I walked slowly over to the lower half of the dead guard and searched its pockets and pouches with my now-functional right hand.
I found broken shards of dark glass, more old, decayed paper, some faded pictures, a heavily rusted pocket knife, and, to my surprise, three old but intact grenades.
I grabbed the pocket knife.
It's actually next to useless against these fucking freaks of nature called Aggressors.
And if it ever was an arcane-weapon, the mana inbuilt in it has long since dissipated into nothing.
I mean, what the hell can I do with this particular piece of shit?
It's the equivalent of using a dull pencil on a fucking Zipper-spine.
But I didn't throw it away.
The streets are still out there – this blade might be worthless against Aggressors, but it can definitely shank some annoying motherfuckers if it comes down to it.
My stomach rumbled loudly out of hunger as I did all this, a hollow, aching reminder of my body's needs.
I instantly felt the hunger vanish when I pulled out those dusty grenades.
Even if they appear very old, corroded even, they should still work fine.
I carefully put them in my burnt-up, ragged jeans pockets.
I then started walking as quietly as a dead man, like a ghost, heading cautiously towards where this ominous path led, with extreme, heightened caution, every sense on high alert.
After several tense minutes of silent progress, I began to see what looked like an exit from the oppressive cave I was in.
But I quickly, instinctively, jumped and slammed my back flat against the cold, rough wall of the cave, because I heard the distinct sounds of multiple footsteps and a low, guttural vocal noise from just beyond the opening.
I edged forward very gently, my back still pressed hard against the stone wall, to get a quick, dangerous peek of what was out there.
I risked putting nearly half of my head out of the cave opening, using only my right eye to peer at the things that were making such a considerable ruckus.
And behold, there was a large, unexpectedly bright opening outside the narrow cave I was in.
This new area had strange, black-coloured, multifaceted gems sticking out of the ground like jagged rocks, scattered all over the place.
In this illuminated opening were these extremely short, pale-white, vaguely humanoid creatures with disproportionately big, black, soulless eyes and rough, entirely hairless heads.
They were definitely under 3 feet tall.
They wore some kind of rudimentary, net-like clothes, and some of them held crude, cyan-coloured daggers or short-swords (they were probably full-sized swords to creatures of their stature).
Others carried short sticks topped with a green, moon-shaped, bladed head (like a spear with a curved, sharpened crescent).
They seemed to be doing some kind of manual labor, because many of them that were without weapons were diligently digging and pushing the black-gem rocks around with their bare, surprisingly strong-looking hands.
The strange thing, the most jarring thing, was how bright sunlight, or something very much like it, was present in this deep, underground place.
The opening where these creatures toiled was just a much bigger cave, yet somehow there was abundant light in here too, and it definitely didn't look or feel like it was coming from Earth's sun.
So, I looked up, craning my neck, to see where this mysterious, pervasive source of light could possibly come from.
The only thing I saw was a ceiling covered in vast, shimmering, glass-like curtains hanging all over, like translucent mineral formations.
This somewhat relieved me of the terrifying thought that I had somehow stumbled into an Aggressor's actual home world.
The glowing glass-like sheets diffused a bright, even light, but it was not as harsh or blinding as the true sun.
And there were familiar, thick vines, similar to those found in a Gate, crawling all over the distant ceiling.
This gave me a solid guess that I was, indeed, still trapped somewhere within the confines of the Gate.
I returned my gaze to the bizarre creatures before me, then, crouching low, I darted behind a conveniently close, jagged boulder.
From this concealed position, I scanned the whole illuminated area and quickly noticed two other creatures, distinctly different from the rest, positioned a bit far away on higher ground, perched above a series of naturally formed, steps-like rocks.
They were several meters away, directly in front of me, or the boulder I was hiding behind, to be exact.
There, a tall, slender creature with long, elegantly pointy ears, dressed in a flowing, white, feathered robe, reclined.
It looked like a 'she'… and she looked very much like a human, strikingly so, except for her extremely pale-white, almost luminous skin.
Kinda like how Daigo always used to describe elves from other people talks.
She was laying on her side like some ethereal queen, gently, almost absently, rubbing her swollen, surprisingly transparent belly.
Through the taut skin, I could visibly make out the form of an infant floating inside her – she was heavily pregnant.
But the truly weird thing was the other Aggressor that stood directly in front of her, making soft, weird 'humming' noises as it, or he, rubbed her distended belly with its two… hands?
The creature's back faced me, so I couldn't see its face, but this creature was pitch-black, its smooth skin adorned with intricate, pulsing red patterns all over its body.
It didn't seem to have a discernible neck that separated its head from its torso.
It stood upright, much like a human, but it had no legs; it simply levitated a few centimeters above the ground, hovering silently, as it massaged the 'elf-queen' creature's belly with a long, smooth, fin-like appendage that served as its hand.
It basically looked like an animated, upside-down, black drop-of-water with two gracefully moving, smooth fins.
Faint, red-coloured, visible electric sparks seemed to crackle and jump from its fins as they made contact with the belly of the pregnant creature.
She, however, didn't seem to be experiencing any pain whatsoever; it was almost like the black creature was some kind of gentle doctor or midwife, tending to her.
The 'elf-queen' just relaxed serenely on a naturally formed, stone-crafted bench as the black, teardrop creature did whatever arcane thing it was doing.
I looked back at the multitude of short, laboring creatures and saw five of them struggling together, trying to lift up a single, huge black-gem rock.
To lift that particular rock, I figured it would take at least two Evolved with strength comparable to my own to even budge it, let alone carry it.
This observation made me come to a quick hypothesis: these short, white bastards were very physically weak compared to almost all the E-Grade Aggressors I've fought in the past, including the brutal Zipper-spines and the relentless Flea-gloats, and certainly weaker than most E-Grade Evolved humans.
The only ones I couldn't get an immediate read on, the wild cards, were the regal 'elf-queen' and the mysterious, floating black 'water drop'.
I needed to get the fuck out of here, and fast.
I didn't even have a clue where an entrance or exit to this entire section might be, and the longer I stalled, the weaker and more vulnerable I would become.
I had no source of food or even water down here, which eventually meant a slow, miserable death by starvation and dehydration if I chicken out of dicing these bastards.
The only way outta here was straight through these motherfuckers.
So, I made a hard, desperate decision right there and then: to dice the lot of these bastards, starting right now.