The carcass bled warmth into the stone.
I stared at it for a while, not moving. My new eyes adjusted easily now — flicking from shadow to shadow, thread to thread. The silence after a kill was different than the silence before one.
But it didn't last long.
There was a sound.
A scuff.
Then a low, wheezing breath.
Not from the tunnel the centipede dug.
From the stone hall beyond the spring, the one choked with moss and dust. A tunnel I hadn't dared explore.
Until now.
I slid from my perch and lowered my frame to the silk-wrapped floor. I stretched my threads across the opening like nerves — and listened.
Someone was dragging themselves.
Slow. Clumsy. But deliberate.
One foot. Then the other.
Not a centipede. Not a predator.
A voice rasped from the dark.
"Don't follow me… I'm already dead."
I froze.
Not because it spoke.
But because it spoke in a language I understood.
"I said… back off! You filthy rats…"
A figure limped into the chamber — clutching its side, hobbling over the stone. Its skin was green, but faded. Eyes sunken. Arms thin. It bled from a wound in its thigh.
A goblin.
Not like the ones I imagined in games — snarling, cartoonish.This one was... small. Worn. Patched clothes. Rope belt. One torn boot. Its ears were pierced with copper wire — handmade. Tribal.
And it looked at me.
Not with fear. Not with anger.
Just exhaustion.
"Tch… what's this? A worm with shiny eyes?"
"Heh. Fine. Get it over with."
I said nothing.
I just watched.
The goblin coughed. Sat down against the rock. His hands trembled.
"Stupid… humans. Called me 'green filth.'"
"I just wanted bark-leaf. For the fever back home."
"Brought back silk once. Chief said I was clever."
"This time… just a few threads more..."
He didn't finish the sentence.
His eyes closed.
He began to cry.
"I didn't even say goodbye to my sister…"
Silence.
Thick. Bitter.
And I… I crawled forward.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
He didn't flinch.
He just whispered:
"End it quick. Please. I don't want to wake up still hurting."
And I did.
Not out of cruelty.
Not even out of hunger.
But because no one should die alone in the dark.
I sank my mandibles gently into his neck.
And the system whispered:
[Target: Goblin Gatherer (Surface-Class)]
[Status: Terminal – Willing]
[Ingestion Confirmed. Hunger Effect Triggered.]
[Memory Core Unlocked – Preserve?]
I hesitated.
Then chose:
Preserve.
The world shifted.
Images. Sounds. Smells.
A village, nestled among trees — bone-tents and rope bridges strung between mossy trunks. Goblin children laughing. Smoke curling from clay pots. A chieftain with flowers in her hair. A little girl with a sling, chasing lizards.
His sister.
Then the humans came.Armored. Cold. Steel in their hands. Fire in their eyes."Monsters," they called them.The gatherers ran. The warriors died.
This goblin — he fled.
Not to survive.
But to return with healing bark.To prove he could still help.To prove he was worthy of their firelight.
Then… the centipede.Then… the spring.Then… me.
The vision faded.
I sat in silence.
No flesh remained. Only a scarf — woven from bark-leaf fibers and spider thread. Carefully stitched. He'd wrapped it around his wrist.
I wrapped it now around one of my front limbs.
A reminder.
Not of a kill.
But of a choice.
[Memory Core: Goblin Gatherer (Tamm)]
[Language Skill Advanced: Surface Dialect – Goblinoid Lv.1]
[Map Fragment Acquired: Western Vale – Forest of Oukra]
[Status: Emotion Mark Imprinted – "Mercy"]
[New Evolution Path Unlocked: Kin-Eater | Dreamfeeder]
There's a world out there.
Not just dungeon walls.
A forest.
A sister.
A home.
I was still just a Threadling.
But maybe…
Maybe I'd build a village, too.
I wrapped the scarf around my neck.
It took effort — my body wasn't shaped for it yet — but I tried.
Not perfectly. Not gracefully.
Just enough that it hung across my silk-smooth shoulders, snug against the first segment of my chest.
The fabric was rough, but warm.
Threaded with bark-fiber and care.
Not mine.
But now… not his, either.
I laid back within the nest.
The dungeon air was thick again.
The moss glowed low.
And the dream came almost immediately.
It wasn't a voice that guided me this time.
No divine whisper.
No web of stars.
Just light.
Green.
Everywhere.
Sunlight spilled through ancient boughs like melted gold.
The leaves sang in the wind — high, flutelike tones.
Below, a dozen goblins chased each other barefoot across woven bridges strung between tree trunks wider than towers. Their laughter echoed like bells.
Tamm was there.
Young, energetic, laughing.
He ducked a thrown fruit, grabbed a vine, and swung to the next platform, cackling. A girl followed — shorter, but fierce — sling around her neck, hair braided with feathers.
"Tamm! You said you'd bring me sweets!"
"I brought you a beetle! That's better!"
