Chapter 140: We Found 31 Monsters Sleeping Around the Bomb

Bore Twelve was closed in the same way many illegal things were closed: with an official warning sign in front and enough fresh tracks behind it to prove no one important respected it.

The main entrance had been cut into a rock wall north of Kharad, behind two tool warehouses and an abandoned ventilation station. An iron gate blocked the passage, covered in red paint and a municipal seal warning of collapse risk.

The lock was new.

So were the wagon tracks in front of the entrance.

Maelor pointed them out without slowing.

"That thing was rusted two weeks ago."

Raven examined the mechanism.

"So Keller Ridge suddenly became concerned about the safety of an abandoned mine at the exact moment they started using it secretly."

"Admirable corporate responsibility," Valeria said.

Raven produced a small tool.

"Almost touching."

Maelor watched him work.

"You’re not breaking it?"

"I’d rather no one know immediately that we entered."

"After everything that happened in town, I think they already know we’re asking questions."

"Knowing I’m asking questions and knowing exactly where I am are different things."

The mechanism yielded with a quiet click.

Valeria watched Raven remove the lock without damaging it.

"That doesn’t look like a particularly heroic military skill."

"Black Hound wasn’t particularly heroic either."

Raven opened the gate just far enough for them to pass.

They weren’t descending alone.

Maelor had insisted on bringing two people who knew Bore Twelve better than anyone else available. Deren Holt was a broad-shouldered miner who had worked there before the official closure. Sila Renn had maintained the area’s ventilation system for nearly ten years and carried a mana lamp wrapped in three layers of cloth to reduce its light.

Roland wasn’t with them.

Raven had decided someone needed to remain aboveground coordinating with Joren and watching the entrance. A longbow also had limited value inside a narrow gallery compared with a pair of eyes on the surface.

Roland hadn’t argued much.

"If you all start running toward the exit," he had said, "I’ll assume I should do the same."

"Good conclusion."

"I like simple plans."

Raven hadn’t explained that the plan would probably stop being simple within the hour.

The air changed before the daylight behind them disappeared completely. It became drier and heavier, carrying the mineral scent Raven was beginning to associate with Burrower territory.

Sila walked ahead of Maelor with one hand near the wall. Every so often, she stopped to feel an air current Raven could barely detect.

"The vents are still open," she whispered.

Maelor examined a narrow crack running toward the ceiling.

"Natural?"

"Some. Others aren’t."

Raven studied the tunnel.

Unlike a mine excavated entirely by humans, Bore Twelve had no consistent geometry. The main gallery was rectangular, with tool marks, support beams, and reinforced sections placed at regular intervals. Every few dozen meters, however, rounded cavities appeared in the walls or floor.

Burrowers had made those.

Some cavities went nowhere, while others became tunnels large enough for a person to enter. Several seemed almost alive, drawing air inward before releasing it again after a short pause.

Raven lowered his voice.

"Do all of these connect to the colony?"

Maelor shook his head.

"Impossible to know without following them. Some end in abandoned chambers. Others might descend hundreds of meters."

"That complicates finding three charges."

"I warned you nothing down here was simple."

Raven looked ahead.

"I’m starting to think you enjoy repeating that."

"As long as you keep entering places like this, I’ll keep getting opportunities."

Valeria walked behind Raven and lowered her voice even further.

"You’re making strange friends."

"Don’t call him a friend. He’ll raise his fee."

Maelor lifted one hand without turning around.

"Already did."

Valeria smiled.

The gallery sloped downward until the sounds of Kharad disappeared completely. Soon there was nothing left except boots against stone, breathing, and the occasional creak of old timber.

Then FORGE appeared.

[Subterranean Pressure Structure Detected.]

[Artificial Excavation Intersects Active Blastback Network.]

[Multiple Pressure Chamber Signatures Nearby.]

Raven stopped.

Not because he needed to read the interface.

He had felt something through the wall.

A tiny vibration moved through the stone, subtle enough to resemble muscle shifting beneath skin rather than rock settling.

Deren nearly spoke at full volume.

"What is it?"

Raven raised one finger.

He waited.

