Page 1437 -- CLIV.

Chapter One Hundred Fifty-Four: ‘Hark! And unravel...!’
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At first, Royo Raju had spent the majority of his time following the one called Diego, but when it did not prove nearly as fruitful as he had hoped, he began wandering about on his own more. It certainly would’ve made things easier if he could speak or at least understand Ancient Hunese, but even with as prepared as he always liked to be, he’d never thought he would have much use for a dead language, especially when there were still so many other, living ones to spend his time on.

An oversight, apparently. And an extremely annoying one.

Now, he only knew what the superhumans deigned to tell him, which was not very much.

Of course, it was also quite possible, and indeed likely, that these Hun’Sho were simply not revealing very much. They had every reason not to want their treasure discovered.

Royo wondered what the one called Diego would do if he actually found it. Would he take it from the Hun’Sho by force? He doubted that the man had such conviction. Perhaps his curiosity was purely that. Curiosity.

Then again, he supposed that it would also depend on what the treasure turned out to actually be.

Ah, but he was twisting himself into knots over this blasted treasure again. Yes, it would be nice to get his hands on, but he couldn’t let it distract him from everything else. That was a good way to end up dead, he knew.

The more pressing matter, of course, was dealing with the worms. Potentially, the golem and feldeath could be snuck past--at great risk, of course, but it was an option. Instead, however, Royo had hoped to learn more about how the one called Carver had apparently been able to subdue all of the worms just prior to their encounter with him. The man was obviously not a superhuman like the others, given his need to wear one of those suits, so there must have been some other reason for it.

And eventually, he did learn that reason, though it was not nearly as helpful as he’d wanted it to be.

“Oh, that was because of this,” the one called Carver had explained, presenting a small, mechanical box in the palm of his hand. “It is what we call an EWE, or Enhanced Wave Emitter. You see, worms have a particular frequency at which they are vulnerable, and if you are able to strike that frequency with perfect precision, you can effectively put them to sleep.”

“Fantastic,” said the one called Zeff. “Then let’s use that to get out of here right now.”

“Uh, it would still be quite a hike to Capaporo,” said the one called Diego.

“Indeed,” said the one called Carver, “but there is a bigger problem to address, first. As I’m sure you are aware, worms are highly resilient, and perhaps the primary reason for that is their adaptable anatomy and biochemical makeup. You mentioned seeing them fuse and split apart multiple times, yes?”