Southwest Days (Semiautomatic Sorceress Book 2) Kal Aaron (read along books txt) 📖

frowned. “It might be they only haven’t come out of the mine because they didn’t sense any prey. If they dig under a city, they could wait for nighttime or make themselves at home in buildings and have thousands of people to munch on.”

“That scenario relies on many different assumptions that might not all be accurate,” Jofi replied.

“It’ll help a lot if they couldn’t handle light. At least we can cut down on the possible emergence points.” Lyssa’s stomach churned. “I’ll bring a body back to the surface on our way out. I can confirm if sunlight harms them, and that’ll help us know when we hit them for a chance of safe retreat. For now, time to go back to wraith form and see where the trail leads us.”

Lyssa didn’t need any sort of special Torch technique or Sorceress spell to know she was closing in on a lot more trouble. The awful gut-churning smell from before grew stronger with each step deeper into the tunnels. She silently cursed whatever idiot Sorcerer had purposely made something that stank so badly.

Familiarity and constant exposure protected her stomach a little, but she suspected this latest sensory experience would haunt her nose for weeks. She’d need to go to Tricia’s place and roll around in the flowers until she forgot all about the snake-roach stench.

Ah, the glamourous life of an Illuminated Torch.

Lyssa didn’t fail to notice the near-constant scratching and skittering noises echoing from the tunnel ahead of her. Nor was it easy to ignore the increased number of tunnels going off in different directions. Many of them were far rounder than the tunnels and passages near the front of the mine.

Slime trails marked almost all of them, but she tromped along her original path, following the largest group of trails and tracks, which happened to line up with the biggest tunnel. That one could accommodate three or four people standing side by side.

Picking off monsters one by one would be tedious, and she’d die of old age before it was done. She needed to find their central nest or hive and take that out in one extreme and brutal burst of overkill.

The number of monsters pointed to possible reproduction. That meant she needed to find a queenlike creature to kill or destroy enough of the snake-roach pairs so the population couldn’t replenish itself. She couldn’t be sure they were reproducing, but she was far from ready to assume the opposite.

One observation continued to bother and distract her: the tunnels were far larger than any of the creatures she’d fought. The implications hung heavy in her mind.

Fighting monsters presented unique challenges. Shadow or Illuminated, people were people, and she understood where and how she needed to wound them to kill them.

That wasn’t always the case with monsters. Every new monster hunt turned into an impromptu anatomy lesson on the most extreme things possible with flesh and bone. Once a Sorceress learned their weaknesses, they were easier to beat than a rogue or a well-equipped Shadow, but that initial learning curve could be steep.

The noise from ahead grew louder as Lyssa advanced until it’d become a constant din of scratching and squelching. A shiver of anticipation wracked her body. Almost there.

She followed the current curving tunnel until it widened. It opened into a huge, sprawling chamber, warm and humid, filled with fetid mounds covered with slime and thick white-green fungus. Snake-roaches crawled all over the mounds, some surrounding opaque and moist spherical eggs. Her educated guess had become an awful reality.

The smaller type of monster Lyssa had fought near the entrance of the mine dominated the room, crawling over one another and streaming in and out of the hatchery from different tunnels. Larger snake-roaches, some nearly the size of a horse, scuttled amongst their smaller family members. Like her first test subject, they didn’t pay her shadowy form any attention.

Lyssa blurted, “Okay, that’s about the most awful thing I’ve seen this year.”

Half the horde pivoted in her direction. All the legs moving at once made her skin crawl.

“Okay, that was dumb.”

“Perhaps a temporary retreat is in order,” Jofi said.

Lyssa stepped into the chamber, her boots sinking into something soft and squishy. When she took a step, there was a loud pop. Packs of small monsters skittered off the mounds and spread out in a wide arc surrounding her. Monsters came from the tunnels.

“No, Jofi.” Lyssa drew her other gun and dropped the wraith form. “It’s time to clean up the mess.”

Chapter Ten

Lyssa swept the pistol loaded with normal rounds in front of her, taking down the small charging snake-roaches as quickly as she could pull the trigger. Their larger cousins remained farther back, clustering near eggs but still facing her.

Male drones? Monster hatchery guards? It didn’t matter. None of them would be leaving this chamber alive.

Green blood splashed everywhere as her bullets found their marks. More than one shot penetrated a snake-roach only to continue through and nail another. The sheer density of the enemy was making it easy to take them down. She could have closed her eyes and shot without missing.

Her confidence grew. She hadn’t been sure they’d be as easy to kill as the earlier monsters. Despite what she’d said to Jofi, she was ready to run if overwhelmed.

Lyssa snickered as she aimed at three monsters lined up in a neat row. She fired through the first one’s mouth and smiled in triumph as the bullet passed through the two creatures behind it. The shot skimmed the next-closest monster but didn’t finish it off. That was her record thus far.

The monsters had charged, but none had gotten close enough to worry her. Their continued mindless behavior kept their movements easy to predict.

That was another common problem with rogues who made monsters. They focused too much on hideous features and not enough on their practicality.

The press of angry fangs and legs limited Lyssa’s ability to take many clever record-setting shots, but she managed more doubles and triples. As