Chapter 1124: A Lair
“We should leave,” Simbady said quietly.
The tablets glowed. The oil lamp pushed a yellow circle into the dark, and outside that circle was everything else — the cave, the wall of coffin-shapes, the silence that had replaced the dripping. This place was wrong in a way that he couldn’t yet name and didn’t need to.
“Leave?” Rex’s voice cracked on the word. He steadied it. “Do you understand what this is? Sir Thunder himself has never found anything like this. These are relics — no. This is a ruin.” He turned in a slow circle, holding the lamp out. The light traveled across stacked tablets, breaking over edges and hollows. “An entire buried city.”
“The ruin will still be here tomorrow,” Simbady said. “Your assistants and the Society are waiting outside.”
That reached Rex. His shoulders came down slightly. “You’re right. We should tell them.” He was still looking at the tablets. “But I need proof. Something to show them it’s real.” He pulled a dagger from his pack. “Just a few chips. One minute.”
Simbady had no good answer to the logic, or to the fact that Rex was his employer and those twenty gold royals were still owed. He found some rusted tools near the base of the tablet wall — old, corroded, water-eaten into shapes that suggested they’d been used once to move these very stones into place — and began filling his bag as Rex had asked.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
Rex’s blade against the stone. The sound bounced off the cave walls and returned doubled, trebled, the echoes layering into something that filled the space.
Simbady noticed that where the dagger cut, the tablet’s glow brightened — not much, but clearly. The stone didn’t like being broken. He noted this and didn’t say it.
“All right, I think that’s — ”
A different sound.
Sharper. Higher. Not an echo. An echo repeats what’s already been said; this was an answer. Coming from further in the cave. Coming closer.
“Rex.”
“One more — ”
“Stop for a second.”
“Seven more minutes — ”
“Stop.”
The word came out with enough force that Rex froze, dagger still raised. The cave went quiet except for that other sound — quiet, rhythmic, metallic, the scrape of something hard against stone. Many somethings. Moving in concert.
Rex lowered the dagger slowly. “What is that?”
Flash of light in the dark ahead.
In the sudden brightness, Simbady saw the shape. Full-grown desert scorpion. Its claws were each as thick as a man’s arm, its tail arched high and curving forward — the stinger full of green venom that left seven minutes between the sting and the death if you had the antidote and no minutes at all if you didn’t.
“The knocking woke it,” Simbady said. “Step back. Don’t look away from it.”
A desert scorpion was manageable for a trained Mojin warrior. Predictable — unintelligent, slow to change targets, committed to its attacks. The tail was the danger and also the weakness: if it struck and missed, there was a window to cut it.
The problem was that Simbady was not a trained warrior by any standard worth measuring. He had drilled since childhood. He had never hunted. He had never fought a scorpion.
He had no other options.
Rex moved behind him without being told. “I understand.”
Simbady turned to face the scorpion.
Standard stance. Right foot back, weight distributed, left hand low, right hand at the draw — the classic Mojin posture for facing forward threats, designed to monitor both the primary target and the periphery.
The scorpion’s eyes found his.
It charged.
No sound to lead it — just the scrape of its claws on stone, already in motion. Simbady heard the claws instead of seeing them. Desert scorpions attacked on distraction, waiting for the moment a defender’s attention shifted, then committed. He knew this. He kept his eyes on it.
When it came in range, he stepped forward hard and drew.
The blade connected. The motion was smooth in a way he hadn’t expected — almost easy, the knife moving through the scorpion’s tail like it knew where to go.
The tail fell.
He stepped past and drove the blade into the back of the scorpion’s head, at the join between shell and neck. A weak struggle, and then nothing.
Rex breathed out behind him. “I see now what people mean about Sand Nationals.”
“Not done.” Simbady was already scanning. The cave tablets glowed in every direction. The wall, the floor, the scattered shapes around the tablet pile — all of them illuminated. All the same pale color.
Except above.
He’d been watching the wrong plane. A scorpion that launched from the ceiling would be invisible against stone until it was already falling.
He looked up.
A shape, dropping.
