They were currently in Black Shell Crab territory.
An underground area buried deep inside the valley, stretching out for miles in every direction beneath the earth. The ceiling above them was low in so places and cavernous in others. The ground was wet. The air was dense and carried a sll that sat heavy at the back of the throat.
On the seventh step of Wind Devil Valley, the rules were different.
A beast race that wanted to hold territory here didn’t just need numbers. It needed strength. At minimum, five abominations just to survive. Just to maintain a foothold against the other races pushing from every side. Or, alternatively, one Great Abomination at the head. One was enough, if it was strong enough.
The Black Shell Crabs fell into the first category.
Five abominations. Their foundation. Their baseline.
The target of this expedition was exactly that group.
But even with the full Athen numbers assembled here, killing an abomination was not child’s play. Not one. Certainly not five. An abomination operated on a level that made every engagent feel like it could be the last one. Every crack in the plan, every second of hesitation, carried real cost.
"Due to the war, the head of this Black Shell Crab community has left the area."
River Bandit stood at the front of a dark, wind-cut cave opening, voice low and asured as he delivered the scout report to the assembled group.
"He was likely summoned by a Great Abomination. Coordinating defense of the larger territory."
That wasn’t all.
The crabs had sent two of their five abominations out with him. Support for the broader effort happening across the valley.
Which ant only three remained.
Three abominations holding the territory.
Only sounded easy if you forgot what an abomination actually was.
There was nothing relaxed about three abominations.
"Evil Spirit, Poison Lilly, and Hamrhead." River Bandit’s eyes moved to the group. "You’ll draw one of the abominations away from the main area. Pull it wide enough to give the rest of us room to move on the remaining two together."
So of the other mbers glanced at that group with barely concealed envy.
They weren’t tattered. Weren’t carrying injuries from whatever had gone wrong in their zones during the war disruption. They had co in whole, and River Bandit was rewarding that by giving them the lighter assignnt.
Or what looked like the lighter assignnt.
River Bandit didn’t acknowledge the looks.
He wasn’t making decisions based on fairness. He was making decisions based on what worked.
This group was good at running. They had outrun an abomination that by all accounts should have caught them. He didn’t need them to win a fight. He needed them to pull one of those abominations out of position and keep it occupied long enough for the main force to collapse the other two.
If they had done it once without dying, they could do it again.
Evil Spirit Lucas understood the logic imdiately.
He didn’t argue.
But his eyes drifted to Guilliman as the briefing settled.
He studied him quietly. Looking for sothing specific.
The person who had actually handled the abomination last ti wasn’t anyone in his original group. It was Guilliman. Solo. With no plan and no backup. The rest of them had scattered. Guilliman had stayed, turned around, and dismantled the thing until it ran.
Lucas needed to know what that had cost him.
Fear ant he had barely made it. Fear ant last ti was luck and next ti would be different.
Nervousness ant it was a one-ti thing. Adrenaline and desperation dressed up as competence.
He watched Guilliman’s face carefully.
What he found there shook him.
A small smile.
Quiet. Almost unnoticeable. But it was there. Mixed in with sothing else.
Excitent.
’Is this guy crazy?’
Lucas kept his expression flat but the thought hit hard. Even at his own rank, he didn’t walk into abomination encounters lightly. It required preparation. Gradual wearing. Multiple A-ranks coordinating over ti. That was the standard approach for good reason.
Guilliman was B-rank.
And he was smiling.
"Boss Lucas." The Jackal appeared at his shoulder before he could finish processing it. "Let’s talk strategy."
The Jackal pulled his attention sideways, and Lucas let it happen, redirecting his focus.
Across the space, Guilliman stepped toward Eric and leaned in close, dropping his voice to just above a whisper.
Whatever passed between them didn’t reach anyone else.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
A few hours later.
A group of eight moved through the darkness in silence.
The ground beneath their feet was soft and damp, soil pressing under each step with a faint give. Ahead, the space opened into a wide low-ceilinged field. And filling that field, spread across the moist soil bed in dense clusters, were the crabs.
Dozens of them.
Their antennae moved in slow, random sweeps. Up. Out. Side to side. No pattern. Just the constant low-level tick of instinct and reflex. Sensing nothing in particular. Reacting to nothing specific.
But the movent never stopped.
At the far end of the field, partially buried in the dark soil and completely still, the abomination rested. Its shell was enormous. Ridged and blackened, it rose from the ground like a boulder that had grown in place over centuries.
It wasn’t awake.
That was the window.
"There are Wayfarer beasts at the front guarding the abomination." Evil Spirit Lucas kept his voice barely audible, eyes moving across the field in a slow sweep. Sothing that looked like a bow had fitted itself along his forearm, compact and ready. "We’ll do a surgical strike to help you all get clean kills. But imdiately after, we go for the abomination."
Everyone nodded.
No extra words.
A few minutes passed.
The group held position.
Then they moved.
—woosh
—woosh
—woosh
The three A-ranks dropped fast and hit hard, completely bypassing anything below Wayfarer rank, targeting the guarding beasts directly. The attacks landed sudden and heavy. So of the Wayfarer crabs were driven to the edge of death on contact. Others were damaged enough to stagger.
The space opened.
The B-ranks pushed in.
[You have slain a Wayfarer Black Crab]
[You have slain a Wayfarer Black Crab]
5,000
5,000
The notifications ticked upward as the gene points climbed. Nobody looked at them. Not yet.
Eyes stayed on the abomination at the far end of the field.
It hadn’t moved.
Still flat. Still buried. Still breathing in the long slow rhythm of sothing that didn’t know it was being hunted.
Nobody celebrated the climbing numbers.
Nobody relaxed.
You had to stay alive to grow stronger. That was the first rule. And the mont that abomination’s shell shifted, the mont those buried legs found the ground and that enormous body started to rise, the warm-up would be over.
The real fight would begin.
And everyone knew it.
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