Okay, where might a hidden underground stealth generator be?

  “Perhaps under one of the buildings?” Samsara guessed.

  Good point. We should start there. I headed over to where the two twin office buildings were. While most of the structures had digested in my stomach, there were still ruins of the foundation that marked where they were, as well as the bunker underneath. I activated [Serrated Tentacles] and began to dig.

  Each of my hair tentacles lashed out towards the ground, slicing up concrete and pouring it to the side. Eventually, I reached dirt.

  I just kept digging.

  Dirt flew into the air, piling up into massive mounds on either side of the hole. My [Serrated Tentacles] churned through the earth like I was digging up sand at the beach. I dug down ten meters. Twenty. Fifty.

  "Nothing," I grumbled to Samsara. "Just dirt, rocks, and some old plumbing."

  I kept going. The deeper I went, the darker the soil became. I must have dug nearly a kilometer down, creating a shaft that would make any mining operation jealous. But there was no metallic clang, no hum of electricity, nothing. All the work of my hair tentacles.

  "It’s not here," Samsara said, peering into the abyss. "We’re wasting time."

  I pulled my tentacles out, shaking off the loose soil. "You’re right. If it’s not under the office buildings, where else would they hide a massive power source?"

  "The Rift Harvester?" Samsara suggested. "It was the most important thing here. Maybe the generator was shielding the Rift specifically."

  We moved to the concrete pad where the dome had been. The Dungeon Rift stretched across the air above. Thankfully, nothing came out as we approached. I repeated the process, my tentacles tearing into the foundation. Concrete shattered, rebar snapped, and my hair tentacles plunged into the earth again.

  I dug and I dug until I reached about a kilometer again. Nothing. Just more dirt. Did they hide it close to the magma? No, that seemed unsafe.

  "Oh, come on!" I yelled mentally. "It has to be somewhere! Eivor said it was underground!"

  However, even if the stealth generator was underground at Lateo, there was no reason for it to be that way for every hidden base the Monster Purifiers made. They could have it above ground. Still, I would have noticed it if that was the case.

  Frustration took over. I stopped aiming for specific spots. I lashed out across the base, digging trenches, ripping up concrete, and overturning dirt. The ruined base looked like it had been hit by a localized tornado.

  “Want to help out?” I asked Samsara.

  “Sure!” she gleefully said in my mind. “If we both work together, then we can get this done quicker.”

  My tentacles mined the earth, tossing debris high into the air. Samsara joined in, her massive claws ripping through the soil. Minutes passed as we dug a massive holes across the base.

  Eventually, I could feel even Samsara getting upset. We ended up not aiming anymore. We were just destroying the ground that didn’t feel like dirt.

  Suddenly, Samsara’s claws sliced something metallic.

  “Over here?” she asked, slashing again at more of the metal structure embedded into the Earth.

  I came over to her. She was in the center between the Rift and the bunker. I raised all my hair tentacles and brought them down in a synchronized manner to assist Samsara. The metal was quite thick, probably nearly 100 meters or so. Why would they need to do this?

  Clearly, to hide something important. They just didn’t expect Kaijus to be the ones digging this stuff up.

  "Got something!" I shouted in our linked minds. Light illuminated below.

  I cleared the loose dirt carefully. Buried about 500 meters down, encased in a protective shell of concrete that I had just cracked, sat a strange machine.

  It wasn't huge like the Rift Harvester, but it was distinct. It looked like a large, concave radio dish, except the material was a matte black metal that seemed to absorb the light. Connected to the base of the dish was a large cube, pulsing with a slow, rhythmic neon blue light.

  “That has to be it," Samsara said, peering over my shoulder. "A stealth generator."

  "It looks small," I noted. Many human structures looked small to a 200 meter tall Kaiju."And delicate."

  I focused on the glands in my hair tentacles and toggled their ink production off. The sticky ink dissipated after a few seconds. It seemed to be reabsorbed into my hair tentacles.

  Four of my hair tentacles reached downward, wrapping around the cube and the dish. I pulled. The machine groaned, and my free tentacles went to grab the wires at the base. Once it was free, my tentacles lifted it into the air.

  “Okay, I got it,” I said, carefully holding the device with a few hair tentacles. "Let's fill up the hole so they don't know exactly what we took."

