Chapter 137: One Fake Explosion Woke the Entire Colony Under Kharad

FORGE reacted near noon.

Raven was following a series of old ventilation shafts when the interface appeared despite there being no corpse or component in front of him.

[Subterranean Pressure Mapping Updated.]

He stopped so abruptly that Valeria nearly walked into him.

"What happened?"

Raven raised one hand and waited for the system to expand.

[Repeated Biological Pressure Activity Detected.]

[Multiple Signatures Converging Beneath Northern Settlement.]

[Estimated Colony Migration Vector: SOUTHWEST.]

[Estimated Mature Pressure Chamber Present.]

That was already important, but another line appeared beneath it.

[Pressure Signature Analysis Complete.]

[Estimated Mature Chamber Quality: EXCEPTIONAL.]

[Projected Prototype Rifle Compatibility: 97–99%.]

Raven stared at the result.

Valeria recognized his expression immediately.

"It found something."

"Yes."

"The component?"

"Probably."

"How good?"

"Ninety-seven to ninety-nine percent."

Valeria exhaled.

"Naturally."

Maelor approached.

"What?"

Raven pointed toward the ground.

"There’s a large adult beneath this district. Possibly more than one."

"We already knew that."

"No. We knew there was a colony. FORGE just detected an exceptional Pressure Chamber."

Maelor didn’t appear particularly impressed by the adjective.

"And that means?"

"It’s exactly the organ I came here for."

Valeria crossed her arms.

"And it’s beneath the houses Keller Ridge is trying to empty."

"Yes."

"Inside the colony their explosions are disturbing."

"Also yes."

She smiled.

"This must feel like a wonderful opportunity."

Raven looked at her.

"It feels like too much work surrounding one component."

"You could leave."

That was true.

Kharad wasn’t his town, and the mining company wasn’t his problem. He could search for another colony, another mature Burrower, another Pressure Chamber.

Maybe he would find one compatible enough.

Maybe he wouldn’t.

FORGE had marked this one as exceptional, and the vibrations from the previous night showed that the colony was already moving.

If Keller Ridge continued detonating charges, one of two things would happen. Either the colony would abandon the area and Raven would lose his target, or it would move even closer to the buildings and Kharad would begin collapsing on top of it.

Neither outcome was useful.

Raven watched several people working on a nearby house. A man lifted stones while a young girl carried tools too large for her hands and a woman repaired one of the warning bells.

Valeria was still watching him.

"You’re going to save the town."

Raven looked at her.

"I’m going to stop them from destroying my component."

"Naturally."

"There will also be fewer dead people."

Valeria raised her eyebrows.

Raven realized a moment too late how that had sounded.

She smiled.

"That almost sounded human."

"Don’t abuse it."

Her smile widened.

"You’re definitely getting worse."

"I thought I was improving."

"Depends who you ask."

Raven returned his attention to the underground map forming in his head.

"We need Bore Twelve."

Getting inside legally proved impossible.

That was useful information in its own way.

The local mining office had sealed the entrances and refused to authorize an inspection without Keller Ridge’s approval because the company retained administrative rights over the gallery even though it was officially closed.

Raven left the building with Valeria.

"That was efficient," she said.

"They told us no in less than five minutes."

"A new record."

"I could go in tonight."

"I know."

Raven looked at her.

"You didn’t say it was a bad idea."

"Because you’re going to do it regardless of what I think. I’d rather conserve my energy for arguments where I can actually change something."

Raven considered that.

"That’s disturbingly reasonable."

"I learned from watching you."

He wasn’t sure that was a compliment.

Maelor was waiting outside.

"No?"

"No."

The guide smiled.

"Good. I know another entrance."

Raven looked at him.

"Why didn’t we start with that?"

"I wanted to see whether you’d try doing it legally."

"And?"

"You lasted longer than I expected."

Roland, leaning against a nearby wall, started laughing.

Raven decided Maelor was becoming irritating too.

That probably explained why they got along.

"Where?"

Maelor pointed toward the hills north of town.

"An old drainage passage connects to the lower section of Bore Twelve. Not directly. We’d have to cross two abandoned galleries."

"Burrowers?"

"Possible."

"Colony?"

"Not yet."

Raven nodded.

"Good."

Then a bell rang from the northern district.

Once.

Then another.

Maelor turned immediately.

"That isn’t natural pressure."

Raven listened.

Three rapid rings, a pause, then one more.

Maelor started running.

"What does that mean?" Valeria asked as they followed.

"Surface explosion."

Raven felt his stomach tighten.

"Another charge."

The answer came before Maelor could give one.

BOOM.

The sound tore through Kharad.

A column of dust rose between the houses.

Raven accelerated.

Burst Step would have been faster, but he didn’t want to spend mana before knowing what he was about to find.

People were pouring out of buildings, and some were already running away from the northern district.

The bells began ringing near the explosion first.

Then farther away.

But this time the pattern didn’t stop.

CLANG.

CLANG.

CLANG.

Another answered from beneath the next street.

Then another farther south.

A vibration passed through the ground.

Maelor stopped abruptly.

"Shit."

Raven felt a second pulse.

Stronger.

"What?"

"They answered."

A bell on the opposite side of the district began shaking violently, followed by another farther down the street.

The Burrowers weren’t simply detecting the detonation.

They were moving.

Raven reached the affected street.

A small house had lost part of one wall. The artificial explosion itself hadn’t been large, because it hadn’t needed to be.

The ground was doing the rest.

