Author's Note: I apologise in the delay. A few days ago I got access to wifi for the first time in a week and got caught up with catching up with reading stuff and games. Then got a little sick from fatigue and eating 3-day old Chinese food (the Internet said it was okay for 4 days if refrigerated!) And the last few days was just plain laziness and wanting to sleep early.

The messenger from Hidden Valley village ran towards his village, guiding Richard. He was tired and had already ran all the way there only to have to go back with barely any rest. Despite this, he was in high spirits; he believed his deeds would save his village from this menace. Running past his limits seemed to be a cheap price and motivated him to keep running. One foot after another, even though each step made them number and wobble. A point came where his legs were so numb that it made it easier to continue running.

On the other hand, Richard was following behind leisurely. He felt that the trip was boring. The scenery was nice but the constant running was repetitive. Every time he tried to take a look around; he would stumble over a rock, tree root, or hole. Then, his legs were short and stubby compared to the messenger, so he had to put in some effort to keep up. It wasn’t to the point where he wasn’t able to handle it but it was annoying him.

Richard flew into the air with a flap of his wings. As a rooster, he couldn’t fly far distances and it took up more energy to fly than to run. However, it was never his intention to fly the entire way. Alternating between flying and running? As if, that would be inefficient. He flew into the air then landed on the messenger’s shoulder, causing him to stumble and almost fall over.

From there, he could look at the scenery without having to worry about menial things like watching where he stepped. This placed an extra burden on the messenger but there was no response, pleasing Richard quite a bit. He was tired of being treated like a unique toy or servant. From the messenger’s behavior, Richard could tell that he respected and feared him. Here, he was a king again.

Why not be considerate of the messenger that’s done nothing wrong and obediently guiding him? Such a thought wouldn’t come to mind. The messenger was human and he was a rooster; if it was a hen guiding him, he’d surely be polite. It’s a different species than him that’s following someone else’s orders though. One could argue that it was immoral, but would a rooster, that’s just gained sentience recently, understand morality even if it knew the definition. Instead, Richard was absorbed by the scenery for the next few hours.

Upon arriving at the village, the messenger leaned up against a gate leading to the interior of the village. Sweat coated his face and he coughed while breathing heavily. His vision was going blurry and he wanted to lay down. However, Richard was sitting on his shoulder and he believed that it would anger the rooster if he fell. Luckily for him, Richard got bored of looking at a wall and was interested in the village, hopping off his shoulder and entering. Which granted the messenger relief as he slumped down gently against the gate.

Two men rushed out of the village to attend to the messenger, ignoring Richard in the process. The messenger frantically tried to point towards the rooster. Of course, the men saw a cock and didn't take it seriously; they've seen plenty before.

Richard was more distracted by the village and a coop over in a corner. Hearing the clucking of hens, he couldn't help but get excited. Perhaps this village was worth saving after all. He could fight, increase his power, gain the ability to speak, and have the villagers offer up their hens.

Distracting him from his ugly thoughts, were the two men prostrating themselves before him and apologising. Richard gave them an annoyed glance and trotted into the village. One of the men followed him while talking while the other continued tending to the messenger, believing themselves pardoned for their mistakes.

This man directed Richard towards a large, wooden house in the center of the village. Along the way, it was observable that most of the houses were haphazard shacks. While this building was much more sturdy and organised in construction.

Rather than spending all day looking into the finer details, Richard tilted his head towards a gate, similar to the one he went through. This gate, however, was blockaded with wood, furniture, and garbage. This blockade was obviously useless, as the entire barrier and gate was coated with several strands of sticky white stuff. One such strand seemed to lead into the house he stood before.

Meanwhile, the man that had lead Richard slipped into the house for some time. When he returned, another man followed that was much better dressed. The villagers up 'til now were wearing rags made of animal fur while this man wore some roughly knitted cotton. He was the leader of this village, the mayor.

The mayor bowed down to Richard, showing that the other man had already informed him about the situation. He calmly waited for the rooster, waiting for some sort of order. Nothing. It seemed like the rooster refused to acknowledge his presence. Not that he took insult; he found such behaviour to be normal for a majestic spirit beast. In reality, Richard chose not to do anything as he couldn't speak his intentions.

