Red looked in the direction he had just come from. A bit further down that tunnel the boy saw a single yellow page filled with Viran's writing. The only thing in his reach to recover.

 

Grabbing the paper, the idea of going back and looking for his supplies crossed his mind, but Red immediately discarded it. There was no way the youth would be able to fight against the scorpion, or whoever the survivor from that battle turned out to be. Even if he did return there, all of his food would have most likely already been eaten.

 

Earlier, the boy was being mindful to not get his bag torn open, but it seems like that was to no avail in the end. The only thing Red was left with was his cleaver and the items in his pouch: the map, the insectoid stone, and his iron knife. No food to eat for the rest of his journey and no bandage to patch him up.

 

There was no time to complain, though. With his leg bleeding and a group of bloodthirsty monsters a few minutes away from him, Red needed to hurry and find a place to rest. After applying some pressure to stop the bleeding, the youth changed his bandages, using a strip of cloth from the ruined bag as a replacement. It wasn't ideal, but it was about the cleanest thing he could find at the moment.

 

After that, Red took out his map and tried to locate his position in the tunnels. He couldn't accurately place himself on the drawing, but considering how close he was to the scorpion, the boy could make an educated guess. Right now he urgently needed to find a place for rest.

 

Thankfully for him, it seemed the other insects weren't too keen on going out of their lair to face an angry tide of centipedes. After walking for about an hour, Red was able to find a relatively small and reclusive chamber to rest in.

 

Nearing the point of exhaustion, the boy unceremoniously hid behind a few stone pillars and laid down. Before long, his body slackened and sleep took over him.

 

...

 

Red woke up with some alarm. Looking around him, the boy barely recalled where he currently was. The last few hours of the previous day had been so stressful and adrenaline-filled his memories of the events were rather fuzzy. The youth was so tired back then he didn't even pay proper attention to his safety in this small clearing and blacked out as soon as his body relaxed.

 

Thankfully, no monsters had attacked him during his sleep, so Red had his instincts to thank for choosing a proper place to rest. Or perhaps he was just lucky. The difference was becoming tenuous at best these past few days.

 

Now that he had woken up and no giant insect was chasing him, the boy had time to think.

 

There was no food anymore.

 

Red had gone without eating for quite a few days before, but not dying of hunger wasn't his most pressing concern right now. To face these strong creatures and remain alive down here, he needed to be in top condition. Without consistent nourishment, after a day or two, his physical abilities would diminish considerably. Red hadn't even gotten to the hardest part of his journey, so how could he allow that to happen?

 

The boy would need to forage for some food. He considered hunting down insects for their meat, but even if he was successful he had no way to cook it. Uncooked flesh was more likely to get him sick, so Red left that option as his last measure. The only thing remaining was to look for edible mosses and mushrooms. However, while there did exist quite a lot of those in the cave, only a rare few of them were safe for human consumption.

 

The majority was highly toxic, and what remained for the slaves to eat was not nearly enough to sate their hunger. Red thankfully was a kid and didn't need as much as an adult to sustain himself. Still, he wasn't sure if he would find sufficient food this way either. In any case, now that he didn't have a good amount of supplies to rely on, the youth would need to hasten his escape plans.

 

Checking his leg, Red was glad to see it had stopped bleeding. As for the rest of his body, his muscles were still very sore from his efforts. At this point, though, he had already gotten used to the feeling. At the very least, they would still work for the foreseeable future.

 

Opening his map and illuminating it with the insectoid's crystal, Red tried to decide on his next move. The chase from the previous day had taken him off track and much closer to the centipede's main nest than he was comfortable with. Their large lair in the map had many tunnels leading to it, and the boy sought to enter and exit through the ones which allowed him to spend the least time in that place.

 

Unfortunately, with his way back inhibited by a huge scorpion and his supplies gone, Red couldn't afford to make any other big detours in his escape. He would need to take this risk and sneak straight through the monsters' nest. With a sigh, the youth put the map away into his pouch and started to make his way forward.

 

...

 

In the next few hours, traces of the centipedes' existence started to appear all around him. Dozens of the creatures' footprints and the broken carapace of their prey littered this part of the underground. Red even started to see more of the monsters walking through the tunnel.

