The Dog Spiders, as he had grown to call them, were catching up to him and the prospect of going down another unfamiliar corridor didn’t entice George, so he decided to fight in the chamber.

One of the spiders leapt at him and he managed to swat it away with the book. When he found a way, he vowed he would get the edges of the book to be sharper.

He didn’t know if he could take three spiders at once, especially since one of them seemed to be really angry now. He also didn’t know if he could take on the slimes.

But he had an idea.

He took the moss out of his pocket and started focusing on one of the spiders. He imagined a wisp of light going out from the spider and a few moments later, the spider was illuminated in light.

The slimes immediately took notice of that, while the other two spiders looked disoriented by the sudden glow. George counted that as a double win.

He pummeled the first spider to death with the book, while the slimes converged on the spider that was glowing. The spider actually shrieked while the slimes were engulfing him, obviously in pain. Apparently more than whatever the book did to them.

The third spider bit deep inside one of the slimes, its fangs easily going through the soft ooze and pierced the small hardened core. Although it looked only like it was cracked, the slime surrounding it almost immediately pulsed, shimmered and then flowed into a pool.

He was unsure if this was just a lucky shot by the spider, but he didn’t waste time to think about it and brought down the book on the spider’s head, crushing it instantly.

“Ha, the book is mightier than the sword.”

The battlefield cleared, and what was left were three reddish slimes, three dead spiders, and one slimy core. The slimes again went on their merry way and George took a moment to examine the core of the slime. It was fairly round and didn’t seem to serve many purposes, so he didn’t bother picking it up.

The next thing he did was try and shake one of the fangs out of the spider’s head, and it managed to fall out rather quickly.

The fang was just large enough to be considered a dagger, but he was worried about the structural integrity of it. It seemed hard enough, and it looked like it could pierce a slime’s core, but he had no real way of testing anything beyond that. It certainly wasn’t usable for cutting, but only for piercing.

Having acquired a new weapon, George considered his options. He was starting to get hungry and thirsty, and he didn’t think anything around him was edible.

He decided to not venture into spider territory. But before he could go anywhere, the book he was holding started to glow. He opened the first page again. And now, it had changed.

To the glory of ___________

Please choose a Domain

Please choose a Deity

“Choose a Deity? But where is the choice? Zeus?” George thought of the first Non-Christian God that came to mind, but nothing happened. Obviously. It would be too weird if it did.

He was unsure of how the choice is made even. Or why the book was asking him for one in the first place.

It started to look like a really weird game and he skipped the tutorial.

He was intrigued by the prospect of choosing a Deity he knew nothing about but decided to shelve the idea for later.

He flipped through the book, and nothing else had changed. “Maybe more things get available if I choose a Deity.”

He went back to deciding where to go. He assumed left would take him to more spiders, and he probably had more than enough spiders for a lifetime, he decided to go right.

The corridor was silent, but he still held the fang up in one hand and the book in another. Maybe taking a second fang would’ve allowed him to not use the book as a weapon, but he couldn’t carry the book that way.

The corridor made a few slow turns, but then visibly started having an incline. There didn’t seem anything peculiar about the corridor, it looked no different between one section and the next.

A few minutes of slowly going upwards, the terrain levelled again, and George was hoping that meant there was something more than just corridor.

He was right.

The corridor lead into a huge chamber, but it was almost pitch black. He considered the risks and had to take it. Going back down then back up another corridor was both time and energy consuming and likely to produce similar results.

He took out the moss, that was still glowing faintly, from his pocket and started casting the Holy Light spell. The incantation was fairly innocuous and he wondered if the language actually made sense. He also wondered how he knew how to pronounce it correctly. But none of that mattered when the light shined up from the fang.

The other side of the chamber was not even visible in the distance with the light on. Unlike the previous one, this actually looked more like a proper cave, with a lot of stalactites from the ceilings and as many stalagmites down below.

He slowly went around the chamber, touching the walls as if they would somehow tell him secrets or open hidden doors.

He walked to the other side of the chamber, looking around all the while, but stopped when something cracked under his shoe.

There was a conglomeration of bones strewn about on the floor. It looked like a long forgotten battlefield to George, not that he had ever actually seen one. George counted a total of 6 skulls, peculiarly, of various shapes and sizes but most looked similar to a human’s. The sixth skull looked more elongated, like an animal of some sort. He could only guess what it belonged to, so he didn’t bother.

Curiously, bones were all he found. There was no clothing, weapons, armours, bags, or anything useful at all, just bare bones. Usually, weapons don’t decay as easily, so someone or something must’ve cleared it all out. An image of green slimes passing over dead bodies only brought him a shiver down the spine.

He entertained a thought of healing the overly dead bodies for a moment. Maybe he’d become a necromancer or the like. But decided it wasn’t worth the time.

He was unsure about the precise detail, but the bones didn’t look dirty. In his mind, old bones would gradually decay with time, but these ones looked like the models in biology class, apart from having various cuts and shatterings. To him, that signalled that they were relatively fresh, which made him both curious and afraid.

He had to stop having useless thoughts that didn’t bring him any closer to any answers and just continue. There was absolutely no sign of life around him, which was both a blessing and a curse. Something alive would mean that something can survive here apart from spiders.

The chamber had a multitude of corridors, but he decided to go for the one opposite from where he went from. He hoped that would get him out of the cave sooner by some weird logic that might not even apply.

After one curious dead end, George went through a corridor that actually looked different. It was a lot wider than the previous ones and he could even see small patches of mushrooms growing from the sides.

And then finally, there seemed to be light from the end of the tunnel. His Holy Light still burned bright, but he decided to put the fang in the shirt and try to avoid the slime scenario.

Walking out of the corridor, he took a long look at where he was and gulped audibly as he finally found something that wasn’t a slime.

It was a tip of a spear next to his neck, and a huge lizard holding it.