No time for the knife. He drove his foot into Rex’s side instead — hard — and Rex went flying left, out of the trajectory. The scorpion hit the ground where Rex had been and scrabbled for purchase. Simbady’s knife came down on the head in a single motion.
Silence.
“Narrow,” he said. He was breathing harder now. “Are you all right?”
“I — I think — ”
More sound from behind the wall. First a few clicks. Then more. Then the whole wall was singing with it, a rising tide of metallic clatter that filled the cave from every direction, that vibrated in the stone under their feet.
They looked at each other.
“Run,” Simbady said, and grabbed Rex’s arm.
They ran.
Behind them, the cave ignited.
Every tablet lit simultaneously — not the soft glow from being stepped on but something blinding, the whole cave as bright as noon — and in that sudden daylight Simbady saw the wall begin to move.
Not fall. Move.
The shape that emerged was enormous. Its shell was layered like coral. Its eyes were the size of dinner plates. The Giant Armored Scorpion — the sacrificial animal of legend, the one the Three Gods Emissary was said to have kept as a guardian — came over the wall of tablets with a sound like a landslide.
Simbady ran without looking back.
But as he ran, the pieces assembled in his head: the tablets lit when disturbed because the Giant Armored Scorpion’s shell produced light, and the vibration transmitted it to the stones. The flowers — the Flower of Providence, which grew in coastal soil and had survived here because coastal soil had survived here. The grass. The green things.
The Giant Armored Scorpion didn’t need light, and didn’t need open sky, and didn’t need the surface world at all. The smaller scorpions nested here in the dark and the flowers grew from the disturbed earth of their nesting and the tablets lit from the scorpion’s bio-luminescence.
This cave was not a ruin.
It was a nest.
Chapter 1124: A Lair Translator: Transn Editor: Transn
“I think… we should go,” Simbady mumbled under his breath after a moment of silence.
This cave was gruesome and suffocating, thus he would rather stay undersea than here.
The glow of the tablets mingled with the light of the oil lamp could only illuminate a small area around them. They were surrounded by an impenetrable and dangerous darkness, facing the unknown.
Neither of them had seen the edge of the cave yet.
“Go?” Rex croaked, a note of quaver in his voice. “What are you talking about? I’m sure that even Sir Thunder has not seen a scene like this before. Are they relics? No… this is definitely a ruin!”
“The ruin won’t go anywhere. We can come back later,” Simbady racked his brain, trying to find a way to persuade Rex to leave. “Your assistants and the Society of Wondrous Crafts are all waiting for your good news outside.”
Hearing the name of his Society, Rex instantly calmed down. “You, you’re right. We need to tell them this good news first.”
“So let’s go.”
“Hang, hang on. I need to take something from here to show them proof,” Rex said as he took out a dagger from his sack and started to chisel a tablet. “Don’t worry, it won’t take me long. You should also gather some evidence.”
Simbady had no choice but to obey. After all, Rex was his employer, and since he had already accepted this job, he had to take some risks for those 20 gold royals.
He tried to convince himself that the cave might not be as eerie as it appeared to be. It was just a little bit dark, and there might not be anything at all.
“Clink, clink, clink…”
Every time Rex wrung his knife, a clink that was amplified tenfold in the crisp, chilly air rang off the wall of the cave.
Simbady also noticed that the moment the dagger cut through the tablet, the light would become brighter and even blinding.
He shook his head, trying to put these thoughts away.
He really was not in the mood for cutting tablets at the moment. Several strange stonewares lay around the tottering wall, which Simbady judged were the tools used by the workers who had initially shipped the tablets here. Nevertheless, these tools were all rotten now after years of water erosion. He picked a few and crammed them into his bag as Rex had instructed.
“Clink, clink, clink…”
Rex was still focused on cutting the tablet and he already had five to six chipped stones the size of a nail littering next to him.
“Hey, I think that’s enough…” Simbady urged when suddenly, he captured a discordant note.
It was also a clink but more squeaky and sharp, as if many Rexes had been chiseling the tablet.
“Is this… an echo?” Simbady wondered.
Then he realized this was impossible because both of them were still standing in the same positions. How could an echo suddenly appear from nowhere?
“Rex.”
“Just a moment. This is the last one.”
