The girls walked for what felt like an eternity.
Hours passed, marked not by any clock or sun but by the increasing ache in their legs and the steady rhythm of their footfalls echoing through the narrow underground cave.
The red mist never faded—it clung to their clothes, curled into their noses, and painted the jagged walls around them in a constant eerie glow.
The awful rotten sll hadn’t improved either. In fact, it seed to grow stronger the longer they stayed down there, like they were getting closer to the source of whatever ungodly stench had cursed this place.
Even Tierra, who had a surprisingly high tolerance for disgusting environnts occasionally gagged and muttered things like, "Okay, I take it back, I miss the desert. The birds didn’t sll half this bad."
But the most unnerving part wasn’t the sll or the tight space or even the constant dripping sound from so unseen moisture above. It was the path.
Or rather, the complete lack of options. For all the twisting and turning they had done, there hadn’t been a single split in the tunnel.
No forks, no crossroads, not even a suspicious offshoot to ignore. Just one long, endless path forward.
It felt less like they were exploring and more like they were being led sowhere. That thought alone made Lilith grip her scythe a little tighter.
Then, without warning, the entire underground system trembled. Thrice.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Both girls braced themselves, eyes sharp, backs straight, weapons ready. But instead of sothing crashing through the tunnel... silence returned.
And then, faintly, from above—barely there but definitely real—they heard it:
Birds.
Faint shrieks of those horrible, screechy black birds echoed through the stone.
Mixed with them were distant booms, cracks, and flashes of light as battle techniques exploded sowhere far above them.
Lilith let out a slow breath. "That’s the third thud event. The birds are attacking again."
Tierra nodded. "Yeah. Round three. Sa annoying flying freaks as before."
For a mont, they both stood quietly, just listening to the muffled chaos overhead. It felt strange to not be in the middle of it.
They had spent so much ti fighting for their lives in the open desert—getting surrounded by flocks of terrifying bird monsters, surviving cold nights that froze their bones, and sprinting toward a pyramid that only kept getting farther away—that this eerie underground journey felt almost... peaceful.
Uncomfortably peaceful, but still.
Lilith stretched her arms with a tired groan, lightning softly crackling around her fingers. "You know, as gross as it slls down here, at least nothing’s trying to eat us."
Tierra gave her a look. "Don’t jinx it."
Lilith rolled her eyes. "Please. What’s gonna happen? A worm with acid breath gonna co crawling—?"
ROOOOOOAAAARRRRRRRRR.
They both froze. The sound wasn’t that loud, but in this cave, it shook the air.
From the far end of the tunnel, a yellow shape began to crawl into view—slowly at first, its long body undulating against the stone with a slick, slithering motion.
It was a worm. A huge one. Easily five ters long, its body about the width of a dinner plate, and it was glowing a faint, sickly yellow that lit up the walls around it like a cursed lantern.
Its skin wasn’t smooth either—it was rough and plated, like armor, and shimred with a faint oily sheen that imdiately set off every one of their danger alarms.
Their eyes narrowed.
Lilith leaned forward slightly. "That’s a peak-stage five worm
"Yup," Tierra confird, already pulling a dagger loose. "And it looks mad."
Or so they thought.
The worm paused, halfway into the tunnel, and its beady eyes locked onto them. There was a flicker of recognition—or maybe calculation.
Then, it shrieked again and charged, its mouth gaping wide, revealing rows of sharp stone-like teeth that churned like a blender on steroids.
"Can’t go all out," Lilith muttered quickly. "If this tunnel caves in, we’re dead."
"Got it," Tierra replied, her eyes narrowing with focus.
She raised her hand, her fingers making a delicate flicking motion.
And space literally snapped!
The air around the worm suddenly twisted and bent, reality itself folding like a piece of paper as invisible blades sharper than anything physical sliced through the tunnel with surgical precision.
The worm didn’t scream. It rely paused.
For a mont, everyone froze.
Then, slowly, several white marks began to appear along the worm’s body—clean slashes where Tierra’s attack had landed.
But... that was it.
No blood. No deep wounds. Just so light scarring.
The worm blinked. Lilith blinked. Tierra blinked.
The worm seed to realize sothing. It turned its huge head to glance at the marks on its body, then looked back at the girls with wide, confused eyes, like it couldn’t believe they’d actually hurt it.
Then, without warning, it scread like a startled toddler and bolted.
Yes, the enormous, terrifying, peak-stage-5 worm did a full 180-degree turn and slithered away at full speed, its long body scrabbling to retreat into the darkness, knocking stones loose and flailing in pure worm panic.
Lilith stared, dumbfounded. "...Did it just run?"
"I think it ran," Tierra said, equally baffled.
"Because we wounded it?"
"Apparently."
Lilith slowly lowered her scythe. "I think we just bullied a peak-stage-5 monster into quitting."
Tierra tilted her head but said nothing. She lded into space once again and cautiously gave chase.
It didn’t take her long to catch up to the worm this ti. Then, she appeared once again. The next mont, space itself began to ripple.
