Transmigration in Mordor

Armed with his new, cold determination, Zac entered another tunnel. Each step was calculated, each breath controlled. He was no longer a fugitive, but a surveyor of his own hell, an explorer of damnation. The memory of death had become a given, a variable in an endless equation of survival.

The air changed. It grew denser, heavy with a strange and paradoxical scent that awakened a familiar terror in him. A sweetish, almost fruity smell, like fermented honey, a scent of decay that sought to entice, but beneath it pierced the stench of animal musk and spoiled flesh.

'This smell... I know it.' The thought crossed his mind, cold and lucid. 'It's a trap. But it's also a path. If I want to move forward, I have to go through the traps.'

He stopped. His eyes swept the floor. He bent down and picked up a flat stone, a shard of obsidian with edges as sharp as glass. It was a pathetic weapon against the horrors of this world, but it was a choice. The act of arming himself. A refusal to die without a fight.

The tunnel opened into a wider cavern. The walls and floor were covered in silk threads, but they were different from the web that had condemned him. Finer, smaller, they were woven with an almost artistic precision, forming thousands of small, fist-sized cocoons, hanging from the walls like monstrous fruits.

He understood. This wasn't the lair of a solitary predator. It was a nursery. A colony. A faint, continuous dry whisper, like the sound of hundreds of chitinous legs scratching stone, confirmed his fears.

Silhouettes emerged from the cracks and shadows. Spiders, but smaller, the size of a fox. Fast, nervous. Deep Watchers. They didn't attack him right away. They encircled him, their multiple eyes fixing him with a collective, malevolent intelligence, like a tide of nightmares about to break.

Fear rose in Zac, icy and familiar. But this time, it was mixed with something else: a cold rage, a determination born of despair. He did not cower. He gripped his obsidian shard, his breath short, his body tense.

The Watchers tested his defenses. One spider launched itself; he kicked it away, sending it crashing against a wall. Another tried to get around him; he pivoted to face it. It was a macabre and desperate dance, a futile struggle against a rising tide.

A spider, slightly larger than the others, detached from the group. Its movements were more assured, more calculating. On its abdomen, a long, thin stinger, black and shiny as glass, pulsed slightly. It wasn't a simple sting. It was a natural blade, a razor-stinger.

The razor-stinger Watcher attacked. A lightning-fast charge, a flash of chitin and hatred.

Out of pure survival instinct, Zac dove to the side, a clumsy but effective dodge. He felt the stinger whistle past his face, a breeze of death. The creature, carried by its momentum, was off-balance. This was the opening.

Zac didn't think. He threw himself at it, driving his obsidian shard into the joint between the spider's head and thorax. A wet crunch, followed by a shrill, inhuman scream, tore through the cavern's silence. The spider collapsed in a convulsion. In the impact, the long razor-stinger broke at its base with a dry "click" and fell to the ground.

Zac had just enough time to grab the stinger, nearly fifty centimeters long, smooth, cold, and incredibly sharp. He had a real weapon. A feeling of wild, icy triumph washed over him.

The triumph lasted a fraction of a second.

The whispering of legs stopped. Replaced by a collective cry of rage, a shrill and deafening hiss that emanated from the entire colony. The death of their champion had driven them mad.

The wave broke. It was no longer a skirmish; it was an avalanche of hatred and chitin. They climbed onto him, their small mandibles seeking any exposed patch of skin.

Zac fought with the fury of despair, using his new razor-stinger to sever legs, to impale bodies. But there were too many.

He felt the first bite. A burning pain. Then a second. A tenth. Their venom wasn't paralyzing; it was a neurotoxin that set his nerves on fire.

His vision blurred, his limbs grew heavy. He kept striking, but his movements became slower and weaker. He collapsed to his knees, then onto his stomach, submerged by the swarming tide. His last vision was of dozens of pairs of black eyes watching him as they began to devour him.

'I got one...' was his last lucid thought, as the pain became an ocean of fire. His hand tightened on the razor-stinger, his only trophy, his only proof that he had fought.

Nothingness. The echo of agony, the memory of being devoured by a tide of chitinous legs. Then, silence. A deep, heavy, absolute silence.

Zac regained consciousness, not with a jolt of terror, but in a strange stillness. He didn't open his eyes right away. He was simply... there. Calm.

The first thing he perceived was not the cold of the rock or the cramps of hunger, but a presence in his right hand. A long, cold, smooth, and incredibly sharp object. He slowly closed his fingers around it. The contact was solid. Real.

He opened his eyes.

His gaze was steady, devoid of the panic that had inhabited him. He looked at his hand. The black razor-stinger, the trophy of his last death, was there. It wasn't a dream. He had brought something back.

'A weapon. My first weapon. An anchor in this madness.'

He sat up slowly, without haste. He was not in the starting cave. He was not before the Waterfall. He was here, in the small recess where he had wrapped himself in his Shroud to sleep, to "save."

'It worked.'

A new light kindled in his eyes. It was not the warm glow of hope, but the cold flame of understanding.

'I can change my respawn point. And now... I'm armed.'

With a new determination, a resolve born from the ashes of his despair, he set off. He no longer fled into the unknown. He retraced his steps, the razor-stinger held firmly in his hand, his steps calculated in the darkness.

He was heading for the Waterfall of Night. His goal. His base. The place where he could turn his suffering into strength.

'I can advance in these depths. I can fight. I can improve.'

His figure moved away, melting into the darkness. He was no longer a victim who endures. He was a player who had begun to understand the rules of his own torment.