffin. They sank like stones. The shield wall broke instantly as soldiers flailed, grabbing at each other, only dragging their comrades down faster.
The Captain, heavier than the rest, disappeared up to his neck in seconds.
"God is with us!" Krug hailed.
"Meat!" the tribe shrieked.
The Kobolds didn't charge into the mud. They scrambled onto the rocky outcrops Red had highlighted during the trap construction. They had the high ground.
They began to throw stones. Heavy, spiked rocks rained down on the trapped Molekin.
CLANG. CRACK. THUD.
A rock hit a Molekin soldier in the helmet. The bronze dented, stunning him. He stopped struggling and sank beneath the surface. Bubbles of air rose up, then stopped.
Iron-Scale, the cleverest of the warriors, ran forward with a long spear. He stabbed the gaps at the neck and armpits of the soldiers trying to claw their way out.
It wasn't a battle. It was an extermination.
In five minutes, the surface of the mud pit was still. Twenty-five elite soldiers of Gorr, Rank 4 Deity, had vanished into the earth without landing a single blow.
[ BATTLE WON ]
[ ENEMIES DEFEATED: 25 ]
[ FAITH GENERATED (AWE): +2,500 ]
[ LOOT AVAILABLE: 25 SETS OF BRONZE ARMOR (BURIED) ]
Red watched the faith counter tick up slightly, but he was more interested in what Krug did next.
Krug stood at the edge of the mud pit, panting. He looked at the dark cave entrance. He knew there were thousands more inside. He knew that when night fell, the sun wouldn't save them.
Krug turned to the tribe. He pointed to the bodies of the three Molekin they had killed earlier.
"Gut them," Krug ordered.
The tribe descended on the corpses. They stripped the leather and tools.
"Not that," Krug snarled. He pointed to the entrails. "The shit-sacks."
He grabbed a handful of the Molekin's internal organs, stinking, bile-filled guts, and walked to the cave entrance. He threw the mess onto the smooth stone threshold.
"Piss," Krug commanded. "Shit. Here."
The tribe understood. They lined up at the fissure. They relieved themselves at the entrance of the God Gorr's domain. They piled the offal, the waste, and the garbage into a foul, reeking mound right at the borderline.
"What the fuck am I watching…" Red raised an eyebrow. "Biological warfare?"
It was crude. It wouldn't physically stop an army. But for a species like Molekin, who relied on scent to navigate, a wall of concentrated excrement and rotting guts would be a sensory flashbang. It would mask the Kobolds' scent and confuse the enemy vanguard.
"Smart," Red admitted. "Disgusting, but smart."
Then came the final insult.
Krug ordered the meat of the Molekin to be quartered. They didn't bury their enemies. They dragged the limbs to the fire pit.
As the sun began to set, the smell of roasting meat drifted into the cave.
Krug sat on a rock, gnawing on a roasted Molekin arm. He stared into the darkness of the tunnel, his eyes glowing violet. He held the bone up, as if toasting the darkness.
"Come out," Krug whispered, his voice dripping with malice. "We are still hungry."
Red hovered above the scene, the firelight illuminating his spectral form. He looked at the notification from Gorr- [ DIPLOMATIC STATUS: WAR ].
He looked at his Kobolds, wearing mismatched pieces of scavenged bronze armor, eating the enemy, and desecrating the battlefield.
"We aren't the heroes of this story," Red noted, watching Krug crack a bone to suck the marrow. "We're the monsters in the dark."
He checked his DP. The trap had cost him, but the loot of 25 sets of bronze armor waiting to be dug out was worth ten times that.
[ DP: 130,500 ]
"Let them sleep," Red said to the void. "Tomorrow, we start mining."