Leaping into action, Kaden turned and fled, racing down the tunnel right back the way he came. Not far behind, the chittering followed him closely as countless spider legs skittered across the rocky walls. Their chittering chorus echoed in the confined space, and they were relentless.
With every step, he resisted the urge to look behind and check, keeping himself moving and focusing on putting one foot in front of the other. Fear propelled him forward, spurring him on as he fled.
From the edges of his peripheral vision, he saw shadows leap and fly past him. He swatted at them wildly, but they were fast and his hands kept catching air. Occasionally, he managed to strike one, the chime of success reverberating in his head. But it wasn’t making any difference in their numbers.
Soon enough, he started feeling them on his back, some managing to leap right on him. They crawled on him, their many legs skittering across his bones as they searched for the best place to bite. Reaching back, he tried desperately to catch hold of them and knock them off. But it was a futile effort, each time he removed one, two different ones took its place.
His heart thundering in his chest, he was starting to panic as he realized they were gaining on him. For every second that passed, more of the spiders caught up to him and leapt in his direction. There was nothing he could do to stop it.
They started overwhelming him, biting into his bones bit by bit and sending tiny shocks of pain through him.
"Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you," Kaden swore, his mind racing as he searched for a solution. A way out.
A flash of inspiration struck him as he remembered the unspent stat points he had gotten after his most recent level up. Needing no time to consider it, he put both of them into agility as fast as he possibly could.
The effect was immediate. His legs surged with newfound speed as he started accelerating, slowly pulling away. The chittering behind him faded slightly, no longer right on his heels and giving him a bit of breathing room. There were still several spiders clinging on to him, continuously biting down, but those were quickly knocked off one by one now that they were no longer being replaced.
Elation flowed through him, a temporary reprieve from the terror. A part of him started believing that he might make it, that he might escape and get out of this situation alive. He kept sprinting, the chittering dropping back as he ran, his hope growing stronger.
He was going to make it!
But as his confidence swelled, he felt his legs growing heavy. They started slowing down as he struggled to move them. His strides faltered, each step requiring more effort than the last. Out of frustration he kept trying harder and harder, clenching down hard and putting all of his energy into it. It made no difference, no matter how much energy he poured in, his body betrayed him and his legs kept getting heavier. It felt like he was dragging a pair of cinder blocks through mud.
He wheezed for air as he struggled to run. Unable to keep it any longer he lost his balance and stumbled, his legs tangling up beneath him. He flailed his arms as he fell forwards, having far too much momentum to stop.
His chin hit the ground with a sickening thud and he tasted rock in his mouth.
With the chittering rapidly approaching from behind, he realized his fatal mistake.
Stamina... he had completely run out of stamina. Drained every last bit of it.
He didn't have the energy left to sit up, let alone flee. He wanted to crawl away, but his limbs were like lead and refused to cooperate, remaining sprawled across the ground.
The nightmare drew closer, and he could hear the living tide of spiders all around him, growing louder by the second. With his face pressed to the ground, he saw dozens of little creepy legs scurry around him. They crawled up his leg bones and onto his spine, spreading out and slowly covering him in a mass of furry bodies and spider limbs.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Terror gripped him, freezing him in place as they swarmed over his prone form. He was paralyzed and rooted in place, unable to move a muscle. He felt every step of them as they moved, sending shivers down his spine and overwhelming his senses.
They soon reached his skull, and he found his vision getting blacked out as they crawled into his eye sockets. They dug in with their legs, forcing them into all of the tiny little cracks in his bones as they tried to burrow further in.
Slightly lower down, some went through the gaps between his teeth and jaw, filling his mouth. As they pushed their way in, his mouth was spread open followed by even more spiders flooding inside.
Feeling them everywhere, the noises were beyond deafening. The vibrations and skitters echoed endlessly in his head as if bouncing around the insides of his skull. They drowned out all background noise, leaving him no mental escape from the nightmare.
