30

"I suggest we circle up or move," My voice carried over the shrill cry enough that they circled up without thinking. 

I could really shout when I wanted. I poured another one of my three reserve vials over my own head. Moving away from the group, and drawing my bow again. The wail stopped, and the suffocating silence crashed back in on us. 

"Give the sniper one of those vials," I started barking orders, "Another two to the healer, and the guy with the bum leg. You can decide who gets the last two." 

The sniper guy looked at me as if he were thinking about arguing with me. 

"Us ranged fighters need more space to work well with the group," I explained before he could argue, "The guy with the bum leg can't run, and the healer is a requirement for us to get out of here alive. These things are fast so we need to be prepared for them. Aim for the heads. Seems like that's a weak point for these bastards. There's probably more then one type so be ready for anything."

My slapped together plan wasn't the worst one I'd ever come up with. I drew my bow, and prepared for the worst. I didn't allow my mana to flow into the arrow like last time. I would save that for now. I couldn't risk running out of mana I might need later. 

I saw the ghouls coming this time. Not all of them were fast like the first one that attacked us. The spiked arms were a fairly common trait. I frowned to myself as I fired my first arrow. I wasn't prepared for how many came. 

There were over a dozen of them in this wave. I was glad that I was able to hit my targets half the time, but I was running into trouble. My arrows didn't have nearly as much of an impact without the mana charge. The damage would add up eventually. The ghouls slammed into our group without mercy. 

Attempting to stab, and slash like the beasts they are. I still charged arrows for the more desperate cases when missing wasn't an option. The ghouls didn't slow down unless their limbs were hopelessly maimed. It was chaos, and by the end of it two of our people were dead. Caught off guard by ghouls dropping out of the trees. 

They ignored everyone that was protected by the scent of the sludge until we attacked them. They would still die if we did enough damage, and from what I could tell only the person that landed the last blow would get credit from the kill. Not that it mattered too much since we were thoroughly overwhelmed right from the beginning. Out of morbid curiosity decided to open one of them up, and found that the damn thing didn't really have organs. Just a stomach. 

No heart or anything like that either. These things couldn't breath, and didn't have a heart. I didn't feel like cracking the skull, and figured that there was probably a brain in there. I wouldn't like what I would find in there, and that was enough. I was already plenty disturbed by what I'd found so far. 

Only a stomach. Nothing else. These things couldn't process what they ate so where did all the other people that came in here go. This floor didn't act like the others, and now those of us that were alive all had the scent disguising potion on us so we should investigate. This floor didn't have any distinguishing markers, and the ghouls would send out a scout before attacking us as a group. 

We'd been attacked the same way three times now, and we were faring better now that they didn't attack us on sight, but we could be here for a long time. None of us had brought food or water, and after so much effort we were both running out of ammo, and getting dehydrated. 

"I don't think they're going to stop coming," I voiced what would probably be an unpopular opinion, "I think we need to follow them back to where they're coming from."

"Are you out of your mind?" The healer voiced the first thought I believed the group as a whole would have. 

"Think about it," I frowned at her, "One scout, one bruiser, and nine smaller weaker gatherers."

I referred to the quick one we'd first encountered, the big one that went with the group, and the rest who had large bellies, but were far slower then the group, and weaker then the big one. 

"Those groups look like they're sent out to gather food for something bigger," I started walking towards the corpses of our two fallen group members, "As cruel as if might sound I think we should let them have these bodies, and lead us back to what they're feeding. If I'm wrong then we kill them afterward. If I'm right then we're just wasting our time being beat against the rocks by the waves, and sometime soon we're going to be pulled under by the tide when we can't swim anymore."

They just stared at me for a while as they processed what exactly I'd said. Sure I'd never claim to be the smartest person in the world, but I definitely wasn't stupid. I had enough sense to know that there were about two hours between each wave of ghouls, and now was the time to act. Three times they had sent out a single scout. Three times the wail had gone up. 

Three times the group had followed. None of the ghouls had so much as peeped the entire time that we'd been fighting them. That meant the wail was coming from somewhere else, and if it was coming from somewhere else then we needed to go to it to survive. These two are dead. If we sit here, and go by normal human standards then we'd be next.