Chapter 49: Beneath the Sarcasm
Arthur continued eating for several minutes, and after taking a few small bites from the crocodile’s heart, he forced himself, with difficulty, to stop.
’This isn’t enough, I want more, just a little more...’
He took a bite from the liver, whose flesh was tender and soft, melting in his mouth quickly like a piece of cheese.
He liked the taste somewhat, so he took a second bite, then a third, and so on, and when he was about to finish it, he stopped himself again with difficulty.
’No, I can’t continue, things have changed completely now, satisfying my hunger is no longer the priority, I have to feed that beast, or else who knows what she’ll do.’
He gritted his fangs, and after a bit of hesitation, crawled out of the carcass, his thin body was completely covered in blood and entrails, making him look extremely savage.
He looked at the massive, meat-filled crocodile with intense longing, wishing he could eat it whole, but unfortunately he couldn’t, for he was compelled to give his precious prey to the spider woman.
She had previously hinted at the possibility of eating him if he didn’t provide her with the food she needed, and although he didn’t know how serious she was about that, he shouldn’t take her words lightly.
’It’s fine, I’ve endured a lot, and I can endure more, a little hunger and fatigue are no big deal, all that really matters is that I stay alive, as long as I am, I can find a way out, or, why not, maybe I could tame that monster somehow.’ He let out a long sigh as he shook his head in disappointment.
He turned his gaze away from the crocodile’s carcass, then scanned his surroundings very carefully, and noticed several malicious eyes watching him from scattered spots around the lake.
’More crocodiles? Damn it, I let my guard down for a moment, luckily none of them attacked me.’
He thanked God that the crocodiles, it seemed, weren’t very intelligent, for if one of them had simply dragged the carcass of the crocodile he’d killed into the water while he was inside it, he would have gotten stuck, and become very easy prey.
In any case, besides being bothered by the fact that he could have died without even realizing it, another matter troubled him greatly, which was the dirt and abundant blood covering every part of his body.
He wanted badly to clean himself, yet he didn’t dare touch the lake water, for his instincts warned him of several dangers lurking nearby.
’I need to look for another, safer water source.’
The water near the shore began to ripple faintly, and he realized the time to leave had come.
Without any hesitation, he placed his palm on the crocodile carcass he’d hunted, then thought about putting it inside the Dimensional Storage, but contrary to habit, nothing happened, the massive carcass didn’t budge from its place.
"I forgot, the system isn’t working." He clicked his tongue in annoyance.
He looked at his surroundings full of craters and scattered debris, and given that he had no other option, he bit down on the crocodile’s tail, and began dragging it toward the spider woman’s nest.
The carcass was dragged roughly across the ground, leaving a long trail behind it, dry leaves and dust stuck to it, and every now and then it got caught among the dense trees, or pulled along heavy rocks and piles of mushrooms with it.
Because of this, Arthur was forced to stop several times to free it from obstacles, and little by little, the effort he exerted while dragging the carcass increased, and this made his already exhausted body lose all the little energy it had recovered.
His breathing became severely disturbed, and his cold eyes became bloodshot, his heart began to boil with anger, and finally, after covering a distance of a mile and a half, he could no longer bear all this frustration, which was, in a certain sense, psychological torment.
"Daaamn it." He let out an incomprehensible mutter because of the tail in his mouth, then with all his strength, or rather what remained of it, he swung the crocodile, intending to smash all the trees around him, but it barely moved from its place.
"To hell with all of this! I’ve had enough." He let go of the tail and screamed.
He looked at the carcass for a moment, then pounced on it with eagerness and a complete desire to devour it, tearing off a large chunk of flesh from the flank with his saw-like fangs, but he stopped himself at the last moment and didn’t eat it.
He stepped back slowly, and on his face was etched a strained expression combining anger, calm, and sorrow.
Dragging the carcass through the forest wasn’t that exhausting, nor painful or stressful, compared to everything he’d been through over the past days, but it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, or rather, the straw that made him release a small portion of the accumulated pressure that had been gnawing at his depths.
After all, Arthur was still a human being with feelings, someone who could suffer, feel fear, and grow tired, and even if he weren’t, what he had been through, and the burden he had carried, was enough to make mountains bow under its weight.
’I no longer want anything, just a bit of peace. I’m tired of this life and all the madness in it. What did I do to deserve being transported to this hellish world?’
He clenched his palms, making his claws carve small cracks into the ground. There wasn’t much left to say or think about; he froze in place for several minutes in complete silence, then let out a very long sigh, the longest of his entire life.
Gradually, the redness in his eyes vanished, his disturbed breathing regained its stability, his heartbeat slowed, and finally, the storm that had been raging through his emotions calmed down.
’And here I was planning to hide my true feelings and thoughts from the spider, what a fool I really am, this is hard, no, nearly impossible.’ His lips curved into a small, mocking smile.
Speaking of mockery, Arthur was not, in truth, a sarcastic person by nature. Quite the opposite—he was extremely calm and, in a certain sense, rigid.
This was understandable, given that his previous world had been full of noise, so much so that it sometimes prevented him from hearing his own thoughts.
But when he suddenly moved to this world, completely devoid of human clamor, he was forced to fill his head with his own noise, in order to preserve his sanity. The sarcastic remarks and curse words were all merely a defense mechanism, easing the weight of harsh reality on him.
As usual, he could do nothing but grieve inwardly, and without giving his feelings any further attention, he directed his full focus toward the System, for he needed to understand exactly what had happened to it.
He could still sense its presence, and although all the screens that appeared before him were blank and full of cracks, he was still receiving a response to his mental and vocal commands.
In any case, after reviewing his Skills, his personal status, and all the sections of the System that he knew, which were few by the way, a screen finally appeared bearing a few garbled words, when he spontaneously thought about summoning the main interface.
[ Rebooting and calibrating... ]
[ Try again later ]
"Wait, what, there’s actually a main interface?" He felt a bit of shock, for this was the first time he’d realized that.
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