Beast Devourer: I Grow Stronger by Eating Monsters

Raven didn’t wait to check whether the others followed.

He turned and ran.

The detonator pulsed once behind them, then again, the interval already shorter.

Before they reached the first conduit, the walls of Old Pressure Gallery began reacting. Vibrations traveled through the rock from multiple directions, and the signatures Predation had been tracking separately changed almost at once from dormant to alert, then hostile.

[Blastback Burrower Signatures Active: 7... 14... 23... 31.]

Raven didn’t need another update.

”Back the way we came!” Maelor shouted.

”No,” Raven answered as he cleared a depression in the floor. ”The main gallery is too long.”

Maelor ran beside him.

”It’s the only route we know!”

”It’s also where most of the pressure will travel when that thing explodes.”

Sila understood first. Her eyes shifted toward the side passages as she ran.

”The maintenance vent!”

”Where?”

”Thirty meters ahead, west side! It connects to the upper gallery if it hasn’t collapsed.”

”I don’t like the words ’if it hasn’t collapsed,’” Valeria said.

Raven didn’t either, but there was no better route.

Behind them, the device emitted a sharp crystalline whine—the sound of a component reaching saturation.

Raven glanced over his shoulder.

The entire alchemical circle had turned red.

”Now!”

The charge detonated.

There wasn’t enough time to hear the full explosion before the first shock wave struck the cavern like an invisible wall.

Raven threw himself behind a stone formation while Valeria spread a sheet of blood in front of Sila and Deren. Maelor went down hard on one side.

The wave tore across Old Pressure Gallery, compressing the air so violently that Raven’s ears sealed shut.

Then the rock came.

Fragments burst from the surrounding conduits as the wall behind the charge split open and a cloud of dust flooded the cavern.

A chorus of screams followed.

Not from one creature, but from dozens answering through interconnected tunnels until the sound became a low, layered roar that seemed to come from the entire mountain.

Predation reacted immediately.

[Colony-Wide Threat Response Detected.]

Raven raised his head.

A juvenile Burrower shot from a side cavity, not attacking yet but fleeing the explosion. It collided with another creature, and both Pressure Chambers inflated by reflex.

”Down!”

WHUMP.

Two discharges crossed.

One stripped stone from the ceiling while the other struck the second Burrower and hurled it into a wall.

The colony interpreted the exchange as another attack, and more signatures turned hostile around them.

Maelor looked toward the tunnels.

”We need to get out before—”

A section of wall exploded.

An adult Burrower tore through rock and dust with its forelimbs extended.

Deren barely moved in time. One claw grazed his shoulder and spun him sideways.

Valeria formed a blood spear.

Raven caught her wrist.

”No.”

”It’s on top of him.”

”If you rupture the chamber, it vents everything in here.”

The Burrower inhaled.

That changed the calculation.

Raven saw its torso expand.

”Deren, left!”

The miner rolled away.

The creature discharged.

Raven activated Burst Step in the opposite direction at the same instant.

WHUMP.

The blast missed Deren and struck the entrance to the side conduit instead, catching a second Burrower that had been emerging from it and throwing the creature backward.

Raven appeared beside the first.

He didn’t try to kill it.

Stonehide spread across his forearm, and he drove a Kinetic Acceleration strike into the joint of one foreleg.

CRACK.

The limb buckled.

”Move!”

Valeria didn’t ask questions.

Sila grabbed Deren while Maelor pointed toward a narrow opening between two slabs of stone.

”There!”

They ran.

Behind them, the injured Burrower shrieked, and answering calls rolled through the colony.

The maintenance vent wasn’t really a tunnel.

It was a natural fissure miners had widened just enough to make usable. For several meters, the gap forced them to move sideways before opening into a steeply inclined passage.

That gave them one immediate advantage.

Nothing large could follow them directly.

Deren was breathing hard behind Sila.

Valeria looked at him.

”How bad?”

”Shoulder,” the miner said. ”Still attached.”

”Reassuring medical standard.”

Raven might have appreciated the irony if a vibration hadn’t traveled through the floor.

”Keep moving.”

The real problem with the vent was the ceiling.

It was too thin.

Predation tracked several signatures shifting above them, all moving in response to the same things: boots, breathing, falling stone, and the lingering disturbances left by the explosion.

Sila lowered her voice.

”If this passage still connects to the upper gallery, we’ll come out near Junction Three.”

Maelor shook his head.

”If it’s still open.”

”Do you have another route?”

”No.”

”Then it’s open until proven otherwise.”

Raven glanced at her.

”I like that answer better.”

Valeria looked at him from the corner of her eye.

”You’re making friends everywhere.”

”We’re underground with thirty monsters. My standards have dropped.”

The rock above them cracked.

Everyone stopped.

A claw punched through the ceiling, followed by another.

The Burrower was digging directly toward the sound below.

