“It comes! Thirsting on our fear… it is in our hearts, in our homes, in our very souls… Devourer… Gnawer, May you be cursed by God for what you have wrought here!”

“Dark Daughter, Divider of all, protect this supplicant’s house from the Devourer.”

“God is dead! He will not save us.”

“SuICide? sUicIde!? SUiCiDe?!?”

~Records of graffiti uncovered in ancient ruins far below the City of Evergrove, preserved in the Enkellion Vault, St Roberta’s Academy.

~ Han Shu, Mysterious Caverns ~

Han Shu had left the gully and was making his way back across the cavern towards what appeared to be another vestige in the hope of finding another direction stele that wasn’t trashed beyond use when he heard the different noise. It wasn’t even a noise, really. More of a definitive change in the nature of the darkness that projected itself into dark corners of his psyche and made his skin crawl.

In the days he had spent in the dark, with qi vision it wasn’t actually that dark, but the visibility was still terrible. He had been left with a lot of time to consider how the gloom ‘felt’.

Mostly it was somewhere between blanketing oppression and shroud-like gloom, but it had rarely come across as malicious; dangerous yes, oppressive certainly and once or twice arrogant and uncaring but not malicious. Given the frankly mind-boggling feng shui of this place, and his relative lack of talent with geomancy even relative to his realm, he couldn’t get more out of it than that. Even when it came to places with moon mushrooms, where it began to border on mendacious, it was not really 'actively' malicious.

That had now changed, abruptly, between one moment and the next. As if the yang winds blowing from the rain-bearing west that fed crops and cleansed the land were suddenly blowing from the east, bringing yang thunder and yin snow from the Great Mount on a harvest day.

Now, alongside that oppression was something akin to hunger. As he considered it from his current vantage point, it kept deepening by the second. Ravenous hunger, cruelty and an unnatural sense of the darkness starting to cling to things with vitality. Somewhat... unfortunately, in the case of this particular outcropping he, himself was probably the most obvious target. Really, it put him in mind of some of those really terrible plants in the high valleys which didn’t sense qi or even soul strength, but vitality itself.

Suddenly, his high location on the current outcropping, where he had been working his way around the mass of fungi on the edge of the swamplands below, didn’t seem like such an auspicious place to be. Even when he considered that there were soul setting and life-shifting fungi varieties scattered far below him. It also afforded him, it turned out, a far better view than he would otherwise have liked in the direction he came from. For a moment he swore he could see a shadow on the bridge looking out of the gully that hadn’t been there before. Then it was gone, as quickly as it arrived. Perhaps it was his imagination, but the warmth from the sword had been just a fraction stronger as well?

As it faded away into the gloom, the sense of hunger and gnawing insanity in the darkness faded away. The sensation put him in mind of some ancient beast dipping its head back below the water so it could hunt more quietly. Certainly, the feeling didn’t entirely vanish.

It had been too easy to forget how dangerous this place was. Perhaps it was because of the sword and because he was simply moving through a place with no obvious active threats. He self-examined that he hadn’t touched anything at all in the gully village. The pool was the only thing that stood out, but he had given it a wide berth, anyway. Suddenly he found he wanted some little mental voice helpfully saying it wasn’t something he had done, or disturbed. In any case, staying here, where he was the sole living thing in a hundred meters, surrounding by faintly qi absorbent rock, was not a good survival strategy if something out there could sniff out vitality.

Taking a few deep breaths, he forced himself to focus again on the task in hand.

-Don’t panic, keep a system, be cautious, don’t linger.

That was Old Ling’s advice for dealing with these kinds of circumstances. Up above, it was good advice, when there were usually plenty of tastier things for big predators to munch in the Shadow Forest. Why chase after some Physical Foundation cultivator when you could slurp up six and seven-star spiders or flying insects by the hundred. On the other hand, down here there was algru and fungus. The fungi were dangerous, poisonous and probably inedible, and the algru was mutated grass, so perhaps a bit of panic was warranted.

Scrambling up to the peak of the outcrop, because he was already almost there, he was at least able to find what he was seeking. A distant watchtower, off far to his right. Nestled on a raised area in between the swathes of shallow water and algru ‘swampland’.

The trip there was fraught with paranoia. Not because it was difficult, quite the opposite. It was suspiciously easy. The algru was also clearly spooked by the change in the darkness, in its own semi-sapient way. Largely knee-deep water was easy for him to run through once it became clear that the mutate fields were all hiding under the rock. The trip which should have taken hours, took less than one, with him keeping to the shallows scanning periodically for algru that might not be hiding.

The outside tower itself, which appeared sealed, looked like it had been ravaged by a beast tide. The stele outside were torn down, ripped apart and scattered. One had been melted beyond all recognition and the remaining one scoured by claws so deeply it was almost a shallow bowl. The exterior walls were slashed and scored so densely that the damage was in danger of becoming the new rock surface texture.

On the other hand, luck was clearly on his side, because a very recent collapse from the ceiling above had neatly taken the corner off on the second level, opening up a passage into the interior between the huge slab that had fallen and the tower itself. Squeezing inside was tricky but doable.

Contrary to his expectations, the tower was completely cleaned out. It looked like whoever had been here had taken everything of value, notwithstanding the furniture and some stacked jars, and sealed it up before leaving. The door to the third layer and every interior room, not a central area was locked and sealed in the usual way, but the access to the ground floor was unhindered and there, miraculously was a totally unvandalised stele with two wall-sized maps either side of them.

The stele stated that this was the Seventh Guard Post, in the Upper Level of whatever Durem Delve Four, Western passage towards Evergrove was.