The pain was horrible, they were constantly biting down all over him. With every bite, he felt slight jolts of pain as specks of bone were removed. It was excruciating and horrifyingly slow, the little spiders struggling to bite through. He wanted it to end, and began longing for release. At this point he no longer cared if he died, and just wanted all of it to stop.
A sharp spasm shot through him, causing his body to jerk violently. With all the torture and the cacophony of skitters, he barely heard the faint chime ringing in the background.
─ Level 1 Darkweaver slain.
─ Reward: 19 Experience Points
The knowledge that he was taking one more of the little fuckers with him brought a grim satisfaction. A small dose of joy amid the torment and horror.
Feeling all the ones crawling around inside his mouth, he bit down as hard as he could, hoping to crush a few more.
The satisfying crunch of their bodies between his teeth was accompanied by a chorus of heavenly chimes singing to him, a bittersweet symphony in the face of death. It was such a blessed reprieve that he was completely unbothered by the taste of their putrid guts as they died in his mouth.
The chittering intensified to a frenzy, and with a fervor the spiders dug harder. Several more slipped into his eye sockets, their combined forces finally cracking the bones inside, and they began burrowing further in. Still, Kaden was all too happy to hear their fury as he killed more of them. Taking joy in their suffering, just as they were making him suffer.
He kept biting down, each time killing a few. At the same time, he could feel them gnawing at his skull and knew that it was the end. His jaws clamped down one last time, his world fading to black against the backdrop of ringing chimes.
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A familiar anguish greeted Kaden as he awoke, the residual terror of his demise fading much like waking from a nightmare. Instinctively, he patted his body but quickly calmed down, sighing in relief. It didn’t take him long to adjust, having become uncomfortably used to the process by now.
"Another death," he muttered, his teeth clenching down in a wry smile as his jaw shifted a little up. The familiar weight of his failures settled on his shoulders, but he refused to indulge in self-pity. Instead, he focused on the small victories, glancing at the pending messages he hadn’t had time to read before.
"Twenty-three huh..." he counted, chuckling at the tally of spiders he managed to kill. At least he gave back much worse than he got.
He checked his status to take stock of his progress.
─ Status
─ Kaden (Brittle Skeleton)
─ Level 3 (Classless)
─ Health: 15/15 ─ Stamina: 15/15 ─ Mana: 6/6
─ Experience: 447/1000
─ Stats
─ Strength: 7 ─ Agility: 6 ─ Vitality: 2 ─ Endurance: 2 ─ Mana Core: 2 ─ Mana Flow: 2
─ Free Stat Points: 0
─ Unique Abilities
─ Bone Essence Absorption
Killing all those spiders hadn’t done much for his experience. He wasn’t even at the halfway mark towards the next level. It made sense he supposed, the tiny spiders, while numerous, didn’t really give much experience. At a rate of nineteen experience per spider, he calculated that he would need to kill thirty more to level up. Quite a few.
Not that it mattered anyway, because he wasn’t planning on ever going back there. He shivered as he recalled the feeling of them swarming and crawling on his bones, burrowing into all the little gaps they could. He had zero desire to feel that again.
Yep, he was definitely not going back, unless it was with a flamethrower in hand.
But there was still the question of how to level up. Now that he had experienced the rush of his stats increasing, he was very keen to keep up the progress and get stronger. The feeling of power coursing through him was incredibly addictive, fueling him with motivation.
Rising up, he shrugged it off. It wasn’t something he needed to think about, his experiences down here told him that it was only a matter of time before he’d meet another monster.
Feeling more at ease in this world, he picked a random direction and started walking. In contrast to all of his earlier lives, he was no longer scared of the unknown waiting in front of him. After all, you could only kill a man so many times before they stopped fearing it.
His skeletal fingers dragged idly across the rock, feeling the familiar terrain on his bones. Kaden was looking forward to seeing what he would discover next. He just hoped it wasn’t something nasty.