ALL NOVEL Chapter 11 (Certamen Irritum)
I don’t know how it wasn’t on my map, but now, checking in the corner of my eye as if to taunt me, was a pulsing red circle covering up my own, confirming that I was indeed in very real danger. The beam lit up the entire room, casting the place in a golden glow which I would have loved to look at more closely had the circumstances been different. As the beam continued to carve out the rock, I was hit by a wave of heat across my face. As the heat died down, I felt a cold sense of anticipation creeping up on me.
What emerged from the still-molten rock Was a mass of undulating tentacles. They landed on top of the pile like a group of earthworms who, having had their home dug up, were desperately in search of a new one. Only, it was clear by the scene that had occurred a moment ago that their purpose was not going to be so passive. As they moved around, squirming in different directions, causing their paths to distort into strange patterns that encompassed the area in every direction around the entrance to the hole before they stopped their movement entirely.
This stillness lasted only long enough for an eerie feeling to creep down my spine before the tentacles retracted back to the entrance of the hole, digging themselves into the ground, the strange tendrils slashed at the ground as if trying to find a grip in the burning stone, the few tendrils which had not retracted now frantically dance atop the hole as if to announce something.
Out of the pile of rubble came the same strange red ant that I had seen before the collapse of the cave. Its arrival was not that surprising, frankly with the light show it had put on just a moment ago, It was silly to expect anything else. Still, seeing it emerge made my heart drop. I could tell that it was different from the other ants I had seen so far.
I mean, sure, the other ants weren’t exactly normal by any reasonable standards, but this thing flew in the face of whatever little bit of reasonableness remained of my impression of this world. It was unnatural, more like a loose amalgamation of a living being than one unified concept. Its small size, which should have been the least intimidating fact about it, served to further this contrast between it and the rest of its kind. Just as my thoughts were becoming overwhelmed with the arrival of this fellow survivor, the sound of a system message rang out in my ear. When I opened the system panel I was met with a flurry of new messages, which quickly covered the page.
System:>
Skill “cloak” {on}
Current status {unimpai….
*ding*
System:>
Warning Abnormal source of soul energy detected!
Calculating new operation parameters. . . . .Solution found}
System:>
{Quest Issued “KIng Maker” [Reward:{Undecipherable}
{Absorb the “Red Ant Lord”?}
{mission progress 0/1}
As I look over the system's messages in my mind, my emotions fluctuate between dread and anticipation at the new quest projected in front of me.
The quest wants me to kill this thing huh? It was almost a laughable request, but one I was tempted to complete anyways. Sighing internally, I made up my mind. I couldn’t expect to remain hidden down here forever. It was better to use the element of surprise while I still had it to gain some advantage, maybe if I was lucky I could kill it in an ambush.
What really interested me was the mention of “soul energy.” From what I understood this term was somehow related to the new power I was given when I absorbed the three ants next to the pond earlier. I didn’t know exactly how it worked, or why the system wanted me to absorb these monsters in the first place, but If my theory was right then I could only imagine what would happen if I was able to complete this quest.
It’s probably good that I was never a philosophy, as I’m pretty sure that my body was quickly losing its humanity; although if I think about it that way, then I guess I already lost that when I died in my previous life, so it was totally okay to try to get as much power as possible from these monsters without having to worry about any moral consequences or something. See who even needs philosophy in the first place when you have good old-fashioned backward reasoning?
Anyway, it didn’t really matter what would happen to me if I absorbed it. If I couldn’t even survive a few minutes in a real fight against it. When I thought about it, I really had been screwed over here, right? It wasn’t enough to barely survive being trapped at the bottom of a collapsed cave, but some monster with nothing better to do than kill me had to come with me.
The ant oblivious to the thoughts going through my mind suddenly stuck its head straight into the air. Its grotesque tentacles, extending to their full length, formed together into a central shape, their tips pointing outwards towards seemingly random areas of the desolate surroundings. The creature almost looked like a blossoming flower with its tentacles being the peduncles extending from the central stem, but this illusion was not long to last. Sprouting forth from the tentacles came an innumerable number of glass-like threads. They whipped wildly in the air for a few seconds, likely not able to support their own weight due to their thinness, before they fell to the ground, spreading out like little white veins to different areas of the cave.