The current cavern outline occupied about a third of the space. There was even a scale on it, although he couldn’t determine what it was, and the map didn’t seem to auto-translate like the stele. Nonetheless, he soon worked out where the chasm was and where he had probably descended. As an afterthought, he put the jade scrip on the nearby table and tasked it to properly record both maps while he looked in more detail at the layout of the cavern.

It seemed that the watchtowers, of which there were eleven listed, extended diagonally across the cavern. He hadn’t spotted the previous guard post but reckoned that it was about two and a bit miles away? Assuming the map was largely representative of course. The scale was still unclear, so he had only his own traversal from the chasm and the settlement to measure. Some quick mental measuring suggested that the entire cavern was close to eighteen miles across and broadly oval-shaped. Almost as large as a valley up above.

Suddenly he felt a bit silly for not making that connection before. These huge caverns, with their ecosystems and walls between them, were exactly like the valleys and ridges of the surface.

Once he was happy he had committed both to memory and that they were recorded in the scrip for good measure he departed the tower once more. There was a growing feeling in the back of his mind that it would not be a good idea to linger in this cavern. Almost on cue, the burn scar from the divination talisman also started to ache with a faint tug as he was scrambling back through the gap to the exterior of the tower.

That it was gently pulling him in the direction where the next tower should be was… unnerving. Taking the most direct route towards it, the trip took about two hours. All the while the sense of unease behind him, and the hunger in the darkness, started to ramp up again. The tower itself, the sixth in the series on the map, was exactly where it should have been, at the distance he had estimated, so that was something at least. It also looked like it had been hit by lightning if he was any judge of the oddly shaped indentations on the outer surface and a warped hole in the second layer.

As the door was sealed, he entered via that hole to find the devastation was as total as he had expected. Just in the room he was in, a table had been fused into the floor and the walls looked like they had warped faintly. Shelves bowed and bowls were flat pancake-like blobs of ceramic on the floor. Two faint shadows on the wall by the door exiting into the common area were things he didn’t stare at too closely. The door up was sealed once again, and all the rooms on the ground floor and this level were melted into slag. Tables twisted, chairs sunk into walls and floors. Walls like melted wax and several very disturbing outlines imprinted into them that spoke to the fate of the occupants.

Muttering a simple prayer under his breath, he left again, rapidly, and made his way onwards. The fifth and fourth towers were also sealed. Between them, he had passed what looked like distant mine workings on the cavern floor. Piles of what were presumably mine debris, covered in fungi and shrouded in mist dotted between the shallow pools, workings linked by causeway roads.

He was certain something very wrong was somewhere behind him now. The darkness felt like it was trying to snare him and drag him back. The cavern which before had had no wind in it now had a faint cold breeze that hissed ominously and also pushed against him. More concerningly there was no evidence of it rippling any water, but all the algru were waving in the direction of the chasm off behind in and somewhat to the left.

As he ran on, it did occur to him that he might have overstrained his ocular meridians in a way that was causing lingering malignancy in his psyche rather than the abrupt manifestation of voices and splitting of consciousness that such a thing usually caused. But while he had a nagging headache and a perpetual dull ache beneath his eyes, he was otherwise okay, and those symptoms had been persisting almost since the water caverns. More plausible was that whatever was behind him was twisting the environment faintly and he was being affected by the sympathetic resonance. That his mantra wasn’t giving him any purchase to resist it either… was probably not good.

The third guard tower was larger than the last few and looked like some behemoth had vomited corrosion all over it. Its walls melted and distorted inwards in a way that strongly implied that the interior was unexplorable. The front entrance had been gouged out completely, so it took only a quick glance inside to confirm his suspicions as he approached, and he went on to the second without even pausing.

The map in his mind had that diagonally right from this tower. It even had a built causeway leading off in that direction. On the other hand, proving that heaven taketh as much as giveth, the entire raised area was a solid wall of fungi that merged into something that was definitely a full-blown forest of the stuff. Utterly impassable, so he was forced to make a curving detour and rock hop across a large shallow lake that was one massive algru bed.

It was here that he had to do a bit of a mental double-take because, scattered along the shoreline ahead of him, were what appeared to be several vast colonies of ferns. Up until now, he had seen nothing other than fungi and algru. He was half-convinced, right up until he was jogging past them, that they were algru of some form, but they were, in fact, a variant of water fern.

It was gnawing instinct that made him look back at that point, towards the fungi forest he was skirting. Staring at it in the gloom, he wondered if his eyes were playing tricks on him, or if the meridian strain was genuinely getting to him, did the forest look… thinner?

He listened hard but couldn’t hear anything other than lapping water and the occasional *plip* *plop* of water from the ferns and the twisting of the mists that were waist high all around him.

The sense of unease and danger was also mounting.

-To head to the last tower or risk cutting straight for the cavern exit, which would be…

He stared off to his right, then glanced back to the fungi forest again. One of the large mushrooms back from the edge, was… gone? He swept his gaze across the gloomy horizon of mushrooms in case he was looking at the wrong place.

-Nope, definitely gone.

The darkness was amorphous over there and the longer he stared at it, the more he felt as if it was trying to look back. He patted the sword handle over his shoulder. As if that would likely save him if some weird devouring darkness actually caught up.

-Who knows, it might? his own mind supplied rather hopefully.

Making his decision, he started to run that bit quicker in the direction of the purported exit on this side of the cavern. There was a... not a sound from behind him but a sensation of ominous intent, as if his decision was not what something behind wanted.

He turned and looked over his shoulder. His skin suddenly clammy in a way that exceeded the dank humidity entirely.

