Chapter 733: More Centipedes?

The Giant Centipede’s body stiffened violently, its ear-splitting shriek cutting off into a wet, choking gurgle.

Its hundreds of yellow legs twitched frantically in the air for three short heartbeats before going completely limp, hanging heavy from Sol’s embedded blade.

Sol held the forty-foot, multi-ton beast suspended off the ground for a second, his feet unyielding on the stone floor, before casually shaking his wrist and dumping the massive, lifeless carcass onto the rocks.

THUD!

The giant monster collapsed in a tangled, bloody heap, its compound eyes dimming as its life essence drained into the slate floor.

Sol wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his sleeve, looking down at the dead monster with a cold, satisfied breath.

"Much better," Sol muttered. "Stealth doesn’t mean a damn thing when you walk straight into my hand."

HUMMMMM.

Deep within his mind, Orphos activated automatically.

A thick, murky wisp of dark indigo soul-essence rose from the Centipede’s shattered head, coiling like a cold serpent before being drawn magnetically into Sol’s head.

It plunged into his spiritual sea, where the ancient compass instantly devoured it, refining the beast’s cold, subterranean vitality into pure origin force.

Sol felt the familiar, soothing wave of spiritual feedback ripple through his mind, repairing another microscopic fracture along Orphos’s inner gears.

However, as Sol pulled the Dreadwing blade free and wiped the black blood on a nearby patch of dry moss, his enhanced senses caught a faint, rushing vibration rumbling from the dark tunnel at the far end of the cavern.

It definitely was not the sound of a single beast.

SKREEEEEE—!

Soon a pair of high-pitched, vibrating screeches echoed from the dark, downward-sloping tunnel carved into the slate wall ahead.

The earlier centipede’s dying death-rattle had worked like an alarm bell.

Sol’s crimson eyes glinted with sudden, sharp interest, now that he knew that it was just this giant centipede, he didn’t have any fear of the unknown.

For him the more beasts the better... as long as they weren’t above layer 4.

Before Sol could even move ahead to see what was going on, two more massive, jet-black shapes burst out of the tunnel mouth at blistering speed.

Their hundreds of yellowed legs clicked frantically against the stone, their dripping mandibles snapping in synchronized rage as they charged him side-by-side.

"Ah, the welcoming committee," Sol grunted, his feet already pivoting.

He didn’t wait for them to converge on him. The moment the first centipede lunged, snapping its venom-slick jaws toward his throat, Sol ducked beneath the strike.

He drove his elbow upward into the joint of its lower jaw, using a burst of raw physical power to tilt its massive head skyward. In the same fluid motion, Sol spun on his heel and brought the Dreadwing blade around in a brutal horizontal arc.

SLASH!

The sapphire-tinged blade cut through three armored segments like parchment. Black hemolymph geysered into the air as the beast’s upper torso was completely cleaved in half, sending its squirming head crashing into the slate.

The second centipede didn’t hesitate. Seeing its kin fall, it coiled its forty-foot length and whipped its tail around like an iron flail, aiming to smash Sol against the cavern wall.

Sol didn’t bother dodging. He raised his left hand, channeling a concentrated pulse of essence into his palm, and caught the sweeping tail dead-on.

BOOM!

The impact rattled the rocks beneath his feet, but Sol didn’t budge an inch. With a low growl, he hoisted the thrashing monster off the floor using its own momentum, swung it overhead, and slammed it face-first into the stone ground.

While the beast was dazed, Sol stepped onto its armored neck and thrust the Dreadwing blade straight through its central eye, driving the blade deep into its tiny brain.

The centipede twitched violently once, then went limply still.

Two dark indigo streams of soul-essence detached from the corpses, swirling directly into Sol’s chest to feed the hungry compass within.

Sol shook the black blood off his steel, his neon-crimson eyes narrowing as he peered down into the pitch-black tunnel where the pair had emerged.

Seems like that dying screech brought those two running immediately, Sol analyzed, his mind quickly shifting gears. Which means this cavern isn’t just home to a couple of lost stragglers. There’s a structure somewhere in there. If I keep making noise like a drunk bear in a china shop, I’ll have an entire army crashing over me before I even see what I’m dealing with.

Suppressing his aura entirely, Sol slid into the shadows of the downward passage, stepping over the fresh corpses without a sound.

The passage was vast, wide enough for three oxen to walk abreast, and sloped sharply down into the deepest strata of the mountain.

As Sol descended, the air grew progressively thicker, hotter, and increasingly humid. The starry bioluminescence of the upper cavern gave way to a darker, blood-red glow emitted by clusters of crimson spirit-fungi lining the walls.

About two hundred paces down, Sol halted behind a thick cluster of calcified stalagmites.

Ahead, two more giant centipedes were patrolling a wide stone archway. Unlike the first three, these two hadn’t heard the commotion above.

They moved with lazy, unhurried glides, their long antennae sweeping the air in a slow, relaxed pattern.

They’re acting like sentries, Sol noted, observing their sloppy patrol lines. And pretty terrible ones at that. Seems like they haven’t been attacked down here in so long that their instincts are completely dull. They think they’re the top of the food chain in this dark.

Sol didn’t give them a chance to wake up.

Melting into the crimson shadows, he glided along the cavern wall without kicking up a single pebble.

He reached the first sentry from behind, rising up like a specter. Before the monster could even register the shift in air pressure, Sol jammed the bone paring knife straight into the soft, unarmored crevice behind its head, severing its central nerve cord instantly.

The beast collapsed without making a sound.