Chapter 74 - Hunting Footsteps

The other entrance upwards was close to the abandoned base of the lizards. Max doubted the enemy [Trapper] had had time to set anything nasty up, but he still went for a balanced approach of speed and care. Fact of the matter was that Max didn’t know much at the moment. The enemy could be making a beeline towards their home base, or they could be catching their breath on the upper floor.

But there was only one way to get more information. And that way was going forward.

So Max took up the stairs and ascended them, all the while gripping Maverick’s handle in the holster and listening carefully. There were no bodies of lizards on the stairs. That didn’t surprise Max, considering the monster-bugs weren’t exactly adept climbers.

Max had actually seen a few of them scuttle here and there in the corridors. Maverick hated them. Every time Max used [Tether] to get up on the wall high enough for the swarms of bugs to lose interest in him, the gun sent an involuntary mental shudder through their bond.

“What?” Max whispered. “Don’t like bugs?”

“They are disgusting, wretched creatures from hell.”

“Didn’t peg you for a sensitive type, Mav.”

“It’s about being a sensible type. Bugs are icky. Any reasonable person will agree with me.”

“Icky or not, they were really useful. You’d still be in lizard-people claws if it weren’t for these.”

“I’ll write a thank you letter to the bugs in my memoirs.”

“How are you going to write a book?” Max asked, chuckling as he reached for his water flask.

“Dictate of course!” Maverick said.

The implication wasn’t lost on Max. “Of course…”

When the two of them got up on the first floor of the dungeon, they quieted down and lost their levity. The enemy could be here. Max doubted they were actively waiting for him to follow them, but it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.

Indeed, Max noticed a tripwire fairly close to the stairs. With Max’s enhanced darkvision, from Cultivation and just simply spending days in darkness, combined with getting better and better at noticing traps, he leapt over the tripwire with reasonable confidence. He had even checked for a double trap, like the [Trapper] had once tried pulling off.

“You’re becoming less of a klutz,” Maverick said.

“Shut up.” Max hissed.

There weren't any signs of movement, but a few more traps had been laid out. It didn’t seem like the enemy had stayed intending to delve the dungeon further. That was just perfect for Max. He wanted to know where the enemy would go from hereon. With that in mind, he went onwards.

There were dozens of bodies of the [Twisted Wretches] strewn on the ground. The Lizards had made short work of them. Max wasn’t surprised. He had managed to kill scores of them with the help of what were basically NPCs. A group of well organized humans wouldn’t have had trouble with the swarms of these Wretches. The lizards were as formidable foe as humans were. Actually even more formidable.

They came in here with the strength of twenty [Combatants]. All of them decently high level. I don’t know what’s going on in other human settlements, but as far as I know, humans are WAY behind the eightball on combat prowess.

And combat was ultimately what this exercise for survival was all about. Sure Joshua’s people were reasonably comfy and productive. You needed a baseline of survival, before you could fight in any case. Having them settle an outpost in the caves of the Dreadlands had been a good idea. That would make humans harder and more capable. And that was what was needed.

The lizards weren’t that great at fighting though. I basically destroyed their group single-handedly. I’ll need to find out what they’re doing.

On a whim Max tried looting the [Twisted Wretches] piled up in the corridors, but they had been cleaned up. The lizards weren’t stupid.

The smell of death was so intense, it almost made Max want to puke. Any undue delicacy had been sheared off him by the new reality, but that didn’t make the smell of decay any more savory.

It didn’t take long for Max to get out of the dungeon. A similar heavy door was ajar ahead. A red light was ahead. It was dim, nothing like torchlight. Indeed when Max came to the other side of the doors, it was just a platform of obsidian atop lava.

This has to be part of the old dwarven kingdom. It’s abandoned though. The heat is nasty, but we could maybe live here.

A pulse from Maverick stopped him in his tracks. It clearly said “STOP! LOOK OUT!”

It was a good thing, Max did. He was just about to reach for the handle of a stone door leading out of the room. It was a black, sleek thing, slightly ajar. But in the dim red light, a gleam of string gave off a reflection.

“Shit,” Max whispered to himself. “How did you even see that?”

“I don’t know,” Maverick said. “But that’s a problem.”

It sure was. The door was trapped. If Max had pushed it open, it would have triggered whatever trap was installed there.

“Just use [Tether] on it and let's carry on,” Maverick said.

“Yeah…” Max muttered. “But then she will know I’m coming.”

“Crap,” Maverick said. “Well unless you’re going to magically lose fifty pounds, I don’t see you squeezing through that slit.”

“I could toss you on the other side and—”

“And what, genius? Maybe I’ll sprout some hands and disarm it? For all we know disarming it will alert the [Trapper]. Just stop wasting time.”

As much as it annoyed Max, Maverick was right. He took a few paces back and used [Tether] to push the door open. A bunch of rocks smashed into the doorway, throwing up a billowing cloud of light gray dust. Few cracked pieces of rock flew at Max, but they dealt no damage.

“We have to hurry now,” Max said, more to himself and cast [Alter Gravity] on himself and [The Maverick] so they could run faster.

Having discarded care for speed meant that Max sprung another two traps. The other one chunked him for 40 Health, but with adept use of [Tether] combined with him running straight ahead, meant that he dodged any severe damage. It was too late to avoid traps. Slassekhsnas knew he was coming to settle the score.

Max actually got lost a few times in the corridors, hitting a deadend twice. What helped him find a winning route was actually following the traps that had been left behind for him. Using them as breadcrumbs, Max finally ascended and found another door. From the outside he could see a faint orange light of the sun of Alpha Ludus, and the acrid smell of the Dreadlands hit him. Without thinking twice, Max used [Tether] to push the doors open. No trap was sprung, but it had still been the right thing to do. Max thought it to be a good sign that this door wasn’t trapped. That meant Slassekhsnas had run out of time or materials. Preferably the latter.

The light of the outside world was almost blinding to Max’s eyes. He blinked through the tears and tried to look around him. He had popped up in a part of the Dreadlands that was unfamiliar to him. He took a few paces forward and as he turned to his right, he saw the volcano’s side looming in the horizon.

Judging from the distance, I’m probably a few miles away from the outpost. Four miles? Something like that. I think I know what direction I’d need to go to find them. But it’s not time for that now.

There was a path winding down in the ashy ground that had been clearly made by footprints driven by haste. You didn’t need to be a professional big game hunter to see these tracks. Max followed the path in ashes made by the lizards. He came up on a hillside, at which he lost the tracks, but there was enough suspicious rubble on the ground to see where the lizards had landed. Faint marks of a path they had used to run could be seen yonder.

Max lifted up his gaze. He saw a pack of Vilefiends a few hundred yards away, but that wasn’t interesting. What was interesting was the pack of half a dozen lizards maybe a mile away in the distance. They weren’t much but a speck moving into the distance. Max couldn’t tell if they had noticed him or not.

It hardly mattered. Max had taken the lizards on when it had been twenty to one. Now there were six or seven of the enemy left. The strongest enemy was a [Trapper] and they were in open country.

Max was done hiding and skulking around in the shadows. It was time to hunt.