It lunged.
Instinct moved before thought.
I threw myself sideways, my body protesting with a lightning bolt of pain down my leg. The creature hit the stone where I'd been kneeling a heartbeat earlier with a wet, cracking impact.
I landed hard, shoulder screaming, bone shard nearly flying from my hand.
I rolled, grit digging into my cheek, and got my first clear look at it.
Centipede.
Or, at least, the dungeon's twisted idea of one.
It was as long as I was tall, all glossy, dark chitin that glistened in the mushroom light. Dozens of legs rippled along its sides, each ending in a hooked claw that scratched faint lines into the stone as it skittered.
Its head was wrong.
Too wide.
Too many eyes.
Each one small and pale, like milky pearls pressed into armored sockets.
Mandibles clicked, opening and closing in a hungry rhythm.
Something dripped from them.
Not saliva.
Thicker.
Darker.
Acidic-looking.
"Oh, good," I thought wildly. "Poison. That's exactly what this day needed."
The centipede hissed—a thin, wet sound—and darted toward me again.
It was fast.
Faster than something with that many legs had any right to be.
I scrambled back on my elbows, dragging my injured leg, and swung the bone shard on reflex.
The tip glanced off the chitin with a hollow clack.
No give.
No blood.
Just a stinging vibration shooting up my arm.
"Of course you're armored," I gasped. "Why wouldn't you be."
The centipede twisted, body flexing like a whip. One of its front legs hooked my calf and yanked.
I hit the stone hard on my back.
Then it was on me.
The weight wasn't as crushing as the wolf would have been, but it was still heavy. Legs scrabbled over my chest, claws pricking through my torn uniform. Its mandibles darted toward my face.
I shoved an arm up on instinct.
Bad idea.
Its mandibles sank into my forearm.
White-hot pain exploded.
I screamed—couldn't help it this time—as fire raced up my arm and into my shoulder. My fingers spasmed, almost dropping the bone shard.
"Get! Off!" I choked.
I jammed my knee upward, slamming it into the underside of its body. It shifted just enough that I could twist my torso and shove with my free hand.
It tumbled off to the side, body hitting stone with a series of sick thuds.
My arm throbbed, a burning, pulsing agony centered around two deep punctures. The skin around them already looked red, angry, and just slightly discolored.
"Venom," my brain supplied helpfully. "Congratulations, you're now on a timer."
The centipede regrouped faster than I did.
It coiled slightly, then rushed again.
I rolled, half-crawling, half-flopping toward the corpse. I didn't have a plan; my body just wanted something, anything, between me and the nightmare with legs.
The centipede slammed into the carcass instead of me, claws digging into already shredded flesh. It climbed up and over the ribs with disgusting ease, mandibles snapping as it searched for purchase.
Scavenger.
It had come for the corpse originally.
I was just… a bonus.
"Not today," I rasped.
I grabbed a loose rib bone with my uninjured hand and yanked it free. It came loose with a rip and a wet sound I absolutely did not want to think about.
The centipede's body undulated across the corpse toward me.
We moved at the same time.
It lunged.
I threw the rib bone.
The bone wasn't sharp, but it was long and solid. It slammed into the centipede's face, deflecting its mandibles just enough that they scraped across the stone instead of my throat.
Sparks flicked off the rock.
The sound made my teeth ache.
The centipede shrieked. I didn't know bugs could shriek, but this one did—high-pitched and furious.
It scrambled over the carcass, claws digging into flesh and bone, dragging itself closer.
I backed up until my shoulders hit the cavern wall.
Nowhere left to go.
"Tight spaces," I thought numbly. "Great for Scouts. Terrible for not getting eaten."
The centipede lunged again.
I ducked.
Its head slammed into the wall above me, mandibles scraping stone. Chips flew. Dust rained down on my hair.
It recoiled, stunned for half a second.
That was all I had.
I drove the bone shard up with everything I had left.
This time I didn't aim for the thick plates on its back.
I aimed for one of its pale, ugly eyes.
The shard sank in with a sick, wet pop.
The centipede convulsed.
