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Chapter 146: The Cave Marathon
🕑 Added 2023-03-27 16:38:00 +0000 UTCJack’s feet thundered on solid rock. The light had disappeared by now, letting only his weak darkvision steer him away from walls and outcroppings. Nauja was a step in front, running with large strides as she led him deeper in. Jack really hoped she knew the way—and that she could see.
A host of pursuers came after them.
The minotaur, Bocor, was at the front, charging on all fours like a bull. Smoke rose from his nostrils, the ground shook and moaned under his hooves and arms, and he boasted enough strength to run at the same speed as Jack and Nauja while wearing full plate armor and carrying a big-ass tower shield on his back.
Level 115 wasn’t for show.
The rest of his team followed. Five people in all: a treant, three humans, and what looked like shimmering air but was actually an invisible person.
The cave angled downward. Jack felt the slope under his feet, sensed his momentum threatening to tip him forward. With his limited vision, all he could do was follow Nauja’s swaying back, her pale skin standing out just a bit in the darkness.
Sounds came occasionally from the left and right as if the wind was stopped by something. Jack imagined peculiar rock formations, but they could be dinosaurs plastered against the wall for all he knew.
Excluding Jack and Brock—who was carried by Jack—everyone else was over level 90. Their feet swallowed the distance at tremendous speed. It was like they were all racing motorcycles through the cave, which appeared endless.
They had crossed miles already. More than once, forks appeared in the path, Jack barely distinguishing the hints of lighter darkness that signified openings. Nauja always picked the one heading further down, and he didn’t dare disagree.
By now, it was clear they were in an enormous, underground cave complex. Its sheer scale was stunning. Endless miles of caves stretching in all directions, twisting and bending around each other, crossing at a thousand different intersections. Cold fear gripped Jack’s heart.
Even if we escape them, will we find the way out?
With his sight impaired, other senses flared up. He could hear the rasping of Nauja’s breath, the subtle change in his footsteps as they ran over different kinds of stone. His nose caught the moisture that suffused the caves, detected the slight hints of moss and rot in the air.
His breath was catching in his throat. His ribcage felt cramped. There was a limit to how far he could run.
“Do you know the way?” he finally asked Nauja, trying to keep his voice a whisper, but that was hard to do while running.
“Down!” she replied, without turning her head, nor giving any further explanation.
“I thought you’d give me up!”
She snorted. “I am no coward!”
“But you said barbarians never lie!”
“Deception is not lying. There’s a difference!”
“How is—” Nauja took a sharp right, and Jack almost slid ahead before barely managing to turn. “How is there a difference?”
“Is this really the time!?” She growled backward.
“Why not? We have nothing else to do!”
They did have something else to do: run. However, a chase was a battle of minds as much as it was of bodies. Their pursuers didn’t know how tired Jack was. If he made them believe they’d exhaust themselves first, they might be demoralized, even stop chasing altogether.
Nauja growled again, not indicating whether she understood or not, while the minotaur’s voice came from behind, washing over them in the narrow tunnels.
“I am a minotaur!” he roared. “You will never outrun me!”
If he was using the same trick as Jack, it was working. He heard the thunderous hooves behind him come faster, the entire party accelerating. They had fallen a bit behind since the start of the hunt five minutes ago, but they had remained within eyesight.
“Brock!” Jack yelled, keeping his eyes on Nauja’s back. “Are they all there?”
Having climbed on Jack’s back, Brock snuck a peek, then raised three barely visible fingers in front of Jack’s face. “Three are left? Good. Which ones?”
Incoherent monkey noises by his ear.
“The minotaur?” he tried. “The staff? The invisible?”
“Yes. Yes. Yes.”
“Good!”
The other three focused on Mental or Will. They couldn’t follow everyone else in this mad rush. That left only the minotaur, the staff-wielder, and the invisible one.
Which was more than enough to destroy Jack and Nauja, if they caught up.
Their only choice was to keep on running. Unfortunately, the main reason Jack could match higher-level cultivators in combat was his perfect Dao Seed. Stat-wise, he was weaker, which hurt him in an all-out marathon. The only reason he could keep up was his Indomitable Body and Dao Root of Indomitable Will, which ensured he would die before giving up.
