All three of them entered the hub. The smell started making all of their nose's itch. It was dark, usually there was some light in the middle of the room. It seemed that something destroyed the light that was here in the hub.
Lydd was not unprepared though. It seemed she had picked up a lighter in the storage facility. After a few clicks the fire sparked. The light showed a table in the middle of the room chopped in half. Beyond the table though it seemed to still be dark for some reason.
Lydd and Den weren't paying attention to that, to their left was a man slumped to the edge of the tent, his hat looked different. He looked more like a general. Well, if it was for one of his eyes being popped out of the socket, and half his mouth ripped apart, drooping down to his legs.
There were many other bodies, most of the bodies here seemed to be wearing military uniforms, there were few miners here, but they still existed. The most obvious one was the one on the table that seemed to be split through the stomach matching the tables. It was almost symmetrical if it was for one of his arms being bent over to the other side.
The entire site was enough to make anyone throw up from the carnage that seemed to have taken place.
"The military escort, they are all dead."
"T-they might have not been the nicest, b-but they deserved better."
Aban didn't know them personally, but it was evident they were the ones who supplied the miners with the guns. They continued looking around, it seemed the smell was on the other side of the table.
They went around to the darkness on the other side of the table; it was a monster.
'This is probably one of the creatures they mentioned before.'
Actually, it reminded him of something in the present. He remembered the depictions of some of the monsters in the corrupted worlds. He didn't know much about the monsters except they were called by the nameless Echoborn.
Usually, echoes of other monsters or creatures, just to a much more evolved and corrupted form. This was not limited to humanity's original creatures, it was creatures that have been extinct for a long time, or monsters unique to specific biomes of worlds. Whatever they were, they are echoes of the original, but usually are stronger, faster, and more intelligent to their counterpart.
The monster they were looking at was just that, it was a corrupted version of a wolf. Its fur black, it seemed to have multiple eyes, it was hard to tell how many due to the amount of bullet holes all over the body. Though it had a minimum of three, likely four, something blasted that side of his face off. Its open eye was red, all three of them didn't want to investigate the other two eyes because they didn't want to even touch the creature.
The final major difference between this creature and its normal counterpart was its tail. Instead of a tail, it had three long tentacles coming out of it. Two of the tail tentacles were cut off, the last one was wrapped around the body of a military guy. He seemed to have been stabbed in the heart by the end of the tail. It seemed the creature died before fully going through the man. The thing at the end of the creature's tail seemed to be pretty solid, like bone.
"It seems like we found the culprit of whatever killed the camp."
Still Aban couldn't shake the feeling of something wrong. Why would there be a challenge on something that was already completed? What was the doppelganger talking about when he said that by the end Aban would be ready to accept the power he could gain from the deal.
Though before he could finish thinking...
"DEN, LYDD, RAIDEN! COME OUT!"
It sounded like Lug. It seems he had survived. Den and Lydd ran out. With Aban's train of thought interrupted he quickly followed. They left the main hub. They looked around, they were excited to see Lug again. It sounded like he had escaped the cave collapse.
When they looked around, they looked at the platform they had originally entered from.
"Den don't look."
Lydd brought Den's head down, but it was too late. Aban took a look; he saw Lug's corpse hanging off. There were three tentacles holding him up. Two holding his shoulders, and whatever was on the end of one of the tails seemed to be in his throat stabbed through the back.
"Hello."
The dangling corpse of Lug waved.