  Samsara nodded. “Good idea. Even if they dig for it eventually, it’ll still delay them by a lot.”

  Samsara scooped up a mound of dirt and dropped it into the hole we made. I assisted her with my hair tentacles. In the end, it looked like a mess of uneven ant hills. My hair tentacles smoothed it all out, and it looked like we did a decent job of putting the dirt back. Sadly, I couldn’t do the same with the concrete.

  Something rattled to the side. We turned towards it. Our eyes went to one of the mechs.

  Tiny red meaty hands dragged themselves out of the hole at the side of the mech’s torso. It pulled on the ground and dragged the rest of it out. It uncompressed, and the meaty form began to expand slightly. Arms, legs, and heads jutted out of it.

  “The meat blob,” I realized. “I ate the pilots, but forgot to eat that too.”

  "It's trying to escape," Samsara noted. The blob shimmied across the ground, surprisingly fast for something that looked quite slow. Plus, the other meat blobs weren't as fast.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  I stepped toward it, readying a free tentacle.

  “Can I eat it this time?” Samsara asked.

  I turned to smile at her. “Sure, I’ll slice it up. Bite-sized pieces for you.” I began to activate [Serrated Tentacles].

  "No," Samsara said in my mind. Her voice was sharp and commanding.

  I stopped. “What? You don’t want to eat it?”

  "No," she repeated. She slithered past me, blocking my path. "I'm going to eat it. Whole."

  Through her eyes, I saw the blob. It was about the size of a small mouse to us. “Samsara, are you sure you don’t want me to cut it up for you?”

  "I need to do this," she interrupted, turning her head to look me in the eye. I stared back. “Remember the Aberration? What if we get into a similar situation? I can’t always rely on you, even with your new mutations. I need to be able to handle things on my own.”

  I was about to counter that I doubt we would have any problem with anything that small, but Samsara interrupted my thoughts with her own rebuttal.

  “What if we run into an Unbound that managed to stun you?” Samsara asked. I didn’t have a good answer to that. “We need to be ready for anything. And I’m done rejecting my snake biology.”

  She turned back to the blob. Samsara quickly slithered over to it and pinched it lightly with her claws, taking care not to injure it. It struggled, vibrating against her clawed fingers, but she pinned it with her scaly palms.

  She brought the mass of meat over to her face and opened her jaw wide. Her tongue stretched outwards and wrapped itself around the meat blob, pulling it inward. Like the other meat blobs, this also tasted like a mixture of steak and gelatin. I wondered why that was since there was no way each blob was fully made of cow girls.

  Unlike the Aberration, the meat blob wasn’t as large, so Samsara didn’t need to stretch as much. She used her forked tongue to push the meat blob towards the back of her throat.

  "You got it," I encouraged her.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, muscles in her neck bulging as she forced the swallow. Her throat distended, a distinct bulge traveling down her neck. She gulped, again and again, forcing the mech’s power source down into her gullet.

  The bulge moved lower, settling into her stomach, which pushed out visibility against her upper abs.

  "Good job," I said. "Really."

  "Tastes bland," she mumbled out loud, wiping her mouth. "But I did it. It’s squirming though, just like the Aberration." A mixture of both disgust and fascination emanated from Samsara’s mind.

  “Why didn’t you inject it with your venom?” I asked, tilting my head. It wasn’t made of unbreakable stone unlike the Aberration.

  “I guess I forgot,” Samsara shyly said. “It’s not a bad feeling though. Feeling my prey squirming inside my stomach. It’s not a problem you need to worry about.”

  “But it was a problem for me to punish the mech pilots that shot at us,” I pointed out, poking her cheek.

  “That was different, what you did was totally unnecessary!” Samsara cried out, backing up from me. “I needed to do this to prepare myself.”

  “So if I swallowed my prey whole then it would be okay?” I asked. Not that I intended to. You miss out on the rich blood and bones if you swallow your prey whole. Plus, I wouldn’t get to enjoy the crunchy sounds.

  “No, because you don’t need to do it,” Samsara shook her head. “This was just a mistake I made because I forgot I could paralyze it.”

  “Definitely a big mistake,” I said. “It’s probably suffering a lot more because it’s being melted alive.”

