Chapter 123 - Monsters

*(mood song: "Fight - All Good Things")

They looked at the wide tunnels and saw one deformity after another appearing, at the front a big eight meters tall crabman with a big right claw and a collection of palpitating black tentacles making a big clawed hand on his left that dripped that black fluid, tentacles and mushroom mouths growing out of his back, cracks in his shell also dripping the black fluid as a manic smile dripping black fluid adorned his face, one of his eyes replaced by a tentacle with an eye.

Some of the soldiers in the army recognized the titanic crab man though, murmuring "It's Barkul..."

The titanic crab man opened his pincer and disgusting arm wide to the side as he laughed "welcome visitors! you will soon be part of the family! kekeke~"

Erik stepped forward and said "hey, not to be disrespectful or anything but since you appear a tiny bit less insane than the others..." he pointed at his back inside the volcanic cavern "why didn't you convert those in there?"

Barkul, or what remained of him frowned "you... you aren't afraid?"

Erik: "care to answer the question?"

Barkul seemed to talk to something invisible: "...what?! no need to- ....oh that's indeed true..." turning back to Erik "IT is very interested in you... It allowed me to tell you anything if you willingly accept its blessing inside you..."

Erik calmly answered, "It? isn't all this a disgusting monster that escaped from that secret lab?"

Barkul roared in anger "YOU?! I WON'T FORGIVE YOU IF YOU INSULT THE GREAT MOTHER AGAIN!" the tentacles in the walls also trembling in anger.

Erik: "fine fine... so? answer my question and I might think about it"

Barkul seemed to receive an order as he instantly calmed down "...that's right, you won't escape this place... no problem telling you, the great mother can't endure that heat, those you see there are shielders, they used to be herded at the enemy during the great war, and also used to guard places, they are more primitive but really useful and resistant, those inside there are wild though and seem to have adapted to the heat..."

Erik: "that's all? ask him her or whatever how it escaped the containment facility then?"

There was a delay as Barkul answered "...one day the door opened by itself as the lights ran out, so the great mother escaped and consumed the other test subjects she could to regain her strength, questions answered... now surrender to-"

Erik thinking 'That means there should be something else that cut the light....'

Erik: "well one last question for the sake of science, you were in the last expedition so... all other's that came before you it already ate them?"

Barkul: "you... they had the honor to become one with the great mother... and she's tired of your questions..." pointing his pincer at Erik.

Khroom and the now royal guards reacted at the provocation "Shield wall! protect the queen!" making a defensive shield wall around Erik and pointing their weapons at the monster horde, the cannon fodder keeping the shield wall by the sides.

From Barkul's left hand extended a thick black tentacle "Accept the blessing already!"

Erik didn't answer him though and just said "Fire!"

*BOOM!* hundreds of explosions rocking the tunnel as their explosive ammunition shredded the abominations.

With the dust and filth still clouding the water, Erik gave another order "throw your grenades!" all being hurled through the blackening waters moments later.

*BOOM!!!* the cacophony of explosions accompanied by the shrieks of dying monsters.

*SNAP!* right then a water ripple went for Erik, but Khroom was faster and stopped it with his shield, the force making him slip back a meter.

Erik ordered a cease fire and the waters cleared, revealing a mangled Barkul, only his pincer and upper torso left as he looked at Erik with hatred.

Barkul gurgled up as his mouth dripped dense black fluid "the great mother won't-" but Khroom stabbed his spear through his head and then cut off Barkul's rotten head, cleaning the edge on a nearby rock.

More sounds were heard approaching as Khroom turned back to Erik "we need to get you out of here now my queen!"

Erik nodded and left a beacon at the entrance of the cave, it would help to locate it faster the next time, he passed over Barkul's corpse and took a sample of the tentacle on his face, putting it on an empty waterproof grenade container.

The cannon fodder ran at the front with the others following, Erik noticed Kraktar kept looking back at him though and thought 'he must be plotting something... oh well~' and pointed his gun at him secretly.

Monsters kept appearing at every cross of the way, some even appearing from the walls, their mangled and dripping forms squeezing out of the tentacle walls, they were weak and easy to kill but the problem was their numbers, as they kept appearing.

