Lucien followed the string with his eyes. It was pulled tight across the narrow tunnel in front of him. It was a tripwire."A physical trap?" Lucien whispered to himself. His voice was full of confusion.He looked closer at the wall where the string was attached. Hidden in the dark cracks of the rock were three sharp wooden sticks. No, they were not wood. They were human thigh bones, femurs. The bones had been rubbed against rocks until they were as sharp as needles.The tips of the sharpened bones were wet. They were covered in a thick, sticky green liquid.Lucien leaned in and sniffed the air carefully. The green liquid smelled like rotting snake venom and bitter plants. It was poison.If Lucien had walked down that narrow tunnel without stopping to fight the Bone-Stalkers, his boot would have hit the string. The trap would have fired the poisoned bone-spears directly into his legs.Lucien stood up slowly. His mind raced. His heart beat a little faster.This was not a magic ward le

The rope wrapped tightly around the Goliath's legs. The heavy rocks on the ends spun around, tying the knot tight.The Goliath tried to take another step, but its legs were tied together. It lost its balance. The giant monster fell forward. SMASH! It hit the stone floor hard. A huge cloud of dust flew into the air.Before the monster could even understand what happened, the other two hunters attacked.The woman jumped off a high rock. She was flying through the air. She held a heavy hammer made from a solid block of dark iron. She landed right on the back of the monster’s neck.CRUNCH!She hit the back of its neck with all her strength. The monster roared in pain. Its thick armor of rocks and mud cracked wide open.At the exact same time, the second man ran in. He held his poison spears. He slid on his knees under the monster's wildly swinging arms. He pushed both poison spears directly into the soft gaps under the monster's armpits.The poison entered the Goliath's body. The monste

The giant cavern was perfectly quiet. The black fire had burned the twenty-five-foot alpha monster into nothing but grey ash.The ash floated slowly through the air like dirty snow. It smelled like burnt stone and a thunderstorm.Lucien stood in the center of the dark cavern. He looked at the woman and the man with the broken leg. He had just told them his name. He waited for them to speak. But before the woman could answer, a loud groan broke the silence.The third hunter, the man who had been knocked out by the monster, started to wake up. He was lying against a large, sharp boulder. He slowly pushed himself up. His head was bleeding.He opened his eyes. His vision was blurry at first. He blinked hard, shaking his head to clear the pain. He looked around to see if the giant monster was going to kill them. He did not see the monster.Instead, he saw a tall figure standing near his friends. The figure wore a cloak made of moving, liquid smoke. The air around the figure felt cold, heav

The Blind-Weed was powerful. Lucien tried to push a little bit of abyssal magic into his eyes to see through it, but the moss absorbed the magic immediately. It was total, absolute darkness. He was completely blind."Is it tight enough?" Elara asked softly."Yes," Lucien answered. "Lead the way.""Grab the end of my spear," Kaelen said. He held out the wooden shaft of his spear. Lucien reached out into the dark and grabbed the smooth wood."Stay close," Kael ordered. "Walk exactly where we walk. There are traps and deep pits along the way."The four of them began to walk. Lucien was blind, but he was not helpless. He smiled under the moss. He did not need his eyes to see the route. “System,” Lucien thought.[Ding!][System Alert: Host's vision is impaired.]“Activate background mapping,” Lucien commanded. “Use my internal compass and record every step we take.”[Ding!][Mapping Function Activated. Creating 3D model of the route based on directional movement, elevation changes, and at

Silas turned around and began to walk back toward the temple built into the giant skull. Lucien followed him. As they walked through the camp, Lucien looked at the people, and the people looked at him. Lucien saw how they survived. It was a hard, brutal life.They walked past a large fire pit. But there was no smoke coming from the fire. The flames were a strange, dull blue color."Smokeless fire," Silas explained, noticing Lucien looking. "We burn a special blue moss. If we make smoke, the smoke will rise. It will gather at the ceiling and leak out of the cavern. The monsters in the deep tunnels will smell the smoke and come to kill us. We must live quietly."Near the fire, women were cooking food. Lucien looked at what they were eating. It was not meat from a cow or a pig. They were cooking long, pale fish. The fish had no eyes and sharp, ugly teeth."Cave-blind fish," Silas said. "The hunters catch them in the freezing underground rivers. They taste like mud, but they keep our hea