Jump

A week had passed since her latest level up and Alice had finally got used to the sounds she could now perceive with her improved sense of hearing. After deafening herself a couple of times while trying out her new power, she had discovered a way to instantly turn off the skill as soon as the noise went over her tolerance threshold, effectively making her new senses viable in even more circumstances.

The girl had also started working on slowly increasing the strength of her symbiotic relationship, carefully dipping any open wound into the glowing water. At first, she had been scared of eventual infections, but none had appeared during her stay in the caves, and she was now pretty sure that the pool ate everything biological and only produced those strange specks of light, which also didn’t seem to be able grow anywhere else.

The young woman was now in the main cave, looking down the slick limestone steps connecting the platform to the actual ground, hidden behind a veil of darkness she couldn’t pierce.

Her heightened hearing informed her of the quiet movements of the screechlings on the vault of the cave and the almost inaudible munching of the electric larvae on the walls.

It was there that she threw the fistful of tiny rocks, the tiny plinks of them bouncing on the walls soon followed by a few sparks of light, enough for her to see her surroundings for a brief instant.

As soon as she saw that the coast was clear, Alice threw down her new creation, something she had been working on for the entire week.

A ladder crafted with silk and bones clattered on the stone surface as it unraveled until it finally reached the floor below. She had securely tied it to the sturdiest stone structures she could find and was quite sure it would be able to easily hold her weight and some more during the descent.

Alice herself was far more clothed than usual, her tattered pants held by another line of silk while her feet were covered in the hide of the evolved screechling, which she had somehow managed to cure enough for it to be usable.

However, had anyone been there to see, the poor clothing wasn’t the thing that would have drawn most of their attention.

Her stump was securely protected by the newly modified crawfish claw, its tip now sporting a sharp metallic tip. The addition was one of the ‘feet’ she had harvested from the many spiders she had had to fight to procure enough silk for the ladder; it had been secured with carefully tied silk in a specially crafted compartment.

Strapped to her chest was an extremely ugly bandoleer full of bone and metal spikes for her to throw, meanwhile her trusted knife hung from the silk belt at her waist, together with a decent length of extra silk rope.

Finally, the monster core she had obtained was still safely lodged in its bone case tied around her neck.

Time to risk my life.

Hearing the noise the ladder’s fall was producing, Alice quickly tossed a rock further away from her position before starting the difficult descent.

Her wrapped feet slipped on the wet surface; her only hand grappling the ladder so tightly it was cutting the blood flow in her fingers.

She pushed away from her mind the horrifying noises coming from the darkness a bit further away, instead focusing on safely getting to the ground, the pincer scratching the stone as she moved.

Then, she felt the first impact on her back, the sting of many tiny teeth biting down on her soft flesh. She grunted, shaking away the screechling while simultaneously trying to maintain balance on the slick steps.

The tiny, furred shape was bounced away in the darkness, only to be replaced by two more, gliding through the air while screaming their ear-splitting shriek.

This time she expected them, expertly dodging one of them while swinging her prosthesis like a bat, a dull thud congratulating her good aim.

In a matter of seconds she was roped into a crazy dance of dodges and swings that more than once brought her a few centimeters away from a very painful tumble to the bottom. Thankfully, her adversaries were also having difficulties, soon deciding she wasn’t a safe meal option and leaving her alone, huffing in the dark.

Knowing this was just a brief pause between her trials, she hurriedly restarted climbing down, soon reaching the end of the ladder and the bottom floor.

Instantly, she activated Enhanced Hearing trying to obtain any hint of what was coming at her.

She could easily hear the soft burble of the brook, flowing just a few meters from her, fed by the many pools of the cave, while the disgusting noise of the fighting monsters almost drowned out the sound of a many-legged something moving towards her, its mandibles clacking in the dark.

She instantly made her stump and other symbiotic parts flare up, the glow enough to illuminate the large millipede ready to tear into her exposed legs.

Alice put the prosthesis between them, the creature’s mandibles cracking on the metal point of the tool and coating it with some sort of liquid.

The young woman didn’t wait for it to recover, quickly slamming her knife between the armored plates of the insect’s head, easily piercing the flesh underneath. She was preparing to ‘double tap’ it when she heard the quiet sound of water parting behind her.

Alice jumped away just as a large claw slammed on the stone where she had been standing a second before.

