The wayfarer itself looked like a giant snail moving across the ground at a fast speed. Most of the body of the snail is hidden most of the time.
Nothing can be seen about the wayfarer apart from its tall and large shell. But it shows itself whenever something wants to enter it or leave it.
The entrance into the wayfarer is its mouth. Unless it opens its mouth for people to enter, they will have to break its shell to gain access to the space within it.
When it appears to grant access to its interior, it shows its hard head and reveals itself to be a creature like a lobster. Then it opened the mouth in its head for them to pass through.
Since the wayfarer was an ally and because he wasn't afraid of being eaten, he led the way into its mouth. The space in its mouth was hot and humid. It protected them from the world.
When they entered the wayfarer's mouth, they realized that for the first time since they arrived in Umbra, they stopped hearing the howling winds. There was only the silence.
It was so quiet that they could finally hear the sounds of their feet hitting the ground as they walked. The silence and the warmth made them realize what they had lost since coming to Umbra.
Kelvin was at the very front playing the role of the fearless leader. A kunut was beside him, chatting with him and leading the way to the leader of the community.
The Kunut was speaking in a strange language that he didn't understand. Fortunately, the two of them have translators that made communication between them very easy.
The Kunut was introducing their culture and the state of affairs to him. He was listening attentively together with the two deputies behind him.
He was also examining his environment for threats or other interesting things. One thing he noticed was how easy it was for the wayfarer to be killed from within.
From the mouth of the wayfarer, they reached where its stomach should be. Usually, in a normal Kunut, the stomach is connected to the shell and open to the symbiotic plants that inhabit the shell and produce food for the Kunut.
But for a wayfarer, the other Kunuts inhabit the space of its stomach. Since the stomach runs through most of the shell and the shell of a wayfarer is very big, wayfarers have the biggest stomach in this world.
In fact, Command believes that the sky whales don't have a stomach as big as a wayfarer's.
Once inside the shell, they gain access to the internal organs of the Kunut. These internal organs, including its brain, nerves, heart, liver, and many more, run through the shell attached to the roof of the tunnels.
These organs are just out there in the open. There's nothing defending them. They can be attacked directly, which will injure the wayfarer.
This fact made him marvel. But he wasn't particularly excited to be in a vulnerable position for the wayfarer because he didn't need to enter the wayfarer to kill it. Thanks to his Life Domination ability, the shell of a wayfarer can't stop him from killing it.
When he thought about this, he became smug and thought to himself, "Maybe this is why they made me the leader."
He should be happy about this, but it only made him feel a bad taste in his mouth because his Life Domination ability was the same reason he was made a leader of a squad in his previous expedition, and it ended with him nearly losing his life.
But this time, he was ready for a situation where he was used as bait, so he didn't think too much about it. He changed his focus from listening to the envoy and scanning the wayfarer to listening to the envoy and scanning for every living thing in the Kunut.
From the stomach, they enter a tunnel, which winds throughout the shell. It can be said that this tunnel is the whole shell. So if they want to reach the center of the shell where the leader of the community is, they will have to go through the whole settlement.
At first, the tunnel was big enough for 100 soldiers to walk side by side. But as they progressed, the tunnel shrank, which reduced the number of soldiers who could walk together side by side through it.
The tunnel didn't shrink too much. At its smallest, it could still accommodate 10 soldiers walking side by side. But before they could reach that point, they had to reduce how many soldiers were walking side by side because they were not the only ones in the tunnels.
The winding tunnel was inhabited by the Kunuts. The tunnel itself was wide, but it wasn't tall. So the tunnel wasn't a round tube; it was a flat tube.
Kunuts could be seen on the side. tending to plants that they had planted and working on various objects. Because there was only one tunnel that made up the shell, they went through and saw the whole community on their way to the center.
What drew most of their attention was the sight of the reproductives laying eggs. They saw the eggs being collected, and they saw the eggs hatching into white and soft juveniles.
The journey was like an excursion. They saw the lives of the Kunuts from beginning to end. Nothing was hidden from them because there was only one tunnel.
At most, parts of the tunnels were demarcated, and structures were built in the tunnel for various activities, but what they saw was all that there was to see. There was no hidden room or compartment within the shell.
It took them hours to tour the whole city. At some point, the soldiers had to stop while Kelvin and one of his deputies continued to meet the leader.
Their destination in the city was where the tunnel ended. Since the shell was flat, the end of the tunnel was at the core of the city and the most secure place in the city.