Red silently watched the colony. On the rare occasions the spiders moved, it was just a few of them diving in or out of their holes. They remained still, doing nothing as their soulless eyes stared blankly ahead.

'No, that's not it...'

They were waiting for something, and the youth had a good guess as to what. A few minutes later, Red saw a lot of movement in one area of the colony, and a lot of spiders started to climb down their webs. Activity spread to their surroundings as other members of their community went over to check, but those a bit farther away didn't bother to move. Five of the creatures had taken the initiative to descend - a mere fraction of their numbers, but still a terrifying scene for whoever had to face the monsters.

The boy’s gaze followed their moving figures before they reached the ground and disappeared amidst rocks and web threads. Red was not able to see what was happening, but soon the spiders started to make their way back up. One of them, in particular, had a large round insect clasped between its mandibles. It looked similar to the beasts he had found within the tunnels, but he wasn't able to confirm from this far.

Soon the creature that had killed the prey disappeared into one of the holes in the ceiling, and peace once more returned to the arachnids. The process repeated itself a few times over the next hour, but this time in different sections of the chamber. Something always alerted the creatures in the area, and a handful of them would climb down to check things out, always bringing back some kind of smaller prey in their fangs.

Red sat down on the floor and observed all of it. None of the bigger spiders moved much during that, and whenever they did it always sent some kind of alarm to the rest of their colony. The lesser members moved out of their way as fast as they could as these enormous beings accommodated themselves in whatever position they pleased.

The boy quietly sat still throughout the whole process. Red waited and waited as if something would eventually change in the scenery in front of him if enough time passed. Something that would give him a glimpse of hope or opportunity. But nothing happened.

'What am I doing?'

He did not know. Throughout this whole journey, his difficulties had been getting consistently worse. Yet through luck and ingenuity, he persevered and always found a way to survive. But this? This was beyond his abilities. It was not fair. But then again, it was never meant to be.

Red wondered how many people had reached this far in the past, only to have their hopes ultimately dashed. Surely, he and Viran couldn't have been the only ones with open spiritual veins to end up down here. When he thought about it, maybe this was why none of the slaves ever heard of someone who had managed to escape these caves.

Nothing made the boy special compared to the old soldier or those who came before him and failed all the same. In fact, Red started to doubt the veracity of Viran's map. He had seen the man fight against a creature that had opened its spiritual sea and although he won, he paid an enormous price for it. Even if the man was far stronger than him, the youth had a hard time believing he had gotten past this chamber alive and verified the existence of a river on the other side.

Besides, why didn't he just keep on going after locating the tributary? What was it that stopped him? Red couldn't think of any reasonable explanation right now beyond Viran's enigmatic words on needing help to escape. Perhaps the story about a possible route to the surface was all just a lie to give the youth some hope.

'That doesn't sound like him at all...'

The man had always been very blunt and honest with his words. He had never hesitated to crush Red's hopes in the past, so why would he lie to him just before his death? Both of them had acknowledged that the task the boy had ahead of him would already be impossibly hard, so he just couldn't see the need for Viran to deceive him.

Snapping out of the daze, Red slapped both of his cheeks.

'There's no point in sulking. Maybe I missed something.'

If the old soldier had indeed managed to make it past this chamber then it was not by brute force. Looking around, he decided to examine his surroundings for any possible clues.

The chamber wasn't completely covered in the web. There was a relatively large perimeter right outside the entrance that the spiders hadn't occupied, and Red decided to search this area before approaching. The first thing he discovered was the presence of more tunnels leading into the room. Like the map indicated, the way he had chosen to travel by wasn't the only one leading to this monster lair. Interesting but currently useless information.

After that, the youth started to scrutinize the ground for footprints. He found a few of them, but they were mostly located near the entrance of those tunnels. None of them lead to the web forest up ahead, and Red wasn't particularly surprised. Monsters had a very good sense of smell, and while they might not be able to notice one or two spiders laying in ambush, there was no way they wouldn't discover a chamber full of more than one hundred of them.

However, this brought another question the boy wondered about in the past. How did they keep themselves fed? From the last hour of observation, it was clear to him that they were still able to hunt for prey located inside this room. But if they didn't come from outside the chamber then did that mean they were living inside this room?

It seemed impossible with all these webs blocking their way, but Red remembered the round creatures he had found before. They were one meter long and had flat bodies, occupying little space compared to most other giant monsters in these tunnels, so it wasn't an outlandish idea thinking they could have a nest in this chamber. Those insects lived in large groups and even in that small tunnel section, Red had found more than 30 of them. What about in a chamber of this size, how many could fit in here? Hundreds, maybe more than a thousand of them? It would be enough to keep the spiders fed considering that, from what the boy had learned from Viran, they could go a long time without food.

The boy thought about employing the same distraction tactic again if he did find these creatures, but that didn't seem possible in this scenario. First, he would need to navigate through these threads without getting noticed and locate a large enough group of insects. If he was able to sneak by these obstacles unnoticed, what would he need the bait for anyways? Second, he needed to make enough noise to alarm the creatures, and that was as likely to get him discovered by the spiders as just bumping into their web. There were many other problems with the idea, but those two alone made it virtually impossible to enact.

It was a dead-end, so Red decided to explore farther into the chamber. Surprisingly, he was indeed able to find similar holes to the ones he saw in the past with signs of insect tracks around them. However, the burrows were still far too small even for a kid to fit in, so they weren't of much use to the boy.

With his options exhausted in this corner of the cave, the youth had no choice but to investigate the web forest up close. Carefully sneaking closer to the threads, he kept an eye on the spiders in the ceiling. Although they were relatively far away from the boy, he didn't dare to let his guard down.

Arriving at the edge of the web forest, Red started to circle the perimeter and examined the blockade. Unsurprisingly, there were no blind spots the kid could see upon close examination. The creatures had done a good job of covering the ground and its surroundings, and the netting only seemed to be sparser towards the ceiling where the spiders lived. Although the monster didn't seem to get stuck in their own threads, Red imagined it could still prove to be an annoyance to move around with the material blocking their way. Unfortunately, he wasn't capable of flying or climbing the walls, or else this would have been made easier. The boy also tried to locate some sort of hole that Viran had perhaps dug near the barrier, but he found nothing.

Another thing of note was the coloration of the webs. When they were alone, the threads looked almost invisible. However, with so many of them bunched together and the bright illumination of the moonstone veins, their appearance became clearer to Red from farther away. Examining the gaps between the lines, the youth found that it was indeed feasible for him to cross through them. There was enough space to move ahead, but it wasn't a straight path. In fact, there was no path at all. He couldn't even see the other side of the chamber.

The sheer amount of webbing made scouting a route a hard task. The threads were crisscrossed in irregular ways, and the boy would need to weave through them on the fly, sometimes crawling, sometimes jumping. And that was only for what he could immediately see. This alone would require extreme care and precision he wasn't confident he had - all of that, just to avoid bumping into anything. But even then how would he know what awaited him ahead? What if there was another section that had been completely webbed shut, like the ones he had found before? It was just an extremely risky and uncertain plan, and it would be Red's last option.

Unfortunately for him, though, he found nothing else. The boy checked this section of the chamber again, hoping to stumble upon something he had missed on his first pass.

Nothing.

He tried again, this time spending hours in search of a hidden passage or anything that would help him get to the other side.

Still nothing.

Red thought about trying again, but he knew he was wasting his time. Slumping down against a rock wall, he reflected on everything he had seen up to this point.

'What am I missing?'

Was the boy merely not perceptive enough to spot some trick or secret tunnel the man used to get past this? Was it possible Viran really sneaked his way through the web forest without being noticed?

'This is silly... How can I even pretend to know everything about Viran to decide whether he could do something or not?'

Red remembered how the man was not detected by the insectoid until right before he attacked. Who knew what other tricks and abilities he had in his repertoire? The youth understood little about that old soldier and it was presumptuous of his part to guess what he was capable of.

Coming to this conclusion, however, didn't bring him any comfort. It only meant that the toughest option was the only option in the end.

Red closed his eyes and took a deep breath. There was no going back. The only way was forward.

'Since that's the case, what's the point in hesitating?'

The youth was tired and spent, both physically and mentally, but he felt as if he had done his best. Getting this far already, who would have believed a malnourished child slave could do it? Not even he was confident in his chances when his journey started. Yet, here he was. Above all, Red had proved himself wrong and if this was the way it had to end then he didn't really feel sad.

'Viran was at peace with his own death... If there's anything I can hope to match him in, it is with my attitude.'

He opened his eyes and got up, ready to face his own destiny.