The orange daylight peeked shyly through the canopy, illuminating the ground full of sticks and pine cones. This was hell to tread barefoot, so our pacing had slowed down significantly ever since we had entered the forest.

  Right now, however, we were taking a break. Myrra was sitting on the ground, laying her back on a tree, eyes closed. She was not doing well; her paleness was not improving, and she was violently sweating, sometimes almost falling to the ground too. I opened the sack and offered her one of the better-looking fruits and a canteen.

  "Drink. You need water."

  She opened her eyes slightly and took only the canteen, almost dropping it. With some difficulty, she tilted the canteen to her lips and drank a few sips, returning it to me.

  I kept looking at her.

  She must have sensed my apprehension because, breathlessly, she said:

  "Spiritus... Atrophy. No Essence," she pointed to the surroundings and exhaled, "need to sleep."

  Again, no clue what you mean, but I kinda get the memo.

  "We rest for some time," I said to her. She nodded and closed her eyes. This was our second break. We’d had one a few hours earlier, but I felt we needed another. What worried me most was that the day was slipping away. If night fell, we might have to climb a tree — and given her condition... that would be a problem.

  Sitting at the base of another tree, across from her, I began planning our next move.

  Getting lost in this forest would be super easy; I'd have to think of a way to ensure we kept walking forward and not in circles. I remembered something about always keeping two points of reference aligned, but I didn't think it would work in a forest like this one. We might have to wait for the lights and hopefully not walk in circles too much. And that was assuming the lights did not appear all around us, like last time.

  Sigh... dude, what has my life become?

  This was all still completely crazy, but... some things here simply had no explanation other than... magic. I touched the amulet on my chest. The idea of having died and being reborn on another planet was scary, absurd, ridiculous, confusing, and a bunch of other things, but...

  But it was liberating, in a way.

  Will I be reborn again if I die?

  I looked at the sky. Maybe.

  But who would have thought? Reincarnation, huh? Actually, scratch that —a lot of people 'would have thought.' There were, like, entire religions about it...

  Well, it's fine. I mean, not like my life was interesting before, but... I still had time. Maybe I could've, I don't know, done something useful.

  I only hope Grandma didn't get too sad, I thought.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  It's in the past now, anyways.

  'Clack'

  My head whipped to the side immediately, searching for the origin of the sound.

  To the right, a huge spider, as big as a poodle, crept slowly toward a sleeping Myrra.

  What the fuck.

  I had never seen a spider of that size. It was a deep purple and absolutely revolting — I had always hated insects. The sheer size of the thing was intimidating.

  It was completely ignoring me, so I stood up and slowly circled to its back, knife in hand. Thankfully, I kept the blade by my waist at all times. Stepping on the spider would have been more efficient, but I had no shoes on, and my feet were completely destroyed from all the walking. If that thing bit me on the foot, it would be game over.

  Staying in its blind spot, I crept closer. The insect’s back was marked with black stripes, and its disgustingly long legs made it disturbingly agile. Before it could get any nearer to the sleeping beauty over there, I sprang forward and drove the knife straight down into the top of its head, pinning it to the ground.

  It struggled in agony for a few seconds, and I called Myrra.

  "Myrra, wake up."

  "..."

  Great.

  The spider stopped moving a few seconds later, and I approached it slowly. Getting a stick from the ground, I poked it and watched for movement. It seemed dead for real.

  I used the same stick to poke Myrra. Why not?

  "Oi, wake up."

  She wearily opened her eyes, looking at me and then at the dead spider right next to her.

  "Waaaah!" She screamed in a high-pitched voice and scrambled away. Heh.

  "It's dead," I said, placating her. "Know what these are?"

  These things cannot be normal spiders. I refuse to believe it.

  She seemed a bit out of it but got closer to the corpse to inspect it. Now that I thought about it, that was the first time I had used that knife—other than for cutting cheese, I mean.

  "Hmmm, Kroahm," she said, "no essence, but there is monster?" She mumbled.

  Monster? Yeah, that definitely wasn't an ordinary—

  "Whoa, wait, what are you doing?" I worriedly asked her.

  She was opening the insect up with the knife, scrambling its insides, and making a mess of everything around her in the process — including me.

  "Checking for core," she explained, matter-of-factly.

  Okay, another thing I should pretend to understand, got it.

  "Find one?" I asked, trying to rid myself of the grossness of the spider's innards. Why did it have to be so... slimy?

  She didn't respond immediately, focused on her task. Geez, she'd get lines by how often she frowned, honestly.

  "... Argh, Vidya," she said aggressively, an annoyed expression on her face. She turned to me, "No core," as if expecting me to share her disappointment.

  What did a core even look like? I couldn't ask her, but it would be nice to have an idea.

  "Vidya," I confirmed, unconvincingly.

  "Nnn, don't say. Bad word."

  What the... didn't she just say it? ...Whatever.

  I risked a question. "What level was this?" I asked, poking the spider with the stick.

  She stared at me. She often did that when she didn't understand something.

  "Uhh, what stage? This monster."

  "No core," she repeated, straight-faced.

  "Right, right. No core."

  Ouch. It seems a core is needed to classify the thing. Or maybe "No core" is a stage in itself.

  Approaching the corpse and taking my knife out, I cleaned it on the grass and leaves scattered on the ground.

  "Won't there be more of these around?" I half-asked her, half-stated to myself while grabbing our supply sack. These things would be a nightmare to spot at night. Besides... if this forest had spiders this big...

  "Well, it's still better than those zombies and monsters back there," I said, trying to stay positive. She nodded.

  "It's okay," she kicked the spider, "this weak."

  "Yeah, but... what else is in this forest? Spiders might not be the only thing we... what?"

  "NNNnn!" She pointed behind me, "Spide—!"

  Even before she finished warning me, I was turning around and slashing at the air.

  'Splurt'

  The spider flew a few meters and hit a tree, suffering more from the blow than from the cut, I suspected. Not before leaving some slimy bits in my face, though.

  Impressed by my own reaction time, I looked at the corpse and confirmed it wasn't moving.

  "Wanna check for a core?"

  "No time," she said, glancing slightly up and pointing.

  I followed her gaze.

  "Oh shit."

  I had never seen that many spiders before.