Live Prey
「…Where…am I?」
When I came to, I was lying down in an unknown place.
Hope of being saved filled my chest since I had expected to never wake up again.
Although it was pitch dark around me, at the very least, there were no signs of the king of flies nearby.
While feeling relieved from that fact, I tried to get up.
But-
「…Huh?」
My body did not move. A strong numbness was preventing me from moving my limbs.
I could barely move my neck, but other than that, not even a finger was responding to me.
I was frightened by this feeling that I’ve never felt before.
Speaking of creepy, what are these sounds that I’ve been hearing for a while now?
There’s a crunching noise of something hard getting crushed.
There’s a faint sound of some soggy chewing.
And there was a sticky slurping sound.
For some reason, those sounds gave me the chills.
I couldn’t see what was happening at all, but fear began to overtake me.
I tried desperately to get away from where the sounds were coming from, but my numb body did not move at all.
Then, at that moment-
A stream of light had unexpectedly come into my field of vision that was covered in complete darkness.
It was the moonlight shining down from above.
Illuminated by the moonlight, the place I was at started to become clear.
I was in a space about the size of a large house. The rugged rocks around me did not resemble any architecture, so I thought that this should be the inside of a natural cave.
However, even though I called this a cave, I could not see any horizontal openings that resembled an exit.
If I wanted to leave this place, I would have to leave through the hole from above.
But that hole was quite far up from the ground. I would only be able to leave through there if I could fly.
If I think about that in a different perspective, that means whoever uses this place must have flying capabilities since they come in and out through that big hole.
That means…
「…The king of flies’ nest」
I muttered as if I was groaning.
Any of the hopes that I had of being saved spilled out of my chest like a pile of sand.
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No, more importantly, if this was the king of flies’ nest… then the sounds that I’ve been hearing are…
I slowly turned my neck in fear to take a look…
I knew that I would surely regret it if I look, but I couldn’t choose not to.
Then, I immediately regretted it as I expected.
「……..* Híííííí *」(squealing)
There was another adventurer here. From what Lunamaria had told me, he was probably one of the adventurers that had gone missing.
He was in extremely horrible shape.
He had already lost both of his arms up to almost where his shoulders were.
His legs had disappeared up to his thighs.
A countless amount of maggots were all running all over his wounds. His bones and his red-colored flesh were exposed.
Maggots from the size of a finger to the size of a fist were all competing to gnaw on the adventurer’s bones, chew his flesh, and drink his blood.
「…* Híííí *?!」(squealing)
The horror did not end there. Maggots the size of a rice grain were also flooding out from the adventurer’s nose, mouth, and ears.
Only his eyes were safe. Then right as I thought that-
—Our eyes met.
He looked like he was going insane from the horror and despair, but I was sure that at that moment, we had recognized each other’s existence.
The proof of that was his eyes were opened wide at that moment and he opened his mouth to try to tell me something.
…But what came out of his mouth was not words, it was a large amount of maggots.
「*AHHHHHHHHH*!!」
He was still alive. He was still conscious even though his limbs, his nose, mouth, and ears were being violated.
A king of flies captures its prey alive and brings them back to their nest to feed its larvae.
And then the larvae take their time to slowly consume the live prey in a manner that doesn’t immediately kill them.
The information that I’ve learned from the documents that I’ve read before was true.
This horrible scene that I was witnessing in front of me will become my fate in the near future.
When I recognized that fact–
「NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!」
I screamed out as I couldn’t take any more of it.
As if the surrounding maggots took that as a signal, they all came swarming at me at the same time.