The parasol and shoes I took off and left in the entrance. I wouldn’t need them.

  I took it slow so my eyes could adjust. My whole body was tense, and I had the spear pointed in front of me, expecting an attack. I just knew there would be more scorpions in here. I just hoped it would be more babies and not mega-giant-murder-me-fast ones. That said, if babies swarmed me again, there was no telling if I’d survive a second time.

  Flexing and moving the spear around, I felt stronger and faster than ever before. As I’d never been a fit or athletic person, I wondered if this was more like how gym-goers and people who did sports felt. It felt…good. I was kind of regretting waiting so long in life to get to this point.

  As my eyes adjusted, I could make out the walls. The rock was the same dark gray stone I’d seen when picking up rocks in the oasis. The walls, ceiling, and floor had the same yellow flecks and spots embedded in it. Streaks of white that I recognized as quartz cut broad ribbons through it, forming patches here and there.

  About ten paces into the cave, I could see that I was in a tunnel with a definite downturn. It was a little wider than I could reach with both arms extended to the sides, and a half meter taller than I was. That papa scorpion must have barely squeezed through. I sensed movement and stopped cold. But I couldn’t see much further in the growing dark.

  I took a deep breath. Things were about to get even riskier. I quietly breathed, “[Vengeance shall be mine! Lightning Scorpion!]” I felt the burn as all my mana was used and stood there, wavering in the semi-darkness while I fought the nausea off. Thankfully, nothing attacked in that time.

  With the mask forming over my face, I now had highly sensitive scorpion vision designed for very low-light conditions. I inadvertently screamed, dropping my spear and clutched at my eyes as I fell to my knees, the pain stabbing my eyes because they’d been overloaded with how bright the tunnel still was. Idiot. Inside the mask, tears flowed, and I was unable to wipe them away to help clear my vision.

  I clumsily felt around for the spear and lurched over to the side of the tunnel, crouching up against it, spear held in front of me in case anything came at me. I blinked rapidly, willing my vision to adjust, making certain I was facing away from the cave entrance. Eventually, squinting until I could barely see, my eyes became useful again.

  Breathing hard from the experience, I stared ahead. Fortunately, no giant scorpion was coming at me. Yay. Pushing myself back to my feet, I took a step forward, then another. I could feel the sunlight behind me like a sixth sense.

  As the tunnel deepened and descended, it grew darker, and I was able to see comfortably. I saw a few baby scorpions of varying sizes on the floor, walls and ceiling. To me, they glowed a pale neon green or blue, making them very easy to spot. I paused within a few paces of the nearest ones.

  They hadn’t reacted to me yet. They weren’t reacting to each other either. Did that mean anything? Would it be wiser to try to sneak past or to kill them? Sneaking might fail while I was in the middle of multiple creatures. Killing might cause them to go into a frenzy. Killing would mean fewer able to exit the cave and infest the area around the oasis, which seemed like a nice idea at first. But then I recalled that nature likes a balance. If I killed all the scorpions, would that mean more snakes and assassin spiders? Or worse? Maybe they kept the number of sand crickets down, and without them, the crickets would eat the oasis down to the roots.

  If I were an adventurer in some fantasy book or playing a game, I’d probably just slaughter everything for the experience points, and to hell with the consequences, partly because, in those situations, there rarely were consequences. Video games were training simulators for serial killers. What else could they be when you hand some six-year-old a tablet with a bright and shiny screen full of creatures and a character with a stick and tell them to go kill everything on the screen?

  Humans were sick, twisted bastards.

  The tunnel was dead silent. I swallowed as I nervously controlled my breathing.

  I decided to try the stealth option first and to deal with only those who attacked me. That turned out to work fairly well. The ones on the ceiling and walls mostly ignored me, but I must have disturbed the ones on the ground when I stepped, because many twitched in my direction, and a few of the larger ones came at me.

  They didn’t fire their lightning though, making me suspect that they didn’t bother when fighting their own kind because of their natural resistance. I was able to stab the ones that attacked without escalating the situation. Still, I pushed the dead to the side of the tunnel just in case the others came scavenging. I didn’t want them in the middle of the path when I was on my way out later.

  Cautiously working my way through the tunnel, one foot carefully and quietly placed at a time, I must have gone about thirty or forty meters when I came to the first nook, a little hollow in the wall about two meters deep.

  A momma-sized one huddled within.

  I froze, with every muscle in my body taut as a bow string at full draw.

  It was halfway up the wall and facing away from me.

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

  I stared at it.

  It didn’t move.

  Very, very carefully, I picked one foot up and placed it down as gently as I could, only slightly ahead. I did not want to cause any vibrations in the rock that would alert the creature. At worst, maybe it would think a baby was crawling about, too small to worry about, and ignore me. I didn’t want to shuffle or slide a foot along the floor by accident.

  Easing my way along the tunnel, I passed the nook. But I didn’t go far. Six paces beyond, I planted myself facing the way I’d come. I had the spear in both hands, point pointed right in front, low.

  Sure enough, the momma silently backed down the wall into the tunnel, turning as she did so that she faced me. Then she started in my direction, still soundless.

  Sneaky bitch! I had to smile even though my fear spiked. She’d played that cool as ice. Could she see me glowing in the dark too? Very possible. Or maybe they were even more sensitive to vibration than I’d imagined.