  Guilt immediately rose up inside of Samsara. And that made me feel upset.

  “Wait, wait, it wasn’t a big mistake,” I tried to correct myself. “You should feel great that you were able to swallow your prey whole. And doesn’t it make you feel powerful that you are melting it alive right now?”

  Tears began to form in Samsara’s eyes. Okay, what else can I do?

  "Let's get out of here before reinforcements show up for real," I suggested. Hopefully, this would also distract Samsara from crying.

  I grabbed the rest of the mech with my free hair tentacles and began chewing on it. Surprisingly, Aisling also followed us. Last time, she just stayed invisible. Perhaps she was learning after Samsara hugged and lifted her up?

  Before I forgot, I made sure to go back to the cave where the truck with the ores were. It was completely offline, with none of the lights on inside. Should be safe to carry. I turned off my corrosive red ink and grabbed it with my finger tip tentacles, along with the ores on the ground.

  We trekked back across the Wild Lands, keeping our pace steady. The invisible weight of the generator wasn't an issue for me, but I was careful not to swing it around. It seemed extremely fragile.

  Samsara wiped the tears off her face, only sniffling every few minutes or so. Her stomach had returned to normal and the squirming inside had stopped. I gave her a quick hug, and she smiled at me.

  Lateo came into view, or rather, the empty valley where Lateo hid. We crossed the threshold, and the village shimmered back into existence.

  Eivor and Halinka were waiting for us near the base of the stairs, just where we had left them.

  "You returned," Halinka said, her fox ears twitching. She looked relieved.

  "We brought a souvenir," I called out. I lowered the stealth generator gently onto the grass. Next, I bent over to place the truck with various metal ores on the ground. “Actually, multiple souvenirs.”

  Eivor's eyes widened. "The generator. You actually found it."

  "Dug up half the base to get it," I said. “You can keep it as a spare. The other stuff here is for Lucia and the others to inspect. And you should also allow them access to investigate the stealth generator”

  “Yes, yes,” Eivor agreed. She walked up to the device, placing a hand on the black metal. "This... this will ensure we have redundancy. Halinka?"

  Halinka stepped forward. The fox woman wasn't nearly our size, of course, but for a monster girl, she was way stronger than a human. She grabbed one side of the generator's metal frame. Then, she lifted it off the ground.

  Halinka instantly shifted her grip. “I’ve got it, just guide me where to go since I can’t really see with this blocking me.”

  They went towards the mountain. I was about to ask ‘Wasn’t the other stealth generator under the river?’ But then I realized that there was no way to get to the underside of the river from here, so clearly there must be an entrance somewhere else.

  Eivor went ahead of Halinka. Even though Halinka went quickly ahead, Eivor repeatedly told Halinka to wait for her to catch her breath. She was panting.

  "Did you see that?" I asked Samsara.

  "Yeah," Samsara replied, eyeing the elder. "She's weak."

  "Not just weak," I corrected. "Halinka is a fox girl, so she obviously has enhanced strength compared to most humans.”

  "Do you think Eivor is a human?" Samsara wondered.

  That would make sense.

  Halinka and Eivor disappeared into a large opening at the base of the mountain, next to the steps leading up to their stilted home. It was still small compared to us, so my 200 meter large frame couldn’t exactly squeeze inside. Plus, it would be a waste to use the [Project] skill since we could just watch Eivor and Halinka through our soul links. Instead, I just sat on the grass.

  The bright sunlight of the valley was replaced by the dim, flickering orange glow of a gas lantern Eivor was holding.

  They descended a long, spiraling stone staircase cut directly into the rock. It went down deep. Both of them traveled for several minutes. As they reached the bottom of the stairs, the narrow tunnel opened up into a colossal cavern.

  I could feel Eivor’s heavy breathing. Her legs burned. She really wasn’t conditioned for this.

  "She feels weak," I noted to Samsara. “Definitely human fragility.”

  "Whoa," Samsara whispered in my mind.

  It was a subterranean city. Dozens of structures lined the cavern floor, built from grey stone and dark wood. They mimicked the architecture of the stilted houses above, but these weren’t stilted.

  They had an entire village below the actual village?

  Reminder: There is a monster girl revolution Discord if you are interested in joining: