The eight-legged monsters studied the rest of the room. From limb to limb, they were easily five meters long. One of them approached the smaller insect who was stuck in its web, before ending its life with a fast and bone-crunching bite of its fangs. The development seemed to startle the other creatures in the chamber and they started to frantically run for their lives.

The two other spiders immediately burst into action. They moved with tremendous speed for monsters of their size, their legs blurring in front of Red's eyes. The distance between them and their target closed very quickly. Before the boy could even process the situation they pounced on their victims, a beetle and some other creature resembling a centipede.

There was no fight, to speak of. The prey was much slower than the spiders, and their carapace gave almost no resistance under their bite. The notably sharp-looking fangs pierced deeply into the exoskeletons of those creatures, green blood oozing from the punctures. Their struggle lasted for no more than ten seconds before life left their bodies.

Red crouched down and moved slowly towards the corner of the chamber, aiming to go unnoticed. He considered running away while the monsters were occupied with their victims, but his decision to lay low was soon validated.

The spiders weren't done hunting.

Removing the fang from its victims while still holding them with their feelers, the creatures dashed towards the running beasts. The speed explosion of the arachnids was almost jarring to witness with their large bodies. Red had never seen anything in the underground move quite as fast as that, and the sight was extremely unnatural and terrifying for him to observe. If he was on the receiving end of their attacks in this wide-open chamber, there was no way he would be able to avoid being caught.

Nothing could escape their grasp. Soon the three of them chased down and each seized another prey with their fangs. Even then, the monsters weren't sated. One of them looked over in Red's direction. Its eight emotionless eyes glared directly at the human, and he swore he could see his own reflection in them.

The boy froze.

However, at that moment a bigger insect ran past him, and the spider's attention was diverted. It retracted its legs and leaped half of the chamber's length to land on top of the creature, biting down and forcing it to the ground.

From a few meters back, Red watched all this with his breath stuck in his throat. Grabbing his cleaver, the boy slowly stepped away from the monster. The beast, however, turned in the youth's direction when the prey under its grip finally died. He gathered strength in his leg, ready to jump away as soon as the spider moved.

However, it didn't move in his direction. Instead, the monster turned around and started to climb the wall again, back towards its nest. In its mouth, it now had three different insect corpses, almost slipping through its grasp. It lacked the ability to carry anything else.

Red looked around the chamber and saw the other two spiders were also returning, each carrying their own assortment of prey back to their resting hole in the ceiling. The remaining insects dispersed from the pond into the connecting tunnels in a panic. The boy stood still watching the large bodies of the arachnids squeeze into the pits on the rock surface, disappearing inside the darkness just as quickly as they had emerged.

The youth slid down onto the ground and let out the breath he had been holding for far too long. His cleaver clattered to the floor as Red tried to recompose himself. Never had the boy stared death in its eyes this closely before.

These spiders didn't rely on direct confrontation to kill their opponent like other monsters he had met in the underground. Instead, they laid in wait for the best opportunity to strike, ending the battle in a single blow. Such an explosion of speed was unmatched in the underground, and before their victims even noticed what was happening they were already dead.

Perhaps the thing that scared Red the most out of this wasn't the fact they were so strong. Rather, it was because despite closely examining the entire chamber he didn't notice any signs of the creatures. Even now, the boy could not see anything of the spiders' webs from this distance despite knowing where they were.

Cold sweat ran down his back. Red finally understood why Viran had said this was the most dangerous territory of the caves. No amount of conventional combat experience could prepare him to deal with these spiders. He would be unable to dodge them and their explosive lunges, and now he had just found out he wasn't able to detect them either.

The realization came to him. Red was very ill-equipped to deal with these monsters.

Getting up and grabbing his weapon, the boy slowly shuffled towards the other side of the pond. The entire way, he closely examined every nook and cranny of the chamber in search of the webs. The youth was barely able to see them when he was within two meters from a certain stalactite. To his further surprise, the line was far thicker than he would have expected for an almost invisible material.

There was something special about these webs, but Red didn't dare to touch them for examination. As sneakily as he could, the boy made his way past the spiders' lair overhead and into the tunnel leading further down his route.

...

The youth had a lot to consider during the following hours, and he stopped as soon as he found a relatively safe area of the tunnels.

