Chương 477: (470) 7.8. Keep Digging

Even with the Whisperer's directions, it ended up taking the group a lot longer to find the cluster of trogums than Vin had anticipated. With the heat warping the distant surroundings everywhere they looked and lack of any landmarks, navigation wasn't easy. Add to that how they now had to do their best to avoid areas with too many of the dirt mounds, and travel slowed down a little bit.

Even so, Vin was able to ensure they were heading in the right direction thanks to Mental Map, and it was only a few hours of wandering through the arid landscape before they spotted something out of the ordinary.

"Anyone else see that large, dark smudge in the distance?" Scule asked, squinting from atop Alka's shoulders as he pointed at said smudge.

"I've got a good feeling about that smudge."

"I bet you say that about every smudge," Alka snorted, and Reginald squeaked some laughter as Scule glared at her.

"Yes, we see the smudge," Vin chuckled, having already directed them toward it a couple of minutes ago. Seeing as his focus attribute was far higher than Scule's, Vin was able to see much farther than the Rogue could. That said, with the haziness and wavering air, that didn't amount for too much in their current fragment. It wasn't long before they got close enough to confirm that the dark smudge was in fact a massive pile of dirt stretching up a solid four or five stories tall.

Shia whistled as they got close, blocking the sun from her eyes with a hand as she admired the tall pile.

"Seeing how fast trogums can dig out their tunnel systems never fails to amaze. Though how did they manage this one? There can't be that many elites, and the mindless ones definitely aren't going to be following directions."

"Don't forget, they've got the dwarves helping them," Vin pointed out.

"The Burrow is a pretty impressive series of tunnels. They definitely know how to dig." As if she'd been summoned, a dwarf chose that moment to push what looked like a wheelbarrow combined with a sled out of a large hole in the ground, bringing it over to the giant pile and dumping it out. Turning around, she froze, blinking as she spotted all of them.

"Hey there!" Vin called out, chuckling as Lumel quickly got off his back and smoothed her robes out.

"We came to see how things were going with the trogums."

"The Explorer!" the dwarf gasped, smiling as her eyes lit up. Tossing the strange wheelbarrow aside, she ran up to him, grabbing his forearm and squeezing hard enough that Vin wondered if he was going to need a quick cast of Renewal to ensure she didn't leave a bruise.

"It is an honor to meet you! The Whisperer's apprentices told us all about how you saved us from the enslaved trogums!"

"Seriously, I'm just happy you guys are okay," Vin said, returning her smile.

"Sorry, can I ask your name? You already know mine, but we've never met."

"Of course! I'm Maggy," she said, turning to share her smile with the whole team.

"Please, after everything you've all done, allow me to thank you on behalf of my people."

"We didn't do it for thanks," Scule said stoically, raising his head and standing proud as his cape draped behind him.

"We did it for money. Or any treasure, really, we're not picky."

"How are the trogums doing?" Lumel asked as Scule danced around on Shia's shoulders, snickering as he dodged the anticipated attempt to flick him off.

"Do you know how many managed to survive?"

"When everything was said and done, Guardian only managed to find a grand total of twenty-three elite trogums to help keep the focused ones alive," Maggy said, her smile faltering somewhat.

"After much discussion, they decided that twenty-five trogums per elite was all they were willing to risk. So there are roughly five hundred of the focused ones being cared for now, of the many thousands the queen created for her army. The rest…"

"You should focus on the lives that were saved rather than those that were lost," Vin said gently, knowing that the road Maggy's mind was wandering down was a dark one indeed. Part of him would never forgive himself for missing the battle for wave three and coming home just in time to wander the field of dead and dying Earthers. None of them had known that the wave was going to arrive early, so he knew it wasn't his fault. But even so, emotions rarely agreed to play nice with logic.

"Can you lead us to Guardian?" Shia asked, nodding toward the nearby hole.

"How large is the tunnel system so far?"

"It's coming along nicely. Nothing nearly as elaborate as the Burrow of course, but we've had a few centuries to improve upon it, so that's not really much of a surprise. Here, follow me." With that, Maggy grabbed the wheelbarrow-sled and headed back into the hole, and the team quickly followed her. The first thing Vin noticed were the scattering of glowing stone shards lining the walls and ceiling of the tunnel, which clearly came from the same rocks that the dwarves used to illuminate their burrow.

Beyond that, the entrance to the tunnel wasn't all that much to look at. There were offshoot rooms leading here and there, and glancing into them revealed small clusters of roughly a dozen of the focused trogums, each one busy carrying out the action it had decided to devote its existence to. While he didn't know their actual names, Vin had a good feeling he could pick a few of them out just by watching. The One That Clapped Its Hands. The One That Walked On All Sixes.

The One That Scratched Circles In Rock, not to be confused with The One That Scratched Circles In Dirt. Some of them were a tad more confusing than others, looking like they were doing nothing more than sitting silently off to the side, but Vin knew that they were almost assuredly just as focused as all the others. He'd met The One That Squeezed Rocks back in the trogums' original fragment, and that guy had been quite devoted to his chosen namesake. You could be reading stolen content.

Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. As they passed by the fourth room, Vin began picking out elite trogums wandering between the focused ones, sitting down and encouraging them to eat what looked like dense nutrient bars of some sort. Most of the focused trogums did what they were told so that they could quickly get back to doing what they wanted to do, but a few were a bit trickier to wrangle than the others.

Watching an elite try to get who he could only presume was The One Who Ran Back And Forth to slow down and eat was pretty entertaining.

"What do you think those ones do when they get tired?" Scule asked, scratching his chin curiously as he watched them run about.

"I mean, that trogum can't run around forever. Eventually it's going to have to rest. Do they just freak out that entire time?"

"That's pretty much exactly what happens," Maggy confirmed, shooting the running trogum a sad smile.

"The elites will combine their mental strength to help it sleep while its body recovers. I'll admit, I was a bit hesitant when I first heard some people mention potentially forming an alliance and helping out with the beings that had come so close to slaughtering us. But witnessing how harmless and innocent the trogums are when they don't have a murderous queen blasting her thoughts into their heads from miles away changed my mind rather quickly."

"Not to say what you guys are doing here isn't noteworthy… but can you really call this an alliance?" Shia asked, gesturing to the rooms of single-minded trogums.

"It's not as though you're getting anything out of this."

"If there's one thing we've learned from the trogum army coming out of nowhere and threatening to overwhelm us it's that on Edregon, it doesn't hurt to have neighbors that you're peaceful with," Maggy explained as she led them farther into the tunnels.

"Even if the trogums can't do more than send warning that a dangerous enemy is coming, that would be more than enough for us to have time to evacuate the Burrow and not find ourselves in the same difficult situation we were in only a few weeks ago. Not to mention, even if they are few in number, the elite trogums are rather impressive warriors. They are able to leave the focused ones for a while without anything bad happening, and twenty-three deadly warriors coming to our aid at the drop of a hat is not nothing."

"That's fair," Shia admitted, satisfied with that answer as she returned to watching the many trogums. Eventually, the team reached a large, central room, where Vin was greeted with a pleasant surprise. Two robed dwarves who were clearly apprentices to the Whisperer were hard at work digging farther into the earth. But it was how they were doing so that caught his attention. New spell witnessed! Tier-1 Earth Spell (Shift Earth).

Vin watched excitedly as large chunks from the dirt wall were ripped out of the tunnel as though from a giant's invisible trowel before being shoveled into the wheelbarrow-sleds, and he eagerly nudged Lumel, whispering as he pointed.

"I have got to learn that spell!" He'd had Stone Shape for the longest time now, but he still lacked any method of digging through simple dirt. He probably could have gone and gotten it from the Stone Mages of Sakis at any point, but he'd already taken so much of their magic for his own that he felt bad about asking for more. Not to mention Eithan had quickly gotten to the point where he wasn't giving out his spells for free any longer."

Hello again," a familiar voice beamed into his head, and Vin turned to find a three-armed trogum elite walking up to them with a shovel in each hand." Have you come to kill me? The last time we spoke you killed the queen and took my arm. I figured I would save time and ask."

"No, we just came to check up on you," Vin said, chuckling as Alka cursed under her breath. He knew she hated dealing with the trogums for the sole reason that she couldn't hear their thoughts they projected into others' heads in order to communicate.

"Maggy here told us you managed to save at least a couple hundred trogums. That's great news!"" Indeed. Many were left to perish on their own, but we took all those we knew we could reliably sustain. In the event we manage to find a way to continue our species one day, hopefully this will be enough. Otherwise, we shall all die here as one."

"This guy is just the life of the party, isn't he?" Scule muttered, looking around the cave.

"Welp, I don't see anything all that shiny here, and I already took the sticky goo these guys can make. I'm good to leave when you all are."

"Actually, I'd like to spend at least the evening studying the trogums in more depth," Shia admitted.

"Remember, I'm a Druid of Bonds. In their own unique way, the trogums have some rather interesting bonds between them and their chosen activities. Not to mention between the elites and the focused. I think I can learn a thing or two."

"I'd like to learn from them as well," Lumel added.

"Their society is just so fascinating, and they're in the middle of recreating it from the ground up now that they are without their queen! This is a once in a lifetime sort of thing!" Reginald added a few squeaks for himself, and Vin and Scule rolled their eyes together, both having come to expect this by now.

"Fine, but don't come crying to me if you get mobbed by a bunch of lady rats when it's time for us to leave again," Scule huffed, throwing up his arms.

"Guess I'll go entertain myself then! Vin, want to come with?"

"Sorry," Vin said, shooting him a sheepish smile as he looked over at the dwarven mages once again.

"I've got my eyes set on learning that Shift Earth spell. It's only a tier-1, and not a complicated affinity, so I should be able to pick it up tonight no problem."

"Bunch a workaholics," Scule grumbled, before glancing at Reginald.

"…and worse."

"Come on. We'll find a way to entertain ourselves while the rest of these guys play with the trogums," Alka said, holding out a hand and helping Scule leap over onto her shoulder.

"Well, it sounds like the trogums are doing well, and we've all got important plans for the evening," Shia grinned, ignoring Scule's rude hand gesture.

"Let's meet back up once were done and camp here for the night. Tomorrow we can hit our first truly unknown fragment on the list!"