HISSSSSS—BOOM!
Ten miles straight beneath Dry-Well City, the hundred-foot-wide Dry-Well Abyssal Elevator & Super-Drill burst through the roof of a vast underground cavern. Below the spinning golden drill blades stretched a roaring subterranean river of bright orange-gold magma, three miles wide and bubbling with jets of liquid fire!
The moment the shadow of the elevator hull fell across the magma river, the boiling lava exploded upward in a thousand fiery geysers.
CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK!
Out of the white-hot magma leaped an army of over one hundred thousand Rank 5 Lava-Shell Crabs and twenty-foot-long Subterranean Fire-Worms!
The smallest of the Lava-Shell Crabs was the size of a washbasin, while the biggest Crab-Generals were as wide as an ox-cart. Their shells were forged from dark-red volcanic stone veined with glowing lava, and their heavy pincers dripped with 800-degree molten slag. Behind them, the twenty-foot Fire-Worms slithered up the outer walls of the elevator shaft, spitting gobs of corrosive magma-spit at the thick black-iron elevator cables!
CLANG! CLANG! SCREEEECH!
Thousands of Lava-Shell Crabs clamped onto the outer hull of the elevator platform, their blazing-hot pincers snapping at the crystal windows and trying to pry loose the steel rivets. Up near the top of the cylinder, five hundred Fire-Worms wrapped their glowing bodies around the four main elevator cables, trying to roast the metal until it snapped!
