CHAPTER TWELVE
The Lichen
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
"System, no matter how much I look at it, I'm fighting a losing battle. Even the goblin has higher charisma than me." Abo said, eyeing the stat windows with growing unease.
The numbers painted a grim picture. The direwolves had raw physical superiority: 35 power versus his current measly stats. 40 speed that would let them close distance in heartbeats. But they had one critical weakness that the chaos had masked: perception.
In absolute darkness, his Heightened Senses gave him a massive advantage. He could detect their positions, their breathing, even their heartbeats within fifteen meters. They were operating blind, relying on scent and sound.
His smile faded as his senses sharpened, catching the low growls of direwolves prowling nearby. Their enhanced perception meant they'd already caught his scent, but in this consuming darkness, that was all they had.
"First things first," he muttered, voice rough. "Kill these mutts. Looks like I'm not the only one hunting blind."
The remaining enemies had spread out after witnessing the massacre, no longer bunched together. Six direwolves prowled cautiously through the darkness, their claws clicking softly against stone. Eight orcs hung back near the rear, their heavy breathing audible even at distance.
But it was the darkness that remained his greatest ally. Total, consuming darkness that rendered their superior speed meaningless.
Abo moved through the shadows smoother than before, silent as death itself. His Heightened Senses painted a mental map of the closest direwolf's position, ten feet away, breathing hard, confused by the scent trails mixing with fresh blood.
He struck without hesitation. No wide swings, no wasted motion. The shovel's tip slid deep into the wolf's neck, punching through fur and flesh. The blade scraped against vertebrae before finding the gap between bones.
Arterial blood erupted in a crimson geyser, painting the stone walls with wet heat. The wolf's eyes went wide with shock, pupils dilating as its brain tried to process the sudden absence of oxygen. It made a choking sound, half-growl, half-gurgle, as blood filled its throat.
"Grkk... what... what was..."
The wolf's voice came out as a weak whisper, breaking into bloody foam as it hit the ground. Flesh tore with a wet, ugly sound as Abo twisted the blade in deeper. The wolf froze. Its eyes went wide with the sudden realization it was dying, then it dropped, blood pouring out in thick pools that stank of copper and fear.
"The demon's back!" a goblin voice hissed from somewhere in the darkness, one of the few survivors.
The remaining direwolves growled, noses twitching as they struggled to track him through the tangled maze of scent trails.
"He's faster this time," one wolf muttered, voice thick with tension and barely-controlled panic.
"That bastard killed my brother!" snarled another, the wolf whose tendons had been severed, who had bitten his allies in blind confusion. Crouched in shadow, Abo felt that familiar, sick deja vu. The words hit deeper than they should have.'
System: Your kill count of sibling relations exceeds baseline expectations. The correlation is statistically significant.
"Not funny, System," Abo snapped, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. Blood welled fresh from a self-inflicted cut to trigger Battle Instinct, but this time he dug the blade deeper than necessary.
He poised himself like a predator, ears twitching, mapping his prey's positions in his mind. The same direwolf padded closer, guided by the scent of its packmate's blood. In the absolute darkness, it moved hesitantly, as it searched for the source of the killing.
"Ravenclaw? Ravenclaw, where are you?" The wolf's voice rang out, thick with concern, almost too human in its emotional weight. "I can smell your blood, brother. Where—"
Abo's grip tightened on the shovel. He didn't hesitate. The blade didn't just sever the rear tendon this time, it shredded it. Abo twisted the shovel as it struck, not aiming for efficiency but cruelty. Metal grated bone. He ground it in. Bone splintered, and muscle fibers tore apart.
The wolf screamed, not a howl, but an actual scream that could have come from a human throat. "AHHHH! My leg! My fucking leg!" It collapsed in place, rear legs useless, claws skittering for purchase as it tried to crawl away. Blood poured in thick pulses, each beat of its heart leaving a fresh spatter on the stone.
"Help me! Someone help me!" it wailed, voice breaking with pain and terror. "I can't... I can't feel my leg! It's gone! It's fucking gone!"
Circling around through the shadows, he approached the crippled wolf from behind. It was still trying to crawl away, leaving a trail of blood, like a crimson slug across the stone. "Your packmates aren't coming," Abo whispered directly into the wolf's ear, his child-like voice carrying an eerie edge that made the wolf's spine crawl. "Just like no one came for him."
