Chapter 175: Chapter 170

The extermination was not as quick as we liked it. The oversized bugs did not have the courtesy of staying still or close enough for us to shoot and stab them. Grenades took out chunks of the eldritch moths, but somehow there was enough room in the damned cave for them to move around the lingering Tiberium clouds.

 

Eventually, I got sick of it and spawned a large net for the troopers to use. It not only helped bring down most of the bugs, but they were also alive for internment in Tleilax. The few remaining moths were picked off with ease after that. Our eldritch catch was dragged outside to be teleported straight to the blacksite. 

 

With the giant moths gone, the cavern’s metanatural emissions dropped to standard levels. A final sweep of the place found nothing new, so once we were ready I spawned up more grenades to restock the troopers before we returned to the initial point of interest.

 

The wall of roots were wriggling in a disturbing way, like watching fresh cuts of meat writhe when you sprinkle salt on it. I cautiously retrieved the Tiberium blade I threw at earlier, and up close I saw that the roots formed only a thin layer. Pushing them aside revealed that underneath the plant matter was an interlacing mass of tentacles that throbbed and wriggled. Black ichor trickled from a deep, pulsing wound I unknowingly made. 

 

The eldritch energy the mass leaked was so weak that the signature was drowned out by the buried moths. Without the interference though, the tentacles’ presence was much more obvious. Hm… VegMan? That’s what this thing is called? Nothing vegetable-like about this at all

 

“Do we cut through?” Edward asked, and I thought over it for a moment before shaking my head.

 

“Don’t want to risk waking this thing up any further to find out if there’s more power to it.”

 

I got on the line to Eva and had some eyebots thoroughly comb through the region from above. A couple also flew into the mine, hovering in opposite ends to carry out a triangulating scan. The whole thing took a few minutes of waiting on me and the troopers’ part, enough that other elements of the 1st joined us and the tentacle wall had died down to complete stillness.

 

Eva helpfully uploaded the 3D layout of the mine and its not-quite dirt-packed surroundings, giving us a clear idea of how deep the tentacle mass ran on the portable hologram I spawned. We were looking at a whole underlevel of eldritch mass, which thankfully did not spread out at all. I was expecting a state-wide root network, but whatever it is down there seemed incapable of branching out like that.

 

Edward gave me a questioning look after studying the hologram. “So, if we’re not going to cut our way down…”

 

I grinned at the commander as I put a call through to Eva once more. “Eva, send in some bots to excavate the site.”

 

“Ohh…”

 

The boys and girls deflated a bit at the lack of violence, but I still had them maintain a tight perimeter, just in case we had more buried moths or such similar incidents. A teleport beacon was set up, allowing for faster transport of Mr Handies to start digging. The initial pace was fast as the robots practically tore out the face of the mountain. Then they got closer to the tentacles, and progress slowed as some level of precision was finally required.

 

I took the time to stare at the wall of tentacles in an attempt to study its console lines, but it felt like there were too many lines missing, probably the thing had to fully wake up for me to get a proper look at its properties. Which obviously sucked. I’m not going to simply wake whatever this was without any preparation.

 

As the digging continued into the late afternoon, I got one of the Tiberium spheres with the mothmen spores to be sent over for an experiment. With the wary eyes of the troopers around me, I unsealed the sphere and we watched as the pile of spores suddenly arrested its fall to the ground, and immediately zoomed towards the Veggie Man tentacle cluster. 

 

Interestingly, it seemed to move around the nooks and crannies of the twisting mass instead of reacting on impact as I thought it would. The catalyst was somewhere below us then, which was annoying. Still, though I couldn’t track the spores as they vanished from my line of sight, it took only a few minutes before I saw a line of code flash briefly on the dormant tentacles cluster.

 

‘VegMan.Exp.Gained=25.0’

 

Huh. I racked my brain for the cloud spore’s stats, and recalled that it had ‘MothExp=5016’. If what I think is going on is going on, we’re talking about a half of a percent experience points transfer?