”Don’t run,” Raven said. ”Sila, Maelor, keep walking. Slowly. Deren stays with you.”

Sila frowned.

”And you?”

”We make noise somewhere else.”

Valeria understood immediately.

”I don’t like that.”

”You don’t need to.”

”You’ve been using that phrase a lot lately.”

”Lately, the situations have justified it.”

The ceiling fractured again.

Raven picked up a stone and accelerated it toward a crack twenty meters farther down the passage.

The projectile struck rock with a sharp CLACK.

The Burrower above them stopped digging.

A moment later, the vibrations shifted toward the impact point, and stone began breaking farther ahead instead.

Valeria almost smiled.

”Your movie.”

”My world occasionally had useful ideas.”

”Did it also explain what to do when there were thirty of them?”

”Usually there was more screaming.”

The creature broke through the ceiling where the stone had landed.

Raven waited until half its body emerged.

”Now.”

They ran.

The Burrower turned toward the new vibrations, but they were already passing beneath it when its Pressure Chamber began to swell.

Raven looked ahead and found no cover.

Then Predation caught another signature approaching from a side tunnel.

They had no time to outrun both.

Raven stopped.

Valeria nearly collided with him.

”What are you doing?”

”Waiting.”

”That remains one of my least favorite words when you use it.”

The Burrower behind them discharged.

Raven dropped flat.

WHUMP.

The pressure wave tore through the narrow vent. With almost no room to expand, it became even more violent as it traveled forward.

Raven pressed himself against the floor while the blast passed overhead.

The second creature emerged at exactly the wrong moment.

The discharge hit it head-on and slammed it into the wall, leaving its body wedged across part of the passage.

Raven stood.

”Now we move.”

Valeria followed.

”One day you’re going to explain these plans before executing them.”

”If I have time.”

”Find time.”

”I’ll consider it.”

”That means no.”

”You’re learning.”

They reached Junction Three with two Burrowers still behind them.

They didn’t need to see the creatures. The walls announced their approach through impacts, scraping claws, and bursts of compressed air.

Junction Three was a circular chamber with four exits and an old wooden platform spanning a central depression.

Raven recognized one of the markings they had passed on the way down.

The upper route.

Unfortunately, it was blocked.

A mass of rock and broken supports had fallen across it after the explosion.

Maelor cursed.

”That wasn’t like that before.”

”I assumed.”

Deren leaned against the wall.

”We can move it.”

Sila shook her head.

”Not before they reach us.”

Raven examined the remaining routes.

One led back toward Old Pressure Gallery and could be dismissed immediately. Another descended deeper into the colony, which was worse. The third was a natural conduit Maelor didn’t recognize.

”Where does that go?”

”I don’t know.”

”Could it lead upward?”

”It could lead directly into another colony for all I know.”

The wall behind them cracked.

There wasn’t time to debate.

Raven looked toward the beams blocking the upper exit.

They couldn’t clear the entire collapse quickly enough.

Maybe they didn’t have to.

”Valeria.”

She was already watching him.

”I can’t lift all of that.”

”I don’t want you to. Just that beam.”

Raven pointed toward the primary support.

”If it comes out, the rest falls.”

”That sounds like the opposite of opening a path.”

”Depends where it falls.”

Valeria followed the structure with her eyes, then looked toward the tunnel where the Burrowers were approaching.

”You want to use the collapse against them.”

”And clear the upper section.”

”It could bury us too.”

”That’s why we do it correctly.”

”How comforting.”

Raven approached the support beam.

Stonehide covered both hands.

”When I pull, force the upper section left.”

Valeria formed four thick bands of blood.

”And you?”

”I remove the beam.”

Maelor stared at him.

”That thing is holding up half the wall.”

”Not anymore.”

Raven pointed toward a fresh fracture.

The explosion had already done most of the work.

”Sila, Deren, get onto the platform. Maelor, with them.”

The first creature appeared.

[Blastback Burrower — Level 21 — AWAKENED.]

Its torso expanded as Valeria tightened the blood bands.

Raven wedged both hands beneath the beam.

”Now.”

Kinetic Acceleration wasn’t designed for sustained strength.

Fortunately, Raven didn’t need sustained strength.

He only needed enough impulse to start the movement.

He activated the Skill and pulled.

The beam jumped several centimeters as Stonehide cracked across his hands and the weakened rock above shifted.

Valeria pulled sideways.

The Burrower released its Pressure Chamber.

WHUMP.

The blast struck the structure at exactly the wrong moment for the wall.

And the right one for Raven.

The support gave way.

Raven released the beam and activated Burst Step, appearing beside Valeria as tons of stone crashed into the center of the chamber.

The Burrower vanished beneath the collapse.

Dust slammed into them.

When it thinned enough to see again, part of the upper route had been exposed while the lower tunnel was buried beneath rubble.

Raven looked up.

”Climb.”