Empty. The almost round cave was really empty.

“Huff.” Alice smiled with relief and looked around. The cave was big and indeed dimly lit. But instead of a portal to another world, the cavern was illuminated by large green crystallish stalactites. Ah. Not exactly, the girl realized. By whitish moss growing on these stalactites. Bioluminescence?

Anyway, very convenient. With understandable doubts, Alice quenched lamps and left the bigger one to mark the cave as she was retrieving her stuff through a hole. Then the girl noticed yellow blood or whatever the centipede left on her sword that she hadn’t cleaned yet was evaporating as if burning off by invisible flames. Not just from the sword, from her clothes too.

Is it… mana? I don't see it my status, by there is no hit-point there either... and mana would go well with this narrative.

Alice vaguely felt an additional pressure in this dungeon from something that was not air at all. Mana was here, right before her eyes and yet she could do nothing. Calling for it, imagining invisible hands, shaping it by pure willpower and any other wild idea Alice tried out on spot went nowhere.

“I need to move.” Alice murmured and sheathed her sword as all physical evidence of the bloody(?) centipede’s murder vanished. “Hope it deconstructs bodies too.” The thought of sleeping in one cave with two giant dead insects was not inspiring at all. Wait, the girl frowned. The dungeon obviously had some sort of resource management... the dungeon, that is.

So I will need to drag them all the way. Shivering, Alice shook her head and concentrated on the task on hand. From the big cavern, she found only one wide tunnel leading out. The tunnel was flat, more or less, with rounded walls and ceiling, lightened by green crystal veins. Well, by the moss on them.

Whoosh...

And it sounded like trouble. Spooked, Alice sneaked behind the corner, pressed into a depression in a wall and pointed her spear at the exit. The girl started to sweat as the low hum of blowing air grew closer. Closer. One target, she somehow understood and tensed up like a spring. The sound grew closer, before finally, it showed up cloaked in streams of driven dust and crackles of mandibles, looking exactly as its name postulated.

[Snakefly Lvl. 3]

The spear split up a transparent wing before burying deep into a long black body. With a squeak, the snakefly bent on the spearhead, rowing air with the unbroken wing and all six legs, blindly striking with ovipositor as Alice drove it into the ground with force. Metal plowed a short line on the stone floor with sparks and monster's high-pitched screams, which did not arise pity in the girl at all; she lifted the spear with the giant snakefly impaled on it and then drove it down again!

The monster cried one last time from being crunched into halves. The ovipositor flinched and opened completely to add some disgusting notes to a flawless win when the girl pierced the head of the creature.

[+300 EXP +120 BP]

“RIP you asshole!” Alice shouted out in an adrenaline rush, thrilled, still scared and a bit excited.

Just now, everything went exactly as she had envisioned it. The snakefly indeed tried to dodge the spear, but with a half-meter long body, it was a far cry from the nimbleness of a real fly. Alice simply shifted the spear’s trajectory by tilting her left hand. Not a slow motion, but still an achievement the girl herself would have never repeated, that much was obvious.

Sorry, system, this skill is awesome!

Two skills, she corrected herself immediately and frowned thoughtfully. Spear mastery taught her fundamentals the girl had just started to perceive in action. Moreover, her natural physical limits were lifted by a lot. A level up made her faster and stronger than she could realistically hope to achieve drug-free.

Yellow blood liquid scattered all over the place as Alice swung her spear a few times.

“No, not quite yet.” The girl judged her strength after a quick inspection of the snakefly’s dead halves. She had checked the attributes in various ways, of course, but the system simply abolished the common use of an appraisal hidden skill. Alice herself judged numbers to be purely statistical, with five being an average.

The snakefly's body started to burn in familiar invisible flames. Fast. How they hunt, or do they even need to? Maybe... New noises interrupted the girl's musings and she backed to her hiding spot. Stirring her ears, besides the heart pounds she could hear wings flapping. Not closing this time, no. Alice knitted her brows. Wings meant new snakeflies. Or bees. Or whatnot.

Clatters of multiple legs? Sounded like centipedes. Shrieks? Unchanging distance?

Alice squeezed the spearshaft, inhaled deeply and bravely entered the tunnel. She advanced slowly while listening to the echoes and watching her own steps not to give her away. After two turns the girl found the source of clamor.

Monsters were fighting monsters. Two snakeflies were circling under the ceiling, and the third already had fallen to claws of a big centipede, lying broken on the ground.

[Snakefly Lvl. 5], [Snakefly Lvl. 3], [Centipede Lvl. 6]

Chirp!

The centipede lifted its body high and attempted fruitlessly to hook snakefly with a forcipule when it went down a little. The low leveled one dived then and stabbed the distracted enemy with its needle-like tail.

The centipede screeched. Crouching behind a big rock Alice noticed multiple stab wounds on the centipede’s carapace and how sluggishly the monster was moving. Poison?

The snakeflies wore their prey down pretty fast. The centipede ceased to move, not dead but paralyzed since its status screen didn’t disappear. In a few moments, it was mounted and then stabbed by one poisonous tail for extra control and one ovipositor…

Alice’s stomach revolted when the apparently female snakefly visually expanded and started to push eggs into the centipede’s body. Of course, rich imagination added extra sickness and paleness to the girl’s face. The abominable scene drew her to an edge of her ability to control her body’s psychological reactions.

Don’t throw up… Too afraid to simply close her eyes, Alice shut the mouth with a palm. Push, push, the snakefly wasn’t hurrying up at all. Stop envisioning it on yourself, idiot. Just stop!

Eight eggs, the centipede was seeded with eight eggs by the time Alice managed to defeat her worst enemy yet: hideous nausea. She readied her bow, forcing slight tremors in the hands stop and aimed with hateful eyes. An arrow pierced the air and burrowed into the snakefly, knocked it back forcing slimy egg to drop on rocks with a slurp.

Swish!

Alice had placed the second arrow near the wall so a second shot downed the last snakefly almost immediately before it could fly anywhere. Smirking viciously, she then rushed to finish the creatures off by chopping their heads with her spear.

[+300 EXP +120 BP]

[+500 EXP +200 BP]

These chunks of experience felt especially pleasant. Never before Alice had been so genuinely glad to kill something. Not just adult insects, their unborn children too: even doubting its ability to survive in the open air, the girl crashed the rolling egg anyway.

“Now it’s only you.” Alice glanced at the paralyzed centipede after she pulled out the arrows. Ridiculous, but the monster looked pitiful even in her eyes now. Being injected by a flying parasite to end up as a host for its parasitic eggs? Numerous horror movies taught her to fear such outcomes.

Well, you know what they say: not killing, but putting it out of misery… or not, Alice suddenly changed her mind after remembering the metaphor with an anthill and lifted her spear with a cold light in the eyes. The girl began with slicing off legs, then she destroyed joints, stabbed every segment of its carapace with the methodicalness of a juvenile maniac until finally…

[+600 EXP +240 BP]

“What are you, a zombie?” Gloomily Alice asked no one in particular. Then she blinked and trembled from sudden chill as an idea came to her mind. "This is how they hunt. They poison the prey and leave the head intact!" The centipede had been stoically enduring butchering until she reached its brain. Only then it died. Again, the girl silently rejoiced the luckiness she had enjoyed during her first mortal combat and somewhat nervously took out a bottle to moisten her swiftly drying mouth.

Should I press it? Or is it even a choice now?