Following one of the strands that was arching in my direction, my face couldn’t help but contort. This wasn’t part of the plan. I didn’t know what the ant was looking for, and frankly, I didn’t care. What was concerning me was that these threads were blocking access to the ant’s main body. Even if the tentacles weren’t searching for me in particular, their sheer density meant that they did an uncannily good job of covering the ground. Taking a step, I moved past the tentacles which zipped past beside me, having dodged the first of many ahead of me. I started closing the relatively short distance over the uneven terrain towards the ant’s main body. Vaulting over a boulder with a large crack running down its center, I was in the middle of stumbling gracelessly up the slope towards the ant when I saw the middle section of the tentacles beside me begin to vibrate before it suddenly shifted in my direction, rushing towards me. I tried to move in the opposite direction only to see that another tentacle was burrowing bizarrely in the bloody remains of an ant, causing that way to become impassable.
Running out of options, and even shorter on time as the white line was closing in on me, I saw that there was a gap above it large enough to fit through. Planting my feet into the ground, I bent my knees before launching myself above the incoming tentacles. As I passed over, I saw it slam its body into another mass of corpses, finally stopping its movement; I didn’t have enough time to consider what it was doing with the dead, as my head was about to become intimately acquainted with the quickly approaching ground.
Panicking, I stretched my arms in front of me to shield my face. Impacting the ground, my body twisted to the side, my back sliding along the ground for a step before my momentum was halted by an oblong stone with a piercing crash.
Hearing the sound, my breath caught in my throat as my eyes darted to the ant ahead of me, waiting for it to take fatal notice of my existence. Luckily, it just carried on its task, taking no more notice of me than the myriad of rocks still falling around the cavern. Letting out an exhale of relief, I briefly checked the system to make sure my skill was still active before cautiously crawling up the slope towards the ant. As I approached, I could fully appreciate the ant's disheveled figure. Its larger tentacles pulsated with green veins that pulsed with green liquid running down their length. Its eyes were glazed over, looking at the ceiling in complete stillness if not for the white tentacles that continued to move around the cave forever.
I might have mistaken its state as no different than the other corpses, and truthfully that didn’t look to be far from the truth, with wounds dotted along its bod. In some places, they were so deep that the fleshy underbody could be seen through its carapace. But the longer I looked, the more perplexed I became. There was something off about its injuries. Unlike when the other ants were wounded, no blood dripped from its body, nor did it let out cries of pain, or even try to shield its body. Looking closer at a large slash along its side facing towards me, I saw a colorless viscous liquid coating the wound, acting like some kind of scab preventing the wound from developing further.
As much as I tried to understand what was happening, I only came up with more questions than answers, a reality of my limited knowledge that I was encountering all too often. Realizing that I was getting nowhere, I gave up on my thoughts. Instead, my hand reached out to the edge of an uneven rock, giving me enough leverage to scramble over the lip of the pile, sliding crouching behind an upturned rock only a few steps away from the ant. As I peered over my cover at the beast in front of me, I tried my best to calm my racing heart for the task to come. It was a futile effort given the circumstances.
The best I could manage was a few deep breaths before I sprang out, my mind focused with a singular intent to drive my blade as far into this creature as I could; however, as I neared the ant, I realized I held in my grasp nothing but air. It was a shocking realization. Coming to a halt. I searched vainly for my knife before the reality of the situation hit me that I hadn’t actually held it since the cave had collapsed.
My face immediately lit up red in embarrassment, though nobody was around to see. I would have screamed into my hands had that action not been the same as suicide. It was frankly a ridiculous situation. How it had escaped me to check for my weapon earlier, and why I had any faith that it had stuck with me through the collapse was a mystery to me. In all likelihood, it was probably buried somewhere under the rubble far beyond my reach. It was a downright ridiculous situation. I was on the verge of going into battle without a weapon. What was I going to do, punch it to death? Though even that thought would have seemed preposterous to me before I came to this world. I was just an everyday salaryman; I shouldn’t have to be worrying about fighting in the first place, and it’s not like any harm was done anyway. For now, it was probably better to find a solution than dwelling on a simple mistake.
