"Y'know, the one the big ol group opened up that you mentioned. Oh, oh, and while we're at it, have any other openings been found?" 6 continued.
[No. No other entries have been created as far as the records of Trivrium show.]
"Right, right. Any chance the spiders noticed the entrance and cared to patch it up?"
[As far as the latest intelligence sent to Trivrium goes, no efforts had been made to close the opening.]
At the same time as the text appeared in front of 6's eyes, an arrow appeared as well, in typical Trivrium fashion.
It pointed off toward the distance, directing him toward another side of the spider's nest. There was no way to tell how far away it was exactly, but 6 had a feeling that it would be a reasonable distance.
This wasn't far from where Trivrium initially dropped him off when she telported him to this world, and he doubted she would teleport him to somewhere on the opposite side of the most important part of his mission here.
It would be too counterproductive to have him walk for an entire day, or even more, as it was difficult to estimate how large the nest truly was, to get to the opposite side of the nest in order to find the.
No, from what he had learned of her in his short time with her, Trivrium would place him within a reasonable distance of the entrance.
She would want to make the mission as simple as possible for him, unless there was some other reason for placing him here.
Folrost would be a good one, considering it was the sister land to the town that the spider nest took over, Erver.
Placing him here even if it wasn't close to the entrance Trivrium knows of for the sake of gathering intelligence would be smart.
But from the mission details, it sounded like Trivrium didn't know, or didn't consider it important, that they were sister lands, as she hadn't mentioned Folrost even a single time.
It was probably a coincidence that he ended up at Folrost when she pointed him toward the nearest town.
But who knows, maybe she knew more than she let on. 6 could only guess at what her knowledge, or her intentions, included.
His first action was not to walk directly toward the arrow, but to walk in the opposite direction of the nest, putting some distance between it and himself, so he wouldn't have to walk near the spider's territory before he reached the entrance.
Luckily, he had a personal gps, otherwise he might have had to walk the entire width of the nest in hopes of finding the entrance.
It would've been a total waste of time, so much so that he may have decided to try to gnaw his own entrance into the nest if that was the case.
After a long period of walking, as finding a proper tree to sleep in for the night,
It was hardly even large enough to be called an entrance for a small crawlspace, much less a truly massive spider nest that put every skyscraper 6 had ever seen to shame.
Entrance wise, it was more of a hole punctured into the nest, behind which 6 could only see darkness. The hole itself didn't seem to be cut into the nest, with a sharp object or something similar, as he had expected it to be. Rather, it looked like an explosion had been set off on the nest, resembled a breach charge blowing up on a wall.
What's more, the area surrounding the nest was devoid of trees, but that wasn't to say the land was flat.
The strange bumps he hadn't had a chance to investigate previously were everywhere, covering the entire landscape as far as he could see.
Not only were they more frequent, they were much, much larger.
Even the smallest bumps were at least 10-15 feet in width here.
In particular, there was one directly nest to the hole in the nest, not even five feet away from it. It was the only one he could refer to as small, only spanning about eight feet in length and about two feet tall.
The breach in the nest was the result of a massive group of people attacking the nest, giving their lives to open it and attempt to lead an assault to the center, to wipe out the infestation.
As 6 already knew, that ultimately failed. Here was the breach, the pin prick that their entire suicide attack achieved, yet he saw no signs of battle. As gruesome as the idea was, though it had occurred to him already, he had to admit the most likely probability, even as much as the idea perturbed him.
These bumps, these strange warts on the surface of the webbed ground, were probably covering corpses. Thousands of corpses.
Like the cocoons spiders typically weaved to store or trap their prey, this was likely their way of ensuring the death of their attackers, as well as preserving their corpses, for whatever it they may be using them for.
Trivrium's records showed that the spiders had never actively searched out prey on their own, which if they needed food to survive, the sheer number of spiders would ensure that they couldn't get enough for all of them without searching for it elsewhere.
So the only option was that they didn't rely on any outside food sources.
