Reading the several texts from his sister, Grey’s face had turned grim. The first two were casual, talking about the earthquake and how she had only fallen over.
She was playful about that.
It was only in the next few texts that she finally expressed her true fears of the apocalypse.
Her messages being...
"Hello Big brother Grey, I just experienced the earthquake."
"I really thought I would die. 😁"
"Oh God, someone is eating the bus driver."
"I’m being chased by three monsters on the streets."
"What’s happening?"
Each message was spaced across several minutes, each one arriving at different intervals.
And then the final one.
"I’m sorry big bro... I love you."
At this point, Grey immediately texted back, sending the message almost instantly as he asked about her well-being.
The message did not send.
He sent another, then another.
Again and again.
He tried a few more times, sending message after message, yet each one failed to send after the last.
The service was finally down.
Grey let out a low sigh and quickly rushed across the room, finding a small backpack at the side of the room. He placed his laptop inside it before searching for any simple provisions he could fit into the bag.
A few pieces of clothing, some food, water, and then anything else he deemed useful.
Afterwards, he grabbed a new set of clothes, clean and dry, devoid of the blood that stained his current ones.
He changed into them, and when he was done, he turned to Bolt and summoned his dagger into his grasp.
"We are leaving the hostel tonight."
Bolt barked in reply to him, and soon enough, they were off.
Grey in the lead and his dog following closely behind as they walked into the first hall.
As soon as they did, though, Grey’s face grew grim, his eyes widening as he muttered in a low, almost terrified tone.
"Dear God."
He had no idea how long he had spent in his room. However, everything seemed to have changed awfully since then.
The corpses sprawled across the ground had doubled in number, their bodies bearing a reddish colour, their entire beings looking as though their skin had been peeled away, leaving only raw flesh exposed beneath.
Around the debris of the hall were thick, rope-like strings sprawled from wall to wall, stretching across the ceiling and between the broken doors, forming strange shapes that reminded Grey of...
"Spiders..." he whispered to himself in a low tone, taking a few cautious steps forward.
Aside from that, it was unbearably silent compared to earlier.
Even the slightest growl did not reach his ears.
Almost as though the entire building was empty.
’Did everyone else alive escape...?’ Grey thought, his gaze sweeping across the desolate hallway.
’Or maybe... They were all dead.’
That thought formed a knot in his chest.
He turned to Bolt, the ruthless hound, who was just as cautious as he was. The beast sniffed the air several times, its ears twitching as it picked up scents Grey couldn’t, before baring its teeth and gnashing at the giant cobwebs as they walked past them.
It knew something was awfully wrong.
Soon enough, they reached the staircase, not encountering a single zombie on their way there.
Grey was speculative, yet he ignored the gnawing thoughts clawing at the back of his mind.
They made it to the next floor, and the same thing seemed to be present.
Dead silence.
Bodies of red piles of flesh littering the ground.
And huge cobwebs filling the hall.
Grey swallowed hard.
"Be alert."
Bolt growled back in reply, and the two began to move through the second hall.
Each step was made with caution.
Their eyes darted from left to right, scanning everything around them.
From the half-caved-in walls to the destroyed doors.
From the tainted floors to the corpses clothed in their red, flesh-like exterior.
Something just felt out of place to Grey.
They continued moving.
And strangely, they covered the second hall without encountering a single monster.
Grey’s thoughts began to grow even more intense.
Something was wrong somewhere.
But...
’What was it?’
Grey and Bolt finally reached the third floor.
Its environment was simultaneously a replica of the first and second.
They moved through the hall cautiously, their footsteps nearly silent against the ruined floor as they reached the middle when...
Grey’s gaze caught the eyes of something in the darkness of a half-opened room.
Several yellow, surreal eyes stared back at him and Bolt.
"Fuck! Bolt, move—!"
Grey grunted as a flash of white, shimmering like steel, tore through the air and shot towards his face.
He raised his dagger barely in time and blocked the attack.
Clang!
His dagger cried from the impact, the force behind the strike sending him skidding back several feet. His boots scraped violently against the floorboards as he struggled to maintain his balance.
Bolt snarled, jumping backwards and narrowly evading two dagger-like arms that struck down at the floorboards where it had originally stood.
Crack!
The monstrous limbs tore straight through the wooden floor like paper, splinters erupting from the impact.
[You have encountered level one Evolved...]
Grey could only read that much of the notification before the door of the room, which had been opened only slightly, was violently ripped from its hinges and hurled towards him and Bolt at an incredible speed.
Bolt reacted just in time.
The ruthless hound leapt upward, meeting the incoming door with an outstretched paw.
Boom!
The impact shattered the door into pieces, sending countless fragments of flying debris—wood, metal, and splinters—raining through the hall.
Claccck!
Claccck!
The debris rained all over Grey and Bolt from the shattered door, sharp splinters bouncing off Grey’s clothes and scraping against his skin.
Yet neither dared blink.
Instead, they stared.
The six-eyed monstrosity suddenly leapt from its hiding place, its massive body smashing into the floorboards right before Grey and Bolt.
BOOM!
The impact caused the floor beneath them to groan violently, while dust and tiny fragments of wood spiralled into the air under the beast’s weight.
In the low light of the hall, Grey could finally gaze upon the twisted abomination of a beast.
Eight dagger-like legs protruded from its body, each limb unnaturally sharp and segmented, trailing out from the grotesque form of a spider—or what looked like one.
Its body was bloodied.
Its eyes were completely out of formation, scattered unnaturally across its entire body and carapace, some blinking independently while others remained eerily still.
Its eight legs were packed closely together in pairs, each one ending in a razor-sharp point that dug into the floorboards beneath its enormous weight.
And it stood towering as high as Grey himself.
Its carapace twitched.
The yellow eyes shifted.
One after another, they locked onto him.
From a single glance at this abomination, Grey’s face turned bloodless.
His stomach churned violently.
He wanted nothing more than to curl up into a ball and throw up his innards.
Yet he forced himself to remain standing.
His fingers tightened around the dagger until his knuckles turned pale.
"What sort of Corruption is this?"
His voice came out lower than he intended.
He steadied his stance and tightened his grasp around his dagger, his eyes never leaving the monstrous spider before him.
He knew...
This would not be an easy fight.