Chương 15: Chitin and Malice

The forest had stopped pretending to be normal. It was now openly hostile, a wall of green that fought Zander for every inch of ground. He hacked at a curtain of thorny vines with his Ironfang Dagger. The serrated bone blade, sharp enough to shave with, sliced through the tough fibers with a satisfying hiss, but for every vine he cut, two more seemed to be waiting behind it.

"Atmospheric," Zander muttered, wiping a sheen of sweat from his forehead.

"If the atmosphere you're going for is 'suffocation'." He had been walking for three hours since breaking camp. The "park-like" spacing of the giant trees in the outer rim was a distant memory. Here, the ancient trunks grew so close together that the canopy was a solid roof, blotting out the sky almost completely. The air was stagnant, heavy with the metallic tang of ozone and the sweet, cloying scent of rotting orchids. He stepped over a root that looked suspiciously like a ribcage and paused.

On the trunk of a massive tree directly in his path, about five feet off the ground, the bark had been stripped away. Zander leaned in. The marks were fresh. They weren't the chaotic claw marks of a territorial beast sharpening its nails. These were deliberate; three horizontal slashes, deep and precise. He looked past the tree. Ten yards later, on another trunk, there was another set.

"Breadcrumbs?" Zander whispered. He frowned. Who left these? It felt too coordinated for a random beast. It felt like a lure. His mind went back to the survivor, the Ironfang Squirrel that had escaped the massacre of its kin, the one that had orchestrated the ambush with the Patriarch. Was this it? Was it trying to lead him into a trap?

"Or maybe I'm giving a squirrel too much credit," he mused.

"Maybe there's something else out here with a grudge." He checked his mental compass, focusing on the Apex Predator quest. The System's guidance tugged him forward, a magnetic pull in his gut. He looked at the scratches again. They aligned perfectly with the pull.

"Well," Zander said, adjusting the strap of his backpack.

"Trap or not, you're going my way. Let's see where this leads." He moved forward, but his grip on the dagger tightened. The terrain grew worse. The ground beneath the leaf litter became soft and spongy, threatening to swallow his feet with every step. The undergrowth shifted from ferns to thickets of bushes armed with two-inch thorns that hooked into his clothes. Zander had to activate [Scarlet Gauntlet] on his left hand just to use it as a battering ram, pushing aside the briars that were too thick to cut.

The red obsidian shell scraped against the wood, the sound harsh in the humid silence. He was moving through a tunnel of vegetation, a claustrophobic chute that limited his visibility to a dozen yards in any direction. It was a kill box waiting to happen. Chit. The sound came from above. High up. Zander stopped instantly. He didn't look up immediately; instead, he scanned the ground around him, his instincts from the last few days screaming ambush. Chit-chit. He slowly raised his head.

Seventy feet up, perched on a branch that hung directly over the path, sat the squirrel. The torn ear was unmistakable, even in the gloom. It looked down at him, its grey tail twitching with a nervous energy.

"So it was you," Zander said softly. The squirrel chattered something that sounded like a curse, then nudged an object with its nose. A large, bulbous fruit, purple and heavy, rolled off the branch. It fell silently, plummeting through the humid air. Thump. It hit the ground twenty feet in front of Zander, landing with a wet, heavy sound on a patch of earth that looked slightly more disturbed than the rest. Zander narrowed his eyes.

"A fruit? Is that the best you—" The ground exploded. Dirt and mulch sprayed into the air as if a landmine had gone off. The "disturbed earth" wasn't a natural formation; it was a trapdoor. Something massive erupted from the soil. It rose up, towering six feet in the air before its many legs found purchase on the edges of its hole. Zander took a step back, his [Identify] skill firing instantly. [Thorn-Back Centipede - lvl 8] The beast was a nightmare of chitin and malice.

It was easily fifteen feet long, its body segmented into armored plates the color of dried blood. From every segment, a cluster of sharp, black spines protruded, giving the creature a chaotic, jagged silhouette. Its head was a mess of sensory feelers and mandibles, clacking together with the sound of stones striking underwater. It ignored the fruit and turned its eyeless head directly toward Zander, tasting his scent on the air. It shrieked, a high, oscillating sound that grated on Zander's teeth, and charged.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. It moved with a horrifying, fluid speed, its hundreds of legs rippling in a wave of coordinated motion. It flowed over the roots and thorns like oil. Zander didn't hesitate. He fell into his stance, left hand forward, right hand back. He then activated [Mind's Dominion] and pushed 10 points of Will into Might. Might: 25 The centipede lunged, its upper body rearing up to strike down with its mandibles.

Zander stepped in to meet it. He raised his left hand, encased in the heavy, bulbous [Scarlet Gauntlet], and threw a stiff jab aimed at the creature's "face." CRACK. The impact shuddered up Zander's arm. The gauntlet connected, but the centipede's exoskeleton was incredibly dense. The blow snapped the creature's head back, but the chitin didn't shatter. The beast recovered instantly, thrashing its body. Zander saw the opening.

He drove his right hand forward, the Ironfang Dagger aiming for a gap between the neck plates. CLANG. The dagger skidded off. The "gap" was protected by overlapping ridges of shell. The bone blade sparked against the carapace, leaving only a shallow white scratch.