  Not wanting to wait until she struck first, I sprang forward like a knight jousting with a lance, and I buried the spearhead in her ugly face. She seemed to have been caught by surprise. Though she fought back, with my new strength and the leverage the spear gave me, I was able to hold her off and shove the spear even deeper into her body without too much trouble. It was about as difficult as trying to control a German shepherd on a leash. I marvelled at how much easier it was after levelling up.

  She died soon enough. I jabbed with the spear a couple of times until she no longer twitched and her legs curled up. Not wanting to come back and find a pile of scorpions feeding on her corpse and not be able to get past, I dragged her back into the nook and shoved her against the wall.

  Resuming my exploration, constantly looking both forward and behind me so I wouldn’t get snuck up on, I passed a couple of side tunnels and spotted more momma and papa-sized scorpions hiding away, usually alone. Thankfully, none came out to chase me. I did not fancy my odds against a papa, levels and skills or not. I’d gotten lucky once; I wouldn’t again, not in these confined tunnels.

  I found that I wasn’t able to go much further. While the scorpions seemed to have the ability to sense the slightest vibrations, even through rock, I couldn’t. They also didn’t seem to need any light to get around. The light soon vanished entirely, and not even my enhanced vision could make anything out. I was forced to halt lest I accidentally walk off a cliff or something.

  I silently mouthed to myself, “Well, that’s frustrating.” I wanted to keep going. This whole expedition was massively insane. I had multiple giant monsters between me and the exit. I had crept all this way without testing the scorpion suit skill first, which, now that I thought about it, had been really stupid, because there was no way I could escape if it ended. I had been very lucky that the skill only seemed to need mana once. If it did burn mana as I used it, it seemed to do so very slowly.

  Of course, now that I’d thought that, I worried that maybe I should turn around right then just to be safe. Then I turned and almost tried to keep going anyway, even blind, before I caught myself.

  I didn’t need to push it. I needed to be smart.

  As carefully as I’d come in, I moved even more carefully on the way out, worried that one of those big scorpions would be lying in ambush. Which is exactly how I was able to spot another one, this one bigger than the last, trying to hide around a corner. It had come out just a hair too far, and because I’d been looking for it, I spotted the sliver of glowing green first.

  I stopped and watched it.

  It didn’t move, probably thinking it was still hidden and infinitely patient.

  It was nearly pitch black in the tunnel, but in the various shades of black, there was an imperfect glowing blotch near my feet. Guessing and hoping at what it was, I slowly squatted and reached out to grab it.

  My fingers curled around scorpion shell. I clenched tight, just in case there was movement, but there was none. It was dead. A baby had been crushed or cut apart. Standing straight, I tossed the remains ahead, just outside the opening of the side tunnel.

  The giant scuttled out, pincers snapping.

  I charged it from the side and rammed my spear deep into its side. The scorpion put up a fight and gave me quite a struggle, but couldn’t turn its tail to the side to fire, and couldn’t get its pincers on me. It was a waiting game as I worked the spear around in its gut, encouraging it to die. My biggest fear was that the commotion would attract the much larger papa-sized ones who were close by.

  Sure enough, even as the one I fought started going into life-ending spasms, a papa came out from a side tunnel behind me.

  Cursing, I tore the spear free and sprinted past the dying scorpion. I glanced back once, happy to see the papa tear into the other one instead of coming for me. But I kept going a bit further before slowing down and going into silent mode again. My back itched with fear, and I paid more attention to the tunnel behind than before as I made my way back to the entrance.

  To my relief, nothing else attacked on the way out. As I neared the exit, I made a nice discovery. As the light grew bright, I wished I could turn off the scorpion eyes. And that’s just what they did! Somehow, they retracted into the shell around my head, leaving only the ninja mask across my nose and mouth.

  I grinned. Not that anyone would have been able to see it behind the mask. “Sweet.”

  I allowed the skill to end once I’d gotten outside. Back out under the sun and unharmed, I was elated. I pumped my fists and shouted at the sky, “Yes!” I had done it. I’d gone in, faced monsters, and escaped death. I laughed and grinned like a fool all the way back to the oasis.

  Standing at the edge of the water, I just stopped and let myself feel. Because I hadn’t felt like this in almost two years, not since Cerise had been killed. It had been so long since I’d felt good that it was both alien and desperately familiar. I’d missed it.

  Though I felt a little stab of guilt at being happy and excited, I tried to resist it. Partially. It helped when I imagined Cerise. If she’d been there with me at that moment, she’d have been proud of me. For the first time in a long time, I allowed myself to feel pride in myself. To accept that I could be capable of things. That I could keep living. I’d been stuck in a bad moment for so long, but there was a chance I could get out of it. Even if I died to some monster the next day, I’d go out in a blaze of glory instead of with a whimper.

  Fuck, I missed my wife. The experience would have been so much better with her here.

  After a bit, I calmed down enough to think about my situation. I wanted to keep exploring the cave. Would it be foolish to tempt fate twice? Maybe. One wrong move, and those really big scorpions would be all over me. I probably wouldn’t survive that.

  But where had this cave come from? Why was it here? Was it natural, or had people dug it out? How deep did it go, and what was at the end?

  I had to know.

  But how was I going to create a light source so I could see in the dark?