As they backed up to a big football field size cavern Erik observed as Kraktar ran away to a different tunnel than instructed, most of the cannon fodder running after him, Erik had seen it coming though *BANG!* and a shot from him blew up two of Kraktar's legs, making him a lot slower, but he didn't stop running.

Rose: [ won't you use the collars to kill him?]

Erik: [ Nah, they will divert the attention of this weird monster horde at least, they won't abandon their leader ]

They were running out of ammunition as they killed more and more abominations, their poison and acid high pressure launchers left behind to lighten the load as they ran empty of liquid, lots of casualties accumulating already as a simple graze of the black fluid completely paralyzed those it touched, as the enraged tentacles and monsters throwing spikes and globs of the disgusting substance at them.

The monsters started getting bigger, so one of Rose puppets stayed blocking one tunnel every hundred meters or so, the abominations were no challenge for the unfeeling bio machine puppets, enduring all kinds of wounds as they slashed everything around them with strengths and speed that even damaged their bones and muscles, fighting to the very last moment the mutated hordes and then self destructing in big highly toxic explosion once they couldn't move anymore, collapsing the side tunnels with their explosions.

But they soon run out of puppets, so as they were running down the tunnels from the monsters, Khroom moved by the guard's sacrifice, suddenly stopped and turned around.

Timberly: "what are you doing you dumb crab?! run!"

Khroom: "no... I WILL HOLD THEM, KEEP RUNNING MY QUEENS!!! it's time to pay my debt!!"

Erik threw him his old vibrosword as he had the new ones anyway "catch, you will need it!" and continued running.

Timberly: "but...-"

Erik: "keep running!" swinging his sabers and severing tentacles as he ran.

Timberly nodded "...alright" and kept running behind him, after looking back one last time.

Khroom looked one last time at his beloved Timberly and respected queen, and then faced the approaching wave of death, his blood pumping faster as his entire body told him to run, but he would stand his ground, 'cause the thought of those beasts tearing his mistress apart, such a goddess was enough to make his eyes so bloodshot that blood dripped out of them, his teeth so clenched they could crack, he stabbed his feet into the floor and set his tower shield and long spear at front blocking the narrow tunnels, "TODAY I MIGHT DIE! BUT REMEMBER IT WAS I KHROOM WHO SENT YOU BACK TO THE GREAT ABYSS!!!"

The first wave slamming into his shield as the stone under his legs cracked, gathering all his strength he pushed back "WOOOOOOOHHHH!!!! FOR THE QUEEN! FOR MY MISTRESS!!!!" his razor sharp big claws swiping at all sides of the shield and reaping abomination after abomination apart, his spear tearing through the bigger ones, but... the tide wasn't stopping and bigger beasts started appearing, a big amalgamation of various being connected together by glowing tentacles quickly approaching with an open toothy maw in the middle charging at him as it trampled other abominations to death.

But even then Khroom didn't run, on the contrary, he felt calmer, as he stabbed the back of his spear on the stone ground while pointing the tip forward, his mind thinking 'hope you are far away already mistress' as the beast just impaled its own mouth or his spear to get to him "CHOKE ON IT YOU BEAST!" Khroom holding the part on the stone floor stable with a foot while taking his sword out.

*GWAAAARKKK!* the beast half gurgled half roared as it impaled itself more and more, finally getting in range of his sword.

"DIE!" Khroom roared as he targeted the eyes and other parts of the beast, his new vibrosword, a gift from his queen just tearing enormous gashes on the beast, the narrow tunnel helping him a lot, one wall hugger tentacle went under the side and stabbed his chest though, pumping poison inside him before he cut it with his sword.

"damn beast!" his vision started turning hazy as he could swear the disgusting mouth of the beast was turning into a victorious smile, but his mind wasn't worried about his own death that was a matter of course since the moment he had stopped running 'I hope you are fine my queens, and Trebetuk my friend and commander... I wish you a long and prosperous life...' the beast approached slowly and still impaled as Khroom calmly removed his chest armor while he still had the ability to do so, under it dozens of high explosive and toxic bombs strapped to his chest "you think you won huh beast? but you made a terrible mistake" he put his tower shield behind him, allowing the other tentacles to stab him as the beast took him closer to its gaping toothy mouth, he had joined all the detonator pins with a piece of rope, so he pulled on it, taking all the dozens of pins out "going after... those I care about... LONG LIVE THE QUEEN!!!!!"

