Chapter 136 Volume III - Chapter 57: A Bigger Spider
We continued to walk through the ruins for a while after we escaped from the cliff, and we had to fight the apins in groups a few times, but there were some that we managed to sneak past.
And then there were the trolls... They gave us a lot of trouble because if we tried to fight even one of them, its roar would draw the attention of every creature in the ruins.
And now, in front of us, there was a broken structure that looked like a huge entrance gate, half of which had broken off and collapsed on the ground. It felt like we were entering a huge garden.
"Look, they opened the entrance for us in advance. Well, we could have ignored it and walked past it, but... courtesy is courtesy."
With a smile on my face, I approached the huge door, empty in the middle because it was broken. Alex was cautious, peering around every corner.
"This is no time for jokes."
"If we're always serious, we'll be old men, Alex! Keep your inner child on the surface for a while."
"But we're in a dungeon where we could die!"
"Meh, that's exactly why you shouldn't be too seri-"
I paused and stepped back, grabbing Alex by the chest and pushing him quickly to the side. Once I was pinned against the wall myself, I ducked behind some rubble.
"What's going on?"
"I heard a noise."
It sounded like someone slurping their food... and I didn't like it one bit.
"Well, we can get a little serious here."
Turning to Alex, I put my index finger to my lips, and when Alex nodded slightly in agreement, I moved slightly in the direction of the sound, behind another piece of rubble, and out of the corner of my eye I looked at the space between the ruins.
Alex, in his own way, managed to see exactly what I saw.
"What the hell is that..."
"Uh... a giant spider?"
There was a huge spider in front of us, just a little bit shorter than a full-grown human being and almost two meters long. It was sideways to us, so we could see exactly what it was doing, and what it was doing was... ruthlessly eating a troll.
The flesh, the bone, the blood... literally all the body parts of the troll were all over the place. The sight was quite frightening and the smell was so strong that I could almost smell it here.
The spider, on the other hand, had a very ugly appearance. It was missing the second of its eight legs from the right back as if it had lost it in a battle in the past, and its head was crooked as if it had been crushed. It had two large eyes and three pairs of small eyes that surrounded the large eyes, making a total of eight. Its whole body was hairy and shiny as if it had a layer of oil on it.
"A- Are we going to fight it?"
"Of course not. Even if we manage to defeat it, it would slow down our progress too much."
I studied the spider a little more.
It looks just like the mini-boss in the dungeon, although some of the details look a bit different, so the reward for defeating it would be good, but like I said, we don't need it.
"Be careful not to make a sound. We'll move away and go around it."
Normally, when we're in the game, it can spot us no matter what because of the system. But we're not in the game right now, we're in the real world. So, we need to be able to get past him unseen, just like we do with other creatures.
Alex looked hesitant, but he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and nodded decisively. So I smiled back, at least he wasn't acting as timid as before.
"Let's go back a bit first."
I took one last look at the spider and then stepped back with a sigh, making sure not to make a sound in the direction we came from, and when we were about ten meters away from our previous position, I went behind a stone again and pointed Alex to the stones on our left. That was where we were going, it was easier to hide there as there were more ruined stones and it was right behind the spider.
That's how we got behind the first stone. Then when we got to the second, third, and fourth. The spider's voice started to come back to us. It still hadn't finished the troll it was eating. The saliva was still flying out of its mouth and the slurping sounds were still echoing.
I couldn't help swallowing for a moment.
This spider is a real 'predator', a real threat to us. The way it recklessly eats its food in the open, when it is defenseless, shows how much it despises its surroundings, and how superior a creature it is.
It's just frightening...
I swallowed again and moved behind the next rock, slowly, without making a sound, and Alex followed me nervously. After a while, we were directly behind the spider. It hadn't even noticed us so far, too busy with its meal, but soon it would stop eating the troll. So we had to be quick.
I walked quickly but quietly toward the next rock, and the moment I was behind it I leaned over and looked back at the spider. It still hadn't noticed us.
I turned around to look at Alex and when I saw that he was right behind me, I sighed slightly and turned back in front of us.
I took another step toward the next rock, and then... I paused.
