Diggy Diggy Hole Chapter 49 (Patreon)

It took eight, eight long days and eight hours of endless bloodshed to slay the thirteen times thirteen broodmothers that filled the darkest and most depraved pits of Karak Eight Peaks.

The invisibility potions really started to stop working, not because the oversized ogres developed some sort of resistance or something. No, instead they were just covered in so much dried blood and gore that it constituted basically an entire covering.

And all to soon, the rats were screaming about the Blood God sending demons in to invade their deepest tunnels as the fighting only picked up from above as my kin met the rats and greenskins in more open combat.

Which, to be fair. Enough blood had definitely been split already to summon some Khorne demons if someone was so inclined to do such a damned foolish thing.

The smell of Ogres, rats, and dried blood had imprinted on myself as well, even with the fire magic I could call upon with the Winds of Aquishy purging the actual blood and gore into but ashes.

"Wez gonna eat good right little un?" Shaggit asked with a whisper that was then answered by his massive gut letting out a small roar of more food then just raw skaven they could throw into their gullets.

"We are heading back indeed Shaggit... Get you and your own kin back to your homes and I will have the promised reward delivered within a couple hours." I said tiredly as I leaned against a wall of shredded flesh and broken thin metal plates. 

A particularly annoying Rat Ogre who had been covered in scrappy platemale, which was a pain in the ass to do deal with.

Shaggit grunted in agreement while I blinked as the sound of harsh gases escaping in the distance rang out from a tunnel. But this hall we were in wasn't a hall carved out of the earth by my kin a millennium at least ago. 

This was a rough cavern opened up by careless hands, hands with no knowledge of the stone they were hewing by slaves' hands. And the uncaring brute force of explosions.

Then I realized what that sound actually was besides some underground, toxic gas escaping from the even deeper layers of skaven-controlled territory.

Rough, stompy metallic clangs rang out as from the tunnel came one of my centurions. A Warpstone-fueled one. Clearly from the glowing green acidic mist leaking from the heat vents in its chest plate.

The centurion gave Shaggit and his fellow Ogre's a long look before the behavior matrix's engraved within it's rune control system inputted that they weren't greenskins nor thagoraki. Hence... They weren't it's problem.

And I saw how it had clearly gotten into some heavy fights with Rat Ogre's with special weapons from the looks of things. As they were the only thing in these tunnels that could have the force to actually score and carved pieces of metal from it's armor plating.

"Oii look at the metal man haha. He got in a right good scrap didn't eh?" Shaggit chuckled before he poked me with a giant finger as he said. "Come on little un. Let's get up topside, I am ungry!"

I chuckled before I said pointedly. "Shaggit you are always hungry though."

And my face twitched as the ugly ass ogre said honestly. "That I am, so let's get up to more food before the lads, and me eat ya and then eat ya goat when we get back."

For a brief moment... A brief moment my hands on my battle axe tightened and I thought that Shaggit's skull would look mighty fine mounted on my throne. But I shook the thought aside.

I wasn't a kin betrayer. And even if these Ogre's weren't kin in the slightest. On my dawi pride, I will never break a covenant of my own accord.

"Follow the path of that Centurion... It will have dealt with any skaven on the way." I said with a grunt as I got back on my feet and followed the lumbering giant ogre's who grumbled and moved.

On the bright side, I didn't need to kill my ogre mercs because the passing by centurion did in fact kill a bunch of skaven and even a few large black-skinned orcs whose remains promptly became ogre McNuggets for the way back up to dwarf controlled tunnels.

And soon enough we reached dwarven held territory with Ungrim Ironfist being found as he and his merry band of murder hobo's were directly guarding the already fortified Nether Portal.

I could see the slayer king looking on at the ogre's with clear disdain as they went through the nether portal to take the train back to my own hold.

And while they left, I went over to the alchemy room I had set up to make healing potions for the matrons of Valaya to help with the wounded. As after almost nine days of constant fighting, I was damn near out of all my potions.

Going over to my chest of potions... I put my hand on my on the chest and I just paused there. The screams of the massive bloated broodmothers as we killed them ringing through my mind. The dark even to my dawi eye's filled with endless rats ran through with my muscles clenching at the memory.

Until I forced down the images, and then I paused as my system pinged. [Illusion Resistance +1]

A cooling sensation filled my mind for but a moment before fury ran through my mind as I realized something... More like 'someone' was fucking with my mind even now.

So I slowly looked up from the potion chest, and I took in the obsidian-reinforced room as I tried to find it. Whatever was trying to fuck with my mind in the shadows.

But nothing was in view. Nothing was there for me to find, even with the system map of my surroundings.

'I need to go pray to the Ancestors... Some evil nonsense is haunting me from the shadows.' I thought with a frown.