Chapter 213: The Door
Light crawled across the spider silk.
It was very faint light, coming from the unlit Energy Bar in Ryan’s hand, and from the dim, half-dead gray glow leaking down from some unknown crack high above.
The light moved along the strands, following those intersecting, tangled lines, refracting into countless tiny, sickly halos that dyed the whole place in a color suspended somewhere between gray and white.
Ryan walked very slowly.
Each step was tested first. He touched down lightly with the tip of his foot, making sure the spot beneath him was solid ground and not another thin layer of silk disguised as the floor, and only then shifted his weight forward.
His head was lowered, his eyes fixed on the ground, and on those tiny gray-white strands poking up from the floor like hairs. They swayed softly in the faint breeze stirred by his footsteps, as though they were alive, sniffing, sensing.
Behind him, Lillian was breathing as quietly as she could.
So quietly it was almost inaudible, yet Ryan could still hear it. He could hear the faint tremor in her throat every time she inhaled, and the slight leak of air whenever she tried and failed to hold her breath entirely.
Her fingers were still clutching Rex’s sleeve.
They gripped it so tightly that even through the cloth, Rex could feel the coldness of her fingertips and their fine trembling.
Ryan kept moving forward.
They passed beneath one cocoon after another.
It was like walking through a forest made of death. Every cocoon held a corpse, each one dead in a different way. Some were shriveled. Some had burst open. Some were twisted into grotesque shapes. Some had even melted, leaving behind only a puddle of gelatinous matter and a skeleton.
The sweet smell in the air was growing stronger and stronger.
So strong that it clung to the throat, impossible to swallow, impossible to cough out.
Lillian’s breathing grew faster. She could feel her heartbeat speeding up, thump thump, thump thump, battering against her chest until it hurt.
She did not dare lift her head. She did not dare look at the cocoons.
She could only stare fixedly at Ryan’s back, at every spot where he placed his feet, at the slight sway of his silver-gray hair in the dim light.
Her stomach was twisting.
She bit down hard on her lower lip until the taste of blood spread in her mouth. That sting kept her awake and aware.
She could not vomit. She could not cry out. She could not make a single sound.
Rex walked beside her.
His footsteps were heavy, but steady. He was deliberately making each one as soft as possible, like a massive beast trying to tiptoe.
One hand stayed on the hilt of his sword. He did not dare look up either, but his eyes swept constantly from side to side, guarding against any danger that might come from above or from the walls.
From time to time, he would shift his body just enough to block part of Lillian’s view whenever she was about to see one of the worst cocoons.
Lillian noticed.
She felt every movement, every moment when his broad back cut off some part of her sight. She did not say thank you. She only tightened her grip on his sleeve.
Vera walked at the rear.
Her steps were the lightest of all, almost soundless. Her gray-green eyes calmly swept over everything along the way—the cocoons, the corpses, the traces on the floor, the patterns in the walls, the direction the silk strands stretched in.
But even she was breathing low.
The four of them moved through the crack between death in silence.
After passing about a dozen cocoons, the web ahead grew sparser, and the number of cocoons decreased.
But the shadows deepened.
Ryan stopped again.
He lifted his head and looked ahead, toward the place where the shadows were thickest, toward the huge shape that rose and fell in slow rhythm. It was close enough now for him to make out details.
A creature too huge for words.
It looked like a spider, but unlike any spider that could exist in common sense.
Its body was too large, as large as a small hill, crouched at the center of the web, with eight legs covered in gray-black bristles folded along either side. Its shell was a dull gray-brown, etched all over with fine patterns that looked like ancient writing, or else like cracks.
The most unsettling part was its abdomen.
It swelled and shrank slowly with each breath, covered in a half-transparent membrane like a layer of mucus. Beneath that membrane, something dark and sluggish could be seen moving faintly.
Its head was small, absurdly small compared to the size of its body.
It had eight eyes—if those deep black pits sunk into its face, without the slightest glimmer of reflection, could still be called eyes. They were shut. Or perhaps only seemed shut.
Ryan did not know.
He only knew that the Eye of Probability was still showing a ten percent chance of being detected.
But he did not dare gamble on that.
He raised a hand and made another gesture.
Slower. Even slower.
Then he continued moving toward that sleeping beast, one step at a time.
The distance shrank.
Twenty steps.
Fifteen.
Ten.
The sweet smell in the air had become so thick it felt almost solid, mixed now with a faint odor that was part mildew, part dried bodily secretion.
The sound of the giant spider’s breathing became clear. It was a low, sticky rasp—huff... hiss... huff... hiss... Each breath made great stretches of the web tremble, and the hanging cocoons swayed with it, like wind chimes that could never make a sound.
Ryan walked beneath it.
Very close.
Close enough to see every bristle on its legs, gray-black and gleaming with a cold metallic sheen.
He did not stop.
His eyes remained fixed ahead, toward the end of the shadows. There, some different kind of light seemed to be filtering through. It was faint, but it was undeniably there, unlike the dead gray light that filled this place.
Five steps.
Three.
One.
He passed directly beneath the spider.
Above his head was its patterned abdomen, rising and falling with each breath. That half-transparent membrane was so close it almost brushed his hair.
He could feel the warm, fetid current of its breath against the back of his neck.
He held his breath.
Behind him, Lillian was nearly collapsing, held upright only because Rex was half-supporting, half-carrying her. Vera’s steps paused for an instant. Her gray-green eyes were locked on the massive shadow above them, and a faint trace of wind Mana gathered at her fingertips before she forcibly dispersed it.
Ryan did not look back.
He kept walking, one step, two steps, three...
Leaving the shadow beneath the spider and moving toward that patch of different light.
Behind him, Rex half-supported Lillian while Vera watched the rear. All three of them held their breath and edged out from beneath that shadow of death, little by little.
Only after they had gone another dozen steps, only after the spider’s breathing had grown distant and indistinct again, only after the sweet, fetid smell had faded somewhat, did Ryan finally stop and slowly draw in a deep breath.
His lungs expanded as cool air, dusty and dry, flooded in and washed away some of the sticky sweetness clogging his throat.
He turned back.
The giant spider was still crouched there, utterly motionless, like some enormous, evil statue. Beneath it, on the web, more than a dozen cocoons hung silently in the dim light, like a dream made of death that would never end.
They had passed through the nest.
Ryan turned back to the front.
There was a door there. A huge, ancient, tightly shut stone door. From the gap in its seam leaked a warm golden light, completely unlike the dead gray glow of this place.
Allen’s sign had said that if they found the thing controlling the illusion, they could clear it.
The Illusion Spider was here.
Then what was waiting behind that door?
Ryan stared at it, at the warm light leaking through the crack.
The Eye of Probability did not activate.
No numbers. No prompt.
What did that mean?
He did not know.
He only knew they had to go there.
He lifted his foot and walked toward the door.
Behind him, the other three followed in silence.
Their footsteps echoed hollowly across the dust-covered floor.
And behind them, on that vast spiderweb, one of the hanging cocoons suddenly trembled.
Very slightly.
As if something inside it had moved.
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