'Can't see a thing…'
Between the thick canopy of leaf-heavy trees and how narrow the crack that served as an entrance was, barely enough light came into the cave to illuminate half a meter from the doorway. The angle of the sun wasn't helping either.
Kai turned around, grabbed his phone and went back to the entrance, then switched on the device's flashlight and, with some hesitation in his body, took a step inside the cavern.
Just by setting one foot inside, the atmosphere had already changed completely. The air was heavy and damp—inside, the smell of moss invaded Kai's nostrils, but there was also a hint of another scent he couldn't quite identify. Even the temperature seemed to have changed, sending a chill running down Kai's spine. Before taking the next step he pulled his mask up.
The place was wrapped in a suffocating dimness, and the flashlight built into Kai's phone barely did anything to keep him from total blindness.
Rocks and pebbles were scattered across the floor, and the dripping from the stalactites had painted the occasional puddle here and there.
But the most unsettling thing of all wasn't that.
The place was crawling with cobwebs.
There were entire stretches where you could barely make out the cave floor.
There wasn't much else besides that—another hole in the wall, this one much larger, opened into a path that seemed to go deeper into the dark.
But if it was already this full of cobwebs, Kai wasn't in any hurry to press on.
His eyes drifted to the exit, considering calling it on his expedition then and there—despite the low temperature, Kai was starting to sweat a little.
But something caught Kai's attention: an unnatural wall of bedrock and cobwebs formed a small sub-space in the room.
If anyone had asked him, Kai would have been pretty confident that was the work of a human—the rocks were placed with considerable precision, and the cobwebs, which weren't only acting as cement but wrapping around the walls, didn't look like they'd been placed at random. It seemed like they covered potential weak points in the wall, neatly preventing any risk of collapse.
Kai kept studying the wall as he walked along it, sweeping his flashlight up and down.
Then he froze, stopping dead in his tracks—the shriek that had drilled into his eardrums earlier was back, but… it was coming from behind the wall?
Did Kai really want to see what was behind the wall?
A faint tremor ran through his hand and he tensed up. He almost felt something move behind him.
Kai spun around, looking every which way.
But there was nothing.
Was he being paranoid?
Kai sighed as he lowered both the stick and his phone.
He didn't actually know whether he'd prefer something to happen—so far, his life in another world wasn't exactly going great.
He took one last look at the wall and turned toward the exit as the shrieking kept echoing off the walls.
But before he left, something else reached Kai's ears—the sound of a rhythmic tapping… no, not a single tapping sound, several of them. Like the sound several legs would make moving across a stone floor… and worst of all, it was getting closer.
Gripped by panic and in a brilliant display of intelligence, instead of leaving the cave, Kai hid behind a rock for cover.
He switched off his phone's flashlight and tucked it into his pocket, gripping his branch-staff with both hands.
'Please, please, please… Don't let it be a giant architect spider…'
His pulse spiked, making it seem like his heart wanted to keep time with the approaching sound.
Suddenly a feeling of dread took hold of Kai as whatever it was entered the room. Kai still wanted to leave open the possibility that it wasn't a spider, but it was looking unlikely.
He thought about holding his breath to stay quiet, but at the rate his heart was pumping blood, he'd most likely have passed out in seconds.
How many times today had his heart already gone haywire?
'I'm going to have a heart attack at this rate…'
The creature moved through the cave as if it owned the place. And of course it did—obviously it was its lair.
Kai heard it pass just a few meters from him and press up against the wall the shrieking was coming from.
Using his phone's camera as a mirror, he brought it down near the floor and looked for an angle to see the creature he'd barged in on. His eyes had gotten somewhat used to the dim light, so he figured he'd be able to make out the creature.
Kai's eyelids shot open the moment he saw the monster.
Of course it was a spider, and of course it was big. But this big?
Kai blinked. And blinked again. But the size of the arachnid didn't change.
He had expected the typical fantasy spider that came up to his knees or maybe even his waist—but he hadn't expected one that reached practically to his chest.
At least it wasn't particularly hairy like a tarantula. But it didn't look very friendly.
The spider was the color of night, its body covered by a chitinous exoskeleton as black as an abyss. The skeleton looked more like demonic armor than simply a body shield, with large spikes and jagged protrusions across its abdomen.
It had its back to Kai and he couldn't see its face, but he could make out how the dark chitin of the arachnid also wrapped around the tips of its legs—the legs themselves were long and slender, creating a contrast in size with the tips similar to the tip of a spear and its handle.
On the front legs, however, the chitin took the shape of a long inverted blade, giving the impression that the spider was wielding two fearsome scythes. With these built for cutting and tearing, and the rest for piercing and stabbing, the spider seemed to have great versatility—and that was without even counting the fangs Kai couldn't see.
'At least it doesn't look like an architect…'
Without warning, the spider suddenly spun around fast—Kai nearly dropped his phone before ducking back behind his cover.
This time he forced himself to hold his breath as the sound of his own heartbeat thundered in his ears.
After a few tense moments, the spider seemed to give up searching and climbed the wall, disappearing behind it through a hole near the top. Then came a sound like fabric being unraveled.
Kai let out a silent sigh, visibly relieved to have that thing away from him.
He stayed crouched for a few more moments, not feeling up to standing.