It screeched—louder now—a sound that drilled straight through my skull. Its entire body spasmed, legs flailing wildly.
One of those legs raked across my side, claws slicing through cloth and skin. Fire traced a line of pain along my ribs.
I held on to the bone shard anyway.
If I let go now, I was dead.
"Stay— down!" I snarled, voice cracking.
I shoved the shard deeper, feeling something crunch.
Dark fluid gushed out around the shard, hot and foul-smelling. It splattered across my hand, my chest, my face.
A bitter, chemical stink burned my nose.
My eyes watered.
The centipede thrashed, slamming its body against the wall, the floor, my legs. Every impact sent needles of pain through my already-injured limb, but I gritted my teeth and clung to the shard like my life depended on it.
Because it did.
Minutes stretched.
Or maybe it was seconds.
Hard to tell, with adrenaline boiling my brain.
Finally, the thrashing slowed.
The legs twitched weakly.
Then stopped.
The weight of its body sagged to the stone, mandibles twitching twice before going still.
Silence crashed down.
For a long moment, the only sound in the cavern was my own ragged breathing.
"Inhale," I muttered to myself. "Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Don't pass out. Passing out is illegal now. New rule."
I shoved the centipede's head away from me and crawled out from under its collapsed upper body. My arms and legs shook as if I'd run for miles.
I sat there, back against the cold stone, staring at what I'd just done.
The corpse of the deer-thing lay ravaged to one side, ribs cracked open like a ruined chest.
The centipede sprawled across the stone beside it, head pinned at an ugly angle, my bone shard buried deep in its eye socket.
Blackish fluid leaked from the wound, pooling on the ground.
I swallowed.
My stomach rolled.
I'd killed something.
The wolves, the lizards, the things in the dark—those were all dodged. Avoided. Survived by not being worth the effort.
This one?
I had put it down myself.
It hadn't been clean.
It hadn't been graceful.
It definitely hadn't been heroic.
But it was dead and I wasn't.
Something inside me loosened and tightened at the same time.
Relief.
Horror.
A little, tiny spark of pride that I immediately felt guilty about.
My forearm throbbed.
I glanced down.
The centipede's mandibles had punctured deep. Two ugly holes oozed blood, surrounded by skin that had shifted from red to an ugly, faintly purple tinge.
Heat radiated from the wound.
"I really hope that's not the 'your heart stops in ten minutes' kind of venom," I muttered.
I didn't have much to work with. No antidotes. No healing spells. No first aid beyond "don't poke it."
I ripped a relatively clean strip from the bottom of my already-ruined shirt and wrapped it around the wound, hissing as the fabric scraped over the punctures.
The bandage wouldn't fix anything.
But it made me feel like I was doing something, which was almost as good.
Almost.
My side stung where the claws had raked me. I checked it quickly—three shallow cuts along my ribs, bleeding but not deep.
That, at least, was manageable.
My heart finally started to climb down from "wolf encounter" levels.
The cavern seemed bigger suddenly.
Quieter.
I looked at the centipede again.
It was disgusting.
Horrible.
And fresh.
My stomach, utterly disloyal, gurgled.
I stared at it.
Then at the half-picked-over deer carcass.
Then back at it.
The thought came uninvited:
> "This is fresher than the deer."
I grimaced.
"Absolutely not," I told myself. "We are not eating bugs."
My body responded with another loud, painful growl.
I dragged a hand down my face.
"Okay. Maybe we are considering eating bugs."
I scooted a little closer to the centipede, bone shard still lodged in its eye. The chitin along its back looked… solid. Too solid to bite into.
But the underside?
Between the plated segments, there was softer tissue. Paler. Less armored.
"Not worse than the rotting deer," I muttered. "That's a really low bar but here we are."
I wedged my fingers under the edge of one of the plates, grunting as I tried to pry it up. It took a few tries, but eventually one segment cracked and lifted enough for me to slice through the membrane beneath with a splintered piece of bone.
Warm, pale meat oozed out.
My stomach twisted.
"This is so gross," I whispered. "I hate this. I hate this so much."
Tiny bite.
