It seemed whatever dwells in this cave had over four legs. The spiders have eight, but the ones chasing after Shan had dozens of them.

The centipede’s trunk was glossy brown, with dozens of legs working together to chase after him. There were seven of them, but none of them were working in coordination. Instead, they chased after him, trying to outrun each other.

It hadn't even been that long since he started venturing into the cavern after finishing the task that he gave himself. Yet these insect monsters discovered him the moment he came out of his hole.

Shan coated his white scales with spirit energy as they glowed a little. The spirit spikes were ready to condense inside his mouth. All he needed to do was ram it to the body segment, cause in any other place it wouldn’t work, with only a couple of spikes.

Shan crawled and coiled himself to spin it against the ridge on the side as his narrow body leapt into the air. He was hovering in the air with all the targets in his sight when his slit eyes glowed in the golden light. Shan’s vision cleared and precision rose. In the nick of the moment, he shot a spike as it drilled through the body segment of a centipede which was the closest to him.

But it wasn’t over yet. Shan twisted his path in the air, to shoot head first against another, drilling through its body segment. He claimed its life with just this blow, unlike the other one.

[You have killed a Giant Centipede (Copper - 0.6).]

Shan didn’t get out below the giant insect when two of its companions tried to take a bite at him. His mind rang as he twisted his body to crawl below one. It was going to take a bite at his lower body, but Shan did it first. Even though it's disgusting for a being once was human, he bit through from under it as its body convulsed.

Shan got out easily, but the scene before him widened his perspective. Holy shit! The other centipede that came along with it to attack him was actually nibbling it. Did it think its friend got me and excluded it from having me? He came up with a theory. Still, it seemed too much of a payback to eat one of their kind.

This is unforgivable! He shouted inwardly to shoot a spirit spike into its god damn mouth that was busy eating its own kind. I know we haven’t known for long, Shan told the other dead centipede. But I avenged you. Now rest in peace. I’ll come back to collect the price later.

There were still four more centipedes remaining, and they haven’t gone crazy yet to finish themselves on their own. So Shan helped them on their way. The spiders have eight sharp strong, sharp legs and cobwebs, but the centipede was nothing other than being a little fast. They do have a hard trunk, but the body segments were too much of a weak point that their hard trunk didn’t matter at all.

Each of them was at the higher end of the Copper rank than him, but they barely had any leverage on him. Shan crawled through below one again, twisting and turning so that it won’t bite his tails, and the event with the other two repeated itself again, though this time it was two that attacked one of their kind.

The spiders are crazy, but there’s no turning point for these centipedes, Shan thought. Something was very much wrong with this cavern. Perhaps some form of corruption, but it should run deep to make so many monsters go crazy. Even outside, the beetle, the python, and the hamster were extra savagery. Perhaps all that was connected to this freaking cave.

Well, since he was given the task of finding it, and he was probably quite close to the centre of all that, he might as well dig his head where it didn’t belong. But before that, he needed to finish this lot of cannibalistic insects.

Turns out it was quite easy. After they got too invested in feasting on themselves, they forgot about him. So he ended their sorry life one after another until the last one of them came to bite him. The congratulatory messages came, but there were no advancement messages.

Shan thought he was there, but it seemed these centipedes were too easy for him. Well, whatever, he would find those spiders whenever he wanted.

He touched the closest dead corpse and used the system feature Loot on it as it dissolved into mist after several seconds.

[Centipede Corrupted Monster core (Copper) has been added to your inventory.]

[You have gained 114 evolution points.]

No meat? Shan frowned. Perhaps it has something to do with corruption. It wasn’t stupid to eat something corrupted, and it seemed he couldn’t eat the monster core either. The system depicted the core as a monster core, not an insect or beast. So there was really no hope for the centipedes since the corruption has reached its core.

Shan moved to his next target and was about to use Loot, when his mind rang as he lurched up, spinning his tail on the ground. A slimy cobweb stuck there the next moment as Shan found an enormous spider on the walls. From the looks of things, it seemed iron ranked and almost twice the size of the one he hunted yesterday.

I hate spiders! He groaned and prepared himself as the spider shot more cobwebs at him as well, trying to bind him in one place. But Shan dodged or neutralised all of them, shooting them down with Spirit spikes, or swallowing them with Spirit Devour. He knew it would leave a disgusting after-taste later, but there was no better option.

He moved towards the centipede that he killed before and touched it to implement Loot, dodging between the attacks. By the time the body turned to smoke and gave him enough evolution points, the spider came down to attack in close quarters.

Shan commanded the system while running from the Iron-ranked empathic spider.

[Evolution points: 325 (CEP: 18)]

He converted the points to 3 more copper evolution points to invest them in advancing Spirit Devour.

[Congratulations! Spirit Devour has advanced to Copper - 0.2]

Now he was ready to engage in a fight. Well, he would still fight it with cowardice, running away most of the time, but he felt a little pained to leave all his prizes there. He even promised that one centipede. So Shan lingered in the surrounding area, circling around, attacking while he could, though that didn’t come in handy.

He looted another one of the centipedes by that time. Alright, four more to go.

Abruptly, the cobweb pinned him down against the ground as the smoke vanished. Shan grunted and triggered Spirit Devour as a suction force came out of his horrifying maw, swallowing down all the disgusting cobwebs as it liquified to a white slimy substance inside him. Shan didn’t swallow whole, but puked back how much he could. No point in making his inside dirty, if he could just let it out.

However, it seemed this one was a veteran in stalking its target as the cobweb pinned him down yet again, though this time it was barely his lower body. How powerful is this one? That was all in his head as Shan freed himself. Looks like he has to run away now.

The giant spider squeaked at him, finding him not interested in the dispute.

Well, pal, see you around. Shan felt wrong to leave his prize, but he also knew greed was the reason for fall. Essentially, he was not a greedy person. He was a person with an uttermost rational mind, but now, he was not even a person at all. Human psychology doesn't apply to him all that much. He was a cold-blooded reptile, a predator in the making, and just the thought of running away makes him sick.

Something was screaming inside him, telling him to stick it up to this eight-legged insect. It was filling him with irrational bravado, providing the ridiculous notion that he could end this Iron ranked spider. Perhaps it was the corruption—the very thing all the insects he met so far were contaminated with, and it was affecting him too.

Shan gritted his teeth and crawled away, but the spider didn’t stop chasing. Why would it? After all, it's not every day that it comes across delicacies.

Shan moved for two full minutes at the top of his speed, using the Mapping ability of the system fully. A few seconds later, he finally found what he was looking for. Before deciding to hunt, Shan had dug over a dozen holes all around the cavern, only narrow enough for him to get through.

And now, he was getting into one of those holes where the spider couldn’t dig through. It took him hours to create those holes, and for the spiders, it would take even longer to get to him because they didn’t have a narrow body, or a delicate hand at using spiritual energy.

Oh please, the only usage of spiritual energy they knew was the cobweb. It didn’t even coat the spirit energy to make itself stronger. Yeah, dumb fucking spiders. Come get me.

And when it does, he will dig again to move elsewhere.

Shan went a dozen metres inside until he reached a broader space where he could finally coil comfortably. Spouting nonsense at the spider inwardly, he let out a breath.

Let’s see what this mongrel does.

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