Free Web NovelChapter 6: Mantis Mortis
Nuri’s heart almost jumped out of his body, but his instincts knew better. He did not wait for it to come.
He stepped back and tucked himself into a jagged recess in the wall.
If it wanted him, it would have to swerve through the blockade and into the narrow wall.
The clicking resumed, slower now, as if perplexed by his move, while it dragged itself closer to his side of the wall.
When the thing edged into view, Nuri finally saw what had killed Leonard. Its carapace was pale, dulled by the cave’s dampness. Two segmented jaws clicked beneath a narrow head. Scythe-like arms, only a bit shorter than his sword, folded high against its body. It was the size of a large dog, and each joint bent with a click that sounded like bones breaking.
’Baby Mantis... I knew it! And not the poisonous kind.’
Baby Mantis was one of the middle-tier 1-Star monsters, with archetypes such as poisonous or raging. You could tell its archetype by the color of its scythe and carapace: pale for normal, green for poisonous, red for raging, and so on.
In Nuri’s case, he was lucky to face its normal counterpart — the least dangerous one. But that didn’t mean he could approach it carelessly. What it did to Leonard was nothing short of surgical dismantlement.
The mantis tried to wedge itself past the blockade. Its scythes scraped the stone first, snagging on the loose brick, which bought Nuri an opening he had been waiting for.
He stepped out of the recess and swung.
"Hyah!"
The iron sword caught the mantis on the side of the head, and the impact shot through his wrist and up into his teeth. Its hardened shell did not crack, but the mantis screamed as its head snapped aside.
’I gotta aim for the eyes!’ freēwēbnovel.com
It thrashed in the gap in mania, with one of its scythes pinned against the wall. Nuri ducked under the free arm and drove the point into the bulge on the side of its skull.
However, the mantis jerked at the last second, and the tip of the blade only grazed its shell, carving a shallow line. A thin spray of black ichor hit his face, and he recoiled.
The mantis yanked its trapped scythe free and lashed sideways. Nuri saw it coming, but it was too fast for him to react. He tried to twist away, but it barely helped. The edge carved a searing line across his thigh, shallow enough that he stayed standing, but deep enough to soak his pants red within seconds.
"Argh! Damn it!"
Nuri stumbled a step back into the recess and braced his shoulder against the stone wall.
He couldn’t let the mantis trap him, so he surged forward and drove the blade in again, aiming for the hinge of its jaw. The point skittered off a hard plate, forcing the mantis back as it screeched.
’Just one more!’
Nuri stepped in, going for its eye to end this once and for all.
He was confident he could finish the mantis with one last strike, but reality had never been pretty.
His injured thigh lit up the second he put weight on it, throwing his balance off. The lunge fell short and scraped off the carapace again instead of finding the eye.
The mantis didn’t miss its chance. It surged into the space he had given up and heaved through the blockade, both scythes coming free at the same time. The first one missed his shoulder by a hair’s breadth, while the second cut a shallow line under his ribs.
He scrambled back into the recess.
’Shit, shit, shit!’
The mantis was through. It stood in the open path, its scythes free to swing in any direction, while Nuri had a wounded leg and only a narrow space that could become his burial ground.
—Kikiki!
—Kikiki!
The cackles came from the other side of the blockade — two sets of them — running fast toward the crossroads.
[Run. Now.]
’I know!’
Nuri shoved off the wall, swung the blade wildly to buy himself space, and ran. He was not about to die a dog’s death like Leonard.
"Hah. Hah."
The path behind him filled with cackles and clicks. He did not look back once, focusing only on running the hell out of this place.
His thigh screamed with every step, and the cut under his ribs pulled deeper every time he sucked in air, but he soldiered on like a madman with only survival in mind.
—Kikiki!
The mantises were fast approaching when the path ahead split in two.
The left mouth was wide enough for a horse, while the right was even tighter than the passage where he had first spawned in.
Nuri immediately veered right, hoping the passage was too narrow for all three mantises to barge in.
The passage clamped tight the moment he forced his way in, stone rasping the skin off the backs of his hands. The pressure dug into his wounded ribs, stealing his breath, but he gritted his teeth and twisted sideways to make room.
Behind him, the lead mantis hit the same fork and tried the right path. Its head and front legs slipped in, along with its scythes folded tight. But as it pushed deeper, its abdomen wedged hard against the walls, grinding away its dull carapace.
Even so, the mantis kept driving forward anyway, black ichor from its head wound smearing a wet trail.
’Should I go for it?’
Breathing laboriously, Nuri seriously considered killing all three of them in this narrow passageway.
[Trust your gu—]
’Rosie?’
Nuri desperately glared at the silent window.
’Rosaria, you there?’
Silence.
Nuri hadn’t heard her voice in eighteen years of this world, yet whenever the window failed to answer, the silence hit louder than anything he had ever heard.
’Fucking perfect timing.’
Her daily allotted words had run out. It was a divine restriction she imposed on herself to keep her powers from leaking and being discovered.
He let out an incredulous sigh and turned back toward the mantis. Her words of affirmation only steeled his resolve. freёwebnovel.com
The mantis kept wriggling toward him, forcing its carapace through any gap it could find. Its scythes dug into the walls, anchoring it as it tried to hurl the rest of its weight forward.
"I got you, motherfucker!"
Nuri braced his back against the stone, gathered what momentum he could, and stabbed for its eye.