 

To his luck, though, they were hanging around alone or in pairs and the boy was able to sneak past them with relative ease. Red expected to see much more of the centipedes as he got closer to their nest, but that wasn't the case. At some points, he even wondered whether he was going the correct way, but the evidence around the tunnel didn't seem to lie to him.

 

Were they out of their base hunting for the egg stealer? It was possible, but Red didn't lower his guard either way.

 

After another hour of sneaking, the passage in front of him started to rise, and the youth knew he was getting much closer to the nest. The tunnel widened quickly as he climbed up the difficult ground, and Red reached the crest before long.

 

The passage in front of him formed an overlook through which the boy could observe the large chamber down below. What he saw, however, took away his breath.

 

The clearing was enormous, far larger than Viran's map seemed to indicate. It was roughly 150 meters across and the ceiling reached over 10 meters high. In the surfaces of the cave, dozens of large moonstone veins grew, illuminating the room brightly in their green glow. The ground was filled with large holes where the centipedes burrowed into to create their nests. Red saw dozens of the creatures walking around or just resting together in bunches. However, even that wasn't the most surprising thing to him.

 

In the center of the chamber, a huge centipede remained still. It was much larger compared to the ones Red had seen, easily reaching over 10 meters long and with a width bigger than an adult's torso to boot. Its antennae waved around the air in front of it, as even its siblings gave the creature a wide berth. Its eyes, though, presented the boy with another shock.

 

They were green, seemingly glowing similarly to the insectoid Red had seen before. A formless pressure emanated from the monster's body that he could feel even this far away. The youth arrived at a natural conclusion after seeing it.

 

Another beast that had opened its Spiritual Sea. The boy felt like cursing Viran again in his mind, but the man was already dead either way. Did the old soldier consider this path to be the easiest one to take? What would the other ones even look like if the centipedes' nest was already this dangerous?

 

Red felt the situation was too strange. Even Viran would have a hard time dealing with this kind of creature considering how the fight against the insectoid went. So why wouldn't he mark this area as deadly on the map? Perhaps the creature had appeared after the man created his map? Or was this just an elaborate way he came up with to get Red killed?

 

Whatever the case may be, it proved one thing to the youth - the map wasn't totally reliable. Things seemed to have changed since the insectoid emerged from beneath and Viran's information had more than once proven to be outdated. There was no way the man could have predicted this, though, and in the end of the day Red was still much better off with the help of the map.

 

Nonetheless, the boy was facing a hard decision. The tunnel he needed to enter to reach his destination was on the other side of the chamber. However, a colossal beast, as well as an army of its smaller but still large siblings, stood between him and his target.

 

Sneaking through a nest full of centipedes would already be a hard task, and now one of them had even opened its Spiritual Sea. Who knew how improved its senses were? Red doubted he would be able to outrun it either, considering how fast its lesser counterparts already proved to be.

 

On the other hand, if he tried to avoid this chamber, the boy would need to backtrack very far and choose a completely different path. Not to mention, he still needed to go through some other monsters' nest which likely had a creature just as strong as this one living in it. With no supplies to make such a roundabout trip either, Red would struggle to even reach those nests.

 

His first option was the best and only one he had. Sneak through the enemy's base and make it out completely unnoticed. More easily said than done, but Red was set on his decision.

 

Still, he had no intention to rush. Hiding behind a few rocks near the tunnel's entrance, the boy started to observe the behavior of the centipedes and their leader. He hoped that perhaps the huge monster would leave the chamber or enter one of the burrows.

 

During the next few hours, Red silently watched the nest and its inhabitants. Centipedes left and entered the room, some even bringing new prey. Not many of them seemed to use the youth's tunnel though, and he was able to remain unnoticed for the whole time.

 

Unfortunately, through the process the giant creature had barely moved at all. If it wasn't for its antennae waving every so often through the air, Red would have thought the centipede was dead.

 

Just as the boy was considering his next step, he noticed something moving through the outer area of the chamber. The youth looked in that direction but the only thing he saw were rocks and the stone floor. Just as Red was wondering whether or not he had been hallucinating, he perceived movement again.

 

It came from a long rock.

 

The boy doubted his own eyes, but sure enough, after a few more seconds the object walked forward again. It was approaching the centipedes' burrows ever so slowly. When Red observed it further, though, he could suddenly discern small legs under the rock as well as the shape of an insect he recognized, camouflaged very proficiently.

 

The egg-stealer. It had come back for more.