A large crawfish had emerged from the depths of one of the many pools and tried to ambush her while she was dealing with the first aggressor.

Alice sheathed her knife, deciding to instead uncoil a length of silk, starting to rotate the heavy metal weight at its end in increasingly wide circles.

As soon as the armored crustacean came forward, hoping to catch an easy prey, she launched the weight towards it, the rope following it as it wrapped itself tightly against the wider claw.

Only then did the crayfish realize its fatal mistake. Failing to sever the resilient thread, it tried falling back into the water, only to find itself pulled away from it. It couldn’t regret it for long anyway, as a few moments later its head was bashed in with extreme prejudice by the slightly drooling woman.

Alice was torn.

On one side, she had come down for the first time with the intent of finally exploring the extensive cave system, on the other, in front of her lay the second decent prey she had caught since coming to this damn world.

Thus, she simply went with the ‘Miguel and Tulio’ approach.

Both? Both.

Both is good.

While casually munching on her snack, Alice proceeded to explore more of the flat area, skirting around the larger pools and staying far away from the feasting creatures.

As far as she knew, the center of the cave could be seen as some sort of no man’s land, where anything that moved would be considered prey for any of the many inhabitants of the cave.

The rest of the space had instead been broken down into several ‘sovereign territories’, each belonging to a different kind of creature; in front of her, over the tiny brook flowing from pool to pool, was a large wall filled with burrows, while her glowing limbs were not enough to shed light into the deep bores in the stone, Alice could still see the skittering movements of large millipedes moving from hole to hole, emerging to hunt or coming back with their mandibles filled with prey. A few meters above the armored insects, large wasps protected a huge buzzing hive, the workers mushing the inedible remains of their prey into the rapidly hardening paste that formed it.

Sure. Why not add murder bees to the mix? Let’s try not to anger them too much.

To their left, Alice almost got caught into the semi-invisible webs of a spider colony, the creatures apparently coming from a heavily webbed crack in the wall.

At least I know where I can find more silk.

Also on the left, this time on ‘her’ side of the cave, was a particularly large colony of the electric larvae she had seen when she had first come to the cave.

Alice would have been tempted to go there to investigate the strange creatures, if she hadn’t recently seen the fate of one particularly curious spider, the bolt of electricity produced by the combined charges of thousands of the fat grubs easily arcing to the metal spikes it had for feet, its body incinerated on the spot.

Note to self. Don’t mess with the grubs.

After the grubs, was her ledge, the previous domain of the salamander which had since then been defended from invasion. To the right of her territory, though, was a strange ‘archipelago’ of pools and streams, connecting it to a low and wide alcove in the wall.

Between the many small ponds grew the first signs of flora she had seen since appearing there; large and small fungal forms sprouted everywhere, enjoying the humid environment. All over the mushrooms feasted large slugs, leaving slimy trails everywhere they slid. Alice could see some of the mushrooms violently burst in a cloud of spores when touched by the hungry snails, coating their goopy corpses with a thin layer of powder. Once again, she decided to stay away from the place and the lingering spores.

Skirting around the place, she found herself in front of the largest entrance in the cave, the brook gently flowing through and disappearing in the darkness, nothing seemed to enter or exit from the opening and she felt that it would be her best bet for a way out.

At least I’m sure I’m not gonna get stuck or something when going through.

Beside the entrance, to the left, slowly ambled a small number of the bombardier beetles she had seen many days before, their bloated abdomen full of the potent acid that they would spray onto their foes. All the other creatures in the cave seemed to give them an extremely wide berth, as anything encountering them would probably be subject to a quick and painful death by dissolution.

Aside from the land creatures, the usual Giant Cave Crayfish inhabited the many pools littering the floor together with small schools of tiny blind fish and even tinier freshwater snails.

After her quick exploration, Alice quickly retraced her steps and safely found her way to the ladder. The corpse of the crayfish hadn’t yet been found by any scavenger, thus, she prepared to bring it back home for dinner.

When she finally reached her base, Alice was definitely exhausted.

Carrying this damn thing up the slope was a fricking nightmare, but at least I now have good food for a couple of days.

The exploration was a definite success, even though I need to explore every inch of the cave before venturing further in.

At the same time I also must not forget to continue my progress with the power. You never know when you are gonna need something.

So much to do and so very little time.