BIOLOGICAL SUPERCOMPUTER SYSTEM-Chapter 1242: Dark Tunnels, Darker Threats (4)
Mira jumped over the fallen worker thaid and spotted her next target. Her arms changed shape as her brain crystal power activated. Her fingers turned into claws strong enough to cut through metal.
Though its feelers sensed her, it couldn't react fast enough. Mira's claws sliced through the soft spot between the bug's armored plates right at its neck. They cut into the soft flesh underneath, and Mira pushed deeper to make sure the creature died.
The dying bug shook violently on the ground. Its body hit the stone floor again and again, making the whole cave shake. Bits of rock and old dust fell from above, raining down on everyone fighting.
The worker twitched its last moments away and collapsed beside its already dead companions. Dark fluid seeped from the corpses into the stone below.
Emily activated her time-slowing brain crystal power, making the workers' movements look sluggish. Her daggers might not have been special like Amber's ones', but they were deadly in her hands, nonetheless. However, what really made her a menace was her brain crystal power. She moved between three workers, slashing at their joints where the armor was weakest.
Amber plunged the ice dagger into a worker's thorax, freezing its internal organs. Before the creature could fall, she spun and slashed another with her fire dagger; the blade igniting its organs.
The two workers attacking Amber died on the spot. Their momentum, though, made them both crash into each other. The frozen creature shattered on impact, while the other one fell on the ground and soon after turned into cinders.
Meanwhile, Mira attacked another worker. She didn't need more than her claws to do the job. She tore off the creature's arm and jumped over its head, landing behind it, killing it quickly.
Emily darted forward in her time-slowed world, her daggers finding gaps in two more workers' armor.
"Are you getting heated?" Amber called out to Emily with a smirk as she watched her friend kill the thaids with inhuman speed.
"Can you blame me? They are gross!"
Emily targeted the joints where their exoskeleton segments met, her blades finding the vulnerable connective tissue. The thaids collapsed, and she finished them with strikes through the gaps in their head plates.
Mira shapeshifted her arm into a barbed tentacle, wrapping it around a worker's thorax. She yanked the creature off, then drove her other hand's claws through its eye sockets.
Using the falling creature's weight, she jumped toward another worker and tore through its chest with her claws.
Amber froze a worker's legs to stop it from moving. Her fire dagger burned through another worker's mouth. She spun around and killed both creatures, stabbing them inside their eyes.
The battle shifted as the leaders grew desperate. Their clicking sounds became louder and faster as they tried—and failed—to command their soldiers.
Two of the largest leaders suddenly broke away from the main fight, charging toward what appeared to be the main tunnel entrance.
"Those cowards!" Mira cursed, seeing the leaders trying to escape.
"Don't let them through!"
The clones rushed to stop the leaders, swinging their mana swords. One clone hit the first leader across its body, while another cut off the second leader's legs. Both insect creatures fell to the ground, twitched a few times, and died.
The clones rushed forward to intercept the leaders. One clone lunged at the first leader. He swung his sword in a powerful arc and struck the creature across its armored torso.
The mana sword shattered the leader's shell into dozens of fragments. Dark fluid sprayed from the cracks as the creature staggered backward. The impact was so severe that fracture lines spread across its thorax and abdomen, causing pieces of its armor to fall away with each movement.
Another clone circled it, waiting for the time to strike. He swung his mana sword, severing another leader's legs. The creature flailed before crashing to the ground.
Both leaders writhed for a few last seconds as they succumbed to death. Their limbs twitched one last time before going still.
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"Ha! Should've bugged out while you had the chance!" a clone said, watching the move.
The death of the bugs seemed to break something in the remaining thaids. The workers' movements became increasingly agitated, yet that wasn't enough to make them stop.
"We need to finish them!" June said. "Without their leaders, they're disorganized. Attack in pairs and don't let them regroup!"
The last phase of the battle was brutally efficient. Without their leaders' coordination, the remaining thaids fell to the group's tactics. The group eliminated the workers, while the guards remained in their positions with suicidal determination.
After the last thaid fell, silence filled the cave—broken only by the humans' heavy breathing and the rhythmic drop of blood dripping from their weapons onto the stone floor.
June checked on everyone after the battle. No one was badly hurt—the clones only had a few scratches, which they promptly healed, while Mira, Amber, and Emily were completely fine.
Mira was already examining the dead leaders, prodding their broken shells with her claws and studying the fluid that leaked from their wounds.
June moved between the corpses. "We can't celebrate yet. If these are anything like the bug thaids from Mannard, this is just the beginning."
"Yeah," Mira said. "Damn bug colonies. I always hated them. They are never small. These guys might just be scouts or an advance guard. On Mannard, when you find bug thaids, you either find none or thousands. There's rarely anything in between."
The group gathered their weapons and observed their surroundings. They didn't waste time and immediately went through the tunnel at the back of the cave. It didn't take much for the group to find themselves in front of another conundrum.
"Three tunnels again," Emily said.
Amber went and checked out the left tunnel. She found lots of signs that the insect creatures had been using it recently. There were deep claw marks on the walls, about three inches deep.
Broken shell pieces littered the floor, some tiny, others as big as her hand. Some pieces still looked shiny and fresh.
"Looks like they use this tunnel a lot," she said, touching the smooth walls.
"The smooth rock surface and deep scratch marks make it clear this is their main route."
The middle tunnel went down steeper than the other two and went deeper into the mountain. Based on how far down it went, there might be chances this was a place the Silver Line Corporation used to build their lab.
The right tunnel was huge—about thirty feet wide and twenty feet tall. Its walls were smooth and showed marks suggesting that something enormous moved through it regularly. The group chose not to go this way, thinking that whatever creature needed such a big tunnel would be much more dangerous than the bug-like thaids they had just defeated.
June looked at the three tunnels. The left one had many signs of thaids passing through it, which probably meant it led to their nest.
The middle tunnel went down deeper into the mountain, where they might find the research facility. The right tunnel was unusually wide, making everyone wonder what kind of large creatures might use it.
However, no one wanted to find out what kind of creature needed such an enormous tunnel.
It was at that point that the group remembered the massive tunnels they had found in Liberty Watch, and that the entire city studied. Those tunnels were as large as these and looked almost identical.
The smooth walls meant they couldn't have formed naturally. The massive body they found in Liberty Watch had proven this. It was made by thaids, and most likely, this tunnel had the same origin.
On Mannard, they had only found remains of giant thaids. No one had ever seen these titans alive, though the tunnels they left behind suggested massive strength.
"Damn…"
"At least we have seen no fresh marks," Amber said, examining the tunnel walls. "Whatever made this tunnel might not be active anymore."
"Or it's just somewhere else right now," one of the clones said.
"Let's take the middle tunnel," June said. "Any research facility would have been built deep inside the mountain for safety. We're most likely to find it there, and I don't want to meet any of these monsters, or something even worse," he said while glancing at the larger tunnel.
Mira gave it some looks.
"We should leave some markers along the way," she said. "That way, we won't get lost if we need to run back."
"Makes sense," June nodded. "The tunnels are complex, and we need a way to backtrack quickly if needed. Let's use chalk marks every fifty feet."
Everyone nodded. The clones lined up in position as everyone got ready to go deeper into the mountain. No one said it out loud, but they all shared the same worry—if they picked the wrong tunnel, they might end up walking straight into a monster, or worse, a nest.
