"Zach?"
"Zach...."
_Silence_
"For the love of God, Zachariah!..."
Zach blinked from his daze as he turned to the side.
"What!". Ingrid, the leader of the excavation team, looked at him with a bit of a worried expression. "Are you okay?" he asked.
Zach looked around. The deafening sound of heavy machinery echoed in the background. He held a shock rod in his hands—the digging tool hummed faintly as he gripped it.
"Probably..." Zach murmured sarcastically, plugging the drilling device into the boulder.
The leader—a bald man wearing a construction uniform—nodded and strolled away to inspect the other miners.
Man, the crap I'd put up with for a paycheck. Zach internally grimaced.
Zach's group was here because a corporation had recently cleared this fissure, and they were inching to extract the spoils. Zach clicked a button by the tool, and the metal bar vibrated, splitting the rock in two with a satisfying crunch, revealing a red gemstone just beneath the concrete—an orb the size of a grown man's fist. Zach sighed as he picked it up.
This was the stuff the co-op was after. Blood stones. The kind of stuff that paid more in a week than most people make in a year.
With a carefree expression, Zach tossed the red ball into a nearby carrier filled with blood stones to the top. The company had hired contractors and miners to clear out the tunnels and haul the ore. Unfortunately, Zach was one of them.
Above them, drones scanned every crevice of this jagged cave. Zach had to resist the urge; if he could just grab a stone and fit it into his pocket, he would be set for life. But that was impossible. The drones would spot him and raise the alarm before he could even lift a finger. Next thing he knew, he'd be charged with theft and executed on the spot... which, considering how expensive these stones were, might actually be the cheaper option.
The cave was a jagged crevice littered with red gems, dark and gloomy, its walls seemed to close in on him as barnacles littered on the walls oozed with the smell of burnt steak. Sweat dripped from Zach's face, his black hair stuck to his temple, as his tired grey eyes scanned the area. He was covered in dust and debris, wearing a construction uniform covered in dirt and mold.
"Uh... boss, you might want to check this out." Zach heard a fellow coworker.
The group of miners gathered around, looking at what looked like a mold of breathing flesh lodged in a boulder.
It pulsated, shifting unnaturally.
"I saw this when I drilled the stone open. Should we be worried?" the miner inquired.
"The hell is that?" The group was unsettled.
Ingrid squeezed through the crowd.
"Huh... this?" He tapped at the fleshy fungus with his boot. "Probably rot from a dead thyxar..." "Now get back to work..." he commanded with his usual grumpy tone.
As expected...Zach sighed, striking another rock with the rod. Thyxars are monsters from another reality that somehow ended up here a long time ago, wielding insane strength and devastating powers; they drove humanity to the brink of extinction.
Zach grabbed a blood stone and chucked it into the pile. "Careful! That thing's worth our salary for ten years," a worker hissed.
"Yeah... yeah, sure thing."
Humans were desperate clinging onto life, but that's when special beings called Seekers—special entities wielding soul cards that allow them to cast skills like in a gacha game—conveniently saved humanity's ass at the right time.
Huge machinery was lifting boulders in the distance, and the sound of power drills filled the air. But the piercing scream of the captain echoed regardless.
Zach's survival instincts kicked in.
In the distance, the mass of flesh latched itself onto the captain's shoulder with an explosive burst of speed, seeping into his skin like molten tar. The group instantly stopped what they were doing as the captain fell on his knees, writhing like a madman.
He....He touched it?
_Blare_ _Blare_ The drones let off an alarm. Signalling that a thyxar had been spotted.
Zach could see it, the captain's veins bulged black, spreading down his arms and legs, like something was crawling through.
"T—that's not normal..." A miner steped back in horror.
The cave fell into silence the only noise echoing was the alarm. Zach's heart instantly dropped to his stomach.
W... what is that?
A worker instantly bolted towards the exit, but it was too late. The captain's figure jumped forward, biting down on the man's shoulder; the miner screamed, and the excavation group scattered.
"A thyxar?, I thought the company's Seekers cleared this area dammit!."
"No way, it's a monster... a monster!"
"Get back!!"
Panic filled the cave.
They were in an underground cave, so the only way out was to climb through a ladder that led to an opening out into the forest above. But the captain blocked the exit.
The man being chewed on stopped moving, then dissolved, merging into the manager's bulky frame. His construction uniform tore at the seams as his body swelled.
Zach could hear bones snapping as the captain's body twisted at an unnatural angle and then reformed into a tall, hulking frame that towered over the excavation workers.
Zach could hear his heartbeat.
Everything seemed to slow down.
"RUN!!!!!"
The monster—with its massive jaw that drew from ear to ear—exploded with movement, biting down on a worker's head and ripping it off with a sickening crack. The worker's body was absorbed into it, making the huge abomination even bigger.
It's eyes trailed off to a scrawny looking miner by the side holding a shock rod.
Zach's body tensed. The abomination's eyes locked on him. With its powerful legs, it shot at Zach, However, Zach wasn't having it. He rolled to the side, instantly avoiding the monster's movement by a hair's breadth. The monster's body slammed into the wall behind, making the wall cave in with an explosive force of a dynamite.
"We're screwed!!"
"Somebody call the association."
The workers panicked. But Zach didn't. With calm steps, he backed away from the monster, slowly.
The monster locked eyes on him again and charged, swinging it's massive jaws. This time, Zach wasn't able to move away in time, and the beast's robust claws stuck Zach's side, throwing him a few meters out.
Pain flared up in Zach's body, his lungs flared as his brain felt like it shut down for a moment, his vison turning white. His back collided with a nearby wall,spine caving in. What followed next were the screams of his companions being torn apart. Zach coughed up blood. His vision hazy, his ribs screamed at him, but somehow he staggered to his feet, blood trickling from his temple. On his shoulder a deep cut bleed crimson, Tearing up the mining uniform.
The sounds were there. There alarms, the screams. The scent of iron and the metallic taste of blood were on his lips, confirming it.
Somehow, he was alive. But not for long.
The monster moved from one victim to another in rapid succession, ripping them apart before absorbing them. Growing each time.
Then everything went dead silent. There were only a few miners left.
"Hey, you!" Zach called out to a middle aged man shivering in the distance in terror.
"I have a plan. But you're gonna have to risk your life, okay?" The miner, a middle-aged man with messy hair glanced at zach, still terrified.
"Zach had a plan"
"I think I can do this... Probably..."