CRACK!
The pick entered the palm and got stuck halfway in.
Surprisingly, no blood came out of the wound.
It was almost like these behemoths were made of pure stone.
The next moment, Kyle felt his hammer getting heavier, and the arm of the behemoth crumbled into stone.
The smaller behemoth quickly jumped up and landed quite a distance away, its speed nothing to scoff at.
From over ten meters away, it looked at Kyle.
Then, it started to rumble, creating a deep reverberating sound.
It sounded almost like a tunnel that was about to collapse.
A moment later, the other behemoths also started to rumble, filling the entire city with the sounds of deep rumbling.
Kyle did not like that sound at all.
Suddenly, Kyle saw one of the behemoths jumping up.
It was jumping right at him!
Kyle scampered to the side.
BOOOOOM!
The place where he had just been exploded in a shower of ruin fragments and stone.
The landing behemoth stretched its arm at Kyle, but he just ran out of its reach.
The rumbling intensified, and Kyle saw more of the behemoths jumping up.
They were attacking!
Kyle quickly ran from side to side as he continued down the streets.
The behemoths were jumping in a steep arc of at least 60° upwards.
‘They are made for vertical movement!’ Kyle realized. ‘They can move rapidly up and down, but they are slow when moving from side to side.’
‘They are like toads or frogs!’
‘Their arms are slow, but their legs have a lot of power that allows them to jump really high!’
‘That’s how the scaly Spitters can survive here!’
Kyle avoided another landing behemoth.
More and more of them were slowly walking out of the houses.
One after the other, they jumped at him.
Kyle was running as fast as he could, but all of them quickly caught up.
Their speed was higher than Kyle’s, but their trajectories were predictable.
Despite their weight, gravity had a fixed acceleration.
The further they wanted to move, the higher they needed to jump, which meant it took a longer time for them to land.
BOOM!
A behemoth landed right in front of Kyle and extended its arm to him.
Instead of striking the arm, Kyle jumped to the side into the open door of a house.
The gigantic arm tore the wall into pieces, and Kyle quickly ran into the house.
He searched for a window, but there were none!
‘Don’t have time!’
Kyle held his hammer in front of him and ran into the wall.
BOOOM!
The wall exploded outward, and Kyle stumbled over the undamaged wall near the bottom.
He scrambled on the ground before he continued running.
BOOOOM!
The house behind him exploded as a behemoth landed right on it.
Kyle just kept running, and soon, more behemoths appeared.
It was like a shower of meteors was trying to crush him, and Kyle had to avoid every single one of them.
The streets around Kyle exploded as more and more behemoths landed near him.
Through sheer luck and dexterity, Kyle managed to avoid every single one of them.
He kept running, and eventually, he saw a huge set of stairs.
These steps led right into the destroyed spire.
Kyle ran up the stairs as he avoided more of the landing behemoths.
After half a minute of avoiding death several times, Kyle reached the huge open gate of the spire.
RRRRRRRRRRR!
At that moment, the entire city started to shake.
The behemoths that were in the air landed, and the ones on the ground didn’t jump anymore.
The entire city had become silent again, except for the overpowering rumbling sound.
When Kyle felt the rumbling, he immediately discerned three things.
First, this rumbling was the same kind of rumbling the other behemoths emitted earlier.
Second, it was much more powerful than their rumbling.
And third, it came right from the spire.
Kyle watched as all the behemoths stopped moving, looking at the spire.
The rumbling vanished after a couple of seconds.
Then, the behemoths very slowly backed away from the spire.
But they only retreated to the bottom of the steps before stopping.
From there, they just looked at Kyle.
Over 20 behemoths were waiting at the bottom of the steps for Kyle.
Naturally, they wanted to kill him.
One of their young just wanted to play, but this guy had destroyed its arm.
They were furious, and they wanted revenge.
They would wait for Kyle to come out of the spire.
Or for him to enter the spire.
Both options would lead to the same outcome.
Kyle couldn’t be sure what the behemoths were thinking, but he could tell one thing.
They were angry.
They hated him.
‘If it’s black, fight back. My ass! Thanks for nothing, public education system! When I fought back, I made all of them attack me!’
‘These fuckers had probably just been curious!’
‘Then, I attacked them like the dumbass I am!’
Kyle took a deep breath as he watched the behemoths near the bottom of the stairs.
Then, he looked into the dark interior of the spire.
‘Yeah, I’m fucked, aren’t I?’
‘Based on the intensity of the rumbling earlier, their leader is probably in there.’
‘I can’t even kill one of the normal ones. How am I supposed to deal with their leader?’
Kyle sat down at the entrance of the spire.
The behemoths just kept watching him.
Kyle waited for a couple of minutes, but the behemoths didn’t move.
It was like they had all the time in the world.
‘What am I supposed to do?’
‘If I run out, I will die. Let’s be real, I survived all of that due to sheer luck, and even if I am lucky again and reach the entrance of the tunnel, I would need to climb back up.’
‘While they are slow horizontally, they are brutally fast vertically.’
‘I will be captured immediately.’
‘There’s no way out.’
‘And if I just wait here, I will starve.’
Kyle took a deep breath and sighed.
Then, he absentmindedly looked into the spire.
That was when he saw something.
‘Oh, so that’s where you ended up,’ Kyle thought as he looked at the old skeleton.
A small mining weapon was lying right beside the skeleton.
‘Well, seems like we’re in the same boat.’