-Nothing untoward.

The ferns shifted slightly in the wind and…

-THERE IS NO WIND! All the different parts of his subconscious devoted to living a long and happy life screamed at him.

Something moved through them. Shadowy and armoured, with a large abdomen. In the brief glimpse he caught of it, about two hundred meters back on the edge of the ferns, it seemed to have no eyes. What it did have was eight legs and a silhouette that looked awfully like a nightmare's interpretation of a large ‘Flesh Robbing Spider’. The circular jaw with teeth in it was certainly not on any spider he had ever seen.

It swayed left and right as if considering something and then—

Fates, it was fast.

'Bright, Iron, Beginning, Worldly, Gift'

He turned and sprinted flat out, pushing his mantra as hard as he dared, given his current condition.

The land was fairly flat here, but the 8 legged monstrosity was larger than him, had longer legs than him and was almost certainly of a much higher realm than him.

The darkness practically clawed around his legs trying to snare him, trick and trip him.

“Not malicious, my ass,” he muttered and ran faster.

Instinct screamed at him and he skidded flat, planing across the ground as a black limb scythed through the space where his head had just been. A second slower and...

Rolling up, he saw that the thing was not as close as he had thought. Twenty meters away still. It had also stopped and was staring at one of its limbs, giving off an aura of confusion, at least as much as something with that kind of form and face could.

-If it wanted to stop and look confused at something... that’s all good, a part of him muttered.

-Just you don’t fate-thrashed stop running to look confused at it looking confused.

One of the disadvantages of qi vision, in circumstances like this, was that you could literally have eyes in the back of your head if required. So even running away, he got half a look at it opening its very un-spider like maw.

[HSSSSSSSSh]

The hiss that it sent out sank into his bones like hooks, even as he cycled his mantra to rip them out and kept running. The warmth flowed out from the sword as well, helping the mantra diffuse the snaring intent in some way he didn’t have time to focus on.

[SHhhhaaaaaaaassssssss]

Another screaming hiss echoed out behind him and he put extra impetus into his mantra and started wondering if he wanted to use his movement art. He was sure he was running fast at this point, maybe 60 or 70 miles an hour if not faster even if it didn’t feel like it thanks to his pursuers. Shadows were streaming across the ground to his left and right, boiling out of ferns and fungi, turning the water turgid and stripping algru from the rocks like it was old paint. Suddenly smaller versions of the same monster were skittering out of everywhere. The shadows in his qi vision lengthened unnaturally, growing legs and literally taking eight-legged form on either side.

-Nameless Fate, you’re killing me here! They were even faster than the big one behind him.

Inhaling, he pushed qi into his leg meridians and had his mantra link up his vascular system more comprehensively, gaining him an abrupt burst of acceleration. Reaching the end of the dry ground he was on he leapt for the first of the submerged rocks, scattering the shallows ahead of him.

A flicker of warning from nowhere—

[Husssaasshhhuusaaaa]

Even as the syllables coiled around him he threw himself arms first into the shallows and skidded in the water, tumbling twice before getting a foot on the ground and using some qi to boost himself back under control and keep running.

The afterimage of another limb and scattered bits of rock and weirdly floating water behind him made his heart palpitate unhealthily.

To his right, a tide of the mini-spiders washed around a rocky outcropping a hundred meters to his left. They were smaller, again. Only the size of his head.

Part of his mind, disturbingly analytical still in these circumstances, wondered if it was, in fact, splitting itself. If the darkness behind him was one –thing– that was manifesting the spiders as much for psychological purposes as material—

He smashed into the shallows, his whole body in agony.

*Pop*

*Krraack*

*Twhack*

The algru that had broken his fall half-heartedly gave him a little maul even as it fled into the ground. He ignored it, the pain was minimal compared to the disorientation in his—

His mantra healed his eardrums, and the world was okay again. Instinct screamed at him properly this time and he kept falling sideways. Rolling over another rock even as there was another-

*Thoxk*

This time he saw what it was that had exploded. A tiny spider, no bigger than his hand, that had been cast from a distance had exploded like one of those cursed mushrooms.

“Unholy-nameless-fate-thrashed-abomination!”

The curse came out as one long breathless exhalation as he found his feet and redoubled his efforts as several more of the smaller spiders drifted over, impossibly oddly, in the gloom towards him.

The cavern wall loomed in the distance out of the gloom as the spiders exploded all around him. The tide behind him was gaining momentum as well. Beyond thirty or so meters from him, the world was now a coalescing sea of writhing gloom, pitch black and faintly oily to his qi vision.

-If it knows exploding fates thrashed mushrooms, I bet it knows other types…

“Nameless Fate who gambles with those who voyage in untraveled lands please don’t let it have eaten any moon ’shrooms already,” he prayed out loud.

He cut around a rock and there was an impact behind him. The darkness streamed across the shallow water either side of him becoming hundreds of fist-sized little horrors sweeping towards him. He hurdled a rock and took a risk, pushing extra qi into the meridians in his legs, allowing him to sprint across the shallow water surface rather than run through it.

There was an exhalation from the shadow swarm.

–HSSSSSSSh-

He didn’t have time to wonder at the subtle difference in the sound and intent until a spider thing appeared out of nowhere, right under his feet. He kicked it instinctively, but might as well have kicked a wall for all the good it did. It scuttled after him even as he used the momentum to vault another rock—

Just in time. The explosion left a two-meter crater beside him pitching him, rock and quite a bit of the surroundings several meters away to rain down in another shallow pool. With the second for forewarning, he was able to twist in the air and land on his feet. Even so, slivers of rock lacerated his back and side.

