Chapter 62: Chapter 60 - Into The Tunnels
It took him 2 more hours at high speed but he finally managed to get past the narrow part and finally got inside, right on time too as he was hearing as weird calling sounds were getting closer from outside, he was pretty sure the corpse wouldn't be there anymore when he wanted to go out. The still tunnel wasn't too big as he couldn't stand completely straight but it was much better, the biggest difference though was that the water was warmer that could indicate either volcanic or extreme biological activity.
Looking around he saw lots of bioluminescent algae and lifeforms stuck to the walls of the tunnel too, Crabina was excitedly collecting some purple glowing ones, they were bloated and strange-looking, but seeing her eat them he stored some to analyze back at the base, and stopped Inky from eating them too, what was fine for Crabina could be poisonous for them, the same that even if you see a bear eat something and the bear is fine, it doesn't mean it won't kill you if you eat the same, this was something he had been trained about in his survival training lessons, the standard protocol was always to store with care and analyze at the lab, even if not for cooking, natural resources were precious as they could contain new undiscovered chemicals and components.
The cameras he had left the last time outside the tunnel were still there and working, they used infrared flashlights to illuminate so they were invisible for human eyes, but just to be safe he had set them to just activate and take short vídeos when they detected movement, this might also scare predators away, the vídeos were also uploaded directly to the octopeople city, to the control room, as while installing the elevator he had also installed a repeater to be able to ask for reinforcements if needed.
They kept advancing, with Erik turning his helmets' lights off as the algae and other organisms gave more than enough light, the tunnels getting wider as they went, after walking crawling, crouching, and now walk for a couple of hours, Crabina stopped and pointed forward. Erik zoomed in with his helmet visor and he could see 2 crab people sitting on the ground by the end of the tunnel sleeping, clearly, by this, it could be seen their discipline and intelligence seemed lacking, their strength didn't seem to be lacking though, as they were at least 2 heads taller than Erik and with arms ending in claws that looked crab gorillas, half a dozen joints allowing for a wide mobility.
He was carrying his vibrosword, dart rifle, and spear as weapons, the mission today was setting the dozens of cameras he was carrying. He wasn't sure how he would paralyze them though as their shells wouldn't allow the darts to penetrate, he would need to engineer a new way to administer the poison. As he was approaching slowly with his vibrosword in hand, part of his mind was already thinking of a prototype, a simple water pressure hose full of poison should be enough to create large venom clouds and even cut, he would just need a turbine, a deposit full of poison, a pipe and a nozzle, it was simple but effective technology. He would need to go alone in that case though as the caves concentrated the poison as the water inside remained mostly still. Another solution would be to make suits for the octopeople so they didn't get poisoned too.
[Why now just a mouth and neck flexible cover, that would work for avoiding poison and providing comunications]
Erik almost fell from the surprise as he was concentrated, Inky and Crabina looking at him strangely as he had flinched and stopped.
Erik: [CAN YOU PLEASE DONT TALK IN MY HEAD WHEN IM CONCENTRATING?!]
[geez~, sorry then (・へ・)]
Erik took some deep breaths and advanced close to the wall to the left, making use of the slight curve of the tunnel as cover, it was a pity he didn't have any flash grenades, well they wouldn't work here anyway, but still, it was what he had been trained to do, approaching more than 2 enemies needed a distraction or a concussion tactic, as if the guards woke up and he was too close, he would be in danger. He also couldn't risk Inky taking care of the other as he wasn't sure she would be silent enough, well he was wearing a suit that almost weighted a ton so he wasn't super silent either, thankfully the advanced joints allowed him free movement without much sound.
He came to just 2 meters of the left one, now there was a question on his mind he hadn't considered 'where the heck do I stab it?' he opted to just go for the mouth up and leave his spear ready to kill the other one.
STAB!, the blade slid cleanly inside, luckily ending the first, but... he looked at the second one he saw it was wide awake and its big round eyes dilated.
KREEEEEHHH!!!!
it quickly charged over with its pincers, and Erik quickly sidestepped with his back foot to pivot then with it to the crabs back and stabbed forward with his spear stabbing through its armpit, the height of the tunnel also playing in his favor. The crab wasn't dead though, it turned, ripping the spear out of Erik's hands as he hadn't had time to charge it with a plasma shot, he took the dart gun, and aimed as he retreated backwards with his eyes always looking at the enemy, and using his thrusters, shoot a dart into the crabs left eye as it penetrated deep.
KREEE!... it screeched in pain but it then fell unconscious, these darts could even stop the Second Elder so an injection to the face area through the eye was more than enough.
Erik restrained the crab man as they would take it away as a test subject and they kept going, finally reaching a big cavern, roars and cries could be heard from different areas, Erik set cameras as they went following Crabina, they climbed one side of the cavern and reached a ledge from where they could see the tribe, in one corner he could see the crabmen raping the more humanoid ones that should be Crabinas people, he saw something disturbing though, as one of them was finishing, it seemed to get hungry and ripped off one of the legs from the female under him and started eating it while he started humping her again, he noticed a lot of the females were missing limbs too, some seemed to be regrowing so it was probably a common barbaric thing for them. On the other side to the right, there was a big tent made of bones and fish skins, the tribe chief of the rock crab tribe lived there according to Crabina, then to the far side there were dozens of cages made of bones full of crabinas people, the rock tribe crabmen just laying around and going hunting or mating when they felt like it at that moment, it was clear they were quite primitive if they didn't even know how to gather and store food.
Erik set the final cameras and they went back, picking the corpse and the test subject on the way out, when they came out the corpse outside was already gone so he picked his air hammer and put everything along with the algae samples on the pod and they started going up.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
NirvanaPenguin
NirvanaPenguin Song: (Heroes del Silencio - Mar Adentro).
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