The air around the worm twisted unnaturally, and suddenly the worm stopped moving.
Its thick, yellow-glowing body trembled in place, muscles rippling uselessly as it struggled with all its might... but couldn’t even twitch an inch.
It was trapped, like a bug frozen in amber. Tierra reappeared above it, floating down from the red misty ceiling like so ghostly goddess of death.
Her dagger, now glowing a heavy shade of grey, humd with power.
Without a single word or a dramatic battle cry, she stabbed downward.
Slice!
The blade sliced through the worm’s body as if it were butter, and a horrible wet sound echoed as the beast split cleanly into two wriggling halves.
But then, sothing insane happened.
The two halves didn’t die. Instead, they shivered violently and then... slid back together.
Like sli.
Like horror.
Like nightmares.
The wound sealed. The worm twitched... and grew. Not by much, maybe a few inches longer, but enough to make both girls raise their brows in horror.
The yellow glow along its body surged in brightness, and then—CRACK—the space around it shattered like glass, and it vanished into the misty shadows again, moving even faster than before!
"What the HELL?!" Lilith growled.
Tierra grinned but didn’t say anything. Then she pointed ahead. "Let’s hurry! It’s running again!"
With a fierce growl, Lilith’s body erupted with violet lightning, and she blasted forward like a shooting star made of thunder.
Tierra vanished again, teleporting behind her with that sa casual grace, and the chase began.
They twisted through the cave system at insane speed, zigzagging between red-glowing stones and leaping over cracks, determined to catch the damn worm...
But after several minutes of running; nothing.
No worm. No trace. No weird glowing sli trail. Just red mist and silence.
They had lost it.
With a long, frustrated sigh, the girls regrouped and kept walking through the never-ending tunnel.
The scent was still atrocious. The path still refused to branch. And there still wasn’t a single sign that they were anywhere near the pyramid.
The underground seed to stretch on forever, and each hour that passed only made it feel more like a trap designed to break their spirits.
A full day passed like that. Ti ant nothing down there, but their bodies kept track. The tiredness in their legs, the strain in their eyes, the weariness in their souls.
’At least,’ they thought, ’there hadn’t been any more attacks.’
Until the three thuds ca again.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
Faintly, they heard it again: the distant screech of birds. The muffled blasts of energy techniques going off above their heads.
The desert trials had begun once more for the poor bastards still up top, dealing with waves of relentless flying monsters while the girls remained in this stinky, endless cave.
Tierra gave a half-hearted chuckle. "Honestly, I’ll take the worm cave over bird hell any day."
Lilith nodded. "At least it’s quiet here."
As if fate heard them and said "Oh, you were saying?" — another sound erged from the mist.
A slithering, vibrating noise.
Two shapes erged.
Two massive worms. Each about five ters long and thirty centiters wide, glowing with the sa eerie yellow light.
"Twins," Lilith said, eyes narrowing.
"Don’t hold back this ti," Tierra muttered, summoning her daggers.
But they did hold back... just a little.
They matched the worms’ power—only up to the peak of stage 5. They wanted to bait the worms, make them lower their guard.
And it worked. The worms paused, their movents becoming smug—if worms could be smug.
They seed confident, their bodies rippling in a lazy sort of way, like they were saying, "Oh, this again? Weaklings."
That’s when the trap sprang.
Tierra disappeared into space and reappeared behind the first worm, her daggers glowing like little death stars.
In one elegant, razor-sharp movent, she diced the worm into a thousand dust-sized particles. It didn’t even get the chance to scream.
It just... turned into fine, glimring particles and vanished into the mist.
At the sa ti, Lilith unleashed her full power. Purple lightning surged from her body, wrapping her in a cocoon of raw energy.
She launched herself at the second worm, her scythe crackling like the storm itself. The worm tried to flee—but too late.
With a single sweeping strike, she cut through it, and lightning exploded across its body. It scread in a high-pitched squeal before convulsing and dissolving into electrified ash.
The cave was quiet again.
And on the ground where the worms had once been... two glowing yellow orbs.
Tierra bent down cautiously, scooping one up with a boot tap and letting it roll into her palm. The mont it touched her skin, the orb glowed brightly—and a beam of light shot into the air.
A projection.
A vast, detailed map appeared mid-air. A swirling, interconnected labyrinth of twisting tunnels and chambers, like a massive ant colony built by maniacs.
And at the center of it all... a massive black triangle.
The pyramid!
Tierra’s eyes widened, and then her lips curled into a triumphant grin. "There it is. I was right. This is the way!"
Lilith stared at the map, then at Tierra. "Are you sure it’s the pyramid?"
"I’m seventy percent sure."
Lilith raised a brow. "That’s not that high."
Tierra smirked. "Higher than our chances were five minutes ago."
Lilith let out a breath, then laughed—genuinely laughed. "Well, guess we’ve got ourselves a real map this ti."
They finally had a direction now!
[A|N: Please support my book with powerstones! It helps our book to get noticed and encourages , the invincible author!]
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