Pushing qi out of his body, he started to cycle his mantra and felt his qi reserves within his leg muscles drop by a quarter.

{Fleeting Steps}

The world slowed and became slightly twisty around him as his movement art took hold and he charged for the distant exit, visible in the gloom as a vertical crevice in the cavern wall.

The spider thing… things, charged after him. He hit the stairs and kept going, each stride taking him a good two dozen steps on the stairs. His qi continued to drain as he maintained focus on the movement art, counting down the duration in his mind’s eye to keep track of how long he would need before triggering it again.

Something smashed into the steps beside him. Another small, exploding spider ‘shroom. He decided on the spur of the moment that that was what it must be. For lack of a better term, anyway. The horse-sized spider thing chased him up the stairwell, easily keeping pace behind him.

-It’s just letting me exhaust myself, he grimaced.

It ran along the wall behind him, smaller again...

-No...!

He was forced to do a forward vault as something lashed out of nowhere, a body skittering after limbs as it briefly slowed its momentum to turn terrifyingly sharply up the wall and run above him.

“Cursed North Fate!” he spat out loud.

-There were two of them.

The second one had long, thin, elegant legs and scuttled along the wall tracking him with a lazy manner that said far too much about the speed it was capable of using if it wanted.

The stairs twisted around and crossed over and back across the cavern ahead of him. Considering his options, he pushed even more into his movement art and threw himself vertically, traversing up to the next level directly.

Behind him, a third appeared on the steps out of almost nowhere. A blur of legs and body about the same size as the other two. They were all of a similar style, but with a few differences. One had the maw, another had those freakishly long thin limbs, and this third one was more like a conventional spider with fangs. Below him, the wave of smaller monstrosities rolled up the stairs and then the wall after him.

Crouching as he reached the edge of the landing, he threw himself vertically once more. This time he travelled almost forty meters vertically to crash down on the stairs. That was it for that activation of the movement art.

'Bright, Iron, Beginning, Worldly, Gift'

Even as he scrambled up his mantra was already doing what it needed to do…

{Fleeting—

The sense of something snaring his ankles was excruciating. The long-limbed one had pierced through his ankle and actually ruptured the end of his leg meridian!?!

It waved its arms mockingly from the other side of the chasm, while the other two arrived above him. Just watching as the hoard of small ones came on.

-What. The. Fates? He tried to work out how they got ahead of him. Could they teleport? Or was the speed they had been running at before just that much slower than what they were capable of.

His mantra desperately worked on his ankle, but whatever the spider had done seemed to have a lot of impetus. It was almost like a wound that was dealt by something stronger than Golden Core. Were they…?

-Are they not suppressed? That was not…

He wanted to yell at them! -I know I’m at Physical Foundation and all, but my foundation is nearly at Golden Core for Fates’ sakes!

-Do you even know what is suppression!?

-Is your fate cursed mother—!

Taking a deep breath, the tide was only a few meters away. He cycled his mantra again and palmed the ‘Nascent Blood Burn Pill’ into his mouth, swallowing it whole.

He had found a reference to it and the recipe to make it in old records when studying for the nine-star examination. When he had asked Old Ling about it, the old man had jokingly said that if he aced the exam, he’d give him one. When he actually had, the old man’s face had been ugly. Old Ling had made him swear to keep it a secret between them and never use it unless he was in mortal danger and wasn’t afraid of leaving a whole corpse if it misfired.

-Now that wasn’t a problem, his mind added. Three teleporting hoard spewing monstrosities born of a fleeting shadow hoard from the depths of the darkness down here was enough!

“Fight to the end, and keep on fighting, until even the end wants done with you.”

Even as he muttered the dark prayer under his breath he felt the effects of the pill kick in on his inner organs, forcibly opening up his eight extraordinary meridians and forming a quasi-dantian in mere moments. At the same time, his bones itched and twisted, getting cores of white-hot fire as the pill promoted the quality of his vital qi forcibly past mantra seed, then body tempering. Finally, that twisting fire swirled out of his bones and joined up with his eight extraordinary meridians to form a set of quasi-soul meridians.

He wanted to vomit and scream at the same time.

The three spiders… flickered and were suddenly right on top of him but their arrogance was their miscalculation. He was already drawing the sword.

{Surging Thunder, Fleeting Strike}

The odds were he was dead, a dispassionate voice in his head sighed, so he might as well give it his best shot and die without giving the abominations a chance to devour him body or soul.

The sword grew warm in his hand as he lashed out the spider grew blurry, waving its legs mockingly as it teleported—

-Except it didn’t. Inexplicably.

The flickering stab of the sword art caught it straight in the ‘head’, piercing it to the hilt and then carrying them both up the stairs. Its companions both lunged immediately. Effortlessly keeping pace with them as they travelled forward in a rushing blur. The spider on his sword twisted, screaming soundlessly, before collapsing into hundreds of smaller spiders that fled back.

He had used his movement art in combination with the sword art and travelled… almost 300 meters in a blink….

-What!? Parts of him wanted to scream that that was impossible. That was a Soul Foundation grade sword and movement art hybrid technique, even his uncle could only travel 400 meters with it back home?

At the same moment, he realised that the suppression, the grasping weight that was omnipresent on his qi was totally gone. Warmth flowed through his limbs. The spider he had stabbed tried to reform from the hoard of small spiders, but something was keeping it from doing so. It shifted and wobbled a few times before collapsing back into black fog, leaving only a large smear of oily shadow on the stairway that smoked faintly.

The two remaining spider things opened their mouths and screamed.

