Tim arose from the dirt, three hours later. The idea was to rest for a couple of hours only, but he got really bored along the way, to the point where he took a nap. This extra hour didn't bother him, neither did he notice it, come to think of it, but the system did assure him that he was a bit more ready to face the world now.
She said, [Good job, Timothy. You've accumulated 64/120 points of mana! If you're more savvy with it this time around, it'll go a long way in terms of helping you survive. Be careful.]
“I’ll try to be more careful, this time.” He followed along, “You weren't kidding when you said that I need the mana. I was knocked out for hours, but my mana pool is only halfway full. Let's hope that I won't have to deal with any more devilish ants. Hate those big, ugly bastards!”
Anyway, Tim then crawled across the landmass, and he could only hope to progress. He didn’t know if he was close or far from finding a soul tampering cave, as it was really hard to tell. It felt like he was far from it, mostly, and that was the same reason why he was on the move. He felt as if he was getting closer to such a cave, just by exploring more.
Tim ended up crawling for about twenty meters, which was a significant distance for a little guy like him, it was an achievement! One would fear that he’d get lost in these grassy fields, especially since the field seemed more like a jungle to him, but he wasn’t really lost, and neither did he care even if he was lost! If all things went bad, he could just shapeshift into a tiny fly and then seek out the ocean. He had options, which was why he traveled almost fearlessly.
After he traveled that far, he suddenly found himself on a downwards hill, a hill with a 45° angle, to be exact. He was technically too small to notice such hills, because it was almost flat for the likes of him, but then he did notice the hill after all, because while he walked, his front legs were enduring a lot of pressure all of a sudden! This was hard to ignore.
Tim then took care of his composure, of course, he didn’t let the hill overpower him. He slowed down, which was the most effective way to battle a steep-ish hill.
Then, as he had some time to gather his thoughts, he noticed another detail about his surroundings. He was intrigued.
“Hmm…” He mumbled, “This is an odd place, I haven’t seen a single tree so far. Is land supposed to be without trees?”
This was a good question, but it wasn’t so important either. He couldn’t care less about what mother nature provided around here, but it still seemed odd to him that there weren’t any trees around. The thought of it left him fairly distracted.
In that less than focused state, he continued crawling downhill, until he found himself in a predicament. He didn’t fall off a cliff or something like that, but he was still in trouble, as he ended up below the ground instead! He fell in a hole, which was stretched across the steep-ish hill that he was climbing down from.
The hole wasn’t life threatening, but since he was so small, the hole seemed more like a cave to him. Sadly, it wasn’t the kind of cave he was looking for.
The system even assured him that this wasn’t a soul tampering cave, she had to specify that. Anyway, since he wasn’t panicking much, he managed to notice a couple of other important characteristics of this hole. He noticed that it was more of a tunnel, rather than anything else!
Tim confirmed that it was a tunnel, because there were a bunch of these tiny rocks that kept the place well illuminated. They radiated numerous colors of light.
Spiders didn’t have the greatest eye-sight, and they especially couldn’t see in the dark, at all. So in this case, when he saw clusters of light positioned here, in a place that would’ve been otherwise dark, he got more than intrigued as a result.
Tim followed the tunnel, quite fearlessly, and allowed his other senses to be more sensitive too, just for the sake of safety. This tunnel was well lit, but it wasn’t a bad idea to be more alert of his surroundings. If he was to be explorative, he might as well be cautious too!
While Tim crawled forward, he couldn’t help getting a bit nervous about his safety, he thought. “I swear to god, or the gods, or whatever… I swear, if I run into gigantic ants down here, I’m going to lose my shit! It wouldn’t surprise me if giant fucking ants dug this tunnel, it looks like something they would do. Please gods, don’t give me any more challenges, I’ve gone through enough of them. No more ants!”
[Although insects, especially ants are keen to dig elaborate tunnel systems, your conclusions are less than probable. These tunnels are too big for most insects to use properly and or thorougly.] The system added, and she tried to help him embrace common sense.
“I hope you are right,” He expressed, and continued to explore.
The tunnel, as the system had vaguely described, was actually part of an elaborate cluster of tunnels. Tim ended up taking many left and right turns without noticing it much, to the point where he unsurprisingly got lost. He only noticed that he was lost about ten minutes later, when he felt that he had taken one too many sharp, left turns. When he started crawling uphill afterwards, he started feeling really nervous!
“Think I watched too many horror movies when I was a human.” He blurted, “I could swear that a monster is waiting for me on top of this fucking tunnel.”
Tim was scared, but he crawled forwards nonetheless. He was a spider, so it didn’t take him much effort to climb upwards. Thankfully, he didn’t run into a monster, but he did run into another badge of fresh questions.
A fraction of the tunnel that he had crawled towards, featured these weird scriptures, that were carved on stone. There were some symbols too, which almost seemed demonic.
“A fucking goat?” He said, and didn’t really know what to make of that symbol.
After some pondering, he thought. “Maybe it’s legendary for insects to see a goat, or something? It could be a horror story.”
Tim made an astute observation there, but it didn’t matter much all of a sudden, because his vibrational senses picked up some movements close by. Something legless was approaching, rapidly!
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