By the time we were approaching the cave, we’d taken down three more Gorg groups and a handful of stragglers. Enough fighting had given the group some experience in coordinating with each other; we experienced a couple of close calls, but ultimately, we managed to prevail.

  It had also given us something else: confidence.

  Not arrogance—we weren’t stupid enough for that—but the solid, grounded kind that comes from knowing you’ve bled together and still come out standing.

  Even Marcus, usually gruff and reserved, walked with his shoulders a little lighter.

  Jack exhaled loudly, stretching his neck as we moved up the incline. “Well… I have to say it. Once you get used to how these overgrown bastards move, it’s not that bad.”

  Quinn snorted. “Yeah. Big, loud, stupid. Like fighting a toddler with muscles.”

  “A toddler that can rip your spine out,” Marcus muttered.

  “Details,” Quinn said, unfazed.

  Alya wiped her blade clean on a shredded bit of cloth she got for that exact purpose. “You just need to commit to the swing. They don’t dodge. Or if they do, they do it too slowly.”

  Mary was the only one who looked a bit left out—though not upset, just amused. “I’m glad you’re all getting achievements and levels,” she said, smiling warmly. “But please stop asking me which one I’ll pick. I cannot kill something ten levels above me with a stick and a shield.”

  Quinn grinned. “You could if you really tried.”

  Mary raised a brow. “Child, I have known you for a day. And I already know you don’t want to see me ‘really try.’”

  Quinn opened his mouth like he wanted to protest… then closed it.

  Being strong was not yet something the kid was capable of leveraging, not that it would be a good idea to start doing that with the only healer with us, but anyway…

  We kept walking, the slope growing steeper.

  After a moment Quinn glanced between Mary and me, squinting as though trying to place something. “So… uh… you two know each other or something?”

  Mary blinked. “That’s true, actually. Elias… do we? You look familiar. I keep getting this weird feeling that I’ve seen you before.”

  I shook my head. “No. Definitely not. I’d remember.”

  She frowned. “Hmm. Then maybe you’re somebody famous? TV? Influencer?”

  I hesitated not because I was hiding it, but because it felt strange explaining your life when your current one involved stabbing monsters.

  “Maybe you saw me in the news,” I offered. “I’m… or I was a lawyer. I took a major case against Virexon Materials just before all of this.”

  Both Mary and Jack snapped their fingers at the same time.

  “Aaah, that’s where I know you from!” Jack said.

  Mary nodded vigorously. “Yes! Yes! I knew your face wasn’t new!”

  Alya slowed her steps, glancing back over her shoulder. “What is this about? I really don’t watch the news anymore…”

  Before I could answer, Jack jumped in.

  “Important? Elias is, sorry, was... pretty damn famous in legal circles. Took impossible cases. Took them pro bono too. Won against corporations, politicians… flipped the table on people no one else could touch.”

  Alya looked surprised, genuinely surprised, brows high, sword resting against her shoulder. “You didn’t tell me you were that well-known.”

  I lifted a hand dismissively. “I’m not. Not in any public way. Just… in a small circle that paid attention. My job already paid well enough. So I could choose my cases. And some people needed help; the system isn’t built to give.”

  Mary blinked at me with newfound softness. Jack nodded with something like respect.

  I was used to the attention, but I didn’t really like it. So I changed the subject. “Anyway. That’s enough about me.”

  I glanced at the others. “What about you all? What were you doing before this place dragged us here?”

  Jack rubbed the back of his neck. “Construction sites. Heavy machinery. Cranes. Nothing glamorous.”

  Mary added, “I was a nurse. Lenox Hill Hospital for the past ten years.”

  Quinn shrugged, kicking a rock off the path. “Still in high school.”

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t push.

  Alya, though, answered without hesitation. “I was a manager at an AI programming company.”

  Quinn’s head snapped towards her. “AI, like… those places in the movies? Rooms full of computer nerds and blinking lights?”

  Alya actually checked herself before answering, like she didn’t want to commit too quickly. “Yes,” she said finally. “I suppose it looked like that.”

  “That sounds amazing!” Quinn said brightly.

  Alya made a face. “Not really. Those guys were… unmanageable. Indisciplined at best. My job was to make them work, and they spent half their day playing games, watching anime, or...”

  She grimaced.

  Jack chuckled. “Ogling you?”

  “Like starving cats staring at a fish counter,” she muttered. “They were funny, but not boyfriend material. More like grown-up children.”

  Mary laughed gently. “Hospitals are the opposite. They seem like boyfriend-and-husband material… but then you realise ninety per cent of them are sleeping with each other.” She sighed. “Grey’s Anatomy wasn’t that far from the truth.”

  Quinn frowned. “What’s Grey’s Anatomy?”

  Marcus, who had been quiet the entire time, exhaled in the long-suffering way of a man trapped in a conversation he did not want to be part of.

  Before anyone could answer Quinn, the mountain wall bent left, revealing the shadowed opening of a cavern.

  A warm and smelly wind blew from inside.

  Finally.

  I lifted a hand to stop the others. “We’re here.”

  The shift in the group was immediate.

  The joking died.

  The warmth drained.

  Every face tightened into the same serious expression.