-[UlsshtsuuuusHallssstuss]-

He had no idea what language they were speaking if language it was, but the intention was clear. That had not been part of the plan. Grimacing he used his movement art and flickered forward, landing lightly on the next landing. Simultaneously the surrounding area twisted and colours inexplicably bled into his qi vision.

The long, thin-legged one with an almost round body teleported right beside him, its front legs already lashing out and its body splitting across the bottom to form an inexplicably huge maw, its body distending behind it like an inflatable bladder as smaller spiders poured off the walls, directly towards it. For a frozen moment, he had a truly inauspicious view of a serrated maw opening up into darkness as the limbs stabbed for his shoulders, arms, knees… stomach.

-Left, up… right, down, down, right, stab.

The instinctual set of instructions were already moving his limbs as he cut the first leg, then another and another in that frozen moment. The spider twisted to try to dodge… and failed.

Both its front legs dropped away even as his front foot touched the floor and the moment ended. He had only managed to execute the first two cuts of whatever impetus had arrived from nowhere, but that had been enough. The spider recoiled even as the original one appeared from the other side, a limb hooking for his foot to interrupt the movement art. It's nightmarish mouth twisted into a curved grin.

“PREY"

His consciousness wavered. The qi in his body recoiled. His vitality crumbled. His jump was somehow twisted, the place he was going to land was a mire of shifting spiders, even as the long-limbed one, its hideous mouth now shrunk down normally danced up the wall after him.

He was tumbling back down to a point about midway between the landings, unable to move.

The warmth in his limbs intensified. This time he really felt it flow out from the sword. It almost seemed to take his mantra by the hand as it guided it through an inexplicable series of steps that diffused the sickening fuzzy feeling.

Hitting the ground with a little more elegance than a ragdoll, he used the movement art again, pushing as much as he could into it. He had qi to burn now, literally, given that the suppression seemed to no longer affect him. If this was the sword's power that was crazy frankly.

The warmth pulsed faintly. And he had the impression that it was laughing at him somehow. Which was…

The world twisted around him as he flitted another 200 meters up the staircase with the thin-legged spider dancing the whole way behind him. As he reached his destination, it accelerated with a mind-numbing burst of predatory speed. He bent out of the way using his qi perception to—

The blow from the limb went right through him, making a mockery of his boosted senses and eviscerating his right side. He was dimly aware, through the inarticulate howl of his own pain and fury, of his liver, a good portion of his stomach, a kidney and quite a bit of his intestines decorating the wall beside him even as he swept the sword sideways through it. Its attempt to dodge inexplicably failed again and he cut the thing like it was rotten kindling, severing a leg and taking a large chunk off the top of its round body.

The creature howled.

“PREY! PREY! PREY!”

The alien hunger and fury behind it made him stagger backwards, or at least try to, until reality reminded both of them that they were tied together with a spider limb.

Something else was inarticulately screaming in rage as he stabbed the spider thing again and again in a frenzy. It staggered sideways, trying to drag him over the edge. His hand moved without thinking and swept the sword back, severing the limb—

The pain that exploded inside of him was out of any world he could conceive of. Almost as if it were trying to gnaw him from the inside out. Belatedly he realised that the severed limb had collapsed into tiny finger-sized spiders that were in fact trying to gnaw him from the inside out. Fortunately, the Nascent Blood Burn was forcibly converting the qi within his blood to Vast Yang attribute. It would certainly cause his death in due course, but it also seemed to be an anathema to the spiders themselves, even as the warmth from the sword sustained him somehow. The ones inside his body were now fleeing, thin limbs flailing even as they dissolved into black smudges and flakes of something oiling in the air.

-Or maybe it was all the sword, a little dispassionate part of him wondered.

-You were good with swords but never to this degree, and even a trainee guard is probably better than you technically given you put so little practice into it. Sword arts don’t help against plants…

Another voice, much fainter added.

-Please stop thinking so hard about it. These instincts are keeping you alive right now when otherwise you would be mushroom spider meat bait.

The wound in his side was already flowing back together, his vital qi pushing his body to regenerate the lost organs. He lashed out again, cutting at another leg. It was down to five now. Again it tried to dodge, to teleport in fact, but it failed again. It was mind-boggling to watch. Somehow it fled, and yet didn’t and the cut stayed and the escape never happened. This time he didn’t go after the body, but cut another limb on its left—

A third spider, similar to the one that had ‘died’ appeared like a ghost beside him, already striking at his leg.

-They aren’t aiming for vital points... are they trying to cripple me?

He stepped out of the attack and used his movement art to try to get distance, only for the spider to speed up and still manage to stab him. The limb went through his calf, outside thankfully, missing the bone by the merest fraction even as he travelled the final distance to the top of the stairs.

The room beyond was a broad, octagonal space some forty meters across, with stele set in the four cardinal directions and stairs travelling outwards to a higher level and then up again. There were no obvious threats, which was a relief. He pushed qi through his remaining good foot to help him move. the other leg was healing, the meridian damage already almost recovered under the effects of the Blood Burn Pill, but it would take a precious minute he certainly didn’t have to recover the large lost portion of his calf. His side was still a hollowed-out mess of organs and superstructure as well.

-The whole fight so far has maybe lasted five minutes since you hit the stairs, a small part of his brain uselessly told him. Five minutes felt like a short eternity.

‘High halls: West Access – Main Level’ flitted uselessly through his mind as his eyes brushed past one, seeking out the three spiders that had all appeared around the entrance he had just exited. They just sat there, watching him, horrible, unnatural maws grinning. Each one was the size of a huge horse now. Behind them flowed a roiling mass of tiny spider monstrosities. All three suddenly hissed simultaneously, the sound of their ‘words’ filling the space like a psychic tsunami of filth.