Test first.
I tore off a small piece with trembling fingers, sniffed it (sharp, chemical, faintly sweet in a horrible way), and pressed it to my lips.
It took three tries to actually get it into my mouth.
The taste was… different.
Not rotten.
Not like the deer.
Bitter, yes, and metallic, and weirdly numbing on my tongue.
My throat clenched.
I forced myself to swallow.
The meat slid down like a lump of guilt.
I waited again.
Ten seconds.
Thirty.
A minute.
My stomach clenched, then settled. A faint tingle spread up my throat and along my jaw, but it stopped there.
Not great.
Not immediately deadly.
I exhaled.
"…Congratulations, Leon," I said hoarsely. "You've officially eaten floor 75's equivalent of an insect. Your dignity is dead."
I took another tiny bite. Just enough to quiet the worst of the hunger; not enough to overdose on whatever was in this thing's blood.
Slowly, warmth spread through my limbs again.
Tired warmth, but warmth.
Enough.
I pulled the bone shard free from the centipede's eye with a wet sound and wiped it on its carapace. The fluid smeared, leaving faint dark streaks.
Weapon secured.
Food sampled.
Nerves shattered.
I pushed myself to my feet, swaying slightly as dizziness washed over me in a light wave.
The venom?
Exhaustion?
Both?
Didn't matter. I needed to move.
The smell of blood, rot, and fresh kill was thick now. Dark pools of fluid spread from both corpses. The air felt heavy with it.
Scavengers followed apex predators.
Which meant this thing might not be alone.
"New rule," I muttered as I limped away from the scene. "Eat fast, leave faster."
I kept one hand on the cavern wall as I moved, the other clutching my bone shard tight enough to whiten my knuckles. Muffled throbs pulsed up my bitten arm in time with my heartbeat.
The walk back to my root shelter felt three times longer than before.
By the time I crawled under the curtain of hanging roots, my legs felt like someone had replaced my bones with jelly.
I collapsed onto the cool stone, back pressing into the familiar curve of the small hollow.
My entire body hummed with pain.
Arm: burning.
Side: burning.
Head: pounding.
Stomach: not empty, but not happy either.
I stared up at the tangle of roots overhead.
"I killed something," I whispered into the dark.
Saying it out loud made it real.
"I killed something that wanted to eat me."
There was no cheering.
No victory music.
No experience point notifications.
Just my heartbeat slowing from "panic" to "tired."
And the faint, lingering memory of the centipede's screaming.
Was I supposed to feel… guilty?
A tiny part of me did.
The rest of me—the part that had felt its mandibles tearing into my arm, that had heard its shriek and seen its body thrash—felt something else.
Something colder.
"If I hesitate next time, I die," I murmured. "If I don't move, I die. If I don't fight… I die."
The logic was simple.
Brutal.
Binary.
In a strange, terrifying way, it felt… honest.
The surface world had rules, politics, expectations.
Down here, the rule was easier:
> "Eat, or be eaten."
I started laughing.
Quietly at first.
Then louder.
Sharp little bursts that echoed faintly in the hollow space.
It wasn't a nice laugh.
It didn't feel particularly sane.
I clamped a hand over my mouth, shoulders shaking.
After a few seconds, it turned back into ragged breathing.
I wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand—not sure when they'd started watering—and shifted onto my side, curling up to conserve warmth.
Pain throbbed in time with my pulse from every injury.
Tired.
I was so tired.
My eyelids dipped.
As I drifted on the edge of sleep, a faint sound reached me from deeper in the cavern.
Not the heavy tread of a wolf.
Not the dragging slither of a reptile.
Clicking.
Multiple sets.
Fast.
Eager.
More centipedes.
Drawn by the same smell that had drawn the first one.
I stared into the darkness beyond my root curtain, barely breathing.
"…Right," I whispered. "Note to self: don't sleep near corpses anymore."
The clicking grew louder, then fanned out—some going past, some stopping where my battle had just been.
I closed my eyes and forced my body to stay still.
For now, they hadn't found me.
Yet.
Tomorrow's problem.
If I lived that long.