Red had witnessed the fearsome nature of these spiders. Taking even one of the creatures on might be a suicidal task on his part, and there was an entire nest of them expecting him farther ahead. He didn't know how many of them would be in his path either. Probably less than the centipedes, but even just a single one was enough to kill him. Not to mention, Red also had to consider the possibility they might have a spider that had opened its Spiritual Sea in their midst.

Direct confrontation was immediately thrown out of the window. However, it was not like the boy even had an option for that in the first place. They were ambushers, not active hunters. With their invisible webs, they could catch anything unaware, including Red by the looks of it. The possibility of sneaking by them seemed even more hopeless when he considered that fact.

He sighed.

'No, there has to be a way.'

After some consideration, the youth also came to a few conclusions. Since these spiders were ambushers, they probably only hung around places where they could hide in. Those three from before, for instance, all chose to make their lair in a chamber with holes they could use for cover and where prey wandered by. This meant that Red was unlikely to find any of them wandering around the narrow tunnels or blocking some of the passages.

However, thinking further on it, he still wasn't confident in making this assumption. What if there was more than one type of spider residing in the territory? Not to mention, didn't they also find their way up to the slaves' living area? They might not be as stationary as Red wished. Even if that was the case, though, the youth would hopefully be able to see or hear a creature of such large size wandering through the tunnels and avoid it in time. The potential ambushes remained the main problem.

Checking over the map, the boy saw there were a lot of chambers between him and the river, including the huge room where their main nest was located. He needed to find a way to avoid these webs, but the only way he could figure that out was by testing it.

Steeling his nerves and keeping a watchful eye, Red continued walking further down the tunnel towards the path of no return.

...

It didn't take long for the boy to come upon another relatively large chamber.

Staring from afar, he didn't dare to approach it recklessly. The place was seemingly empty, the green glow illuminating the rock floor. From this distance, though, Red wasn't able to see much of the details of the room.

After some preparation, the youth walked step by step closer to the cave chamber. Finally, he could see more of the place reveal itself to him. It was relatively smaller compared to the room with the pond, but it was still bigger than most of the sections closer to the surface. Stalactites and stalagmites covered the majority of the place, but in the middle of the stone spikes, Red could see another dark pit leading deeper into the terrain above.

It seemed too small to fit a creature the size of a giant spider, but the youth stopped moving forward either way. Looking around, he tried to find any signs of the invisible web, but even after a few minutes, he wasn't able to discover anything near him. The next thing Red examined were the tracks.

Most of them seemed similar to the herbivore insects he began seeing in this section of the cave, but he wasn't able to distinguish anything else from the marks. The boy still refused to move forward, knowing only an abundance of caution would give him a chance to make it through this alive.

After a few more minutes of silent thought, Red finally seemed to have an idea. Looking around his feet, he grabbed a small rock. Gathering the strength in his upper arm vein, he threw the stone with precision in the general area around the dark pit.

The pebble flew through the air and hit the opposite wall of the chamber without obstructions. The youth waited a bit, but nothing happened. Still not satisfied, Red picked up another rock and repeated the same process, this time aiming at a different area.

Still, no sound or movement from the hole in the floor. Instead of being relieved though, he became more nervous. It didn't make him think the chamber was safe to cross, but rather that he might have missed the webs and was just about to walk right into a spider's trap. Viran would probably call the boy paranoid, but to him, there was never enough caution he could have when it came to his own life.

For the following minute, Red continued throwing rocks around the chamber, but he seemed to hit nothing. Just as the youth was about to give up, however, he noticed something.

A small pebble seemed to suddenly change its trajectory midair as if it had hit something. The shift of direction was very small and easy to miss if one wasn't paying attention, but this was exactly the sign Red had been looking for the entire time. To confirm his suspicions, he continued throwing stones in that specific area, hoping to witness the same thing.

After a few more tries, something happened. One of the rocks seemed to crash straight on with an invisible obstacle in the air and bounced back to the ground. The boy could see a very faint and blurry line vibrating from the rebound force, and then he heard it.

A scratching noise inside the hole in the ceiling. A furry leg appeared in view and soon the dark head of a spider came through the opening. Red didn’t stay to see the rest.

Turning back, the youth began to sprint away at full speed, putting as much distance between the creature and himself as he could. Only when the boy couldn't see the green light from the chamber did he dare to stop and rest.

Between heavy breathes, Red sat down once more, slumped against the wall. This scene had become commonplace these last few days.

'That's one way blocked...'