"Hard," Zander hissed, ducking under a wildly swinging leg. The centipede twisted its long body, bringing its flank around. The spines along its back weren't just for show. As it coiled, it scraped its side against Zander's left arm. SCREECH. The black thorns ground against the red obsidian of his red gauntlet. Zander watched in horror as deep gouges appeared in his blood gauntlet. The thorns were harder than the squirrel patriarch's claws. They chewed through the vitrified blood, chipping it away.

If that hit his flesh, it would shred him to the bone. Zander backpedaled, putting distance between him and the living buzzsaw, and channeled points from his blood well to close the gouges in his gauntlet.

"Armor is too thick for the dagger," he analyzed rapidly, his eyes scanning the beast as it reoriented itself.

"And the thorns make it impossible to get close enough for a grapple without getting shredded." The centipede hissed, sensing its prey retreating. It didn't lunge this time. Instead, it whipped its rear section forward. The tail was a heavy, club-like appendage covered in the longest spikes yet. It moved like a whip, blurring through the air. Zander saw it coming. He couldn't dodge; the undergrowth was too thick on either side, trapping him in the tunnel. He had to tank it. Shift.

Resilience: 25 The density of his body skyrocketed instantly. His skin hardened, his bones becoming heavy lead bars. He raised his gauntleted left arm and braced his right arm behind it, forming a cross-guard. WHAM. The impact lifted him off his feet. The spikes slammed into his arms. The gauntlet shattered on the left, turning to red dust, but it absorbed the worst of the puncture damage. The force of the blow, however, was like being hit by a wrecking ball.

Zander flew backward, crashing through a thorny bush and slamming into the trunk of a tree. Health: 178/200"Resilience works," Zander groaned, shaking his head to clear the stars. He looked at his arms. His shirt was in tatters, and his forearms were bruised a deep purple, but the bones held. The centipede clicked its mandibles, pleased with the hit. It began to skitter forward, sensing the kill. Zander stood up, spitting a glob of blood onto the mulch.

"You like your armor," Zander gasped, his mind racing.

"Topside is a tank. So... let's look at the undercarriage." He needed leverage. He needed to overwhelm the bug. The centipede reared up again for a finishing bite, towering over him. Zander dropped his center of gravity. He didn't bring his dagger up. He put it back in his belt and spread his fingers. [Scarlet Gauntlet] The red mist erupted around his left hand again, reforming the shattered armor in a blink. Shift. Might: 25 Zander screamed and launched himself under the descending mandibles.

He ignored the pincers snapping at his hair. He jammed his left gauntlet directly under the creature's chin, using the bulbous shape as a wedge. At the same time, his right hand, bare and fueled by 25 Might, grabbed one of the thick, spiny legs near the head. The thorns dug into his palm, drawing blood, but Zander didn't let go.

"UP!" He roared, engaging his legs, his back, and every fiber of his enhanced muscles. He pushed up with the gauntlet and pulled down with the leg. The centipede was heavy, easily five hundred pounds of chitin and hate, but Zander was a hydraulic press made of flesh. The beast shrieked as its center of gravity was violently displaced. Zander twisted his hips, turning the lift into a throw. With a sickening crunch of joint manipulation, he heaved the front half of the creature into the air.

The momentum carried the rest of the long body with it. The centipede flipped. It crashed onto its back, its hundreds of legs wriggling frantically in the air, exposing the pale, soft, fleshy underbelly that had been hidden against the dirt. Zander didn't give it a second to right itself. He drew the Ironfang Dagger from his belt in a reverse grip and leaped onto the thrashing belly of the beast. The centipede tried to curl up, to protect its soft core, but Zander was faster. He drove the bone dagger down. SHLICK.

This time, there was no metallic clang. The blade sank into the pale meat all the way to the leather-wrapped handle. Green ichor sprayed over Zander's face. The centipede convulsed, its legs going rigid. Zander didn't stop. He ripped the blade out and stabbed again. And again. He carved a ruinous line up the creature's thorax, seeking the nerve cluster he hoped was there. The beast let out one final, gurgling hiss and then slumped back against the earth, its legs curling inward in death.

'ding' You have killed [Thorn-Back Centipede - lvl 8]. For killing an adversary above your level, you receive 40 System Coins. Zander sat there for a moment, straddling the dead insect, his chest heaving. He wiped the green slime from his eyes. Health: 172/200 He looked at his right hand. The thorns had chewed up his palm pretty bad when he grabbed the leg, but the bleeding had already stopped thanks to his Will, and [Blood Infusion] was already knitting the skin back together. He slowly climbed off the corpse.

He looked up. The survivor squirrel was still there on the branch. It looked down at the dead centipede, then at Zander. It flinched as Zander stood up. It cocked its head, let out a short, sharp chirp, and then scrambled away, moving faster than before. It moved in a straight line. Deeper. Zander sheathed his dagger.

"You're becoming a thorn in my side," Zander said, watching the grey tail vanish into the gloom.

"I need to put you down, for good." He looked at the dense, forbidding darkness where the squirrel had gone. The "Green Maze" was only getting started.

"Lead the way, fuzzball," he said, a cold grin returning to his face.

"Let's see what dies next."