  I took a breath, touching the grimoire at my hip.

  “Alright,” I said quietly. “Same plan as before. We take them by surprise if we can. Kill by rotation.”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Quinn, you know the layout. Lead us. And keep your ears open. We do not want to get pincered. If we get surrounded in here, it’s going to become ugly really fast.”

  He nodded sharply.

  I let my voice drop even lower. “One more time: the boss is mine. Don’t heal me. Don’t cover me. Don’t toss a pebble at it. I need to see if my theory is right.”

  A mixed chorus answered me, “okay”, “fine”, “we know”, and “got it”, all layered on top of each other.

  Good.

  We stepped into the cave.

  The smell hit instantly: foetid rot, wet fur, and something sour and mouldy. Bones littered the entrance: things I didn’t recognise. Patches of half-rotten pelt clung to the rock floor like scabs. And the walls… Someone, something, had smeared crude shapes across them in drying, flaking blood.

  I forced myself to breathe through my mouth.

  Light filtered in through holes in the cave walls, thin white shafts piercing the darkness like spears. Enough to see, but not enough to see clearly.

  Quinn motioned us forward silently, weaving through stone pillars and narrow corridors until we reached a split in the path. He pointed left, and we followed.

  Twenty seconds later, we stopped again.

  Three Gorg hunched over a carcas in the centre of a small chamber, ripping and swallowing hunks of meat with gluttonous abandon. One faced us; the other two had their backs turned. We immediately retreated behind cover.

  I whispered, “I’ll take the one watching us. Marcus, right. Quinn left.”

  They nodded.

  We moved as one.

  I stepped out first, mana surging through the grimoire and into my fingertips. The projectile formed instantly, denser, darker, and cleaner than anything I’d managed before. I fired, and it ripped through the Gorg’s skull like wet paper. Brain matter sprayed across the carcas.

  The creature collapsed face-first in its last meal without a sound.

  The other two barely reacted, still gorging themselves, hunched over like pigs at a trough.

  Quinn became a living shadow, sliding behind one and slitting its throat so fast the Gorg didn’t even stop chewing. Marcus’s spear whistled through the air and punched straight through the last Gorg’s chest. Heartshot. The creature jerked, choking silently, then toppled.

  I felt a curl of satisfaction.

  This power… This control… The grimoire made the curse worth the pain.

  We moved deeper.

  Two more Gorg were sleeping in the next chamber. Jack and Alya handled them—silent, efficient, a spear through the heart and a blade through the throat. Marcus killed another with a perfectly thrown spear straight into the eye socket. He was really improving his aim.

  Room after room, Quinn guided us.

  Left. Straight. Down. Up a narrow path. Left again.

  But we didn’t find any more gorgs; it was strange. Last time it was much more crowded; maybe we killed enough to thin this particular population. Or clan, or whatever.

  Finally, Quinn held up a hand.

  “We’re close,” he whispered. “Just around that bend.”

  We all froze as Jack tilted his head. “Wait,” he murmured. “Do you hear that?”

  We listened.

  A steady, multi-rhythmic thump, thump, thump carried through the stone.

  Wet.

  Heavy.

  Wrong.

  Mary swallowed audibly. “That’s not what I think it is… right?”

  No one answered.

  We crept forward until the tunnel opened into something massive.

  A cavern the size of a cathedral unfolded before us—lit from above by a huge natural skylight where water dripped down into a clear pool. A crooked little tree grew straight out of the water, its branches sagging with strange fruits that glowed faintly in the dim.

  It could’ve been beautiful.

  But the scene in front ruined any hope of that.

  Bones. Piles of them.

  Skins.

  Rotting heaps of meat.

  A stench thick enough to taste.

  And seven Gorg, seven, were furiously humping a massive, swollen lump of flesh with arms and legs.

  The females, I realised. If you could call those things “female”.

  “Oh God,” Jack whispered, horrified. “Are those…?”

  “Yea…” I confirmed grimly.

  Quinn gagged, covering his mouth. “I’m going to throw up.”

  I was still processing the grotesque spectacle when something even worse caught my eye.

  Farther back. In the darkest corner.

  Moving.

  The Gorg leader.

  A monstrous bulk even by their standards, massive, scarred, muscles like boulders, and just as deeply occupied as the others.

  “Oh hell,” Mary breathed. “That thing is… that thing is the size of a fire extinguisher. The industrial kind.”

  I gestured at them and pulled everyone back behind the bend we previously came from.

  “Alright,” I whispered. “There are three mages. They go down first. Quinn, Marcus, and Jack, you take them. Fast. Quiet as you can.”

  “And the others?” Marcus asked.

  “Kill them after the mages drop. Females won’t move probably; they don’t seem to be able to do that given the proportion between those spindly limbs and their body, so ignore them. They are all busy fornicating, so the distraction will probably be enough to sweep them even before they react. I know you can handle yourself.”

  Alya stared at me. “And the leader? Elias… that thing is like four metres. At least.”

  I looked at her and let a slow, confident smile spread across my face.

  “It’s fine. I told you I have a plan.”

  Alya didn’t look convinced.

  But I was.

  Because it was time.

  Time to earn a new achievement.

  20 chapters ahead!