Chapter 15: Chapter 15: Exploration

It didn't. There weren't really all that many options, and since none of them had unlock requirements, it seemed I wouldn't get more options by waiting around.

Faster respawn: Cut respawn time by 75%.
Mapping: Automatically record the layout of any visited locations.
Item Box: Grant access to a spatial pocket in which a small amount of equipment can be stored.
Magic focus: Gain magic skills more easily, and level them slightly faster.
Combat focus: Gain combat skills more easily, and level them slightly faster.
Scouting focus: Gain scouting skills more easily, and level them slightly faster.

A couple of proper isekai staples there, further proving that this was a class geared towards me and my expectations, but alas I could only pick one. Aside from faster respawn, nothing was quantised. How big would my item box be, exactly? Would I lose anything in it on respawn? How much more easily would my skills level? If I took magic focus, could I actually learn magic skills, or would I still fail on the basis of anything multiplied by zero still being zero?

I picked item box in the end. My respawn time had never been a problem, and the geography around here wasn't complicated enough to require a map. The focus skills were interesting, and combat focus would have been my second choice, but without knowing the size of their effect, item box seemed like a more certain bet. Being able to carry food and water, as well as a few spare weapons, would be very useful. If it turned out to be big enough to carry whole corpses back to base for dismantling, or if it had time dilation effects, even better.

With that done, my excuses for procrastination were over. I donned my silk and chitin armour—now improved with additional spiky bits—tucked a spider claw into my belt and grabbed a spear. One more spear and my shield went into my item box, along with a bag of water, once I did a few handstands to check that the open top didn't matter, and it wasn't going to spill while in storage. I did find that my item box cost mana, but with nothing else to spend my mana on, and enough of the stuff to pull something in and out a dozen times, that didn't much matter for now. I didn't even need to worry about a return trip; trigger respawn was essentially a teleportation skill, bringing me and my equipment back here.

Actually, I should probably test that... I stood outside my respawn cave and tried to activate the skill. It was much like the process of pushing one of the buttons, and I felt it click inside of me.

Nothing happened.

That was strange... I could feel the skill, and it was still active, yet nothing was happening. No, the feeling was getting gradually stronger. It was building up to something. Ah, right; the skill was called trigger respawn, not just respawn. When I died, I didn't immediately respawn; it took some amount of time. If death was the usual trigger, then this skill was probably the same. That was annoying; I couldn't use it as an immediate escape.

With some unknown amount of time until it activated, I tried storing some poisonous nectar in my item box, in case it had a time stop effect. Alas, an experiment with a pair of full muncher shells, one stored and one kept out, showed that it deteriorated just as quickly in my item box as outside.

Trigger respawn took an hour to activate, but I could feel when it was almost ready and made my way back to the respawn cave. My vision abruptly went dark as I lost my acclimatisation, followed swiftly by a naked body falling on top of me. And thanks to the equipment transfer, the new me was wearing my spiked armour, causing the old me some nasty lacerations. I'd wanted to keep my eyes on my respawn location to see if I could see anything interesting, but the cave had been so small I hadn't been able to stand at a safe distance. I'd half hoped not to leave a corpse at all, but I knew that was unlikely. A quick check showed that my old body lacked a pulse, so it had died immediately when my mind was plucked out.

Another quick check revealed that everything in my item box was still intact, so respawning didn't cause it to empty. A quick trip to my pet murder tree to dispose of my corpse and then to the brook to wash off my previous instance's blood, and I was on my way back to the shrine. I'd willingly admit to some amount of paranoia, rechecking all the locations where I'd broken the concealed strands of silk, but in the end I found the place exactly as I'd left it. Five new webbed up passages to explore, each containing goodness knows what sort of nasties.

I picked an upward sloping one first, two arches anticlockwise from my own, because unlike the others, the artificial brickwork continued up the passageway, with obviously artificial sharp corners, and glowing stones set periodically into the ceiling. I carefully collected the web, even though I already had enough silk to be getting on with and really needed more chitin or rigid materials, then set off up the corridor.

After a couple of minutes of walking, I ended up at, strangely, a window. The passage ballooned outwards, expanding to ten metres across, then ended in a barrier of perfectly smooth silver. In the centre of the silver wall stood a large, stained-glass window, depicting the Goddess smiting whoever it was that had incurred her wrath this time. Actually, the image looked familiar, albeit mirrored. This was the window from the chapel, except seen from the other side!

I ran up to it and peered through, only to see the chapel from when I was first summoned. Shouty-guy was there, with the three knights behind him, none of them moving. Shouty-guy's expression looked... confused. Given that I was no longer in the room, nor was the sword on the altar, that was understandable. The way he was frozen must be the time dilation. How much did he see before it kicked in? Or had his expression had enough time to change in the... days? weeks? I'd been in here. I didn't even know how long it had been any more. With no sun or sky, and with death resetting my physical needs, I had nothing to keep track of. I'd hardly slept since I'd arrived.

There wasn't anything I could do there. Perhaps it would be my exit point once I found the sword, but for now, I returned to the shrine to pick the next passage to explore. The one to the left of my own sloped downwards, so I decided to leave that one till last. For my next one, I picked the passage in between the two I'd already visited. It was very much like my original entrance, in that there wasn't just the one web in the archway, but they continued down the passage. The natural stone and shape of the passage were also the same, and if there was any difference, it was that there was less luminescent moss growing. In the interests of haste, I only cut small holes in each of the webs, but didn't get far before I heard a loud clattering.

The next web was already occupied. Three enormous centipedes, each over two metres in length, were caught in it. They weren't cocooned, so they must have arrived since I'd killed the spiders. They were also very much alive, clicking and clattering as their bodies curled and writhed, their many legs seeking any sort of purchase, their mandibles snapping as they tried to bite through the threads.

What the heck was it with this place and oversized bugs?! Can I have something just a little less... gross? Please? A cute little slime, or heck, even a goblin would do. Anything with less than six legs! These centipedes weren't quite up to the hundred their name implied, but they did have dozens jutting out of their brown-shelled body segments. One was stuck in the base of the web, but the other two were high up the walls, so these things could also climb. On top of that, I could see the ceiling web continued beyond here, implying that the centipedes had already torn their way through at least one web.

Since I had some captive specimens, it would be remiss of me to not take advantage. As far as I could see, these bugs lacked any sort of eyes, removing the weak point that I normally targeted. That had bad implications when coupled with the way the moss was growing thinner... Dealing with these things in complete darkness wouldn't be fun. The segments looked more heavily armoured on top, the underside looking paler and softer. I jabbed at the ground level one with my spear, and while I could stab them easily enough through the underbelly, I was unhappy to find that I couldn't pierce the segments from above, my horn spear simply sliding down their exoskeleton, barely leaving a scratch.

You are reading story A (Not So) Simple Fetch Quest at novel35.com

Stabbing into a random segment didn't immediately kill them, but caused the injured centipede to screech and squirm even harder, screwing itself into a ball with only the harder part of its exoskeleton exposed. Stabbing one in the front segment was an instant kill, so there was obviously something important in there. Unlike the green of the beetles and blue of the spiders, these critters bled grey. Something else for my broken sense of humour to latch on to; even if the outsides were all blacks, greys and browns, the blood and haemolymph on the insides of these monsters was actually quite colourful.

Now, the question was whether I wanted to continue down this passage, or pick a different one. With the spiders gone, the centipedes seemed to be spreading up here, and while I could repair this web, I couldn't guarantee they wouldn't end up invading the shrine and my already cleared corridors. Then again, the same thing could be happening along the three unexplored corridors too... How much was logic, and how much was because I didn't want to tangle with a bunch of gross gigantic centipedes? With a sigh, I cut a small hole in this web and continued onwards.

The next web was the last, and I could see the ceiling web end beyond it. This one had a couple of unmoving centipede-sized cocoons, as well as another stuck live one. It also had several holes torn in it. I skewered the last one and continued on my way.

Spear dabbler advanced to level 10

Bah, no skill evolution. I'd hoped that my eight-on-one spider battle would have counted as an achievement, but apparently not.

The patches of moss continued to grow sparser, forcing me to bring out my shield with its moss coating in order to see, and there was no sign of munchers down here. Thus far, the munchers had seemed to serve as food to the other cave inhabitants, which raised the question of what these centipedes ate. Maybe they ate the moss, which was why there was so little of it. That would be nice; as gross as they were, I could maybe cope if they were vegetarian and weren't trying to kill me. I doubted it. Even regular centipedes back on Earth were generally carnivorous, and these were monster versions...