Their village rose with the trees — woven, grown, shaped.Clay domes hugged the bark.Spider silk marked sacred knots.
Chimes rang when the wind moved right.
No kings. No walls.
Only firelight and stories.
The memory twisted.
Now Tamm was older.
Carrying baskets of leaves. Scraping sap into jars. Sitting beside a coughing elder, brushing her brow with soaked moss.
He was always the one who gathered.
The one who stayed behind.
The one who watched others march to war… and return fewer.
Then came the humans.
Tall. Armored. Silent.
The chimes did not ring when they entered.
The girl with the sling fired first — and fell.The forest caught fire next.
And Tamm… ran.
Not to flee.
To find the silk grove. The bark-leaf tree.
To bring something back.
Anything.
I saw all of it.
Felt it.
The pressure of running.
The shame.
The hope.
The scarf was tighter around my neck now.
Almost heavy.
I curled tighter into my silk.
Eyes closed.
Is this what it means to carry the dead?
Not just in memory.
But in meaning.
I didn't weep. I didn't sigh.
I just lay there, wrapped in thread and another's past.
And when I finally drifted into true sleep — deeper than the dream —I heard a whisper:
"Protect it, would you?"
"The forest."
"She still breathes…"
[Dream Complete: Forest of Oukra – Echo Preserved]
[Memory Core Integration: 12%]
[Emotional Anchor Strengthened: Mercy +1 | Kinship +1]
[Unique Trait Progression: Dreamfeeder – Larval Class]
[Next Trait Tier at 20% Integration]
I woke early.
The spring hadn't dimmed, but its light had cooled — a softer shade of blue, like a sky before rain. The moss shimmered. My silk-den clung to the stone above, half-sphere, lined with reinforced webs and hardened thread posts.
And I felt…
Good.
Rested. Stronger.
No lingering ache in my limbs.
No clumsiness in my crawl.
My silk flowed like breath now — smooth, obedient.
I stretched. All my segments popped faintly.
Then I turned to my reflection — still warped in the cracked mirror stone.
A long, coiling body. Faint chitin platelets, lacquered like beetle shell. Two large, black eyes — too soft to be monstrous, too deep to be human. Mandibles tucked neatly below my face, now retractable when not in use.
And around my neck — the scarf.
Still tied.
It had shifted in the night.I adjusted it carefully.
"Let's head out."
I said it aloud. Voice still chittered. Still faintly broken. But the language came smooth now, the Goblinoid syllables twining with thoughts I didn't know I had.
I packed my things.
Yes, packed.
Scraps of the centipede chitin — cut and wrapped in silk like bent panels.A strand-net I'd crafted in the night. A twine-hook I molded from hardened thread.
Even a few bark-fragments from the scarf itself — now half-woven into a belt.
I should name this place before I go.
The thought struck like a bell.
I turned back to the Spring, the blue pool, the moss-cradle, and the little apartment I'd built from silk and stone and dreams of the surface.
"Spring Den."
"First home of the Threadling King."
A little grandiose, maybe.
But who was here to laugh?
I set out.
The upper tunnel gleamed.
Thin roots clung to its edges.
Somewhere beyond it, there was light — faint, natural, warm. The taste of real wind filtered faintly through the cracks. The surface.
Maybe the Forest of Oukra.
Maybe ruins. Maybe war.
Maybe her.
Tamm's sister.
I almost started crawling up.
I almost chose the light.
But then—
Twing.
A shiver raced down my left forelimb.
One of the old threads I'd cast into the broken centipede tunnel — the place I hadn't checked after the fight — just twitched.
Not snapped.
Not pulled.
Just…
Disturbed.
I stopped.
My antennae curled.
No footsteps. No digging.Just a tension. Like when you see a shadow move from the corner of your eye, but it disappears when you turn.
Something moved below.
And it saw the silk.
I felt it.
A pause. A brush.
Something with a mind.
Not bestial like the centipede. Not dying like Tamm.
Something… deliberate.
But not hostile.
Not yet.
And in that space between certainty and danger… something bloomed in me.
Not fear.
Not caution.
Curiosity.
Like when I used to sit in front of my cracked laptop in Tokyo, clicking deeper into obscure dungeon wikis, asking myself just one more page before bed.
That itch.
That pull.
I turned away from the upper tunnel.
Crawled down the thread.
Past the centipede's collapsed burrow.Deeper.Colder.
The silk tugged tighter. The walls grew closer.Moss faded. Glow dimmed.Even the system stopped announcing new things.
But the pull grew stronger.
And around the next bend, my thread ended.
Torn.
Cleanly.
As if snipped.
And beneath it… I smelled something old.
Not rot. Not predator.
Something woven.
[Location Discovered: Forgotten Silk Hollow]
[System Advisory: Thread Signature Detected – Ancient Weaver Class]
[??? - Thread Response Unconfirmed]
I did not retreat.
I pulled myself forward.
Because some part of me whispered:
I'm not the only one who builds nests in the dark.