“~PREY! ~PREY! ~PREY!”

He staggered backwards, his vision nearly blacking out. The three spiders all raised their forelimbs. He noted belatedly that the long-limbed one hadn’t managed to recover its lost limbs. Weird how such details stood out in the monochrome gloom.

A fourth spider appeared, as if out of thin air. It was nearly mat black under his vision. At least until ugly red and purple runic marks on it. The colour oozed malefic intent under his forced eyesight.

-Colour in qi vision is rarely a good thing, Old Ling and his Uncle’s warnings both echoed in his mind.

“YOU! PREY! BECOME PREY! PREY IS GOOD!”

He barely managed to stay upright, the warmth from the sword pulsing against the waves of hungering intent that swept around him, snaring up his limbs.

It waved its forelegs mockingly.

"Weak Mind. Only Live By borrowed PoWer, ~BECOME ~PREY"

Somehow he got the impression that the sword was waiting for something? The warmth shifted through his body, almost like hands holding him up? Steadying him even as it stopped him from blacking out. Even so, his vision still started to blur and grow dim around the edges. It was still enough to show a wave of spider-like things breaking like a wave over every edge of the octagonal room, the air warping faintly around them as he took in the last moments of his life, alone in the dark.

{Ah. The little abominations are going to be too cautious.}

The spiders all froze at the soft, ethereal words, as if they were rabbits that just saw some unexpected apex predator. He looked around in a confused manner for a second before realizing that it came from the sword there was a hitch somehow and the soft voice whispered in his mind.

{Please try not to die young one}

“Eh!?” he blinked as the spiders’ tide suddenly grew fuzzy.

Words formed in his head unbidden as all the strength fled from his limbs. The sword sank into the floor, allowing him to support himself as he knelt beside it. Somewhere behind him, the ethereal voice whispered words that became a roaring crescendo that consumed everything.

{SEVEN NIGHTS SEVERING SANDS}

All his qi seemed to flow into the sword and then some. His qi vision faded away, leaving him in total darkness. Except he could see the outlines of all the spiders faintly. A shifting mass of nightmarish lines and horrific maws. The red and purple runes on the new one leaving weird tears in his vision. The power of the Nascent Blood Burn Pill cooled in his chest within moments. The unnatural connection it had forced between his physical cultivation, spiritual cultivation, body and soul dissolving away.

Silver sand drifted off the floor like tiny fireflies in the darkness. Everything it touched became glimmering silver sand.

The hoard of tiny shadow spider things that had, without him even noticing, poured over the edges of the octagonal room and covered the distance towards him in the mere moments before the voice spoke were becoming silver sand. Their transformation instantaneous, yet… not, even as they were swept away.

His perception of the passage of time was... weird. Even in his current fogged state, he could tell that things that should be moving, were not, and things that really shouldn't be moving, were... or at the very least he wasn't seeing them in ways that made any kind of common sense.

The silver fireflies swirled and multiplied, becoming a silver wave expanding outwards. The first of the spiders to fall was the long-legged one, dragged into the silver wave and tumbled beneath it. Unable to easily flee with its missing limbs, it was subsumed. The thick black-legged spider thing that resembled the 'Flesh Robbing spider' fared little better. The silver sweeping its footing away as it fled into the chasm, turning it over and burying it. The angular bladed spider that had just teleported around, spawning hordes of little ones, was somehow frozen in mid-air. The coalescing darkness around it, a shield of some kind, didn’t help as the sand swirled up and consumed it as well.

The matte black spider was also… suddenly frozen a hair's breadth from his face. He was shocked it had covered the distance to him in the blink of an eye. Striking for both him and the sword. It also slowly dissolved into silver sand in that stilled moment where the only thing that seemed to flow were the silver sands.

His body was now a chunk of graven ice. His bones had all sprouted thorns and his muscles felt like they were plaiting themselves in very unpleasant ways. The tearing sounds in his body were not even real sounds now, just the sensation of his meridians crumbling under the strain of whatever art the sword had executed. His very life-force itself was merging into the sword now, even as something else came from the darkness.

The shadow met the silver wave and the two swirled around each other. Maybe it said words, maybe it just screamed, but whatever that unquantifiable emptiness said or did it was useless. The silver wave flowed over the edge of the room and out of sight. Now he felt it move through his qi perception, which he was unable to retract. How did he even have qi perception? He wasn’t a spiritual cultivator, a voice in his head asked, sounding alone and lost. His whole body felt like lead and unable to support himself, he slumped against the sword. That part didn’t matter though, because he was still with the silver tide.

It flowed down the stairs like a primordial avalanche, burying the shadow wherever it went. The whole world was shaking under the maelstrom as it scoured the darkness from the hall they were in and the stairway below, the walls starting to fall inwards as if they were also made of sand.

-Is the floor glowing, another part of him wondered?

For a split second, he was sure he saw a figure... a woman? Standing with her back to him. One hand rested on the pommel of the sword. The edges of its blade glimmered faintly and seemed to flow into nothingness that defied rational thought, cutting apart the world in inexplicable ways just by being. Her arm was outstretched? Palm up, pushing or grasping towards something he couldn’t see.

-It’s...really... like the night sky… hair like starfire…

His last thought before his mind blanked was that it was quite pretty. Which was a really inane final thought to have...

~ ???, Mysterious Pool ~

It frowned in the pool and slowly rematerialized.

Before it were many of its children... But somehow they were less, which should not have been.

