Chapter 336:Not going to happen.

Chapter 336: 336:Not going to happen.

There were small movements everywhere; inside cracks, behind stone, along the ceiling, and within narrow passages. Dozens became hundreds.

Silver’s jaw tightened.

Then Spatial Sense brushed against something deeper in the cavern. He stopped breathing for a moment.

It was difficult to interpret but something was there. Far beyond the strongest portion of his detection range. It was large and still.

He concentrated but his headache began almost immediately.

The shape remained indistinct. It could have been a strange rock formation, it could have been several creatures clustered together, or it could have been one very large creature.

Silver had absolutely no desire to find out.

He immediately deactivated Spatial Sense. The cavern returned to darkness beyond his headlamp.

Silver stood there.

He looked toward the third passage, then toward the cocoons, then toward the ceiling filled with tiny crawling shapes. One spider dropped several centimeters on a strand of web.

He took one step backward.

"No." He took another step. "I’ve made enough bad decisions underground."

He turned.

The walk back toward the queen’s route was considerably faster than the walk away from it.

Silver didn’t run. Running through a spider-infested cavern felt like an excellent way to accidentally slam face-first into a web.

He maintained a controlled pace while keeping his handgun ready. Several Pale Cave Weavers moved across the walls but he ignored them.

One crawled across the floor ahead. He went around. He didn’t need another fight, especially not one that could potentially attract everything else living here.

The luminescent marker finally appeared. Silver felt an unreasonable amount of relief. He reached the queen’s passage and stepped inside, then turned toward the open cavern.

From here, it still looked peaceful, large, potentially useful, and absolutely full of spiders.

He looked toward the upward tunnel.

"The giant worm route suddenly looks wonderful."

He started climbing.

For the next several hours, Silver regretted those words. The queen’s route was horrible. It was not dangerous at first, simply exhausting.

The passage climbed steeply for almost forty minutes before suddenly curving around a massive section of stone. He followed it horizontally, expecting the upward slope to resume.

Instead, the tunnel descended. He stared at it in defeat.

"Again?"

He checked the queen’s marks to find they continued downward.

Silver followed.

The descent lasted twenty minutes, then the tunnel curved, then climbed, then curved again.

He had no idea how something as enormous as the queen had managed to navigate such an unnecessarily complicated route without becoming irritated enough to simply dig straight upward.

Maybe it had, perhaps this was the straight route by worm standards but that thought wasn’t encouraging.

Silver climbed.

His injured thigh gradually began aching again. The medicine had done its job, but it couldn’t eliminate fatigue.

His shoulder was worse. Every time he had to pull himself over a ledge, the claw wound reminded him that it existed.

He compensated by using his right arm more heavily. Another vertical section appeared. He retrieved the climbing rope.

His boots scraped against stone as he pulled himself upward, his breathing became heavier.

Halfway up, loose rock broke beneath his foot.

His body dropped but the rope caught him. Silver slammed against the wall, pain shooting through his ribs. He hung there for a few minutes, then slowly looked upward.

"I hate this mountain."

He repositioned his foot and continued climbing. At the top, he rested for several minutes, then continued.

The queen’s trail entered a chamber filled with narrow stone formations. Silver crossed.

He began using the luminescent markers less frequently because there was little chance of losing the queen’s trail. The gouges were too obvious.

Instead, he saved them for major intersections. Every hour or so, Silver tested the network module but the result never changed.

[Searching for External Networks...]

Silver waited.

[No External Signal Detected.]

He switched it off. Later...

[Searching for External Networks...]

Nothing.

[No External Signal Detected.]

Silver stared at the device.

"I am going upward."

No response.

"I know I’m going upward."

The device continued displaying zero connectivity.

Silver stored it.

"You’re beginning to make this personal."

The Emergency Survival Beacon remained inactive. He considered trying it, then decided against it again.

No point wasting its power when the network module couldn’t detect even the faintest outside signal.

Silver continued.

Several hours into the climb, he encountered another group of four worms. This time they were directly in his path.

Silver noticed them before they noticed him. He crouched behind a rock formation. Spatial Sense showed the creatures moving slowly through the tunnel ahead.

He considered fighting. He could probably kill them but his body hurt, and every fight risked attracting something stronger.

He waited for a little over ten minutes but the worms remained where they are. One had stopped completely while another began scratching at the wall.

Silver’s patience disappeared.

He looked around. A narrow ledge ran along one side of the chamber. It wasn’t part of the queen’s route, but it reconnected beyond the worms.

He studied it with Spatial Sense. It was possible but dangerous, still, it was better than shooting.

He climbed.

The ledge was barely wide enough for his boots. Silver pressed his back against the wall and moved sideways.

Below him, one of the worms clicked.

He stopped.

The creature raised its head. He remained completely still. The worm’s eyesight was poor. Its head moved, then lowered.

Silver continued.

One careful step at a time.

He eventually reached the other side and dropped quietly into the tunnel. Then continued without looking back.

"Still better than fighting."

His body disagreed.

His legs were beginning to feel heavy. The climb continued.

He crawled through one section where the ceiling had partially collapsed. He crossed another fissure using the rope.

At one point, the queen’s path disappeared into a hole that dropped almost twenty meters before curving upward again.

Silver stared down.

"No."

He searched nearby.

Spatial Sense revealed another narrow passage circumventing the drop. It took almost forty minutes but he used it anyway.

The alternate route eventually reconnected with the queen’s markings.

He kept going.