The monster that was chasing me with speed far eclipsing my own smashed into the ground with its head meeting the ground first.

The saber-tooth-like animal- if saber tooths were 10 feet tall and had vibrant black-colored fur that seem to shine blackness into its surrounding- was biting on the heels of the variant faceless that was about to rip me to shreds.

Thanking the animal in my heart, I ungracefully ran with my metaphorical tail between my legs.

Only after running till I completely exhausted myself with even my newly enhanced body did I start to think about slowing down.

The sudden appearance of the beast at the moment I thought I was saved did a lot to my conscience than I thought. After making sure that nothing was following me, my trudge slowed to a halt while I used the nearby tree as a support while I focused on calming myself and my breathing. P.S. I failed.

My fist slammed into the tree in frustration. So, I wasn’t out yet? Was it my entire premise that was wrong? Or was the world actually completely fucked? Whatever... I'm tired of thinking.

I looked around myself. The things that my mind conveniently tried to ignore were in plain sight now. The trees looked slightly weird with small blue lines passing through them like veins, small crystalline rocks that seem to grow from the ground that glowed in the same color, the fact that the tree that I hit just now was hard like concrete...

Stroking my fist, I leaned down to examine the glowing small rocks that seem to sprout from below. It reminded me a lot of the giant floating crystal that saved me back then. I examined it closely in an effort to satisfy my curiosity but also to take my mind elsewhere and relax.

The small rocks that barely went over 10 cm looked hard as... well a rock but touching it felt like touching a hard jelly or dried honey or something. I tried to pry it out of the ground but it seemed very insistent on staying. I was about to smash the glowing crystal with a rock when I noticed a flying thread in my vision.

A spider web? I pulled it out as I continued with my examination.

In hindsight that was my mistake.

More of these webs loosely started falling from the sky as if it was raining webs. Before my hand could reach to tear those out or look up in confusion, it instantly straightened out with tension and tightened around me. I raised my voice in alarm but that was soon snuffed out as my body spun around with my legs leaving the ground.

I tried to move my hands but they were stuck to my body inside the many wounded strings of webs. A stabbing pain in my ribs elicited a silent cry from me that made me look up in pain to see a spinning face of a giant spider working hard in procuring its next meal.

My vitality flared more than it has ever been, as my arms broke through the dozens of webs that were woven around me. My body fell down the few centimeters that it was raised to and as soon as my feet found purchase, my hands flew towards the empty space that the arachnid was on. The giant spider being pulled up in a straight line using its web towards the many branches.

I looked down to my sides to see a single puncture wound oozing slight blood. Not exactly a wound you see from a spider bite. The spider, as soon as it reached the top, started making a rattling sound with its mouth in frustration? To scare me?

I almost smirked at the intimidation tactic until the sound spread throughout the canopy of the forest, producing a melody of sound that eased the mind if it weren't for what the sound implied. Before my eyes widened at the thought that I was surrounded, my body moved towards a random direction to escape the entrapment that I unknowingly found myself in.

My body stopped halfway through the motion when I saw thick white strings that were strewn all around me in a circle, using the trees as pillars. In my panic and surprise, one of the spiders jumped on top of me, with its tail almost looking like a stinger of a scorpion, stabbing my sides again.

My fist flew again, this time finding its target with a satisfying feedback and the spider crashed into the ground but before I could finish it, another spider jumped on top of me and without even stinging me once, went back into the air before my fist could reach it. Although confused and inwardly afraid of the sudden situation, I turned back towards the downed spider to see it being pulled towards the top by another spider's web.

These spiders...... they’re the same. My mind flashed with images of the faceless creature. They’re smart just like them. Trapping me in, distracting me to prevent even a single casualty on their side.... planning to definitely kill me.

As soon as the wounded spider reached the top, they started rattling with their mouth again in an echo. My hands and legs started feeling cold and weaker.

I'm gonna die....... This time for sure....

Images of me slowly dying while being eaten alive with their tiny mouth briefly flashed on my mind.

I looked around me and confirmed that indeed a multitude of webs was surrounding me, preventing me from running away, making a cage for me to die on.

Before. I would have made my final stance but we all knew how effective that was – No, this time, packed with the knowledge that number = power, I glanced at the webs that surrounded me in search of a way to run.

My only logical choice was to run through them, but that option felt like DeJa'Vu.

And any creature, even dumb ones would try to do so. No, with this much noise and intimidation they were expecting me to do so.

That’s a trap. I confirmed with my instincts. My only choice is to stand my ground and kill them all.

And just in cue, they started falling like rain, this time their number reaching a dozen with them knowing that this much was needed for me to die from their previous testing and that any more would actually impede on each other in their efforts to kill me efficiently.

