Chapter 82: Erima's Desperate Plan

The beacon burns. It is a star in a box. The light floods the small stone watchpost, casting harsh shadows against the rough walls. I feel the heat of it on my face. Mizuki stands in the center, her hand raised, a pillar of golden fire connecting her to the ceiling. She looks like a statue of judgment.

"That should get their attention," Hachiro says. He shields his eyes with his good hand. "It is bright enough to wake the dead."

"It will do more than that," Yogawa says. He is tracing lines in the dust on the floor. "It disrupts the Miasma flow. It is an irritant. A challenge. Every Hunter within ten miles will feel it."

Kizawa stands by the window slit. He does not look at the light. He looks into the dark.

"They are moving," Kizawa says. "The web is vibrating. I can feel them climbing the walls."

I join him at the window. I am Erima. I see patterns. I see vectors. The darkness below is alive. It shifts and ripples like a pool of black oil disturbed by a stone. Thousands of red eyes open in the gloom. They look up. They see us.

"We cannot stay here," I say. "This room is a trap. One way in. One way out. If they swarm the tunnel, we are suffocated."

"We invited them," Mizuki says. She lowers her hand. The pillar of fire vanishes, but a residual glow remains in her hair. "Now we have to fight them."

"Not here," I say. I turn to the group. My mind races through the maps I memorized in the Nexus. The upper mines. The ventilation shafts. The structural weak points. "We need a kill box. This room is a coffin."

"Where do we go?" Hachiro asks. "Back down the tunnel?"

"No," I say. "That tunnel is too narrow. We need space to maneuver, but tight enough to bottleneck them. We need the Central Junction."

"The Junction?" Yogawa asks. "That is the main hub for the upper mines. It is huge. We will be surrounded."

"It is huge," I agree. "But it is supported by four main pillars. Ancient stone columns. If we take those out, the entire ceiling of the Junction comes down."

Silence fills the room. They look at me.

"You want to drop a mountain on them?" Hachiro asks. A slow grin spreads across his face. "I like it."

"It is suicide," Yogawa says. "If we are in the Junction when the roof falls, we are crushed too."

"We will not be in the Junction," I say. "We will be in the exhaust vent above it. The same system we used to get here. We lure them in. We wait for the General. Then we blow the pillars."

"How?" Kizawa asks. "We have no explosives."

"We have Hachiro," I say.

Hachiro blinks. He looks at his fist.

"Me?"

"You are the Fist," I say. "You cracked the King's armor. You can crack four stone pillars."

"It will take time," Hachiro says. "Stone is stubborn."

"We will buy you time," Kizawa says. "Mizuki and I will hold the entrance."

"And I will guide the fall," Yogawa says. He adjusts his glasses. The fear is there, but the scholar is stronger. "I can calculate the stress points. I can tell Hachiro exactly where to hit."

"Then we move," Mizuki says. "Before they get here."

We scramble back into the tunnel. It is a tight fit. The air is stale. We crawl fast. The sound of skittering claws echoes in the rock behind us. They are in the vents.

"Faster," Kizawa hisses.

We burst out of the tunnel into the Central Junction. It is a massive cavern, hewn from the living rock. Rusty mine tracks crisscross the floor. Abandoned carts sit like metal skeletons. In the center, four massive pillars of black stone hold up the roof. The ceiling is lost in shadow, but I know it is heavy. Millions of tons of rock wait to fall.

"Get to work," I order. "Hachiro, Yogawa. The pillars. Kizawa, Mizuki. The main tunnel. Hold them back."

"On it," Hachiro says. He runs to the nearest pillar. Yogawa follows, scanning the stone with his hands.

"Here," Yogawa says, pointing to a hairline fracture. "Strike here. Thirty degrees downward."

Hachiro winds up. His green chi flares.

CRACK.

The sound of his fist hitting the stone is like a gunshot. Dust rains down from the ceiling.

"One down," Hachiro grunts. "Three to go."

