A Game in the Cave

The rustling sounds continued without pause, and everyone in the dim mine felt their lives hanging by a thread. They fell silent involuntarily, dreading that something might lunge from the dark. Their silence only made the scuttling noises sharper and clearer, mingled with the pounding of their own frantic heartbeats. Suddenly, a massive dark shadow darted from a corner of the cavern, sweeping across a section of the crowd. Before one of the miners could even cry out, his voice was cut off forever. "Ah—" *Gulp...* Immediately after came the sound of something swallowing, followed by the crunch of food being pulverized. In the tense silence of the cave, where even a dropped needle could have been heard, the gulp was unmistakably clear to every ear. At once, their terror threatened to boil over. The disorderly crowd surged instinctively toward the mine entrance. Hart pushed his way into the thick of the throng, doing his best to steady his voice. "Nobody panic! The moment you see anything abnormal, hurl your spears at it!" "It's just a cowering beast hiding in the dark! All we need to do is—" *Gulp.* As if deliberately slapping him in the face, another crisp swallowing sound rang out before Hart could even finish his sentence. No one knew which poor wretch had lost his life this time. A great clamor erupted across the crowd. Panic burst forth, and the raw instinct for survival overwhelmed everything else. "Don't—don't eat me!" "There's a monster! A real monster!" "Run!" "Dammit, get the hell out of my way! Don't block me!" Screams and frantic shouts rang out incessantly, and the entire mine devolved into absolute bedlam. Even the overseers' whips could no longer herd the chaotic mob; in fact, the overseers themselves were already looking to sneak away. "I want to live!" "Almost there... Once we get outside, we can—" Yet amidst the turmoil and deafening clamor, who knew how many were silently swallowed into the dark? Just as the foremost group scrambled desperately upward in an attempt to flee, the enormous figure struck from the shadows. "Ah—!" The men in the lead were swept up in an instant, vanishing without a trace. In the fleeting glare of torches, people caught sight of only an enormous, greenish mass flashing past. In the next breath, the spot where several men had stood was completely empty, and the light of their dropped torches snuffed out, plunging back into darkness. Those behind had no idea what had happened and kept pressing forward. Those in front, warned by the gruesome precedent, dared not advance. Yet, shoved from behind, they had no choice but to brace themselves and probe ahead. The swallowing sounds were drowned out by the noise of the crowd. Hart watched the scene unfold, beads of sweat dripping from his chin. Despair engulfed him completely. Where could they go? How could they escape? The beast needed only a fraction of a second to swallow a man whole. It only had to guard the entrance, and people would be delivered right to its maw, one by one, filling a bottomless, insatiable belly. "Throw your spears forward!" "Kill that monster!" Driven to wit's end, the miners had no other choice. They obeyed the shouted command, blindly hurling their spears into the darkness. Yet all that came back was the crisp clatter of spearheads striking bare rock. Men wailed and shrieked. To their eyes, that deep darkness had already become the very embodiment of death. Suddenly, a raspy chuckle drifted from the shadows. "Humans, your little tricks are truly amusing." "Today I have already eaten three giant bats, two goblins, and eight humans, but I believe my belly can still hold—all of you." The creature slowly slithered out from the dark, the faint torchlight barely illuminating its true form. It revealed only its grotesque head. Slit pupils cast an eerie glow in the dim mine, and huge, backward-curving horns framed both sides of its skull. The sheer size of its slightly parted maw suggested it could swallow several men at once. Its elongated body, coated in banded scales, resembled a grotesque fusion of crocodile and centipede, bearing countless pairs of legs that trailed off into the gloom. Under the flickering flames, a chilling grin spread across the beast's hideous visage. "I wouldn't want to miss an opportunity like this. Food delivered right to my door—quite enough to fill my stomach." "No, don't eat me!" "It's over! It's all over!" "We're all going to die!" "Help!" "It—it's charging at us!" In sheer panic, the people scrambled backward heedlessly, crushing together in a frantic bid to flee this living hell. Trampling, shoving, and agonized screams filled the air. Yet the creature merely trailed unhurriedly behind the crowd, creeping and undulating like a shepherd herding sheep, snapping up a person or two now and then. "I don't mind playing a little game with you." "Run. Flee to your heart's content..." "I'm still in high spirits." To the miners, the monster's raspy voice sounded like the call of the Grim Reaper, dragging them deep into an abyss of horror. *Thwack!* Kelu's arrow struck the creature. Feeble spears, slender arrows, crude swords—every human counterattack struck its banded scales to utterly pathetic effect. Even if a strike were lucky enough to crack its armor, such a scratch was laughably insignificant against its immense bulk. Daoba the barbarian finally reached his limit with this game of cat and mouse. He halted in his tracks and turned to face the monster head-on. Yet the muscular physique he took such pride in was as tiny as a rat before the towering beast. Taking a deep breath, Daoba hefted his iron warhammer and let loose a string of curses. "In all my years, I've only ever played other people! Nobody turns me into a goddamned toy!" "Aaargh!" With a furious roar, Daoba panted heavily, his eyes turning blood-red—the unmistakable mark of a barbarian entering a frenzy. Robbed of reason, the barbarian raised his warhammer and charged the monster's colossal bulk, much like a knight charging a windmill. Faced with the charging barbarian, the beast did not flinch in the slightest. It merely watched him with keen interest, as if observing an amusing plaything. "Frenzied Strike!" Daoba bellowed fiercely. The muscles in his arms bunched as he slammed the hammer viciously into the monster's chest. *Boom!* *Boom!* *Boom!* Blow after blow hammered into the creature's body. Remarkably, he actually shattered several scales across its chest, drawing thin trickles of blue blood. "An amusing human. I shall grant you a splendid death." The beast cackled stridulously, paying no heed to the damage the barbarian had inflicted, while its body crept slowly along the ground. "Ah! Aaargh!" Hearing its taunt, the barbarian's fury flared even hotter. He hammered away in a frenzy, strike after strike. Soon, however, he realized that the monster's immense body had coiled around him without his noticing. Or perhaps "coiled" was not entirely accurate—it would be truer to say the creature had trapped him within its colossal frame, enclosing him like a cell of blue-green scales. Daoba felt the space around him shrinking rapidly. The pressure bore down upon his muscles, and his breath grew increasingly ragged. *To think that I... would end up suffocating to death.* That was the final thought that flickered through his mind.