Chapter 82: Crawler Caverns
The heavy stone door at the back of the clearing groaned open, revealing Zone Two.
The Crawler Caverns.
The air changed instantly. It was hot, claustrophobic, and smelled like sulfur and dry dust. The tunnels were narrow, the walls jagged and lined with clusters of unrefined raw crystal.
Almost immediately, the clicking started.
Heavy Carapace Centipedes swarmed out of the dark cracks in the ceiling. They were nasty, screeching things the size of hunting dogs, covered in thick, dark armor plates.
But Squad 7 didn’t panic. They had spent enough time running sponsored dives through the Obsidian Hand’s crawler cavern to know exactly how insectoid mobs behaved in narrow tunnels. This was not unfamiliar terrain anymore. This was income with legs.
And Squad 7 had learned how to collect.
Felix immediately stepped forward, turning his heavy tower shield at a slight angle. He perfectly plugged the narrow tunnel, forcing the centipedes to bottleneck against his iron wall.
Emily didn’t waste energy punching their thick top carapace. She stepped out from behind Felix, throwing targeted, brutal low hooks that shattered the weak joints of their multiple legs, instantly crippling them.
Arthur moved through the tight space efficiently. He didn’t use wide slashes. He drove his daggers into the exposed underbellies of the crippled insects, killing them in a single strike before tapping the raw crystal nodes. The academy tag on his collar flashed each time he tapped a crystal node, logging the resource value without needing him to mine it out physically.
Chloe stood safely in the center of the formation. She kept her eyes on her squad’s breathing, tracking their stamina and casting minor relief pulses to keep their muscles from cramping in the heavy heat.
They moved through the cavern like a well-oiled meat grinder.
Ten minutes later, the tunnel finally went quiet.
Felix leaned heavily against a stalagmite, pushing his glasses up his sweaty nose. "Why does every profitable place have insects?"
Emily kicked a twitching centipede leg out of her way, wiping bug guts off her metal visor. "Because bugs are stupid and full of money."
Arthur pulled his dagger out of a carcass and wiped the blade on his pants. "That is the most accurate economic summary I’ve heard all week."
Two sectors over, Leon’s squad was struggling.
They weren’t taking damage—they were far too skilled for that—but they were completely mismatched for the architecture of the caverns.
Cedric’s massive kite shield kept scraping against the narrow rock walls, getting jammed in the tight chokepoints. Alicia couldn’t use her elegant, sweeping longsword forms. The low ceiling forced her into awkward, rigid forward thrusts that frustrated her immensely.
"Step back!" Leon yelled, his sword glowing with a brilliant, blinding light as a swarm of centipedes rushed them.
He raised his blade to unleash a massive Holy Strike, but abruptly canceled the cast, grunting in frustration. The blast radius would have shattered three high-value crystal nodes on the walls, completely tanking their resource score. He was forced to drop his stance and hack at them manually.
Without warning, Elara suddenly released three arrows. The shots vanished into the dark ceiling. A second later, three massive centipedes dropped dead directly at Alicia’s feet, pinned cleanly through the skull.
Alicia looked back.
Elara lowered her bow calmly. "You were about to step under them."
"I noticed," Alicia lied.
Cedric snorted behind his shield.
Back in the eastern sector, Arthur led his squad down a quiet side tunnel.
According to the standard exam map, this route led absolutely nowhere. It was a dead end. And sure enough, twenty yards in, the tunnel abruptly stopped at a solid, seamless rock face.
Grid 4-7.
Arthur stopped. He placed his hand flat against the cold stone.
"This wall is fake," Arthur said.
Felix walked up and knocked his armored knuckle against the rock. It made a dull, heavy thud that echoed down the tunnel.
"That is a wall, Arthur," Felix said tiredly.
Emily stepped up, cracking her knuckles with a loud pop. "Can I punch it?"
"Not yet," Arthur said, holding up a hand. "We need to make it fail correctly."
A loud, echoing screech rolled down the tunnel behind them. The noise of their armor had attracted another swarm. The chittering of dozens of centipede legs grew louder by the second.
"Company," Felix warned, turning around and dropping into a defensive stance, planting his shield into the dirt to block the narrow path.
"Hold the rear, Felix," Arthur ordered. He turned his attention back to the stone face, scanning the faint mana lines pulsing under the rock. "Emily, there are two raw crystal anchors on the left and right edges. Break them."
Emily didn’t ask questions. She stepped up and threw two devastating hooks into the corners of the wall, shattering the protruding crystals into dust.
"Chloe," Arthur said, pressing both hands flat against the dead center of the rock. "I’m going to dump a raw pulse of mana directly into the core. Stabilize my flow so the feedback doesn’t blow us backward."
Chloe immediately stepped up behind him. She gripped his shoulder, channeling a steady, grounding stream of her own mana into his arm, anchoring him.
Arthur pushed. Hard.
The feedback hit Arthur’s arms like a hammer. His fingers locked against the stone, the raw mana violently trying to surge backward through his veins.
Chloe gasped behind him but did not let go. Two weeks ago, she would have panicked and broken the channel. Now she bit down on the fear and forced the mana into a steady rhythm. Her healing mana wrapped tightly around his wrist, grounding the pulse before it could tear through his channels.
"Arthur," she whispered, her voice strained under the pressure.
"Hold," Arthur growled. "Don’t let it spit me back. Emily, hit the center-left! I missed an anchor!"
Emily spun and drove her gauntlet into the stone just inches from Arthur’s waist. The hidden crystal shattered.
The stone groaned. Deep, glowing blue cracks shot through the rock face like lightning. With a violent crack, the entire wall shattered inward, collapsing into a heavy cloud of dust and debris.
Emily coughed, waving her hands to clear the air.
As the dust settled, a perfectly cut, pristine stone staircase was revealed, leading directly down into the dark. It completely bypassed the rest of the cavern labyrinth.
"Hidden staircase," Felix said, looking over his shoulder in disbelief. "Are you kidding me?"
Arthur smirked, shaking his numb arm out to get the blood flowing again.
Before anyone could take a step forward, a harsh, metallic chime rang out in unison from their pockets.
Arthur pulled out his communication scroll. The text wasn’t the standard blue. It flashed in a sharp, bright red.
[Academy Evaluation Alert: Hidden Route Discovered.]
[Composite Block C Difficulty Adjustment Applied.]
Arthur stared at the glowing red text. A second later, a private blue screen flickered in his vision alone, entirely separate from the academy’s system.
[System: Hidden Route Exploitation Registered]
[Route Efficiency Score Increased]
[Warning: Adaptive Threat Scaling Detected]
Arthur dismissed the blue prompt. His confident smirk slowly vanished.
"That sounds expensive," Arthur muttered.