The wolf whimpered. Maybe it still believed the thing it mauled in the dark was a goblin, but Abo knew it wasn't. He didn't finish it, he let it bleed, and left it twitching in its own panic. In the dark, a crippled wolf was useless, but useful to him. The blood wasn't just collateral; it was on purpose.
He'd been painting the cavern in it, blurring scent trails, dulling their noses. Panic spread through the pack. One wolf, ears flicking, sniffed the air in short bursts, then stopped. Its head jerked as it tried to pinpoint his scent. "Where... where are you? Show yourself, demon!"
"I'm right here." Abo's shovel sliced deep across the wolf's spine. Blood sprayed onto the stone as the vertebrae cracked under the force. The wolf convulsed, spine arching as neurons fired in chaotic patterns. Foam gathered at the corners of its mouth.
"Please," it gasped, the word barely recognizable through its panting. "Please, I have cubs. Three cubs back at the den. They need their father." Abo hesitated for a moment, shovel raised. Then he drove the blade into the wolf's stomach, hard enough to punch through to the spine. The steel didn't just part flesh, it destroyed it. Abo twisted the shovel as he pulled it free. Intestines spilled out in gray coils, steaming in the cold air.
"My... my cubs..." it whispered, blood trickling from the corner of its mouth. "Tell them... tell them daddy tried to come home..." Its eyes went glassy, reflecting the faint luminescence coming from the ground beside it.
"Shadowfang's down!" another wolf called from the darkness, voice cracking with grief and rage. "The bastard's killing us one by one!"
"We can't see him!"
"Where is he?!"
"I'm going to tear his throat out!"
Abo grinned like a lunatic, eyes gleaming with satisfaction as he stalked his next victim. The remaining wolves were bunching together now, seeking comfort in proximity, but that just made them easier targets. He found the fourth wolf huddled near a pile of orc corpses, whimpering softly to itself. In the consuming darkness, it was just another frightened animal waiting to die.
This time, Abo went for the eyes. The shovel's tip punched into the socket with a wet pop, bursting the eyeball like an overripe grape. Blood and vitreous gel mixed as the blade scraped against the inside of the skull.
"AHHHHH! MY EYE! MY FUCKING EYE!" The wolf thrashed wildly, its remaining eye rolling in its socket as it tried to process the agony.
Blood and ocular fluid poured down its face in thick rivulets.
"Join the club," Abo muttered, already positioning himself for the killing blow.
But before he could finish, something moved in the darkness. A faint shimmer appeared, dim and unstable, flickering at the edge of his vision. His figure, crouched among the corpses with blood-slick shovel in hand, was suddenly swallowed by the faint green gloom.
An eerie glow from lichen. Then it began. One by one, patches of glowing lichen lit up along the cavern walls and across the ceiling. The light spread in waves, each patch triggering the next, filling the darkness with a steady green glow that revealed the cavern in dim, unnatural light.
The true horror of what he'd accomplished was laid bare in the growing light. Two direwolves lay in spreading pools of blood, one with its throat opened like a second mouth, another disemboweled with intestines spilling across the floor. The four remaining wolves backed away in terror, their superior speed finally usable now that they could see their diminutive tormentor.
"No," Abo breathed, watching his critical advantage evaporate as the cave transformed from pitch black to dim twilight. "Not now."
The crippled wolf with the ruined eye managed to focus its remaining vision on him. "There! There he is! The little monster!"
Eight pairs of orcish eyes locked onto his small form from the rear of the cavern. The two uninjured wolves bared their fangs, no longer afraid now that the darkness had lifted. But it was the half-dead wolf, the one begging for mercy just moments before, that spoke the words that chilled him to the bone:
"You're going to die slow for what you did to us, baby demon. Real fucking slow."
⚠ SYSTEM ALERT
Environmental response escalating! The lichen is reacting to mana saturation from combat.
Blood from mana-born entities has soaked the ground, triggering rapid luminescence!
Visibility is spiking, your concealment is failing! Tactical advantage critically compromised!
RECOMMEND IMMEDIATE REPOSITIONING!
✦ ✦ ✦
End of Chapter