Quickly opening the system, I selected the shop icon, scrolled down through the weapon category. I didn’t feel like reading each individual item, so I just decided on the first one, which I could afford while still giving me a little GP left over in case something unexpected happened.
System>
Would you like to purchase (Sterling Short Sword) for 1000 GP?}
[“A blade made of excellent materials by a master artisan. . . . . . . . . . . .
while he was drunk, still good enough for most tasks, . . . probably.”]
[Yes] . . . [No]
The description was appealing enough, if not a little strange, so I quickly answered yes with my mind. As the shop page closed itself, I made sure to take a step back as I looked up towards the prospective black ceiling. A moment of anticipation passed before a golden circle of streaming light began to open up between me and the ant. The tip of a shimmering silver blade emerged out of the rapidly expanding portal. The sword soon fully appeared; it was about twice the length of my knife with a thin blade that somehow looked like it would snap in two with a little force, and also very sturdy with its presence. The portal snapped shut behind it in an instance. This was all the confirmation I needed to act. Jumping up, I reached my hand out, accepting the now falling handle of the sword. Its cool metal grip reassured me a bit as I descended blade-first toward the head of the ant. As I fell, I could hear the ding of a system message alerting me to the deactivation of my cloak skill.
System:>
[ Skill “Cloak” {off} ]
[Current status {further use not possible until hidden status is gained.]
My now exposed body approached the ant from above at a speed impossible for any human to react to; unfortunately, it wasn’t enough even against the distracted ant. In an instant, its unfeeling eyes snapped towards me. its body, shaking violently as it let out a strange guttural shriek. My heart sank; in that moment, I felt an imminent sense of danger, the same feeling as when I had been surrounded by ants on the verge of dying.
In a split second, I steadied the grip on my blade, my muscles tensing to swing the side of the blade down towards the head of the ant with all the force I could muster. I could feel my blade shake violently as it made contact with the extremity-hard carapace of the ant before it managed to slip through.
At this moment, my feet made contact with the ground, shoving me backward away from the ant with not a second to lose. Because the ant had reacted even quicker than me. The moment before my blade made contact with its body, it had pulled itself backward, causing my blade to only graze its face instead of landing the deadly blow I had intended. A moment later, it whipped its tentacles out, sweeping through the place I had landed. From my perspective, the whole scene happened instantaneously. I only realized the result of the ambush after I felt the rush, a rush of air blasted past my face caused by a bulbous form slamming into the ground in front of me, sending a rain of debris into the air.
Looking past the tentacle on the ground that was once again curling towards me, I could see the ant, a slash running down the left side of its face. My sword had abruptly gone through one of its tentacles as it lay like a statue at its side, and all the white lines attached to it shriveled up at once. The sword had then continued into the creature's mouth, detaching a chunk of flesh from its left side, causing the ant's face to take on a rough appearance. I would have been pleasantly surprised with the success of this attack had I not noticed the lack of reaction from the ant to the wound. No blood gushed from the wound, no cries of pain filled my ears, nor did it try to back away. In fact, the only sign that I had caused that wound at all was a sticky blackish-green residue that went up halfway up the length of my blade.
My gaze went from the tip of my blade up to the hollow eyes of my opponent. They didn’t return the glance; they simply looked past me as though I didn’t exist, but I was not left to wait for long. Lacking any of the inaction I had witnessed before, its body contorted like a puppet with its strings cut as it endeavored to whip two more tentacles at me. Still, even with all its movement, there was something off about the way it reacted. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it before, but now after wounding it, I finally understood. Its actions lacked purpose. It clearly wanted to kill me; that much I could see all too well, but that was all it was, too surface-level. It wasn’t fighting for glory, for its kind, or even for its survival. No, its actions were those of a machine, something which acted only to serve the action itself, nothing greater. It was an unnerving realization, but in some ways, it was reassuring as I rolled backward, dodging the incoming attacks. I realized that the reason it wasn’t looking at me was that it didn’t care about me, it was looking further at something else.
{Current Time until apocalypse: 298rs, 1m, 24s} . . .