A line of paving stones lifted several centimeters.

People screamed.

"Off the street!" Maelor shouted.

This time, nobody needed an explanation.

Residents rushed toward doorways and raised stone platforms.

Raven saw an old woman trying to lift a child who had fallen.

The vibration passed beneath them.

Raven activated Burst Step.

He appeared beside them, grabbed the child by his clothes, and shoved the woman toward the entrance of a house.

They didn’t make it inside.

The ground erupted as though something enormous beneath the street had inhaled and then expelled everything at once.

Paving stones launched upward while dirt and dust burst through the gaps.

A rock struck Raven’s shoulder. Stonehide spread by reflex and absorbed part of the impact.

Valeria raised a blood barrier in front of several residents while Roland shouted for people to clear the intersection.

Raven kept the child against his chest as the street deformed beneath them.

The old woman stared at him.

"Thank you."

"Inside."

This time he added nothing else.

He didn’t need to.

The woman disappeared into the building with the child.

Raven turned back toward the center of the street.

A crack appeared between the paving stones and began widening rapidly, stretching from barely a meter to several times that length as the ground sagged around it.

"Back!" Maelor shouted.

Raven retreated just before an entire section of street collapsed.

Stone plunged into the darkness below as compressed air roared upward from the newly exposed cavity.

No Burrower appeared.

Instead, Raven saw only the tunnel, the pressure moving through it, and the unmistakable signs of something enormous shifting somewhere beneath them.

FORGE reacted.

[Subterranean Biological Pressure Spike Detected.]

[Multiple Colony Signatures Active.]

[Migration Response Escalating.]

One final line appeared.

[Exceptional Mature Pressure Chamber Moving Toward Settlement Center.]

Raven stared into the newly opened hole.

The human explosion had done exactly what they had feared.

The colony was no longer merely responding to disturbances.

It was moving closer.

Valeria reached his side with dust coating part of her hair.

"Tell me that explosion didn’t do what I think it did."

Raven watched the tunnel as another vibration traveled through the street, deeper and heavier than the last.

"Depends what you think."

"That someone just provoked an entire colony to lower the price of a few houses."

Raven looked toward the column of smoke.

"Then yes."

Maelor had gone pale.

"If they keep pushing from Bore Twelve, the colony will enter the old chambers beneath the center."

Roland arrived with his bow in one hand.

"And is that bad on a normal scale or bad on a Kharad scale?"

Maelor looked at him.

"If an adult colony discharges inside those chambers, it could open half the square."

Roland stopped smiling.

Raven looked toward the center of the settlement, where bells, houses, wells, and crowded streets all sat over the same network of old chambers.

Something large was moving beneath all of it.

He could still leave.

He could get on his horse and let Keller Ridge, Kharad, and the Burrowers solve their own problem.

But the best Pressure Chamber FORGE had found was moving directly toward a town full of people, and if the colony destroyed the lower chambers, the organ could end up crushed beneath tons of rock.

Raven exhaled.

Valeria glanced at him.

"Don’t say ’my component.’"

Raven hesitated.

"I wasn’t going to."

"That worries me more."

He studied the crack.

"First we stop the detonations. Then we redirect the colony. After that, I find the adult."

Valeria raised an eyebrow.

"That’s three problems."

"They’re the same problem in an irritating order."

Another bell began ringing to the north.

Raven raised his head.

There had been no explosion this time.

Only vibration.

Something large had just changed direction beneath the town.

The surface of a nearby bucket began to ripple in concentric circles that formed faster with every passing second.

Raven remembered the movie from his world and looked toward the elevated platforms surrounding the street.

Valeria followed his gaze.

"What?"

"Nothing yet."

"That answer usually means you just had a dangerous idea."

Raven pointed toward the water.

"If they track vibrations, we can make them follow something."

Maelor opened his mouth, then looked at the bucket and finally at the ground.

"That would be unbelievably stupid."

"Probably."

"We could attract them directly toward us."

"Also possible."

Valeria crossed her arms.

"Is there any version of this plan that doesn’t involve turning yourself into bait?"

Raven thought for several seconds.

"Roland could do it."

The response came immediately from behind him.

"Do not include me in this conversation."

Raven almost smiled.

The street vibrated again.

This time it wasn’t a distant pulse.

It was directly beneath them.

Maelor looked down.

"Up."

"What?"

"Get on something!"

Raven didn’t ask.

He jumped onto a stone structure beside a cistern. Valeria used Blood Magic to propel herself onto a terrace, while Roland scrambled onto a cart.

Two seconds later, something passed beneath the street without breaking the surface.

They all felt the mass of it.

Fast.

Heavy.

The paving stones rose one after another in a moving line that crossed the intersection and disappeared beneath a house on the opposite side.

Then everything went still.

Roland stared down from the cart.

"I’m going to ask something, and I want a reassuring answer."

Raven followed the creature’s path.

"I’m not promising anything."

"Did a monster just pass underneath us because it was following our footsteps?"

Maelor answered for him.

"Yes."

Roland looked at Raven.

"I hate your movie."

Raven watched one bell begin trembling on the next street, followed by another farther away.

The movement was retreating.

For now.

"The movie was better."

Valeria looked down at him from the terrace.

"How did it end?"

Raven remembered rocks, explosives, and people desperately trying not to become food from below.

Then he looked at Kharad.

"With considerably more destruction than I’d like to recreate."

The northern bells began ringing again.

And this time, something much deeper answered.

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