"I welcome you, servant of the master, to our humble village. I am mayor Dressing," said the mayor, breaking the silence.

These words sounded wrong to Richard. Not the kind of wrong that Lo Qi's and his master's voice was. Rather, the word choice simply irritated him. "Servant" and "master." He wasn't a servant nor was Lo Qi's master also his, not by choice at least. They were forced upon him and he didn't have the power to contest it... yet.

Not noticing Richard's distaste, the mayor continued, "I regret to inform you that the situation has gotten worse. Your master's mistress candidate was staying at my house before she was to make the trip to your master's manor. Alas, the infernal spirit beast, no insult intended towards you, took her in the last few hours. We're all doomed if she is harmed in any way so make haste."

A couple villagers, overhearing the mayor's words, turned pale. Their only now rested upon Richard, who could not care less. His mission was to take down the beast in the forest and test out his new strength from his cultivation. A mistress candidate was basically a human hen to him, he understood why it's desirable but not something irreplaceable. Put simply, he didn't care about the announcement.

The mayor ordered around a few people and the barricade by the gate was removed, revealing the outskirts of a green forest with spots of white. The only thing Richard cared about, was the fact that he had to walk without a guide to ride on. The thought of getting one came to mind, but all of the humans ran off and holed up within their homes. Even the mayor was nowhere to be found. Perhaps this is why it was called Hidden Valley.

So began the true start of the mission, walking into enemy territory. As Richard passed through the gates, he noticed something familiar. One of the objects that formed the blockade was a metal cage. It was the same as the one that once contained him, but bigger and with sheets instead of bars. A giant hole on the top was present with the edges curled up, revealing an empty interior. Whatever was in it, was now long gone. The only evidence of what lies inside was an upside-down nametag that read, "Charlotte.

This proved to be quite interesting. It meant that other occupants of the ship had survived the lightning storm and that the beast terrorising this village might've been a fellow passenger. Such information was fairly minor to Richard though. Why would he care about the ship or its passengers?

Curiosity about what happened and hope for other survivors didn't exist. In fact, there's a few passengers he would be glad if they had died. Like the scary boar and man whose hand he clawed.

Richard continued into the forest. As he got deeper, the spotty whiteness began to cover more of the surroundings. Eventually, it covered the ground and trees completely. On the exterior of the forest, there was birds and rodents wandering about. Here, towards the center of the forest, everything was dead.

The environment discomforted Richard. Every step entangled his feet a little bit, making him miss his claws. With his claws intact, he could easily cut through this sticky webbing. Instead, he put his beak to use, tearing apart strands every time he got tripped up. To make things worse, the webs tasted terrible and he had a terrible stomachache.

Deeper in the forest, a creature shrouded in darkness moved about. It felt vibrations on its web and knew it was being hunted. A light hiss sounded as its venom dripped onto a tree branch below, making a hissing sound as it corroded. It set up a trap for this unfortunate hunter, jumping around from tree to tree.

Right as it finished setting things up, it saw a large shadow out of the corner of one of its eight eyes. A loud booming sound rang out as it hit the ground. The shadow chose not to reveal itself, watching as the creatures legs twitched a few times before stopping.

Richard was nearby when the creature impacted with the ground and heard the noise. He wandered over and found the creature in the center of a clearing between a few trees. Upon entering the clearing, he stumbled over some sort of twig on the ground. After recovering and tearing away some webs, he saw the features on the creature.

The creature was a giant spider, the size of a large dog. It was covered in a black carapace that appeared to be covered in blood. Blood red splatters were scattered over it in a haphazard fashion as if it had been killed in a most brutal fashion. A smell many times worse than his old, shit-covered coop emitted from the body.

How was a sentient rooster supposed to react in a situation like this? Feel happy that it doesn't have to fight? Suspicion towards this scene and whatever killed it first? Annoyance at having to walk back after coming all the way here? No, that's how a human would react.

