Chapter 55 - 55 – Scales
The view was imposing and gorgeous.
Right now, Kyle was on a small platform that was about 100 meters high.
The cave itself was 300 meters high, and the ruins of the city had buildings that almost reached that height.
The buildings were made of brown crystals, and in the middle of the city were the ruins of a spire that had been broken halfway up.
Yet, even while broken, the base of the spire still almost reached the ceiling of the cave.
The walls and ceiling of the cave were clean, and almost no minerals were growing anywhere.
'This is crazy!' Kyle thought. 'An entire underground city!'
He wondered about the past of the city.
'That big tower is obviously broken, but it still almost reaches the ceiling. Does that mean that the city was once above the surface?'
'Did the ground beneath them give way?'
'But then, shouldn't everything be covered by rubble?'
'I mean, there's a bunch of rubble from the buildings, but there are barely any stones from the actual cave or whatever.'
Kyle scratched the back of his head as he looked at the city.
'Guess this is where that Inheritance Crystal or whatever is.'
Kyle approached the edge of the platform and looked down.
'Oh boy. Getting down there won't be easy.'
He looked for anything to land on, but there were no big footholds.
The biggest footholds only had space for the tip of his feet or his fingers.
'How the fuck do I get down there?!'
'Guess I have to climb down,' Kyle thought as he nervously looked at the rough wall below him.
'But how? I mean, I survived the fall through that one hole, but this is a couple of times higher.'
Kyle grabbed the edge, and several stones broke off.
The stones tumbled down into the city.
Yet, Kyle just looked at the edge he had grabbed.
'This wall isn't nearly as hard as the other ones!' he realized.
'I can probably create my own footholds.'
Then, he got an idea.
'Or I could just dig down! I'm a miner now, right? Might as well mine my way down!'
Kyle walked back from the edge and grabbed his hammer.
Then, he struck the ground right in front of him, stones exploding everywhere.
The stone flew from the platform and into the city, creating a small shower of stones.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Kyle kept striking the ground more.
Thanks to his power and his hammer's special functions, the rubble was flying everywhere.
The broken stones hit him on their way out, but his body was strong enough to ignore the flying rubble.
Within just a couple of minutes, Kyle had dug almost ten meters down.
But then, one of the walls started to shake.
With surprise, Kyle watched as the wall vanished.
'Oh,' he thought as he saw one of the walls just falling backwards into the city.
A ten-meter-long rock had fallen off the platform.
Now, Kyle was no longer in a hole but in an opening.
BOOOOM!
The gigantic stone landed at the edge of the city, destroying a house.
Kyle just looked down with a bit of embarrassment.
'Whoops. Sorry, mate,' he thought.
As Kyle looked down, he saw a couple of things jumping out of different houses and going to the place where the gigantic stone landed.
He took a deep breath.
'Are these... Spitters?' he thought. 'No, that's not completely correct.'
The things that had come out of the houses had the shapes of wolves, but there were a couple of differences.
Instead of fur, they were covered in scales.
Their tails were long, almost like the tail of an iguana, and their heads had a lot of teeth.
It was almost like someone had created a hybrid of a Komodo dragon and a wolf.
They were fast, agile, and had tons of power.
There were over ten of them, and they were scampering around the huge stone.
Kyle didn't move.
If he jumped out of his newly created ravine, they might hear him.
However, that concern was unwarranted.
They had already spotted him.
The ten or so scaly Spitters all looked at him.
Then, a couple of them opened their mouths, and Kyle knew what was coming.
'Oh, fuck!' he thought as he quickly jumped out of his ravine, accidentally jumping five meters too high.
Several fireballs flew out of the mouths of the scaly Spitters and landed on different spots of the cliff.
Stones flew everywhere, but Kyle managed to crawl back into the tunnel.
Luckily, the wall hadn't closed behind him after he left earlier.
He saw the platform in front of him shaking violently under the assault of the fireballs.
BOOOM!
One of them hit the edge of the platform, and an entire meter of it exploded off, stone scattering everywhere.
Kyle started to sweat as he saw the destruction.
'These fuckers are stronger than regular Spitters!'
After a couple of seconds, the explosions stopped.
He waited for about half a minute.
'Are they done? Did they give up?' he thought.
He slowly crawled forward, afraid that he would be seen.
Maybe they thought that Kyle had fled.
Maybe they realized that they couldn't hit him due to the platform.
As he silently and carefully approached the edge, Kyle heard the quiet sound of scraping stone.
Just before he reached the edge, a scaly head popped out from the edge.
It was the head of one of these scaly Spitters!
At this moment, the scaly Spitters were climbing up the walls.
These things exclusively lived underground, and they were excellent at climbing walls with their claws.
When Kyle saw the head, his heart started to race.
The scaly Spitter opened its maw, ready to fire another fireball.
BANG!
"No!" Kyle shouted as he shoved his hammer into the scaly Spitter's face, his push having enough force to throw the scaly Spitter off the wall.
The Spitter fell away and lost all its grip on the wall.
It fell towards the ground, spinning wildly.
BOOOOM!
And died.
Sure enough, not even these things could survive a fall from such heights.
But then, Kyle saw several more heads popping out from the platform's edge.
'Ah, fuck,' he thought as he ran back into the cave behind him.