 

I quickly dug through the eldritch mass’ stats again, and true enough, among the values that seemed to be missing important context, I found the line ‘VegMan.Exp.ToWake=9322.1’. So…this thing needed to absorb the experience points from the mothmen to awaken. That then raised several questions:

 

What counts as experience points? How is it I’m only seeing experience in the console now? Is it a unique resource? 

 

So many questions to work on later… Fuck, I better make the best of this excursion before I lock myself in the labs for a time-dilated week again.

 

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As the sun began to set, the tunnel walls of the tentacles had gradually been unearthed, allowing them to spill out like eviscerated guts. There was still plenty more dirt to remove before we reached the core of this Veggie Man, but we all in all, it was a good day’s work. 

 

Until the tentacles began pulsing and growing anyway.

 

The movement had been subtle at first, and we mistook it as caused by the excavation around them. Then one flicked up to launch a Mr Handy into the twilight sky, which understandably caught everyone’s attention. The tentacles began writhing and flailing without purpose, occasionally glancing against a robot. The now full-strength 1st Company reacted quickly, going for their rifles and blades on instinct, and only pausing to look to me for orders.

 

I gave the new situation a thought, glancing at a downed Mr Handy that got its console-enhanced chassis stabbed through by a meaty, slimy tentacle. 

 

“Evac the place. Form a cordon.”

 

“You sure, Sev?”

 

I gave Edward a nod. “Yeah. This thing isn’t fully up yet, and it’s already breaking the bots. If it gets up to full strength, things might be worse.”

 

“So you’re gonna put it down?”

 

“Or cripple it, preferably. Let’s see how it go-”

 

The ground rumbled beneath us, and I snapped my order again to the troops. “Go, now!”

 

They packed up everything with commendable haste before withdrawing, leaving me to balance on the shifting soil. Console wasn’t telling me shit, so I settled for moving to a more stable location to witness whatever was happening.

 

The Veggie Man’s tentacles flexed and heaved upwards, flailing desperately at the heavens for something. The whole mass was dragging itself out of the hole, I realized. “Eva, quick infohazard defense around this zone, ASAP.”

 

I didn’t wait for her reply as the tentacles surged upwards, tearing explosively through dirt and rocks. Finally, I got to see more than just the tentacles of the Veggie Man. Eyebots in the sky descended just low enough to focus spotlights on the giant monstrosity that slowly unfolded itself. It looked like a faceless head full of tentacles that stubbornly pointed skywards, attached to a small body which had six stumpy, deformed arms at wrong angles, and on the other end of it were a pair of overly long, multi-jointed legs.

 

It looked nothing like a vegetable.

 

The thing stiffened jerkily. It made no conventional sound, but console and the eyebots’ metanatural scanners picked up a deafening otherworldly cry that went out for at least a mile. Edward reported the 1st’s detection runes lighting up, and their wards were going warm.

 

As I conversed with my company commander, the Veggie Man (or whatever else ‘VegMan’ could mean) fell on its back with a lumbering slowness. The thunderous roar of impact echoed through the mountains and surprisingly, its arms held its weight rather well. Then the creature began shuddering with the sounds of crackling paper.

 

I only realized my first impression of the creature was utterly wrong when two massive pairs of moth-like wings burst out from what I initially thought was its chest, and the skin of what I once thought were legs burst out into a forest of human-sized hairs. 

 

Seriously, how the console called this a vegetable man when it was clearly a monstrous moth monster is beyond me.

 

Its wings dominating my view slowly moved down and the displaced air they created threatened to send me flying. The moth monster rose to the air, screaming corruption through the metaphysical realm again as it slowly climbed towards the stars. If it gets too high up there’s no telling how far its eldritch noise could reach.

 

And this thing’s not supposed to be fully awake yet?

 

“Fuck. Eva, launch Prisms.” If I can’t pull out its wings, I’m going to swat this misnamed bullshit out of the sky.

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