Richard didn't understand this situation at all. He chose to look around then walk up to see this strange creature. A feeling of hunger arose as his stomach grumbled and rolled about. It was a spider after all, something chickens would eat if they found. This one was just bigger than most. The difference between this and a nice snack wasn't registering in his brain.

Around the area, there was about twelve trees. Half of them had thick webbing stretching across like walls, preventing entrance from those directions. Thankfully, that left easy access through the other three gaps. Of course, that didn't mean that there wasn't webbing; there was sticky white stuff covering everything here and was thick enough to feel solid here.

Once the rooster got within biting distance of the spider, its legs flexed slightly. It was alive, surprising him and making him jump back a meter. It flipped itself upright then dug its legs beneath the webbed ground and made a dragging motion. With this motion, walls rose to cover the former gaps in the walls of sticky white stuff, forming a pseudo arena.

What about its wounds? What wounds? A closer inspection revealed that the blood red parts were a part of the design on its shell. Likely some sort of mechanism to trick hunters into lowering their guard around wounded prey before becoming the prey themselves.

This was the situation Richard fell into. Both sides looked towards the other hungrily. There was no escape for Richard, not that any was needed as he came here to fight. As a signal to start their fight, he let out a low crow. The spider responded by moving its fangs about, causing its venom to fall and hiss as it hit the webbing below.

The webbing gave the spider an advantage and he was sick of it. So, he flew up into the air with a flap of with wings. Then, extended his feet and tried stepping on the spider, like a bird of prey swooping down on some poor creature. The spider was not that creature and scampered out of the way.

For his next move, Richard extended his beak and began desperately biting at the webbing below. His dive bomb tactic backfired and now his legs were completely submerged in the layers of webbing. A disadvantage and some carelessness pretty much costed him the first round of the fight.

The spider watched on as he struggled, moving off to the side slowly. Richard tried to follow its movements between each peck, but that's hard to do when you're trying to clean sticky white stuff off your extremities. The spider was in front of him when he looked, then on his right side on the next look, finally being nowhere in sight.

Richard freed himself and extended his wings, hoping to escape before he was ambushed. It was obviously behind him with no intentions of a fair one-on-one fight. Alas, his efforts were for naught as an impact from behind threw him back towards earth. He crashed face first into a pile of sticky white stuff.

This uncomfortable situation didn't last for long as the spider pulled him out with a thick strand of webbing attached to a tree. It bounded his wings and legs together to keep him from moving them. Richard became a limp and upside-down cock piñata. All he needed was some defeathering, spices and an iron rod and he'd be ready for the rotisserie.

But the spider had no intention of eating him just yet. Instead, it circled around him a few times before slamming one of its legs against him. No candy came out but he felt some bile start to rise-or rather, lower in his stomach. Another hit, this time in his head made him go blind for a few seconds.

This went on for a few more hits. One hit managed to strike a dangerous area, the stomach. The contents of Richard's stomach suddenly spew out onto the spider. The vomit was a distinctive green color with a slimy texture. Whatever it was, it burned the spider and it ran off.

Richard didn't pay attention to where it went, pecking at its restraints instead. After freeing his wings, he flapped them a few times to stabilise himself enough to reach up and rip up the strand that held him up. Gracefully landing with a few more flaps, learning from before to not land too heavily.

The spider had recovered from the pain the spot had done. However, the damage was done and its shell had a splattering of green to contrast with the red and black. It was none too happy about this. Lifting its head and bringing its fangs together, it spewed some venom towards Richard in revenge.

Closing his eyes and moving his head to the side, Richard managed to avoid permanent damage. Alas, pain wreaked havoc in tandem with acid breaking down his feathers and burning his skin. His front became cooked like a sunny side up egg.

A pained crow resounded from his beak and a branch snapped as he stepped back. As he opened his eyes, he was met with an odd situation. Expecting a spider charging him or trying to manoeuvre around him, he was shocked to find a fat man instead.

Lo Qi had come to his rescue. In one hand, the fat man held some sort of cocoon. In the other, was a wooden sword piercing through the spider's leg.

Author's note: My naming sense absolutely sucks. However, that might be a good thing for this story.