A pulse traveled through the wall, followed by another several seconds later.

That wasn’t geological movement.

Predation reacted.

[Blastback Burrower Biological Signature Detected.]

A second signature appeared almost immediately, then a third.

Raven continued walking slowly while the system updated around him.

[Blastback Burrower Signatures Detected: 4.]

Ten meters farther down:

[Signatures Detected: 9.]

The gallery eventually opened into a chamber where the floor was covered in rounded stones and fragments of partially chewed mineral.

[Signatures Detected: 17.]

Valeria saw Raven’s expression.

"How many?"

"More than we need."

She looked at him.

"That wasn’t a number."

Raven waited as Predation recalculated.

[Blastback Burrower Signatures Detected: 23... 27... 31.]

"Thirty-one minimum."

Valeria stopped.

Even Maelor turned around.

"Thirty-one?"

Raven nodded.

Valeria looked toward the walls as if they had suddenly become thinner.

"That was a number I would have preferred not to hear."

"There are probably more outside detection range."

She looked back at him.

"Thank you for improving it."

"You wanted precision."

"I regret that."

Maelor spoke barely above a whisper.

"If there are thirty-one this close to Bore Twelve, the colony has shifted farther than I thought."

Deren glanced toward the entrance behind them.

"We can leave."

No one mocked the suggestion.

It was reasonable.

Raven wanted to leave too.

There was only one problem: somewhere ahead were three charges capable of making every one of those creatures react at the same time.

"If we leave, one of the charges could detonate before we return with another solution."

Deren clenched his jaw.

"And if we wake thirty of them down here, we won’t get another chance either."

"That’s why we aren’t going to wake them."

Raven looked at Maelor.

"Where would Keller Ridge place the first charge?"

The guide considered it.

"If they were trying to close migration routes, they’d use choke points. Places where one blast could seal several galleries."

Sila pointed ahead.

"Junction Four."

Maelor nodded.

"Less than five hundred meters."

Raven adjusted the knife at his side.

"Then we start there."

The first visible Burrower appeared seventy meters later.

Sila saw it first and stopped so abruptly that Deren nearly walked into her.

Raven followed her gaze.

At first, he thought it was an irregular section of the wall.

Then he saw the stone breathing.

The Burrower rested inside a lateral cavity, covered in enough dust to blend almost perfectly with the surrounding rock. It was a juvenile, perhaps similar in size to the one that had emerged in the market, but its legs were folded beneath its body and its head was tucked between its armored plates.

It appeared to be asleep, or at least whatever passed for sleep in a creature whose body continued regulating underground airflow.

Its Pressure Chamber expanded slowly as air entered through small valves. When the chamber contracted, a nearly imperceptible current moved through another opening in the wall.

Maelor gestured silently.

No talking.

Move slowly.

Don’t touch the wall.

Raven went first.

The Burrower didn’t react.

Valeria passed behind him, followed by Sila.

Still nothing.

Deren came last.

A small stone cracked beneath his boot.

The Burrower opened one eye.

Everyone froze.

Predator’s Instinct tightened Raven’s body even though the creature had shown no aggression yet.

The black eye shifted toward Deren, whose hand hovered near the short pick hanging from his belt.

Raven slowly shook his head.

The miner understood and left the weapon where it was.

The Burrower snorted. Its Pressure Chamber expanded slightly, then settled again as the eye closed.

No one breathed normally until they were twenty meters farther down the gallery.

Valeria moved closer to Raven.

"I’m beginning to understand why you didn’t want to fight."

"One would be manageable."

"Thirty-one would be less pleasant."

"Especially inside a tunnel where every pressure discharge could trigger the others."

Maelor glanced back toward them.

"If one vents because it panics, the nearby ones respond. Then the others feel the pressure change and respond too."

Raven looked toward the ceiling.

"So one frightened juvenile can become a chain reaction."

"Yes."

"And Keller Ridge planted explosives in the middle of it."

Maelor slowly shook his head.

"I’ve known greedy people. These ones are trying to turn it into an academic discipline."

They found the first charge at Junction Four.

Its size bothered Raven immediately.