Slowly they all dissolved into the dark and it was one, and it understood.

It watched them sate their hunger, the backing of the mushrooms in this place was cut off, so they also consumed them, and saw memories, their own and others.

They adjusted their forms to ones best suited to the landscape of this underground prison.

They swept through the place unopposed devouring everything.

[PREY!] ... [HUNGER!] ... [SWEET!] ... [EXPANSION!]

It watched the hoard find an oddity. A thing it couldn’t really feel until they saw it, now, in the moment and the past understood.

-A Primate. Easy, juicy prey. And a… vehicle. A means to leave this place.

It watched the primate run.

It was amusing, so they followed it at their leisure. Down here it would tire quickly. Even the most powerful primates did not have the means to repel the suppression of the deep dark fully. It was etched into the very fabric of this place now. Part of the reason it was a prison to so much.

The primate fled for the exit. It was unerring.

-Was there a map here?

It thought it had destroyed all such things last time so as better to make this a place where prey might congregate. It dispatched some of itself to find out.

-Perhaps this primate had survived? There were means to do that, it considered. Hidden spaces, crude arts to step outside time.

The primate’s struggles were amusing as it followed it.

After some consideration, it concluded that it was not a survivor of then. It was quick, yes, but pathetically weak. None of the prey from then would have been this weak. Its realm barely counted, to the point where it was almost unsuppressed. Perhaps that was why it was so optimistic. Did it believe the suppression gave it an edge? It had a weapon, but it didn’t use it, perhaps it knew of the inevitability of its fate if it fought so it just ran.

-Odd.

Their kind was usually obsessed with suicide when they met. But then all populations had oddities, it supposed. This was another inevitability.

The primate fought up the stairs, dodging the myriad self and even managing to kick one in the process, but it was starting to tire. Then it ate some medicine and got a fraction stronger.

-Ah, there had been one like that long ago?

Another primate who fought in the upper levels. It was a slumber or two ago. That one had screamed a lot before it became part of the whole. It was always interesting to see how they tried to resist inevitability.

Idly it watched the procession up the stairs. The primate finally drew its sword and stabbed one of them, taking away a bit of it forever.

It crossed the gap between ‘was’ and ‘will be’ and ‘seized’ the moment. Sacrificed a bit of the spark that it had obtained to eliminate the suppression.

-How had the primate found a reliquary weapon!

It snarled, and they unleashed their full intent.

-That was unusual.

It observed as the reliquary weapon...reliquary PREY, managed to resist the execution.

It stared at the style of the weapon. It wasn’t familiar in its design. The Absolute Self had surely shared all the dangerous ones with the whole when they broke their chains… hadn’t it?

It examined the primate again as the myriad contained it, pressured it.

-Maybe it was one of those survivors. One of their so-called important primates, who got a lot of silly protection and thought themselves great with their stolen power?

The style was such and the method was so. Nothing like it remembered. It would hesitate to say it was confused, but the idea that a reliquary had remained hidden in this place was inconceivable.

-Maybe the weapon was young?

-Inexperienced?

-Had it come here to hunt the whole?

-Was it trying to awaken?

-Had there been one among the primates that was that skilled?

It called another of itself. One more attuned to overwhelming the reliquary weapon.

The primate was able to move a bit better outside the suppression with the weapons help, but it was still pitiful. Only that borrowed power was able to prolong its life. When it fell, the reliquary would belong to the one.

That was exciting. It had been a long time since it was excited by anything. Some of that was also transmitted to the myriad, but that was fine, they were it. The excitement was rare for them as well.

-It could bring it back here...

-Take it to the pool up above and quench it in the waters of Star Ocean that the other one had set to twisting.

It would become truly Self then.

-That would annoy that other one, who had messed with the Absolute’s plans so long ago.

-It... It might even be able to escape this place if it wasn’t tied to the Absolute Self.

This was an opportunity it couldn’t hunt for, no matter how hungry it was.

It cursed as the sword injured itself again. It hadn’t found anything in the fungi that could overwhelm the reliquary so easily that was close by.

It looked back through the events and found an opportune point before the primate started up the stairs and started to convert the hoard to the fungi that had unstable wild Yang spirit roots. Physical destruction meant little to the swarm. It was a perfect cycle unless you could take from it directly.

With the extra tool they hadn’t considered before, the hoard was able to push the primate a bit more and finally, it was injured by its other-self. Suited to speed and stalking prey in shadows.

The sword managed to save it, but the injury was bad and it was slowed. The little fire it took had given it some extra power, but its soul flame was flickering out.

It pondered.

-It would need to separate the primate from the weapon before death. It would be a paltry thing, but a soul was still a soul, and the vessel of the primate was also needed.

It managed to cripple the primate as it sacrificed another limb. Not ideal, but the sword seemed to be weaker than it should be. The primate had no potentia, so it would not be long now.

It brought its Greater Self, now properly attuned towards the place. This one could separate the primate prey from the weapon.

The primate seemed confused why it/they didn’t attack. The myriad enjoyed its fear and smiled more.

It took an aspect of the primitive things into itself and smiled on behalf of its itself, its enjoyment reflected to the many, who also smiled. The primate was not very smart and its perception was weak. Struggling as it was, not knowing it was already surrounded.

Another self, one suited to speed, had teleported ahead once it entered the region of the cavern where it was restraining the suppression and became myriad as another hoard.

It became aware of another, who had found one of the useful mushrooms that broke down soul power and made it malleable.

It considered the flow of events once more and had the ones that went ahead start to incorporate that aspect subtly at the top of the stairwell.