The corridor ended more or less in mid-air. It had come out in another cavern, but not at ground level; we were a few metres up the wall. I could probably scramble down, but getting back up would be a challenge. Not that I had any intention of climbing down; below me, the floor was moving. I could see no moss in here, and only had the light of my shield, but what it revealed was a floor that was made of centipedes, crawling all over each other in an unceasing tide. I couldn't see a single patch of ground through the wriggling mass of segments and legs.

If not for the effects of friend of fear, I would have at least stumbled backwards away from the sight, if not turned and fled. It was a curious sensation. I knew I was terrified of the sight in front of me, but it somehow didn't matter. It was as if I was reading a prompt that said 'you are terrified' rather than experiencing it first-hand. Except that my heart rate had doubled and I was hyperventilating... There wasn't much I could do about my heart, aside possibly from leaving, but with a bit of concentration I could at least slow down my breathing.

But whether I was standing my ground or not, how in the hells was I supposed to deal with this? Killing them one by one was infeasible; I'd be here for years, even if they didn't try to fight back. Where were my wide-area fireballs? I need them! Or, preferably, a nuke.

As I stood there staring, there was a sudden feeling of attention, as if I was standing at the front of one of my university's lecture theatres, with a whole room of people staring down at me. I heard a loud clack in the distance, but my light was nowhere near sufficient to see the source. The tides changed in response. Now they had purpose, and the flood of centipedes rose up against the wall, climbing towards me.

Now I fled.

Personally, I was of the opinion that two legs were a perfect number, and any more were a waste. The centipedes seemed determined to prove me wrong, and the clicking behind me was rapidly drawing nearer. If I could just make it to the first web, hopefully they'd get badly tangled enough for me to make it back to the shrine and... and then what? If they followed me, I couldn't run forever.

It was a moot point. I saw movement on the ceiling above me as the aerial part of the swarm pulled ahead of their ground based forces, the constant shoving occasionally dislodging one of them and sending them careening to the ground below. One dropped very nearly on my head. I was able to turn and skewer it in mid-air, but the delay of having to defend myself was enough for the portion of the swarm on the floor to catch up. None of them seemed to deliberately target me; they just crowded around, then climbed over me, shoving me to the ground and leaving me buried under the wriggling mass. I stored my shield and spear with item box and drew my spider claw daggers instead, which were easier to manoeuvre in my current position, jabbing as many of them in their soft underbellies as I could.

There was a sharp pain in my neck, and my movements became sluggish. Venom again? Something that induced paralysis? What was my poison resistance doing?! Or maybe without it I would have been completely paralysed. Not that it made any difference; I no longer had the strength with which to pierce these things. I stashed my daggers into my item box to avoid losing them, and was once again reduced to waiting for death. I could invoke trigger respawn, but somehow I doubted it would kick in before I died. Actually, if they all tore into me, it would utterly wreck my armour. Could I item box it even though I was still wearing it? I tried, and my armour vanished, leaving me naked under the swarm of centipedes.

Yeah, that was stupid... Their legs were quite sharp and immediately started needling me all over...

Aside from their legs, no further pain came. Come to think of it, the way that loud noise had sounded in the distance immediately before they started chasing me suggested that their actions were the result of an order of some sort. What was that order? To subdue, but not to kill? Did all monsters in this dungeon have a sadistic streak? At least the wolves had been straightforward. I activated trigger respawn, just in case, but for now I still had enough movement to slit my throat if I needed a quicker escape.

I felt a clamp on one leg, followed by scraping along my back as I was dragged away. Now I really wished I hadn't removed my armour, but luckily the scraping didn't last long; the swarm of centipedes was so dense that some of them managed to get underneath me, raising me off the ground. Deciding I didn't want to wait around for an hour to find out where they were taking me, I pulled my hand to my throat. Alas, the partial paralysis made my movements jerky, startling the centipede mass and earning me another bite for my troubles, leaving me barely able to move at all. With my reset attempt foiled, I was forced to wait while they carried me, wondering what sort of horrific situation I was going to end up in this time.

You can find story with these keywords: A (Not So) Simple Fetch Quest, Read A (Not So) Simple Fetch Quest, A (Not So) Simple Fetch Quest novel, A (Not So) Simple Fetch Quest book, A (Not So) Simple Fetch Quest story, A (Not So) Simple Fetch Quest full, A (Not So) Simple Fetch Quest Latest Chapter