“Stop for a second…”
“Give me seven more minutes — ”
“I said STOP!” he bellowed.
Rex was stunned, his dagger suspended in the air. The piercing clink immediately stopped.
However, that screeching sound still existed and was now slowly approaching them.
This time, Rex also noticed something wrong. He crammed his pocket with the stones, looking around, and said, “What’s that?”
Just at that moment, there was a blinding flash in the distance.
In the dazzling light, Simbady saw the intruder. It was a full-grown desert scorpion, its clamps as thick as a man’s arm, its tail high up in the air, leveling their waists. The tail was filled with green venom which, once someone was stung by, they would only have seven minutes to take the antidote.
“Damn. The sound of our knives must have startled it!” Simbady drew out his knife and said, “Step back slowly and fix your eyes on the scorpion. Don’t look away.”
For a first-rate Mojin warrior, a desert scorpion was not difficult to deal with, for scorpions were unintelligent and slow creatures. The only thing that might pose a threat was their venomous tail; however, this was also their weak point. If the scorpion failed to hit its target, Simbady would have a chance to slash its tail in half.
The problem was that Simbady was not an excellent warrior by any means.
Although he had received training since he was a kid, he had never participated in any hunting events, nor had he ever fought a desert scorpion.
He had no choice but to attempt it.
After Rex hid behind Simbady, Simbady said in a hushed voice, “Now, look down. Don’t move no matter what happens.”
“I… I see.”
Then Simbady turned around.
The moment his eyes met the scorpion’s, the scorpion lunged at him. Although Simbady could not see the scorpion in the darkness, he could clearly hear its clamp scraping the ground.
This was how desert scorpions generally attacked people: they tended to bide their time, waiting for the moment their opponent was distracted to launch their strike.
“Stay put!”
Simbady slightly bent forward, his right hand resting on the handle of his knife on the left, which was a standard fighting stance for Sand Nationals. In this way, he would be able to monitor both the area on his right-hand side and his enemy in front of him.
When the scorpion started to move, Simbady strode far forward and drew out his knife.
There was a flash of light.
He felt his knife hit something.
The blade cut through the scorpion like a sword through a suet.
With a crunch, the tail of the desert scorpion was slashed in half.
Simbady then stabbed the scorpion in the shell at the back of its head.
The scorpion soon stopped moving after a weak struggle.
“Impressive…” Rex remarked while heaving a sigh. “Now I see how strong a Sand National is…”
“Not yet!” Simbady interrupted him. “Based on the sound, there must be more than one desert scorpion!” He surveyed the cave, fully alarmed, wondering where his enemy was hiding. The cave was filled with illuminating stone tablets, so he should be able to see it clearly when it appeared!
But it was pitch-black.
Except for the area above.
Damn! Simbady suddenly realized what he had missed. He had forgotten to pay attention to any new light sources other than the glowing tablets.
As he looked up, a dark shadow dived to the ground.
It was aiming at Rex behind him!
With no time to react properly, he powerfully kicked Rex and sent him flying into the air.
The desert scorpion brushed past Rex and landed.
Simbady flailed his knife at the scorpion almost instinctively and cut the head of the scorpion in half.
“Whooo,” he breathed out a sigh of relief. “That was a narrow escape… Hey, are you OK?”
“Aargh… I, I think…”
No sooner than Rex had finished, more clinks sounded from behind the wall. At first, there were just a few, but soon the sound became louder and more frequent. In the end, the whole cave started to rock, as though a giant monster was shuffling in their direction.
Simbady and Rex exchanged looks, pale-faced.
“Run! Hurry up!” Simbady yelled as he grasped Rex by the arm and dashed toward the exit.
A moment later, dazzling light erupted from behind, and the cave was as bright as day!
Simbady then saw a colossal desert scorpion, its eyes as big as a dinner plate and its shell as hard as coral reefs. Without a doubt, this was one of the legendary sacrificial offerings to Three Gods — the Giant Armored Scorpion that dominated the continent.
The light emanated by the wall of tablets now became blinding.
He now understood the reason.
He knew why grass would grow here in this dark cave and where the light he had seen earlier came from.
The cave was actually the nest of the Giant Armored Scorpion.