They kept heading down. The temperature dropped steadily, reaching the freezing point, and the moisture dampened. Jack’s every breath was laborious now. He drew the cold in every time he inhaled, like icicles stabbing his lungs. His throat was parched. He was sweating all over, his vision was bleary, and his legs were made of lead.
But he couldn’t stop.
He could feel Nauja’s exhaustion, too. Her strides had shortened. Her breath came in shallow rasps, her form wobbled in his eyes.
He had no way of telling whether their pursuers were as tired. The footsteps remained on their heels, gnawing at the distance every time Nauja tried to slow down. It was incredible that the minotaur had persisted so far while carrying massive weights. He wasn’t fast for his level, but he was extremely durable.
Will we get captured? Jack wondered. Should we split up?
It could take him days to find the way back without Nauja. Weeks, even, and that’s assuming he wasn’t captured. But if they didn’t have a choice…
The tunnel opened up around them. Jack sensed himself entering a cavern, felt the open space surrounding them. For a moment, hope surged in his heart. This cavern signified change. Opportunity. Salvation.
Nauja kept running straight, not slowing down in the slightest. A few moments later, they were back in a tunnel, always running.
Jack wanted to ask what that cavern was about, but he no longer had the energy to spare. His focus sharpened to a point. The world fell apart, becoming a series of ragged breaths. Only keeping track of Nauja and placing one foot before the other mattered now. His heart was drumming in his temples, his ribs stitching, his every breath simultaneously burning and freezing his throat.
He kept hoping for something to happen, anything. Their pursuers to let up. Some monster to appear.
But nothing. All this place had was empty stone tunnels. It really was empty.
The minutes slogged on. Every step was a new torture. Many times, Jack considered turning around and just fighting, even if it meant death, but his heart was made of fist, and it pushed him ever onward. Every time they turned, he thought he would fall over, barely staying on track.
His mind was swimming now. Running was his entire existence, his purpose. The reason had stopped mattering, all directions were fused into one. He no longer felt pain. He simply moved his legs and kept going.
Suddenly, his exhaustion disappeared. It felt like he was flying on clouds. His heart surged with joy. His steps got sturdier and stronger, his stride widened, and before long, he was flying through the tunnels, relaxed and free like a bird, euphoric. He was a gust of wind flowing through, a fist in trajectory to meet the next face.
Nauja must have felt the same, because she accelerated. They darted through the tunnels, making sharp turns, opening the distance. The encroaching footsteps were softer now, farther away. They were escaping. They had done it.
The minotaur’s bellows went from a voice next to their ears to a far-away, forgotten sound. The tunnels echoed it, but it was nothing but a memory. The footsteps softened in their ears, slowly disappearing. Jack laughed, a carefree, exalted peal. Nauja laughed with him. They were birds, wind, the Dao itself.
And then, as suddenly as it had come, their energy disappeared. They returned to reality so hard that Jack almost lost his steps. Everything was pain. His chest was shaven from the inside, his throat was filled with razors. His legs were numb. His muscles were no longer responding. He had the will to bear through the pain, but his body simply had nothing else to give.
He could no longer run. He slowed to a walking pace, his legs moving shakily by themselves, like they were no longer his. Nauja saw him and slowed down as well. Instantly she groaned with pain. She paused for a moment before forcing herself to keep going, but it was a slog.
Every step, they almost collapsed. Jack’s eyes were bulging out. He yearned for release, to stop, but kept himself going. When Nauja faltered and tripped, he grabbed her waist, put her on his shoulder, and kept walking, for he could no longer run. They had to escape.
The footsteps that had almost disappeared were returning now. Slowly, steadily, they were getting louder. Approaching. They went from whispers, to thumps, to stomps. Jack felt despair creep in. He couldn’t fight in this condition. He had to escape.
His mind released all unnecessary functions. All that mattered was to keep walking.
The footsteps drew closer. The stomps became crashes, then peals of thunder. Jack maintained a simile of hope, a tiny prayer that, even at the last moment, the pursuers would collapse. He kept going.
