Chapter 51: Stench
After a bout of excitement Zac suppressed his giddiness and refocused. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t start a mining operation at the moment. He had things to do.
Besides, it likely was more effective to let the demons mine the crystals, and then commandeer it when it was all extracted and gathered. They shouldn’t have sent their most powerful warriors to mine, so an assault wouldn’t prove to be too difficult. He longingly took another look at the glistening walls and then kept going.
This obsession with wealth was something new he had started to develop. He hadn’t really cared too much when the world still was normal, and he just was a white-collar worker. He was happy as long as he had enough to live a comfortable life.
But lately he was running toward corpses like it was Christmas morning and the bodies contained presents. It was a weird type of callousness that translated corpses into loot. He had always enjoyed the grind in video games, waiting for that rush of seeing some glimmering unique or valuable item drop. He was starting to get the same feeling in real life as well. Just the thought of finding a magic pouch full of crystals made him want to forget about the Heralds and go on a treasure hunt instead.
But he knew he couldn’t, at least not for now. As he walked, he started to gradually hear rhythmic sounds of metal hitting rock. It was still far in the distance, but Zac presumed he was hearing mining operations.
He hesitated for a bit, but then reluctantly decided to go in another direction. There was no real need to see the miners at the moment, and he wouldn’t risk getting exposed this early just to steal a peek. What he currently wanted to explore was whether the thrifty imp was a loner who had snuck into the caves, or whether it was part of a larger group.
As he crept along the paths the sounds of pick-axes hitting rock didn’t diminish, rather it was a constant drone in this part of the cave system. This made Zac realize that the mining operations were on a larger scale than he had expected. After walking for 30 minutes the sounds finally started to diminish, letting him know he was moving away from the mining operations.
Suddenly he heard another sound and he stopped in his tracks. It was the familiar sound of light scuffling on the ground that the imp had made, but this time it sounded like came from multiple sources. It was accompanied by some clanking and subdued inane chatter that didn’t quite sound like a language.
He gingerly crept forward, careful not to make a sound. He wasn’t sure how sharp their senses were, and he didn’t want to find out. Zac took quick peek around a corner and saw that the tunnel led into a cavern that was roughly 10 by 10 meter large. The roof was also higher compared to the usual 3-4 meters of the tunnels.
The first thing he noticed was that he didn’t have to be careful of the imps smelling him out, as a wall of overbearing stench hit him as soon as he looked around the corner. It seemed that sanitation and hygiene were alien concepts to the small humanoids, as that level of smell could only come from a buildup of waste and excrement.
What entered Zac’s vision could tenuously be called a camp. Moss had been ripped from the walls and placed on the ground to make simple bedding, and in the middle of the room was a handful of lumber together with vines making a fire whose black smoke polluted the cave. Luckily for the imps there seemed to be some cracks in the roof which kept the cave ventilated, otherwise they might have killed themselves accidentally by inhaling all that smoke. Piles of food waste and other unmentionables were strewn randomly about the camp, and in a corner there was a large rotting carcass of a smaller version of the salamander Zac fought earlier.
There were roughly 20 imps that inhabited the disgusting campsite, and it looked like they were turning in for the night. Zac was a little fuzzy about the exact time but felt that it should be somewhere around 4 to 6 am. He had assaulted the Herald in the evening, and after his escape spent a few hours on absorbing energy, then a few hours of sleep.
From what he’d seen from his travels across the island the imp’s weren’t nocturnal and guessed that their sleep schedule had gotten messed up from living in this subterranean cave.
Most of the imps were already lying on the ground snoring away, while a few lazily milled about. Two had a small scuffle over a moss bedding, and after a short while the victor lay down while the loser skulked away. It seemed the beddings closest to the fire in the middle were the most desirable, and the losers had to pick some spot further out.
Zac waited and only 15 minutes later the whole group was fast asleep, and they didn’t bother with sentries or the like. Perhaps that was what the bedding arrangement was for. If they were attacked the weaklings in the outer rim would be attacked first, and their death wails would be the warning alarm for the others.