When he made to leave and took his first step, a terrible howl stopped him.
On the other side of the wall, struggling and howling began. Those sounds, however, were smothered and silenced by others even more chilling.
Kai went pale. Through the wall, he could make out perfectly the sound of a wet, sickening crunch alongside the splashing of a puddle.
The more that sound went on, the more the howling faded, dropping to nothing but weak, powerless whimpers—until finally going quiet altogether; barely a faint struggling sound remained, which a few moments later also stopped.
More unpleasant noises and splashing followed for nearly half a minute, sealing the dark recital.
Kai no longer had a racing pulse or was hyperventilating. Quite the opposite—his heart and lungs seemed to have frozen, refusing to work normally.
He had entered a new state of mind after hearing what would happen to him if the spider found him.
He stayed motionless behind the rock as he listened to the spider come back out through the hole near the top of the wall and disappear back into the darkness of the cave.
Only then did Kai relax and start seriously thinking about what he'd been doing since he arrived in this world, and what he'd do to survive.
This was the first monster Kai had seen up close—and not because they were afraid of him or there hadn't been any in the forest. A good hunter never lets their prey see them.
But why hadn't they attacked him yet? Was it because he hadn't stopped moving?
In that case they should have gone for him at the river.
'Whatever the reason, at least I'm still breathing.'
Kai picked his sad stick up off the ground and leaned on it to stand.
Near the exit, Kai took one last look at the wall sealing off what appeared to be the spider's pantry.
Could there be anything still alive behind the wall?
As he thought that, something flooded his ears. It was the now almost familiar shriek—but much quieter, as if trying to call out to whoever was in the cave without alerting the spider.
Kai had assumed the spider had eaten it, but the howling he'd heard clearly hadn't come from the same creature.
'Well, I'm not walking into the lion's den for a stranger…'
Kai turned to leave, but the shriek grew slightly louder—almost as if it knew Kai was about to go.
For a moment he considered finding whoever was making the sound. But what would he get out of it?
Was he going to put himself in danger for a creature that would probably only offer him its fangs?
He took two steps toward the exit, then lifted his chin and sighed tiredly, staring at the cave ceiling.
'I really hope it's some kind of legendary monster that'll give me a broken skill, a blessing, or some treasure.'
'I could settle for its eternal gratitude and loyalty.'
He went to the wall and looked for the hole the spider had passed through earlier.
He turned around a couple of times, making like he was about to leave—he still didn't know what to do. He wanted to go, and no strong sense of justice or morals was tying him down. But what if that crying creature had something incredible to offer? He was still torn between his own safety and a possible reward…
Finally he set the stick down on the ground and climbed the rocks slowly and silently, careful not to touch the cobwebs.
Before even making it through the hole, a strong, heavy stench of putrid blood and God knows what else pierced through his mask and hit him right in the nose.
It was almost unbearable—Kai's face crumpled and a wave of terrible dry heaves hit him at the revolting mix of smells.
With a small splash, Kai put one foot in the room after a short jump down from the wall.
'My sneakers…'
He switched on the flashlight to see what was around him, and seconds later wished he hadn't.
The room wasn't very big, but it didn't need to be—it was clearly just the spider's pantry, and its dining room…
There weren't even rocks on the floor, just the occasional pebble and some… remains. Between the puddles there also seemed to be cobweb residue. The ceiling, for its part, was clean; the walls, on the other hand—despite the room's small size, you could see dozens of pieces of empty cocoons with horrible rust-colored stains, the other halves of what lay on the floor. Countless splatter marks bore witness to the spider's gluttony.
The mix of cobwebs and remains, both submerged in a few centimeters of putrid blood and other fluids, brought on another wave of dry heaves from Kai.
There were some sealed cocoons, but only one of the creatures seemed to still have the strength to keep moving.
And of course, it was the one making those shrieks.
Still feeling the warmth of the fruit in his stomach—probably the only thing that had kept him from throwing up—Kai approached it with his knife in hand.
With more effort than anticipated, Kai cut where the cocoon met the wall, which took him a good while. The creature along with its silk cell dropped to the floor. Kai stepped back a couple of paces, raising his knife cautiously.
The instant the bag hit the cold, blood-soaked rock, the creature inside moved so fast Kai didn't have time to make out its shape.
All he saw was a projectile of considerable size flying straight at his chest while feathers flew through the air.
At the last second Kai managed to dodge it by jumping sideways and twisting his body, though his shirt took a small tear.
'That would've gone straight through me…'
The monster turned to face the other side of the room.
It shot a quick glance at Kai, sizing him up—it lingered on his phone, as if it couldn't understand how it could produce light, staring at it with curiosity, almost like it wanted it.
Kai frowned, looking down at his shirt.
"You little bastard… Is that any way to say thank you? Pay for my shirt, you little shit!"
The small creature looked at the floor for a few seconds and slowly approached him.
It wasn't exactly small, but compared to the spider it was nothing. It was some kind of bird with an absurdly large beak. It barely reached halfway up Kai's shins.
Up close it looked him up and down, then turned away.
After moving half a meter away it launched itself at Kai in a treacherous move, hitting him square in the chest with the back of its body, sending him staggering and nearly knocking him flat.
The air left his lungs in a strangled grunt and a dull ache spread through his ribs.
"You li… ttle rat…"