*BOOOOOOMMMMM!!!* the almost simultaneous explosions collapsing the cave and poisoning the water, killing the abominations in the thousands and stopping their advance.

--- Out in the distance ---

Erik and his group were running as the ground suddenly trembled, making them stop.

Erik sighed "seems like he did all he could, consider your debt paid crabman, your family will be kept safe"

Timberly: "...yes he truly did..."

Rose: [I can't scan so far from you without the amplificators inside the puppets, so keep running! who knows what those beasts are capable of! （＞д＜)]

Erik nodded and said to the group "let's continue, this isn't over"

They all nodded and kept running, finally arriving at the entrance with the Elders and almost a hundred survivors that only thanks to their armors and modern weaponry and equipment had survived, they had deployed big ballistas with big sodium rods at the entrance, so as they came out they shot out at the monsters at the back, also setting of the explosives they had prepared at the beginning, completely sealing the tunnel with a big explosion.

They then went back to the fire tribe base for some rest as the Elders and Erik disconnected back to their bodies he went to his laptop and started prototyping something.

Rose: [will something like that really work?]

Erik: [remember, it told us it's weakness itself, if I install this heat pump on the lava rivers I can pump her tunnels full of boiling water, if not killing it at least weaken that thing, since we collapsed most side tunnel entrances on the way it should be easier to clear this entire path off those things]

Rose: [... sigh... I will tell you right now that I don't have enough metal for that, and you already know what I had to do in the past, I'm not willing to lose memories on something that's not essential]

Erik: [don't worry about that we will ship up all the low quality metal from the fire tribe, five tons of metal should be enough, we will bring them up and let the nanobots break them into usable powder and print all the pieces, we should be able to put it back together down there again, I might need to go down on my human body with the big armor and the drones though...]

Rose: [I can pilot the armor don't worry (✿◠ω◠) ]

Erik: [that solves it then, but... what about the guards? you lost them all]

Rose: [oh, wanna see?, I'm making version 2 with 2 of those royal guards (◉ω◉)]

Erik: [alright] his vision then turned black and seemed to go through a deep pond as he suddenly saw a room, on a table 2 crab men opened up completely as dozens of robotic arms seemed to be extracting and replacing the entire nervous system [wow! for real... is it what I think?]

Rose: [yeah, replacing their nervous system for nanobots made with a superconductive alloy, but not only that, I will also replace all nonessential organs for smaller and more efficient versions made with nanobots, so many ideas... and the most important... a quantum brain capable of handling my senses somewhat, that way I will be able to feel with that body hehe~ (๑´ڡ`๑)]

Erik: [that's really cool, okay you work on that and I will keep designing this]

Rose: [just a rough design is fine, I can divide it into pieces myself if you want (･ิω･ิ)]

Erik nodded [alright] and kept on working, the heat pump would use a turbine to pump water through a pipe inside a heat sink that would be sunk into the lava river, it would quickly heat up and then be pumped through a long pipe and into a hole in the rubble blockade, he also left the monster sample that he had in the grenade inside a safe box in the base lab where no one would touch it, a flamethrower left on a nearby table just in case.

Meanwhile, now back at the base Inky was holding a blunt sword and training hard as she swung it at a steel and compacted dry seaweed scarecrow, hitting it in different areas as she thought of her avatar, she had seen Erik fall and her body moved by itself to protect him the other day, her pincers should have caught the sword, but Kraktar and skilfully avoided them and pierced her chest... and the monsters chasing after them this time also caused her distress, no one told Erik but seeing the crab men and women kept alive by the tentacle monster was horrifying to them, she held her chest still remembering and trained even harder to clear her mind.

After a couple of hours she couldn't move her arms anymore so she went to the gym and started running, working her new legs and body to be faster, she wouldn't allow any mistake to happen in the future.