Either the person behind this infestation handles that somehow, or whatever natural treasure drew them here provided enough energy for them that they didn't need food. Or, alternately, whatever overarching species of spiders this was, whatever spider gave birth to all these little monsters, was of the variety that didn't require food at all.
There was too little known about this infestation in general, and even further, 6 knew too little about spiders themselves. The few hours he prepared before coming here wasn't enough to become an expert.
He couldn't claim to know whether these spiders required food or not.
If he could figure out why they stored these corpses, if not for the sake of food, it could be a big help to his investigation. Additionally, he should try to confirm that there were in fact corpses beneath the warts.
But just like previously, he couldn't risk cutting through the webs in order to look inside, else he would definitely alert the large amount of spiders walking around the area.
He needed to enter the nest without a single spider noticing, otherwise if they had some way of communicating with other spiders, particularly in the nest, they would know he had entered, which would make his reconnaissance much more difficult.
As much as he wanted to check inside the warts, it would have to wait until later. He could check it in a less important area, at a less important time.
Ignoring the burning curiosity in his chest, 6 began walking toward the entrance.
Using the warts covering the area, he remained hidden, not alerting even a single spider.
It was actually quite easy, as the spiders weren't exactly good at finding people. If you could walk without alerting the spiders via the vibrations through the webs, all you had to do was stay out of the eye sight of their creepy eight eyes, which was shockingly easy considering they had absolutely terrible eye sight. As long as he didn't walk directly in front of them, they couldn't see he was there at all.
Hence why just having obstacles to use to hide made it so much easier to deal with large amounts of spiders, and also why he could easily sneak right into the entrance of the nest with ease.
In Folrost.
Plono, who had just returned home, walked into the room where her father was sitting on his chair, as he usually was.
"Dad, do you think Karkum is gonna kill 6 when he comes back this time? He's been raving for the entire day about the mess he made before immediately leaving town" Plono asked him, standing just inside the room, opposite of Cypius' chair.
"No."
"Have you seen him though? He's been red in the face ever since." She said with a slight chuckle
"Plono, you know Karkum is not the innkeeper he is pretending to be currently. He is still what he was, no matter how convincing the façade." Cypius said, hoping to pull his daughter back to reality.
"But 6 isn't even here. Why is he pretending if there's no one to pretend with?" She asked.
Cypius shook his head, continuing, "When someone becomes someone they aren't, it is more than pretending. It is necessary to be who you are becoming at all times, unless otherwise necessary. Until the need to disguise himself is gone, he will continue to be like this. You can't become attached my dear."
Plono said nothing in response, she just stood still, staring at the ground.
"I'm sorry, but as good as it would be to pretend things aren't what they are, we must remain in the truth of things. 6 is a stranger, one we must protect ourselves from, even if he truly wants to help. But at the same time, we need the help he provides, or more specifically, the help of the one behind him."
"If he is helping us, why do we have to trick him."
"Because he can help us. Because the entity behind him is stronger than you can imagine, stronger than all of Folrost, stronger than all of Erver ever was. We need that strength, but at the same time it could ruin us." Cypius said. "And Karkum becoming who he is, that is only part of that protection. He is just doing what he must."
"How does tricking 6 protect us?" Plono asked, not understanding why they had to be so underhanded.
"Because we know things. Things the entity behind him needs to know. If we simply tell him we know these things, we must explain how, and why, we know these things." Cypius said. "But we cannot explain the how or why of this, not without becoming a target. So we must lead 6 to these answers on his own accord, letting him believe he discovered these things."
There were many words unsaid between the father and daughter, but they both knew what they were thinking. There were things neither of them wanted to talk about, but both of them knew it was necessary.
After some uncomfortable silence, Plono finally spoke up.
"But dad...he's..." Plono trailed off, not finishing her statement.
"No. He isn't. He isn't Karkum. You know who he is. Your uncle is gone, and the man who has become Karkum is just performing a job. That is another entity, another being entirely."