With the Queen defeated and the Nexus closed, a swarm was incoming.
Blitz said they'd be less resistant to mundane weapons since the Nexus was destroyed. Could we lure them to a spot where we can detonate the explosives Spark had brought along? Yeah, there was a place back toward the front, where we came in - a depression with water in it. I led the way, slipping a bit on the crumbling dirt. We got a good head start but the beetles were gaining on us and more were arriving from other directions. A couple bugs made wild jumps at Spark as they closed in. They emitted flames but they seemed weaker. Another tried to spew flame at Blitz, and cooked his armor pretty good. I took another glance at the digital display and we were where we wanted to be. I threw on the brakes as we arrived at the confluence of a few tunnels with a 20-meter drop off straight down. Spark set the explosives and then pointed out an access ladder we could use to get out of harm's way.
Spark headed up first then Blitz. Then me, of course. Blitz sent a blast of energy at the rear of the swam, to send them steamrolling toward our trap. It worked, as they started piling up on themselves in the bowl-shaped area below us. Spark activated the explosives. Nothing. A few agonizing seconds went by as we clung to the access ladder. Our hearts sank. Then the explosives went off. BOOM! Smoke ripped up toward us and a strange smell of burning assaulted our noses. It seemed more chemical than death.
Then the ladder started to loosen. I frantically looked for a place to connect my grappling hook in my climbing kit. I saw part of the infrastructure above us that I could loop onto. There was a separate I-beam that ran parallel to the one the ladder was on. I fed the stable rope to Blitz after I'd secured it, then I leapt five meters to the ground. Blitz got down safely. Spark followed but none to gracefully.
We retreated back the way we came, with Blitz checking out Astral space to see if there were more bugs out there. "Let's get out of here," he said. "These things are toast." We got back to the place where the Nexus had been. Now there were piles of carapaces almost fused into the "altar" as if they climbed onto it as they died. I found a "smaller" beetle shell intact. Its legs were gone but the rest of its Rhino beetle-style body was there, albeit fragile.
After we'd collected some material we headed back to the surface, realizing it was hard to process how long we'd been down there. Ben was there waiting, feeding wood into a big iron cooking stove. "Do you bear good tidings?" he asked. "Yes," Blitz said, pulling out a beetle horn and tossing it to the Troll. It landed on the ground near his giant feet. "Done." Ben shouts a hurrah and called out to the camp to rally to him. "Our home is saved, and we have these little fellas to thank!" As more Trolls emerge, a few grabbed me and Blitz and tossed him in the air in celebration. It hurt our sore bones so much. Elias poured something from a gas can into a tin cup for Spark. "Drink up! It's a good day!" Grain alcohol by Trolls.
I uploaded the footage from my cyber eyes to Ben's tablet so they could watch the Run. A young female Troll hooked it up to a widescreen TV that had been hidden under a tarp. They played it like a movie.
Later Schroeder broke the material link on the glove Blitz had acquired so he can use it in the future without being traced by the former owner.
