Chapter 11 – The Second Earthborer

The Mana Crystal atop Elara’s cap flared. In a panic, she cast Mire.

Solid ground became a bog beneath the Earthborer. The stone fragments it had torn loose dissolved into muddy water.

The transformed layer was not deep. Farther below, where the end of the giant worm’s body remained underground, the earth was still firm.

Using that buried section for leverage, the Earthborer continued to drag itself slowly downward.

Evan had no intention of watching it escape.

“Elara, keep casting Mire. Don’t stop!”

“All right.”

The Puffcaps taking damage around the cavern finally returned fire. The soft popping of Spore Cannons became continuous.

Evan concentrated every shot on the section where the Earthborer’s stone armor had shattered.

Its HP fell steadily on the Status Panel. At the speed it was burrowing, it could not escape.

They were going to succeed.

This was Evan’s path out of the dungeon. Once the Earthborer died, he could move here temporarily, decompose the corpse, and obtain its skill. Then he could dig upward and see daylight again.

It had been so long since he felt the sun.

But why was the ground trembling again?

The vibration was coming from...

...

“Elara, run back!”

“What?”

Focused on maintaining Mire, Elara did not understand. She took two instinctive steps backward.

Another colossal worm burst through the stone directly in front of her.

A ridge of rocky armor struck Elara like an uppercut and hurled her into the passage.

“Elara? Elara!”

She did not answer. Evan opened her Status Panel in alarm.

She had lost 400 HP.

With more than 3,000 HP, she was nowhere near death, but the impact had clearly knocked her unconscious.

Four nearby Puffcaps collected Elara and the fallen A-grade Mana Crystal, then carried both deeper into the tunnel.

Elara was safe for the moment. The battle was not.

The second Earthborer rampaged through the cavern, crushing Puffcaps by the score.

Without Elara to maintain it, the bog around the wounded Earthborer began to harden. The creature’s burrowing speed increased visibly.

Why was there a second Earthborer?

Had Evan used so many Mana Crystals that the bait became too enticing?

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Or did the worms possess some sense of companionship and come to one another’s aid?

There was no time to consider it. Defeating the newcomer was impossible. Evan concentrated his remaining firepower on the wounded target.

He ignored the Puffcaps dying all around it and unleashed everything he had.

If only he could reduce its HP to 0 before it escaped.

* * *

“What? Another Earthborer knocked me away?”

Twenty-three Puffcaps and one newly awakened Elara, who was still confused and somehow a little excited.

That was the full strength of the force that made it back to the Mycelial Garden.

The wounded Earthborer escaped with only a sliver of HP remaining. Meanwhile, the second worm inflicted devastating losses on the surviving Puffcaps.

Worse, collapses had cut off large sections of the cavern. Many Puffcaps could not reach the passage home and had to be abandoned.

The mana disturbance from the battle had at least frightened away every small monster in the area. The survivors encountered no further attacks on the retreat.

Otherwise, none of them might have returned.

Evan felt like a speculator who had wagered his entire fortune and lost it all.

His savings were gone.

At least the dungeon had no mortgages. He still owned the Mycelial Garden.

One mushroom’s sorrow was incomprehensible to another.

Evan mourned his losses. Elara was in an excellent mood.

She did not know that Evan had hunted the Earthborer as a means of escaping the dungeon, nor how much he had wagered on the attempt.

As far as she was concerned, they could simply organize another hunt. Surely two Earthborers would not appear every time.

What mattered was that Evan had kept his promise. The A-grade Mana Crystal tied to her cap now belonged to her.

Elara decided she would call him Boss from now on.

And the Earthborer that had nearly bitten her?

The danger did not feel real.

She had lost consciousness immediately. Regeneration LV4 restored her completely before she woke. She had no memory of being injured at all. It felt as though she had earned the Mana Crystal by taking a nap.

She was already wondering whether the next hunt might earn her another A-grade crystal.

In one corner of the Mycelial Garden, a shaft of hyphae descended thirty feet beneath a large mushroom. It ended in an underground chamber ten feet square.

Evan’s true body grew there, an unremarkable cyan mushroom.

A prime Puffcap radiating a powerful aura shared the chamber with him.

Unlike the disposable Puffcaps elsewhere, this one had been cultivated since the Mycelial Garden’s founding. Every skill and level had been raised to Evan’s current limit.

It was a personal vehicle prepared for his true body.

Evan now faced a choice.

Should he spend a long time accumulating power and attempt another Earthborer hunt?

Or should he return to his original plan? The next time the Magma Fiend left its lair, he could place his true body inside the prime Puffcap and risk the journey upward.

* * *

At the same time, Silverthorn Company stood in the Magma Fiend Lair, where the passage from the Deep Strata met the Tenth Stratum.

“It’s so hot! Is this what the Deep Strata of the Amethyst Deep are like? Is the whole place filled with lava? Are you certain Lady Elara is here?”

Nyx tugged uncomfortably at the collar of her close-fitting clothes.

She possessed no Heat Resistance. Even after drinking a Fire Ward Potion, she could barely endure the cavern and wanted nothing more than to leave.

A Cooling Breeze settled over the group. Relief finally softened her expression.

“You saved my life.”

The light faded from Ivan’s staff, and the Halfling Archmage answered with a smile. When mana addiction did not control him, he was remarkably dependable.

Captain Nolan tested the Tracking Crystal in his hand.

“The signal is nearly horizontal. She should be somewhere in the upper reaches of the Deep Strata.”

“But these are the Deep Strata. Even I might not survive here for nearly a month.”

The first ten strata had clearly defined levels. Each possessed its own terrain, typical range of monster levels, and exploitable rules. With a reliable guide, Nyx believed she could survive any of them alone.

The Deep Strata were different. Chaos defined them. Monsters of every level roamed their tunnels, constantly shifting from one region to another. Every adventuring party that descended could encounter entirely different conditions.

Their current information was three years old. It claimed that an LV59 Magma Fiend guarded this entrance.

Now they found nothing but a field of lava.

That was good fortune, of course. It also proved that the Deep Strata had changed again. Their information was obsolete and nearly useless.

“Once we find her, we can ask how she survived,” Garrick said.

The Half-Dragon no longer sounded as despondent as he had before departure. The two worst possibilities, a Parasitic Tree or the Tentacle Nest, had been eliminated.

In Garrick’s estimation, Lady Elara’s chance of being alive and sane had risen dramatically.

From perhaps 2 percent to 20 percent.