I jumped towards the side to prevent being under the fall of the most amount and smashed my fist on the spider that was on my way. The spider although had a fist smashed into its stomach managed to fire its stinger into my arms in a valiant effort to slow me down.

I threw the spider stuck on my arm that soon died after it stung me and started running on the outer edge of my entrapment in a circle to prevent myself from being surrounded. The others in the top also kept spewing their webs at me, but due to the distance and lack of speed, I could easily dodge them while killing the ones in my path.

I smashed my fist and kicked my legs into the ones that were in my way while weaving myself out of the ones that tried to drop on me like bombs, while also dodging the thick webs that were spammed towards me. I noticed that I was moving a lot better than I thought, and was dodging the arachnids that were dropping on me without looking up.

I took out at least 8 or 9 of them when they noticed that their strategy wasn’t working and climbed back up. The spiders started rattling again on the treetops, though I could feel their hearts weren't into it- if they had hearts- as if they were thinking about what to do while doing it.

They didn't really need to think real hard about it. Although it looked like I was with the advantage, vitality was strangely being depleted at a higher rate than ever. This was never the case before, it always depleted in the same amount unless I was using it to strengthen another object. And the way things were going, I was most likely going to end up with an empty barrel and helpless before I could kill them all.

My mind once again flashed with what was most likely going to be my fate, if they subdued me in their web. Being eating slowly. Being kept partly alive as a ration for the next meal. Being laid eggs upon my body and dying when they hatched and ate me inside out.

I relaxed my stance and lowered the intensity of vitality, keeping it in a subdued state. Imagining my horrific and likely death somehow made me calm down a lot. Muted but ready to explode into action at a moment's notice like I did before. And just like every time I was in danger or backed up into a corner my aura obeyed so easily that it was almost eerie.

While I kept the aura in my body in this state I focused on my fists. I thought of it as a foreign object, as a rock, and tried to strengthen it, to reinforce it, to make it hard.

While I was concentrating, noticing that I had my guard down, a few spiders dropped on me without a sound, hoping to catch me off guard. For some reason, I opened my eyes just as it was about to land on top of me and before I could register it, my fist was halfway through its path. Like a bullet, it smashed through the spider, almost like I was throwing a reinforced rock.

My fist moved back to my body and flew off like a Gatling gun to all the falling arachnids, punching a hole in them, or sometimes straight out obliterating half their bodies.

And within a second, I was surrounded by more dead spiders on the ground. My hands prepared for the last falling spider that couldn't stop its fall, whose panic and regret as it flayed around its arms I could almost see from its expressionless, ugly face.

Just as my fist made a hole in its body, the flow that was contently building up, that was crying to be tipped over, tipped. And my aura that was on the edge for weeks exploded as it spread out throughout the entrapment.

I saw their numbers, their face, their tails spiked with venom but more importantly I saw the leaves, the ground filled with ‘something’, the trees that had something flowing in them, the rocks that shined like a beacon to my sense.

I realized something. Something that I would have never agreed upon, something that I would have rejected even if it was proven scientifically and written in a paper and taught to me.

But precisely because I was shown the inside out of everything in my vicinity, about the nature of what I was standing on, about the composition of air, the soil, the matter, that I had no choice but to accept, to admit the reality.

That I was not on Earth right now.

I vividly remember when the same happened to me back in the mall, I could see every single entity inside the mall despite the darkness, but I could understand in a vague sense of everything else that was present inside the range as well. It made sense, it felt like home, it felt in accordance with the conception I had of the place I lived for 20 years.

Though I couldn’t name them or explain them to someone, I could understand them. And what I was seeing right now was something else, like seeing and comparing two different images, and differentiating them, I could understand that the place I was in was something completely different from the mall I was in before. And this difference was not something the likes of distance or more trees or something.

It was completely different.

Knocking this insane revelation from my mind I ran towards the multitude of webs that were blocking me and ducked, jumped, and weaved through them like I knew them from the back of my hand.

If going under, above, or around was not possible I reached towards them with my fist and changed ‘something’ in the aura that was vested in them which shredded the web when my fist passed through instead of being stuck on it.

And just like that, I escaped the death cage as the spiders watched their meal run away from them.

I looked around me as I kept running, the trees, the shrubs. Although the omniscience view was long gone, barely lasting a few seconds I began seeing everything that I passed with a hint of caution.

I looked down at my hands. I could see the aura flaring with my physical eyes now. They were like distorted air or colorless steam that maintained their shape around my fists as they vibrated but had an ethereal look to them.

I looked forward as I continued running.... Fuck, that's cool.