He had expected a barrel, a crate, or something obvious enough to announce itself as an explosive. Instead, Sila noticed a metal plate installed behind one of the support beams. It looked like part of the structure until Raven saw the crystals embedded around its edges.

Valeria crouched beside him.

"Alchemy."

"Can you tell whether it’s active?"

She brought one hand closer without touching it.

"Stored mana, but no circulation."

Raven looked toward Sila.

"Can you disarm it?"

"I know how to remove normal mining charges."

"Is this normal?"

Sila shook her head.

"No."

"Excellent."

Valeria looked at Raven.

"Your optimism remains inspiring."

Raven studied the device.

He didn’t understand enough alchemy to dismantle it through intuition, but he understood detonators well enough to recognize that the underlying logic had to be familiar: stored energy, activation, transfer, charge.

FORGE reacted to the mechanism even though it wasn’t part of one of Raven’s projects.

[Artificial Pressure-Fracture Device Detected.]

[Energy Pathway Identifiable.]

[Mechanical Understanding: PARTIAL.]

That was enough.

Raven pointed toward one of the smaller crystals.

"That receives the signal."

Valeria examined it.

"How do you know?"

"FORGE can follow the function."

"Convenient."

"It can’t tell me how to disable it safely."

"Less convenient."

Sila took out her tools.

They worked for four minutes, which felt much longer underground.

Every scrape of metal and shift of fabric seemed to carry farther than it should. Raven could feel biological signatures through the walls, floor, and nearby passages, several close enough that one mistake would make the explosive the smaller problem.

Eventually, Sila separated a reddish copper filament.

The central crystal went dark.

Valeria checked the mana.

"Dead."

Maelor exhaled.

Raven looked at the device.

"One."

"Two left," Deren said.

"We know where the second probably is," Maelor replied. "The third is the problem."

Raven didn’t need an explanation.

The third was inside Old Pressure Gallery, where a single detonation could propagate through most of the network.

As they moved deeper, the colony became increasingly visible.

Not as a horde.

That would almost have been less unsettling.

Instead, Raven caught pieces of it everywhere: an armored tail disappearing into a crack, a Pressure Chamber expanding behind a broken wall, claws protruding from a cavity, and clusters of young packed inside warm chambers until they resembled piles of overlapping brown plates.

In one deeper section, Raven counted six juveniles sleeping around an older female.

There was no way to pass without approaching them.

Maelor raised a hand.

"We can go around."

Sila shook her head.

"No. Eastern tunnel collapsed last year."

"Then we wait."

Raven studied the chamber.

The Burrowers weren’t breathing in perfect synchronization. There was a repeating sequence instead. The female expanded first, followed by two juveniles, then the remaining four, while air moved between openings around the chamber as part of the colony’s ventilation network.

Raven watched three complete cycles before he identified the point when the ambient noise was strongest.

"We move when she exhales."

Deren looked at him.

"What?"

"When the adult vents slowly, the pressure produces noise through the tunnel. It should cover our footsteps."

Maelor listened through one cycle.

Then another.

"It might work."

"I love ’might,’" Valeria whispered.

Raven glanced at her.

"You’re the one who chose to keep coming."

"I don’t remember being offered a particularly attractive alternative."

The adult’s Pressure Chamber contracted.

Air moved through the surrounding passages.

Raven advanced three steps and stopped.

On the next cycle, Valeria followed, then Maelor, Sila, and Deren.

They repeated the pattern several times, using each release of air to mask another short movement through the chamber.

During the fourth cycle, one of the young shifted.

Deren reacted too quickly.

His hand closed around the handle of his pick.

Raven caught his wrist.

The miner looked at him as the juvenile raised its head.

Raven spoke so quietly his lips barely moved.

"No."

Deren glanced toward the Burrower.

"If it wakes—"

"If you kill it here, the blood and pressure release wake the entire tunnel."

The miner’s hand remained tense.

Raven tightened his grip slightly.

"If it moves toward us, we retreat. You don’t attack unless I say so."

Deren hesitated, then released the pick.

The juvenile tested the air.

A small sound came from deep inside its chest.

The adult female answered with a low vibration.

Everyone went completely still.