Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons novel Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Chapter 8 - Taming the Tunnels

Ren saw it, the dead tree, its twisted silhouette cut against the night sky.

The Mirror Mantis was getting closer, and the sound of its broken plates was like a promise of death.

The dead tree was less than fifty meters away when the ground gave way beneath Ren's feet.

Hope had got him distracted.

For one terrible moment, Ren floated in darkness, his stomach lurching as gravity claimed its prey.

His father's kitchen knife flew from his belt. In an act of pure instinct, Ren grabbed it. The blade plunged into the tunnel wall, slowing his fall with strength he didn't know he had.

Earth and stones rained around him, striking his face, getting in his eyes.

Above, the Mirror Mantis stopped at the hole's edge. Its broken plates created a sickly kaleidoscope of fragmented moons.

The creature tilted its triangular head, calculating, hungry.

"No, no, no..." Ren kicked at the wall, searching for a foothold. The knife was slipping.

The earth gave way and Ren fell.

The Mantis jumped.

Its scythes gleamed in the darkness as it fell, the metal of its broken exoskeleton singing a death song. Ren saw his life flash before his eyes, ten short years that would end in darkness, far from his parents, without even the chance to...

A deafening roar shook the tunnel.

The image of the excavator catching him made him drive the knife back in, and in his desperation, he saw a small tunnel beside him.

The parallel tunnel was narrow, barely wide enough for Ren to crawl through. Without thinking, Ren pushed himself toward the tunnel.

But the mantis caught up.

However, just before it could grab Ren as he entered the tunnel...

The wall beneath the mantis opened, revealing the monstrous head of a Night Excavator.

The beast had been hibernating, storing what little mana was available, when the collapse had awakened it.

And now it was hungry.

The Mirror Mantis twisted in the air, its scythes finding excavator flesh instead of its original prey. The Excavator roared in pain, its massive claws emerging from the earth to catch its attacker.

Ren was paralyzed with terror.

Less than two meters away, two nightmare beasts fought in a deadly dance of metal and earth. The Mantis's broken plates created chaotic flashes in the darkness while the Excavator tried to drag its prey into the depths.

To his right, almost invisible in the darkness, Ren distinguished an opening. An older tunnel, its walls smoothed by the passage of time.

He had no choice. The winner would be decided soon.

He crawled into the tunnel while behind him the battle reached its climax.

The Mantis's metallic shriek mixed with the Excavator's roar. There was a horrible crunch, and then...

Silence.

Ren crawled away from the edge, his breathing so loud in his ears he feared the winning beast might hear him.

'I'm alive,' he thought, incredulous.

The mushrooms in his hair provided the only light in the tunnel's absolute darkness, their weak glow barely sufficient to see his own trembling hands.

"As if someone had melted the stone itself, son. A tunnel of the ancients, from when humans lived here and shaped rock with magic."