Free Web NovelChapter 7: Tip: Stab
Nuri drove the blade in with all his strength, but the moment the tip touched the mantis’s right eye, it ripped a scythe free from the wall and slashed at his face, as if it knew he would get close to capitalize on its immobilization.
Luckily, his blade was longer, sinking into the eye a heartbeat before the scythe reached his face. It whistled past his ear and struck the stone above him, throwing sparks that lit the passageway for a second.
The blade did not sink all the way in, however. The mantis screamed and thrashed its head from side to side, dragging the sword with it.
"Fuck!"
The hilt jerked hard in Nuri’s grip and almost tore from his fingers.
He twisted, freed his other hand to clamp around the hilt, and wrenched the blade out in time.
—Krakrak! freёwebnovel.com
It did not die.
’This is the worst!’
The thrashing only got worse. The pierced eye streamed black blood down its face, while the other one rolled wild in its socket.
"Gross..."
The free scythe continued its manic streak, slashing through the empty space above its own head.
Nuri took a sharp breath and stabbed for the same eye.
Its whipping head was hard to pinpoint, and the tip skated across the side of its skull instead.
"Die already!"
Nuri stabbed for the left eye.
This time, the tip caught the rim of the socket and slid off the curve beneath it. The mantis screamed louder.
He stabbed.
The blade went between two segmented mandibles and lodged in the soft tissue at the back. Feeling the flesh, he twisted at once, just before the mantis bit down on the steel.
—Kiiii!
Nuri wrenched the blade free and stabbed again.
He stabbed through the right eye a third time. He stabbed into the crown until the shell finally cracked under the tip. He stabbed into the seam between head and thorax until the head hung loose.
"Die, die, die!"
Nuri kept stabbing.
He stabbed until his arm could barely lift the blade. He stabbed until the screams turned thin and wet. He stabbed until the head stopped whipping, the jaws stopped clicking, and the scythe stopped thrashing.
"Just die!"
The mantis went limp.
Nuri pulled the sword out one last time and let his shoulder fall against the wall. He was covered in blood up to his elbows.
"Haaaah."
[You have slain a Baby Mantis (1★).]
[XP +60] (Bonus!)
[Tip: A Star Rating difference gives you a bonus or penalty to XP and Coin gains!]
Just when he was about to catch a break...
—Kikiki! Kikiki!
The cackling started up again. Through the gap above the dead mantis’s mangled head, he saw two pale shapes climbing onto its back.
They were clearly smaller than the dead one, half a head shorter at the thorax, with shorter scythes to match. Their smaller size meant one thing only.
"Ah crap..."
They were already squeezing through the spaces the first one had been too wide to fit through.
"No, no, no!"
The first walked over the corpse and dropped into the passage in front of him, its jaws clicking rapidly.
Nuri instantly drove the blade the moment it landed.
The tip struck the front of its head and skidded off the shell. The mantis screamed and lunged anyway, scythes whipping out menacingly.
The third one was already halfway through behind the second.
Nuri was out of room to maneuver. The passage was tight enough that he could not hastily retreat without scraping his back off.
Before he could take a step back, the second mantis was already on him. One scythe hooked his arm, another raked his shoulder, and its jaws snapped at his sword hand.
"Get OFF!"
Nuri slammed forward with everything he had left. His shoulder caught the second mantis under the head and drove it back into the third, perched on the dead body’s crown. They tangled for space, legs scrambling.
"Now!"
He drove his good leg up the dead mantis’s thorax. The blow rocked the corpse just enough for the two mantises to lose their grip on the curve and slide down its wide abdomen.
He picked the closer face and lunged the sword.
It caught the third low in the eye and punched straight through its brain. Black blood spattered across the dead mantis’s back and his wrist.
—Kiiii!
"Time to move!"
Nuri turned in the cramped space and shoved himself deeper into the passage.
His thigh gave in as he moved, but he caught himself with his palm flat on the stone, smearing his own blood across the wall from back to front.
"Fuck. Keep fucking moving!" freewebnovel.cσ๓
Behind him, the cackling sounded even more monstrous, though thinner now. Claws scraped against the smooth surface of the corpse’s shell, and one of them screamed at the other, or at him. He couldn’t tell, and he didn’t want to.
He did not look back.
The passage stretched into the abyss, seeming to have no end.
Nuri moved sideways the whole way to avoid scraping his wounds against the jagged stone.
"I need water..."
He shouldn’t have been thirsty this early into his first run, but panic and sheer focus had dried him out completely.
Fortunately, he was capable enough to kill the mantis and earn some LCs, which he could use to buy water and food in the Labyrinth Shop.
It would have to wait, however. Nuri could still hear the cackling behind him, albeit fainter than it had ever been. Maybe they had given up the chase, or maybe they had fallen silent to trick him.
There was no knowing what these Labyrinth monsters were thinking. They could be quite intelligent, even for a 1-Star.
Somewhere along the way, Nuri lost track of which side of him was bleeding and which side was just numb.
It wasn’t a good sign.
As he moved further into the narrow passageway, a faint glow began to bleed through the dark ahead of him.
At first, he thought he was hallucinating. It was so dim it could have been an afterimage from the sparks the mantis’s blade had struck off the ceiling.
He was that crazy.
Nuri blinked hard, and it was still there, washing the curve of the passage wall in pale gray.
’Light. Real light?’
