As its face slowly tilted upward even more, its eyes widened, showing off its teeth as if they were a prized possession. Its lips turned upward more and more until...
It smiled.
"Guark."
Finally, a sound came from it.
"GUAAAAAAAAAAAARK!"
It laughed.
In one swift motion, it rotated its body, planting its feet toward me and lunging with its jaw wide open. Its front limbs stretched out as saliva and blood escaped its mouth, spraying past me.
When it shifted, the angle of the light changed. I realized this was not a dead end; beyond the corpse, there were more tunnels, with fresh bodies scattered just outside them.
The dead body without legs was melting while these ones were not.
I also noticed that the leg of the man who had just died was lying just beside the rocks, severed completely.
That was all I could process in that passing second as I took a step back. I side-stepped into a tunnel right beside me that sloped sharply downward, covering the back of my head with my hands.
My body began rolling down the incline. Under normal circumstances, the fall would have been lethal, but thankfully my body was stronger than that of an Sleeper. If I could just protect my vital organs from the impact, the damage would be manageable.
I kept tumbling down the tunnel, keeping my hands locked over my head as countless rocks scratched my skin. I clenched my legs tightly together to protect it as well.
The monster's limbs barely missed me as I evaded the initial strike. It took the creature a second to realize where I had gone. It looked down toward me, the distance between us opening to over three meters as I continued to slide deeper.
Finally, I reached a stretch of stable ground, but the peace was short.
The monster lunged toward me again, leaving behind another trail of saliva and blood. Its jump was incredibly high, tracking so far upward that it should have smashed straight into the stone roof above.
But it didn't.
The jump was indeed high enough to crack its skull against the rock. That was the only logical outcome, but instead, its feet planted firmly onto the side wall. It began running along the vertical rock face, its speed increasing as it dashed downward. This completely defied physics. It should have crashed and fallen just like I did.
Having just fallen, I pressed my weight into my shoulders and legs, rolling onto my back and pushing up to my feet. Yet, it was already dashing toward me. It kept riding the stone walls, its speed compounding with every single step.
I couldn't turn around. The area was so dark that I couldn't see what lay ahead, and turning my body would simply take too much time. This creature was moving far too fast for me to waste a single second.
This monster could not be damaged by momentum, but that did not mean it ignored the laws of motion entirely. It merely re-established them. It would not be able to instantly stop its forward inertia. The speed it had built up would require a second to halt, and another second to pick back up.
The time I had to formulate a plan was less than a second. Calmly, I reviewed everything that had happened so far, especially the layout I had just glimpsed inside that upper tunnel.
...
This was it.
After completing its descent along the wall, the monster lunged from the rocks directly at me. If I turned to run away from it, I would die. That was the exact reason I had jumped down here in the first place, because the same trap awaited me up there.
So, instead of turning around, I ran back up the slope. The monster narrowly missed me, landing on the rocks behind me and losing its speed as it continued forward into the lower depths.
I had a plan to survive.
I could have tried to jump onto its back right then to kill it, but it was too risky. Instead, I sprinted back up the tunnel.
When the monster had jumped down, the cyan light from its spine illuminated the path for a single second as it passed. That single second was enough for my mind to register every single foothold and ridge that could help me.
I started running. I leaped up using my right leg, putting just enough power into the stride to land on one of the projecting rocks. I used my left hand to grab another ridge and began climbing.
...
Suddenly, I jumped up again, repeating the process just as the monster came charging back up, sprinting past the exact spot where I had been a moment before.
?!
Just then, the saliva and blood dropping from its mouth splashed onto my shoulder. It began burning my flesh intensely.
I glanced around to look at the rocks the fluids had touched; they were actively melting away.
Its fluids possessed both a cyan glow and highly acidic properties.
I simply gritted my teeth, continued climbing up, and switched my position again as the monster turned and ran back down.
Then I went right, dodging it again.
Then left.
Right again.
Left.
Right.
Until I finally reached the top and broke into the tunnel where I had first encountered it.
I ran past the human who had just died. His face was melting terribly where the monster had taken its bite, and his stomach was dissolved as well. I glanced at a corner, seeing how neatly his severed legs had been stacked against the rock.
I ran past the scene just as the monster finally made it back up the slope and began pursuing me again.
Now, there were a bunch of dead bodies before me, none of which showed any signs of melting. There were three separate tunnels with corpses at the entrances, but only one tunnel had bodies leading further inside.
I ducked into that specific tunnel, which also sloped downward.
I quickly threw a stone ahead of me. It echoed once, twice, thrice, and a fourth time.
I looked back, seeing just how close the monster had come. Since it made absolutely no sound, it was incredibly hard to judge when it was right behind me.
It dived toward me.
I had no choice but to dive down the dark tunnel where the stone had taken multiple bounces to hit bottom.
So I leaped, protecting my vital areas and taking another blind jump into the dark. I was really pushing my luck here. A single miscalculation and I would die, but that was the only card I had left to play.
