With little time for Ryoichi to mourn, he started to rush faster. The enemies wanted to chase after him, but were terrified by the spiders.
"Is it necessary to sacrifice our lives? We can just reply the king that they are all dead."
After a small discussion, the soldiers stopped chasing. Although the danger behind was solved, but the danger down the feet was still there. With the dying of S, his power of controlling was also fading as the fish began to lose control. The road paved by fish was like a fragile bridge crumbled right behind Ryoichi.
He couldn't move as fast as others, he thought, if, if only he could be faster, he should've arrived earlier. As he was closer to the opposite bank, the bridge could not hold any longer. A single trip almost sent him to hell. He fled through the bridge made by fish, looking like a moving star over the milky way.
Almost there! Ryoichi saw the destination where some of his fellows were waiting.
"Jump!" Guard E yelled and reached his hand to him, so did other people.
The desire for living roused Ryoichi's potentials. At the last moment before all fish completely scattered, he moved all muscles, used all his strength and took a leap.
'Yes! I can do it!' Measuring the distance by sight, Ryoichi burst into tears and reached his hands to …
The gravity seemed to get stronger suddenly. The distance between Ryoichi and his fellows became infinitesimal and then larger and larger. Finally, a force dragged him into the valley, the membrane net swallowed him, and the light got farther away from him.
As he went through the net, he was close to the cliff, where this side witnessed less spiders than the other side. He grabbed the rock and tried to reach his hand to the net, while the easily passed net became like a gum from this side, hard to break through.
He had his weapon on hand and cut a few spiders that tried to attack him. Maybe had got signals from fellow spiders, more and more monsters climbed over from the other side of the net. Ryoichi explored the road paralleled to the net, meanwhile defending the attack of the spiders, but the net made no difference at different place. As said, it was a one-way membrane, so there was no chance to go up.
Maybe downside? Ryoichi thought, 'spiders are getting more, so it's all dead anyway. I might as well go down to explore if there's other ways.'
After making his minds, Ryoichi was heading to the deep sea of the trench.
As he went down deeper, the light was dimmer and the atmosphere was colder. From the distance, he seemed to see some armors and tridents slowly falling. It must be the people whose flesh was eaten up but weapons were left.
So those armors and weapons were hard enough to defend the spiders' bite, Ryoichi thought. He decided to collect and wear it. Therefore, he swam to it. Lucky! Seemed like there was no spider around. When he got it and was about to take it on, a much small spider climbed from the inside of the armor. It was too small and too fast to hold. Ryoichi wanted to shake it off the armor or hit it to death, but it climbed over his hand and took a bite!
"Ouch!"
It was late to kill it. The sweet smell of blood had spread over the water, and the monsters, big and small, surged to him.
The armor, the armor, take it on and he could hold on! Thinking this, he tried to be faster, but the more flustered he became, the harder he could put this body on that armor. A spider fell on his arm from the above and took a bite; another jumped from the side on his breast, looking at him with multiple eyes, moving the mouth, seemed like it was picking up where to take the first bite. Ryoichi didn't look back, but he heard the rustling. Not one spider, but thousands, made a loud and scary sound behind him. If he looked back, he could see a spider pyramid with its spire just arrived his back.
At first, he was still fighting, but just cleaned left arm, they climbed over his right leg.
As more and more spiders landed on his body, he could not wave the trident anymore. He was swallowed by the rustling and falling down to the deep. It was not just rustling, it was them eating his body, from arms to legs, from ears to nose. As far as he could see, there were just countless red eyes, countless hairy legs, countless mouth and countless pain. Pain, it was pain all over his body. He could feel pain at the beginning, but as the pain accumulated, pain became numb. He gave up fighting and accepting the fate of second death.
'Am I dying? Again? In the first life, I died as an ordinary worker. Second life, I was still born as an ordinary person. By saving the princess, I thought the turning point of life had come. I could be elite and no longer plain. But with not much time, I just died in a more tragic way.'
He started to lose his consciousness, and see some flashbacks of his life.
'If my life is like a game, which step did I go wrong? I think I did the right thing and try hard to live a better life. After entering this world, I learned how to live, I was being nice to save the princess, I was very careful even after I got promoted from a plain person to an elite. I did everything I should do, so why do I have to suffer from all this?!'
Anger took him back from coma. Until then, his body was not much left. However, he was still alive, feeling every bite of those monsters eating his body. The image in front of him was turning from blurry to clear, and the vision seemed to be separated into different dimensions. Moreover, it seemed like his lost tactile sensation got back.
'What's this familiar feeling? Am I reincarnating again? Now what? A spider?'
Before the last bite of his flesh was ingurgitating, his soul, as he had no mouth right now, made a final roar in the darkness: "I won't die! Even reborn, I won't be a spider!"
'Be a spider down here is just another plain life in the darkness! Descended to the slave of spider mother, and scramble for food with others. Let's say if a hero comes to slaughter us, I might be the first one to die. I won't accept such life again! I don't want to repeat the same life as an NPC in a game, I don't want to be a henchman killed by the protagonist to upgrade and fight the final villain, don't want to be insignificant anymore!'
Suddenly, a light broke into his minds and when he opened his eyes again. He was naked but alive. Look down and check his body, he was a human, not a spider.