Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 169: Ch167. Something that could take it

Chapter 169: Ch167. Something that could take it

One year later

The boy’s lungs burned as he tore through the trees, darting between gnarled roots and moss-covered trunks. His boots slipped on blood-slick leaves, the copper tang of fear thick in his throat.

Each step felt slower than the last, his legs ached, his breath was shallow, and his vision slowly started to tunnel.

Behind him, a myriad of sounds.

Click. Clack. Chitter.

He didn’t look back.

The forest was too dense, the creatures too fast. He could hear their wings, paper-thin and serrated, beating in sync like war drums.

Something skittered to his right, just past the ferns.

Something big.

’Don’t trip. Don’t fall. Don’t-’

He tripped.

His foot caught on a protruding root, and he tumbled forward, rolling through undergrowth and crashing down a short incline. His shoulder hit a rock, and pain bloomed. He scrambled back to his feet, adrenaline numbing the worst of it.

’Just a little further!’ He panted to himself. ’They’re ahead. They have to be.’

A roar split the forest air.

A man’s roar.

And then, steel rang.

A magic skill cracked the air like lightning.

The boy burst through the last thicket and stumbled into a clearing bathed in red mist and ash.

It was chaos.

Alric stood at the center, his shield shattered, his sword broken to half a blade, but his stance was impregnable like a fortress. Cass danced around him like a fury, wielding a cracked spear with deadly grace. Elise knelt beside Riven, their mage, who lay limp on the ground.

Her hands glowed with a healing skill, and her face was twisted in desperation.

"I’m here!" The boy shouted, his voice cracking.

Three [Grass Crawlers] crashed through the trees behind him, their chitin clicking, mandibles dripping venom.

One leapt, and Cass pivoted without missing a beat. She hurled her spear, striking mid-air, impaling the monster against a tree. Green ichor splattered the moss.

The boy dove beside Elise, grabbing a discarded dagger from the grass. He turned just in time to stab another [Grass Crawler] in the eye as it lunged.

"Hold the line!" Alric bellowed, swinging his blade at a monster crawling across the ground. "They’re surrounding us!"

"They already have!" Cass shouted, pulling a broken axe from a corpse.

The swarm emerged from the forest like a tide.

The next few minutes were a blur of blood, screams, and motion.

The boy stabbed anything that got close. One of the insects pinned him to the ground, claws scraping at his ribs. Cass yanked it off him by the antennae and drove her axe into its skull.

Alric’s blade broke entirely. He grabbed a fallen limb of one of the monsters and used it like a club.

Elise screamed as a creature bit into her leg. She kicked it away with her good foot, then fried it with a desperate burst of magic fire.

Riven didn’t move.

At some point, the boy realized he was crying. Not because he was sad, but because he was still alive.

Then, there was silence.

The clearing was a battlefield, and the monsters lay in piles, their bodies twitching.

The boy couldn’t hear anything but the sound of his own breathing, and the occasional cough or groan from his team.

He collapsed backward onto the forest floor, blinking up at the artificial sky of the dungeon, where stars flickered like glitches in a simulation. His hands were stained black and red. He didn’t know whose blood it was.

Cass sat down hard beside him, letting out a long exhale. Her face was streaked with grime, sweat, and blood. She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

"We alive?" she muttered.

"Define alive." Alric grunted from somewhere nearby. He limped over, clutching his side. A long gash split the side of his tunic. "I think something cracked."

"Everything cracked." Elise said faintly. She was sitting with her back against a tree now, her face pale, the hem of her robe soaked in red.

Riven still lay beside her, unmoving.

No one said anything.

Eventually, the system echoed in their heads.

[Dungeon Cleared: Hive of the Rot-Winged Broodmother.]

[Reward: +1200 EXP; Stat Points (+8); Unique Drop: Broodmother’s Ichor (x1)]

[Bonus Clear: No Survivors Left in Nest +400 EXP]

[Level Up!]

The boy blinked at the glowing pop-up window in front of his face. The cheerful fanfare felt insulting.

"Riven didn’t make it." Elise said softly.

"I know." Cass’s voice was flat. "We tried."

"This wasn’t just some off-the-grid dungeon. This was planted. No way a hive that size grew unnoticed." Alric lowered himself to the ground with a wince.

"They must’ve been spreading underground." Cass said. "Through the roots."

"They always come from underneath." The boy muttered bitterly.

The silence returned, heavier now. He looked down at the dagger still in his hand. It was broken, snapped at the hilt. The tip was embedded in a corpse somewhere.

"This isn’t going to cut it anymore." He said.

"None of our stuff is, Jake." Elise added. "That was barely a fight. It was a death march." She winced as she adjusted her weight. "If we go into another dungeon like this..."

"We won’t." Alric said. "We’d die."

The boy, Jake, looked around.

Cass’s armor was dented to hell. Her spear was gone. Alric had nothing left. Elise’s robe was slashed down the middle, and even their potions were used up. Their equipment, what little they had, was almost entirely destroyed.

He felt something bubble up inside him. Not fear, not sorrow.

Just... Fatigue.

He did not want to do that again. Not without being ready, not without gear that could take it.

"I say we go back to the city." Alric said, rubbing at the dried blood on his arm. "Cash in what we’ve got, rest, reequip."

"We can’t afford new stuff." Elise replied. "Not with what’s left in the party funds."

"We don’t need new." Cass murmured, and for the first time since the battle, her voice had a spark of life in it.

The others turned to her.

"I know one hell of a craftswoman in the city."