The thunderous footsteps paused. He heard a faint gasp. A flicker of hope welled up inside him. It had happened. They had experienced the same euphoria he had, then crashed down hard. Maybe this would make them stop. He just had to walk a little bit more. A little bit more.
He took another step and ran into a dead-end.
Brock started screaming, dropping down and dragging Jack backward. He barely stopped as a draft reached him from below. He forced his bleary eyes to focus. A lighter darkness was in front of his feet, a hole going down. He wanted to jump, but Brock was pulling at the back of his pants.
“Deep?” he managed to croak out.
“Yes!” Brock shouted. “Yes!”
At this state, a fall would leave them completely mangled. Easy pickings.
Jack wanted to laugh. This was it. He had tried so hard, pushed himself to the limit, endured this torture only to come within reach of escape…but be cursed with bad luck.
Now, even if the hole disappeared, his legs wouldn’t carry him anymore.
“This world hates me,” he muttered, throat scratched with every word. “It hates me!”
A bestial, guttural scream tore through what remained of his throat, crashing into the stones only to disappear. Jack collapsed into a heap. His arms had some power still, but he couldn’t stand. Nauja fell with him, and she tried to draw her bow, tried to nock an arrow. It manifested half-way, out of thin air, then winked out of existence. Her arms fell to the ground, defeated.
The footsteps approached. A shape rounded the corner. A bull. No—a minotaur. A hulking beast on all fours that slowly stood up as it saw him on the ground, releasing a triumphant roar.
A final hint of hope blossomed inside Jack. The minotaur was alone and exhausted, like them. Maybe they could take him.
But even that bit of hope was dashed as he saw the darkness flickering. The invisible one was here, too. And, a moment later, the shadow of a staff peeked through the opening.
“I told you,” the minotaur’s rough voice filled the tunnel. He sounded exhausted but satisfied. “You cannot…escape.”
Stubbornness welled up inside Jack. He wasn’t going to just wait for death. There was a hole behind him. What was the worst that could happen? Smash his head on a rock?
If the minotaur wanted to take him, he had to jump exhausted into a hole.
“Fuck you,” Jack said, tilting back. He let his body topple, falling over the edge. Time slowed down. The shimmering darkness flickered. A dagger crossed the air, its familiar whistle echoing in Jack’s ears like the calling of death.
Gravity was pulling him, but at their level, everything was happening too fast. Gravity was slow. He could see the darkness deepening as the dagger approaching his face, and he struggled to raise a hand to defend.
A staff smacked it out of the air. Brock stood before him, screaming in defiance and bitterness. He had been carried all the way—he was fresh, but also too weak to help. These people were so far above him that he could do absolutely nothing.
Still, he tried.
The dagger veered off its path, only grazing Jack’s ear instead of stabbing his eye. The minotaur roared. Somehow, he found the strength to lunge forward, raising his tower shield from its edge to bring it down like a club. However, Jack could see that the strike wouldn’t be on time. He would fall before the shield did.
Brock, turned the other way, couldn’t see that. He tried to smack the minotaur’s side. The Staff of Stone whirled through the air, but in the end, he was just far too weak. Bocor let it land, not even bothering to defend, then took a hand off his falling shield and slapped Brock across the face. The strike wasn’t strong, but it was fast, faster than the shield could fall. Simply an insult.
Brock was thrown aside by the strike, his cheek red, gaze frozen in surprise and rage. In that moment, the shield crashed down.
The little brorilla recovered, but he still didn’t retreat. He thought Jack was behind him, defenseless. He roared in anger and threw himself forward, ready to give his life to defend his big bro. Jack grabbed his tail just in time. He dragged Brock along, pulling him just an inch away from the falling wall of metal that almost broke his head. The shield slapped against the rock floor, barely missing Jack and Brock as they were tumbling down the hole.
Brock hollered, throwing a poop at the minotaur as he fell. Bocor’s cry of rage followed them down the hole.
And they fell.
Comments
Timothy simpson
I gotta say, I stopped and had a whole internal debate about "moisture dampening" for like 5 minutes. But basically it boils down to, can you make water wet? If you can then dampen away.