I possessed luck that would either half kill me or keep me alive. [Embraced by Fate] needed me alive for something, and I used that knowledge to make bold decisions. In a book, this would be called foolishness, but in reality, the chances of failure were close to zero.
I fell, hitting the ground multiple times before finally stabilizing on the dark floor, and looked back up as the monster came down.
I executed the exact same maneuver I had used in the previous tunnel, sprinting back up the slope as the monster rushed past me. I watched to see how far it went before it managed to turn around and head back in my direction.
...
Alright.
I started climbing the walls again, changing my position each time the monster charged past.
This time, I did not continue running upward. Instead, I began running downward into the tunnel, navigating the uneven rocks as far as the monster had gone. If my eyes had served me correctly during the flash of light, there was another passageway here.
I reached the opening and, without waiting for a single second, began running at full speed.
I could see it.
Past multiple junctions, there was another source of light. This time, it came from a burning piece of wood secured into the rock. A torch. It was a red light.
I suddenly stopped and ran backward as the monster rushed past me again, stopped, and turned to pursue me. But I turned right back around and sprinted toward the torch once more.
Even without sound, I could easily predict it after watching it a few times.
I repeated this loop for a few minutes, using the monster's own cyan light to illuminate the terrain ahead so I could map out my route.
Once I had gathered enough visual information, I sprinted with all my power, outpacing the monster's mid-momentum speed as I ran with everything I had.
I reached the torch, where a total of seven humans were resting. Each of them was wearing clothes.
They looked at me from head to toe, their eyes widening in shock.
I did not wait for them to speak. I grabbed the torch from the wall and ran straight past them.
I dashed down another tunnel, leaving them sitting there for a second, trying to make sense of what had just occurred.
They were probably confused as to how a completely naked man had just sprinted past them with one of their torches, and how that man had emerged alive from the direction of the monster.
I did not look back. I ran deep into the tunnels, not turning around even for a fraction of a second, the stolen torch casting long shadows against the rocks.
Just then, I heard them.
Screams.
I heard human screams that sounded like they came from the absolute depths of horror. It wasn't the sound of an honorable battle, but rather a slaughter. I heard them desperately attempting to fight the monster off, their weapons clattering uselessly against the stone.
Then came the curses and swears aimed directly at my back, echoes of raw betrayal tearing through the narrow passageways. But the anger didn't last. The voice of the person who had just cursed me suddenly shattered into a distorted shriek of deep agony.
I did not stop for a single second. I just kept running down the passages, letting the red light of their dying hope guide my feet away from the carnage.
The screams did not leave me.
It felt as though the entire cave itself was weeping, crying out in agony as the seven were consumed in total silence by a monster that didn't even breathe.
Scream after scream echoed, growing weaker, turning into pathetic, desperate whimpers until they stopped altogether.
...
The screams had ended, but I did not stop running.
My shoulder burned where the monster's fluid had struck me.
I had known humans were nearby the moment I looked at that first dead body. Its legs had been cleanly cut off. I originally assumed the monster had eaten them, but a doubt remained because a monster would not butcher a corpse so neatly.
So I had stood there watching instead of running blindly. I would not have escaped anyway if I had tried to run at that exact moment.
When the angle of the light shifted, I saw it: the dead man's legs lying there, alongside a trail of other corpses. The body without legs began melting only after the monster took a bite, but the other bodies were untouched by acid. I calculated that this man had his legs cut off by his fellow humans, and when the monster arrived, its fluid melted him.
The other bodies had been killed by humans. Why? I don't know, but if the monster had killed them, they would be melting too.
The man without legs was still alive when the monster found him, which meant the rest of the group could not have gotten very far. They were probably terrified too.
I purposely led the nightmare straight to them.
I killed seven desperate people just so I could survive. I could have warned them, telling them that death was crawling right behind me, but I didn't. I purposely sacrificed their lives.
I didn't tell them a monster was coming because, in reality, it had already arrived. The monster had come, stolen one of their lights, and run away into the dark. What came next for them was just an animal.
I was the monster they should have been warned about.
This was my first Nightmare all over again. They died in the dark because I chose to live, and I am not going to change my ways.
I ran and I ran down the tunnels, looking back occasionally into the darkness. There was no monster in sight. Except for me.
I found another tunnel with a torch inside, and as I approached, its warm light illuminated another group. This time, it was a group of four.
They seemed much more peaceful than the seven I had just abandoned to a terrible fate. They looked up, perhaps expecting friends, completely unaware of the darkness pooling just beyond the light.
Seven had died in agony, and I had just met another four. And today, in the depths of this graveyard, I once again realized something.
I am a horrible human being.
************
How was this chapter?
I actually stopped writing and just nodded to myself after writing this.
"I did not stop for a single second. I just kept running down the passages, letting the red light of their dying hope guide my feet away from the carnage."
It just hit so hard for me, I do not know why.
And hmmm, you all should probably be paying attention to every single thing that is happening around them. Let us see how many of you will be able to solve the mystery behind this arc and volume before Kiyotaka reveals it.
That is it.
Tell me something, Smaller chapter consistently or big chapters in every few days?