“Can we do that again?” Phovos asked as she bounced up and down on the corpse of an arachnid that was way, way too large.
“Do what again?” Tenuk asked in return, wiping green and blue glowing blood off his staff. “Fight these horrible mistakes again?”
Phovos bounced up and down some more. “Yes! It was awesome, we got to kill a fuckton of monsters and do some actual good for once, all while having a good time!”
Tenuk rolled his eyes, just as Retvik and Elksi turned up. “You call… THIS a good time?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Why?”
Phovos glanced around, then turned to the rest of her team. Elksi was busy using a torn off limb as a toothpick to clean her teeth, while Retvik was rubbing one of his arms, looking rather tired.
“I… I don’t know. I just had a lot of fun mindlessly slaughtering things. I haven’t done that in so long…”
Tenuk tutted. “You ought to be careful. Mindless murder is what separates us as heroes and from common bandit-folk.”
“Yeah but these are just mindless creatures that would murder us. And we were insanely outnumbered!” Phovos was getting a little flustered, and couldn’t understand what Tenuk was talking about. “What’s so wrong with squashing canine-sized bugs?”
“There’s nothing wrong with it!” Elksi swiftly offered her own opinion. “Plus it was self defence. And all that nonsense. They wanted us dead and probably eaten.”
Retvik nodded in agreement. “I understand what you are getting at, Tenuk, but our current scenario does not really connect with what we would normally do.”
“And we were asked to do this!” Phovos added.
“We are getting paid. Money for bug squishing!” Elksi also added. Both the feminine members of the team seemed not at all concerned when it came to the number of bugs they had killed. “The outpost asked us to.”
“If anything, that makes us mercenaries…” Retvik frowned. “Or bug exterminators. But all that aside, what we are doing here is a net benefit to the local area. No one wants biting insectoids running all over the place. Is this area clean, Phovos?”
Phovos nodded. “Yeah. Got all of them. If there’s more, they won’t be sticking around.”
“And you, Tenuk?”
“My sector is secure. I closed up all the small tunnels too.”
“Good. Elksi?”
Elksi grinned wildly. “I had an awesome time. We need to do this more often. Like, a lot more often!”
Tenuk stared at Elksi. “You’re into violent murder too?”
“Only when it’s icky bugs!” Elksi continued grinning. “Maybe we could ask the outpost? If there are more infestations?”
“That sounds like a good idea!” Phovos also smiled. “After all, they’re just killer bugs. Better us than them.”
Tenuk sighed, then relented. “You all make good points. Still, I want to get out of here. I don’t mind the corpses everywhere but the blue and green blood being bioluminescent makes me worried that there’s something bigger underneath all of this. After all, what sort of creature would have blood that makes it more obvious in the darkness?”
“I will be honest, Tenuk…” Retvik snorted, seemingly a bit grumpy. “I am not in the mood for morality right now. Sometimes you must murder a hive of horrible monsters now and then and, because we are in an eternal void, evolution works differently and many creatures can have weird mutations and still be successfull…” Retvik trailed off for a moment. “Hmph. While I am happy to do more of this extermination, I think I need something to eat.”
“We’re covered in goo and you’re hungry?” Elksi teased.
“All this heat I generate has to come from somewhere.”
Phovos finished wiping down the rest of her axe. “How about we go back to the outpost, get paid and then stop somewhere and get some nice, tasty, non-glowing lunch?”
The circle of friends all nodded.
“That is a great idea. Le’s get out of there already!”