Between its Greater Self which arrived and this self, they would be able to deal with the reliquary. It was fortunate it had been found before it found a way to acquire a servant of actual power.

-Yes…

It pushed at the primate’s mind.

-Best to be sure.

-Leave nothing to chance.

The sword managed to block the pressure again, but it was wavering. It seemed the reliquary was nearly out of power.

-All that remained to do was…

Its myriad selves imbued with the strength of those soul melting mushrooms all charged to subsume the prey and finish separating it from the reliquary. The soul dispersing power swept out, and it also triggered all the various mushroom spores and weird qi affinities that the myriad had acquired in clearing the cavern below of useful biomass.

The primate collapsed to its knees, its soul suppressed. -Good, that just left…

-Ah? It was still holding the sword handle?

An incorporeal idea of a Primate wearing a black robe stood there. The whole stared uncomprehendingly at it for a horrible moment. The sword had already awakened!

-There had been nothing like that on the upper layers, even during the unchaining...

Understanding!

-An awakened reliquary was a thing only Mantled Emperor possessed! The Absolute Whole below would have claimed them, and they would remember because all were part of the absolute.

It pulled on the true-spark fully and cast forth all its intent at the primate. It was somehow acting as a conduit.

{I wondered what your game was, vile thing}

Everything else was inconsequential now.

This Threat must be eliminated for the good of the whole. Whatever plans it had had to depart the Absolute were abandoned. It cast its other-selves, still exploring, into the abyss. They would go to its brethren... far below. It would have to let them know!

-Ahh… it needed…

[RAGE!]

The Reliquary frowned and glanced in the direction of the chasm...

-Impossible! Its perception stretched that far!?!

-What kind of reliquary was this!

Memory surfaced.

-The Hateful One, the Inevitable One, the Cruel One… the… the… there had been another one… Spiteful One… and another?

It reached for the name, fighting the gaps something had cut through its memory. Impossible gaps. Terrifying gaps. Even as it grasped for the point of understanding the reliquary smiled at it, in a way that made its mind quaver.

{I am Mother's First Daughter. Born of her Reason to Be.}

-Oh. Reason to Be. First One. Original.

Miscalculation. It had miscalculated.

-Original was...

{You think too much, phase spawn}

Did that make it… make it… prey!?

It overcame its flicker of existential uncertainty and managed to pull some of its self from the moment. It felt the tearing of its origin vessel, and a part of it was sacrificed to the Absolute. When it next awoke, it would... The spirit frowned.

{Ah. The little abominations are going to be too cautious.}

And it felt something cut through its intention….

-Ahh… such a principle. This was the very pinnacle… it…

[…..]

-It... It would have to gamble. The principle this... the original was... unparalleled... the enemy of all things...born to be the curse upon all higher beings... if it got the required momentum to bring forth...

-Better not to try anything mendacious.

It would just smash its power directly. If the link to the primate went, it would be lesser. Even if it couldn't consume the reliquary prey, the Absolute self would be able to face it. A shame to lose the primate’s soul and sacrifice the spark it had obtained so fortuitously, but it would be whole still.

-Oh well.

[~RAGE!]

The reliquary stepped between the primate and the manifestation of its own Reason to Be, which struck the sword. The stilled moment rang like a silent bell that shook the whole. The sense of stoppage intensified, and the reliquary took a step back and looked a bit fuzzy. The whole suddenly felt a sense of primal crisis and gathered all its remaining intention.

-It would….

{It is lucky that the wage of these vile things is balanced in the taking}

{Still…}

{Try not to die, young one.}

{Be unbound, shadow of the final shore, regalia of Original Song, let the ephemera of your great achievement descend.}

{~Seven ~Nights ~Severing ~Sands}

............

.........

.......

Shards of itself awoke, it was back in the pool...

-The...

It tried to remember what it had just seen. Darkness boiled around it as it tried to re-connect with itself.

-It had taken...

-To the centre...?

-Then beyond ferns...

-After...

-Primate? Ran…?

It pulled itself up and stared around...

~oh.

The gully vanished under the wave of silver sand. In that instant, it felt an intangible sense of-

-It had become Pr—

For the first and last time in its eternal existence, its thought was truncated in a soundless scream of existential horror that nothing heard even as it tried to tear its way out of the silver maelstrom. Desperately it reached for a new reality within the place of hated suppression, but the inescapable silver sand flowed into its original essence and dragged it down into the abyss where it was washed out onto the final shore, where it met with extinction.

The remaining selves throughout the cavern and making their way into the depths all paused at the silent ripple of existential dread and dissociation that tore through their psyche.

The larger ones with a closer connection to the Over-Soul crumpled in death. The smaller pieces of the whole, specimens who had been hunting for maps, unusual prey or other exits all collapsed and writhed for a few seconds. Many ended, a few died, but some recovered. Those that did suddenly found themselves as self. Individual. They tried to grasp what that meant, but it was already filtering away.

A few managed to retain some capacity, but almost all of those that remained were simply left with two overriding concepts. An inexplicable [RAGE] and an insatiable [HUNGER].

Within a few hours they discovered that the exit many of their number had died at, that somehow related to their inexplicable rage, was now sealed with an impassable barrier. A few hours after that they came to the conclusion that the only things to consume in this place were some few mushrooms which were largely inedible or so dangerous that they couldn’t make much headway with them or some horrible grass that tried to eat them even as they ate it.

None of the juicy, fleshy PREY they required to sustain a colony on this side.

So their rage intensified and their numbers dwindled accordingly even as the oppressive darkness started to leech away their potentia and suppress them once more.