Zac deliberated whether to attack or to go around the camp. He felt that such a large group of imps indicated that the caves might very well be the main area of the imps. The imps he encountered in the forests had been mostly solitary, but here he immediately saw two dozen of them.
That meant that the likelihood of the herald being down here had gone up by quite a few points. He didn’t want a repeat of the battle of the monkey Herald, where it summoned a throng of subordinates to wear him down. And being attacked by hundreds of imps seemed far more deadly compared to the monkeys. He’d be blasted to smithereens in no time.
But he also was still quite unclear about things down in the tunnels. He only possessed a shaky grasp of the layout down here so far. But soon he came to a decision and brought out some rags from his pouch. They had once been a shirt of his but were ripped up for bandages long ago. Hewrapped the rag around his mouth and nose, and then brought out a large dagger he had taken from the last fight with the demons.
The rags were a small defense against the smell. He was already getting nauseated just smelling it from a distance, and he did not look forward to experiencing the stench point blank. He crept forward, with his dagger at the ready.
He soon arrived at the mouth of the cave, and the overwhelming stench almost made his eyes tear. He forced himself to ignore it and moved over to the closest imp. He bent over, and with quick movements put his padded hand over its mouth and simultaneously cut a huge gash over its throat, almost completely decapitating it.
The imp had no time to scream or struggle, and after a few shudders it was dead. Zac stopped for a second to survey the surroundings, but they were all still fast asleep. He kept going and moved to the second one, repeating his actions.
In short order he killed 8 of the imps without alerting anyone, and he moved to the 9th. He was approaching the innermost circle of beddings now and was quite close to the fire. As he did he reflected that the only thing that smelled worse than imp excrement was hot imp excrement.
Zac was starting to wonder if a stench could physically hurt someone, as his eyes were tearing up from the stink. If he was forced to sleep in a camp like this he’d rather sleep on the edge of the cave at risk of getting eaten by a salamander, compared to sleeping next to this putrid flame.
The smell was so bad that he couldn’t properly focus and he accidentally hit the sleeping imp with his foot as he approached. He quickly bent down and finished it off, but not before it managed to release a high pitched screech.
Zac knew he wouldn’t be able to sneak around anymore, and immediately swapped out the dagger for his axe. He activated [Chop] and with three quick swings another five imps were dead before they managed to properly wake up.
By now the surviving imps were up, and all of them charged up a purplish-black fireball without hesitation. Zac managed to kill another two before they were done charging, but afterwards four fireballs slammed into him. The cave was simply too small, and he had no time to dodge them. Normally he would have used his chest piece here, but he wanted to save it unless it was a true life-and-death scenario. He might meet a Herald soon, so he needed all the tools at the ready.
Zac could only grit his teeth as the nefarious flames hit him, sticking to him like glue. He knew that the fires would die out when their owners did, so he wasted no time and charged at the remaining four imps. They screeched and started to flee towards a tunnel opposite where Zac came from, but Zac wouldn’t give up.
Ignoring the impractically large consumption of energy, he elongated the [Chop] edge and managed to hit two of the fleeing imps, bisecting them in an instant. Their two compatriots didn’t care and only started flapping their wings more fervently in order to escape.
Zac fished out a throwing dagger out of his pouch, and as he followed he threw it into the back of one of the two imps. He took out another dagger, intending to quickly end the fight. But as he prepared the throw a huge white maw suddenly emerged out of a side-tunnel, snapping shut over the imp in a lightning-quick manner.
It was another salamander that emerged from the tunnel, contentedly chewing on the small demon. It lumbered forward toward the other imp that Zac had downed and gobbled up it as well, knife and all.
Zac wasn’t in a mood to fight against the salamander unless needed, as he liked the idea of these huge lizards walking around in the tunnels and helping him out by whittling down his enemies. Therefore he quickly receded into a side-tunnel in order to avoid its approach. The huge monster soon came to the entrance looking toward Zac’s direction, and seemed to be hesitating for a few seconds. Zac didn’t understand how they kept sensing him, as this time he had fled even further back, but he could only get ready to kill this white giant as well.
Finally it turned around and ambled away, toward the now deathly silent imp camp.