The screeching gets louder. The main tunnel entrance, a wide archway to the south, fills with movement. Red eyes gleam in the dark.

"Here they come," Kizawa says. He draws his swords. "Silence" and "Storm" hum in the quiet air.

Mizuki stands beside him. Her hands ignite.

The first wave hits.

Stalkers pour into the junction. They are fast, lethal, and mindless. They see the light. They see the prey. They charge.

Mizuki throws a wall of fire. It incinerates the front line. But the ones behind push through the ash. Kizawa meets them. He is a blur. He moves like water, flowing around their strikes, his blades severing limbs and heads.

"Keep them off me!" Hachiro yells. He is at the second pillar. CRACK.

"We are trying!" Mizuki shouts. She blasts a heavy beetle-demon backward.

I climb a pile of rubble. I find a vantage point. I nock an arrow. I do not shoot the small ones. I look for the big ones. The leaders.

There.

A massive shape moves in the shadows of the tunnel. It pushes the lesser hunters aside. It is not a Stalker. It is a Weaver.

A spider-demon, but humanoid from the waist up. Its chitin is white as bone. It holds a staff made of spun web.

"General!" I scream. "Incoming! Twelve o'clock!"

"I see it," Kizawa says.

The Weaver hisses. It raises its staff. A glob of white silk shoots out, aiming for Mizuki.

Kizawa intercepts it. He slices the web in mid-air. The silk falls harmlessly to the ground.

"Hachiro! How long?" I yell.

"Almost there!" Hachiro grunts. He is at the third pillar. His knuckles are bleeding. "This rock is tough!"

"Hurry!" Yogawa screams. "The ceiling is destabilizing! It is going to come down whether we are ready or not!"

The Weaver charges. It moves with terrifying speed. Its legs tap-dance on the stone floor.

Mizuki meets it. She forms a sword of golden flame. She clashes with the Weaver's staff. Sparks of gold and white fly.

"Go!" Kizawa shouts to me. "Get to the vent!"

"Not without you!" I yell.

"We need the signal!" he roars. "Go!"

I scramble up the wall. I reach the exhaust vent. It is twenty feet up. I look down.

The battle is chaos. Kizawa and Mizuki are fighting back-to-back against a tide of monsters. Hachiro is at the final pillar. Yogawa is screaming coordinates.

"Last one!" Hachiro roars.

He pours everything he has into the punch. His entire body glows green.

BOOM.

The fourth pillar shatters.

A deep, grinding groan echoes through the cavern. The ceiling begins to sag.

"RUN!" I scream.

Hachiro grabs Yogawa. They sprint for the vent. Kizawa grabs Mizuki's arm. They disengage from the Weaver.

They run.

The Weaver shrieks. It realizes the trap. It tries to retreat, but the mob of Stalkers blocks its path.

The ceiling cracks. A massive slab of rock falls, crushing a group of Hunters.

Hachiro throws Yogawa up to me. I catch the scholar and pull him into the vent. Hachiro jumps. He catches the ledge. I haul him up.

Kizawa and Mizuki are right behind him. They leap. Hachiro grabs Kizawa's hand. Kizawa holds Mizuki. We pull them in.

We scramble back into the tunnel.

Behind us, the world ends.

With a roar that shakes the mountain, the Central Junction collapses. Millions of tons of rock come crashing down. The screams of the Hunters are cut short. The dust cloud billows into the vent, choking us.

We crawl. We do not look back. We crawl until the shaking stops.

We collapse in a small chamber further up the shaft. We are covered in gray dust. We are alive.

"Did we get it?" Hachiro coughs. "Did we get the General?"

"I saw it," I say. "It was under the main slab. It is paste."

Yogawa wipes his glasses. His hands are shaking.

"That was," he stammers. "That was statistically improbable."

"It was a plan," I say. "And it worked."

Kizawa looks at me. He nods.

"Good plan," he says.

Mizuki smiles. Her face is streaked with soot.

"One down," she says. "Six to go."