I hadn't made a sound and neither had Alex, who hadn't moved a muscle. We had done nothing noticeable, yet there was a reason for the pause.
The slurping sounds the spider had been making up to now... had suddenly disappeared.
An intense silence descended throughout the area as if even the wind refused to make the slightest hum.
I turned my head a little to the side and looked in the direction of the spider, and there... I saw eight red dots glowing like death itself.
It was looking at me, not even moving, as if the whole world had frozen.
It was definitely looking at me. It was completely focused on me.
"Run, Alex! Run!"
After I made contact with the spider's eyes, I stood up without even looking back and started running at a speed I didn't think it could keep up with me. I could hear Alex following me. His voice sounded bad, but at least he could keep up with me, so I kept my eyes on the road ahead and kept running.
A high-pitched hissing sound, as if scratching our ears, raged around us. The calm before the storm was suddenly broken. Animals and birds in the trees began to scatter in fear, and then the sound of steps echoed as if someone was beating a drum, one after the other.
I didn't need to look behind me, because the spider was 'running' just like us.
"Don't look back Alex, just run!"
I didn't hear a reply from Alex, but I didn't say anything because I could hear him coming from behind me. His voice became a little more erratic, but he still didn't lag behind.
So, I kept running.
The disgusting sounds of the spider coming from behind us distracted me and put strange thoughts in my head. At least the Absolute Mind was doing a pretty good job of pushing them away, but that didn't change the fact that there was a scary spider chasing us.
As I realized that the rubble of the ruins was beginning to dwindle in number, something else caught my eye, a group of apins wandering along our path, albeit a bit far away.
"Run toward the apins!"
I quickly turned in their direction and threw my hands in the air and shouted at the top of my lungs.
"LOOK OVER HERE!"
Even though I was quite far away from them, a few of the apins turned their heads in surprise and started to look around.
"OVER HERE YOU IDIOTS!"
I shouted once more and this time a few of them turned exactly in my direction. For a moment I saw the bloodlust in their eyes, they saw me as prey, but that bloodlust was quickly replaced by fear.
They had seen the spider behind us and as soon as that happened, the whole of them stopped what they were doing and started running into the forest. As soon as I saw this, I looked at their backs, which were empty and moving away from us.
I thought these idiots were going to fight the spider!
Shit... That's right, I'm not in the game. The algorithms of the creatures in the game tend to attack everything they see, but this is reality!
The spider's ugly voice echoed in my ears again. Like a centipede, I felt its steps speeding up with the constant sound. All the ruins, all the creatures, literally everything was trembling from the sounds of the spider.
Damn... Damn... Damn... What should I do? The spider is getting closer... Alexander will soon get tired and so will I.
The spider roared again, I felt it getting closer to us, and that's when I realized that Alex's footsteps had slowed down.
Damn it!
The feeling of helplessness enveloped my body with each passing second. Gradually, as Alex's footsteps began to fall behind me, I found myself in an even bigger predicament, but then... I paused.
I can think straight a little thanks to the Absolute Mind. There is no way I can fight that stupid spider, and if we keep running, the only outcome is to become its food. So I have to take a risk...
Pausing where I was, I quickly turned around and looked at the landscape. Alex looked at me with a look of confusion on his face at my action and fear at the situation. His speed had dropped considerably compared to when he first started running. The spider was coming toward us in an ecstatic state and looking at him like that made him look even more ugly and scary.
"Stop, Alex."
Alex hesitated for a moment, but as soon as he did, a look of fear came back on his face and he sped up again. He must have thought I had given up on living or something.
"Hold on tight."
"What?!"
Without letting him speak any further, I grabbed him by the shoulder, then took a deep breath and swirled my mana around inside me.
'Sith, I need to jump almost four meters above the spider. And we're not only going to jump but dive forward. The breeze will be behind us so I don't need to spend a lot of mana, but I need to focus to get up. We need to save as much mana as we can.'
Sith didn't answer me but I sighed as a faint teal glow surrounded my body.
Running away is not an option. Even if I can't fight the spider, I have to kill it somehow. And even if I can't kill it, I have to defeat it.
With that, I jumped into the air with Alex.
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