Morning sunlight filtered through a canopy so thick it could've housed a small city, scattering broken patches of light across the ground that reeked of decomposition and way too much nature for Alexei Volkov's liking.
He was having what could be described as the worst morning of his sixteen years of existence.
He stood about 1.75 meters tall now, lean in that wiry way that came from not eating enough rather than any athleticism. His hair, which had been a respectable dark brown back in Moscow, was now an unsettling silver-white that fell just past his shoulders. The clothes he'd woken up in were some kind of dark blue martial arts getup that looked like it came from a budget wuxia film, complete with unnecessarily flowing sleeves.
At least he was still undeniably male, which was more than he'd feared when he first woke up in this nightmare.
"Chert voz'mi," he muttered, which roughly translated to a very Russian way of saying he was absolutely fucked.
Because yeah, he'd gone to bed in his cramped room after pulling an all-nighter grinding through some cultivation webnovel that was probably rotting his brain, and woke up... here. Wherever "here" was. Some kind of primordial forest that made the Siberian wilderness look like a goddamn petting zoo.
His first thought: I'm having a stroke.
His second thought: This is a weirdly specific hallucination.
His third thought, after pinching himself hard enough to leave a mark that faded in seconds: Oh. Oh shit.
See, Alexei wasn't stupid. He'd read enough of these cultivation novels to know how this worked.
Wake up in a strange place? Check.
Weird new body? Check.
Mysterious healing ability he'd discovered after tripping over a root and watching the scrape disappear like it had never existed? Double check.
This was either an isekai situation, or he'd finally snapped from reading too much xianxia trash and was currently drooling in a padded room somewhere.
He was hoping for the padded room, honestly. At least there'd be medication.
For the past hour, he'd been walking, no, more like speed-hiking through this oversized terrarium from hell. His legs should've been screaming. His lungs should've been burning. But he felt fine. Better than fine. Like he could run a marathon and not even break a sweat.
Which would've been great if he wasn't surrounded by insects the size of house cats and trees that would take twenty people holding hands to encircle.
"Just keep moving," he told himself, pushing aside another bush. "Find civilization or someone who speaks something resembling a human language. Figure out—"
He stopped dead.
Twenty meters ahead, climbing up a tree trunk was a snail. A very, very large snail. Try five meters of milk-white flesh, carrying a shell covered in moss that looked like it weighed more than a small car.
Behind it stretched a glistening trail of slime that reflected the scattered sunlight.
He stared.
The snail's eyestalks swiveled toward him, pupils contracting. Then, with surprising speed for something that was literally a giant snail, it retracted into its shell with a schlorp sound that he absolutely didn't need to hear.
"Right," he said to himself. "Giant snails. That's... that's a thing now. Giant snails are a thing. Cool. Cool cool cool. Everything's fine."
He'd already seen the ants. Ants the size of watermelons, skittering through the undergrowth with their mandibles clicking together. He'd seen beetles that could've been mistaken for motorcycles. This was just the next logical step in his descent into madness.
The snail stayed retracted in its shell, clearly not interested in whatever he was selling.
Smart snail.
He was about to keep walking when he noticed something strange: the forest had gone quiet.
Up until now, there'd been noise everywhere. Bird calls that sounded. Insect chittering that reminded him uncomfortably of horror movie sound effects. The rustling of things moving through the underbrush.
Now? Nothing.
Dead silence, except for his own breathing and the hammering of his heart.
Every survival instinct he didn't know he had started screaming at him to move.
He didn't question it. He broke into a run.
Behind him, something else started moving too.
Swish-swish-swish.
CRACK.
THUD.
He didn't look back. Looking back was how people died in horror movies, and he wasn't about to become a statistic in whatever fucked-up nature documentary he'd stumbled into.
His feet pounded against the forest floor, vaulting over roots and dodging between trees. The sounds behind him got louder. Whatever was chasing him was big, fast, and apparently really wanted to get acquainted with his internal organs.
"Of course," he panted, adrenaline turning his vision sharp and bright. "Of fucking course this is how my day goes. Wake up in a death forest. Get chased by—"
FWOOSH.
Something white shot past his head so fast it left an afterimage.
Alexei's brain, running on pure panic, registered what was happening a half-second before he could react. He threw himself to the side, hitting the ground and rolling.
When he scrambled back to his feet, his escape route was completely blocked by a spider web.
Not a normal spider web. A spider web that stretched more than ten meters across, strung between trees. The threads were thick as his fingers.
He spun around, ready to run in any other direction.
Too late.
A shadow fell over him, bringing with it a wave of fetid, rotting-meat stench that made his eyes water. Something large breathed directly above his head.
Slowly, because apparently he enjoyed suffering, he looked up.
The spider was massive. Three meters of furry, reddish-brown nightmare, with eight legs like steel girders and eyes the size of dinner plates. Dark green drool dripped from mandibles that could probably bite through a car door, sizzling where it hit the dead leaves.
For a moment, they just stared at each other. Boy and spider. Spider and boy. A real meeting of minds.
"Hey there... buddy," Alexei said. "Nice spider. Good spider. I don't suppose we could talk about this?"
The spider's mandibles clicked together. Click-click-click. A sound that definitely meant "I'm thinking about how you'll taste."
"I'm probably really stringy," Alexei tried, taking a very slow step backward. "Lots of gristle. Not enough meat on my bones. You'd be better off with, I don't know, a deer? A boar? Something with protein?"
The spider's response was to lunge forward.
Alexei's body moved before his brain caught up. He dove left, hitting the ground. One of the spider's legs stabbed into the earth where he'd been standing, punching through packed soil.
He scrambled backward on his hands and feet, crab-walking in a way that was absolutely not dignified but might keep him alive for another thirty seconds.
The spider stalked forward, taking its time now. Why rush? Its prey was trapped between web and predator, weak and small and so, so edible.
"Okay," Alexei muttered, his back hitting a tree trunk. "This is fine. This is totally fine. I've been in worse situations. I've definitely been in worse—"
He hadn't. He absolutely hadn't been in worse situations. The worst situation he'd been in before this was getting chased by a homeless guy in Moscow who thought he had stolen his vodka.
This was considerably worse than that.
The spider's legs tensed.
And Alexei found himself thinking: Of all the ways to die, this is so fucking stupid.
He had survived sixteen years in Moscow. Russian winters alone could freeze the soul right out of your body. There were also school bullies, angry teachers, and the time he had accidentally pissed off the local gopniks by wearing the wrong color tracksuit. And now he was going to die in a fantasy forest, eaten by a spider that probably was not even sentient enough to appreciate the irony.
"Well, fuck you too, universe," he said with feeling.
The spider struck.
This time, Alexei didn't dodge. Well, he couldn't. The leg came too fast for him to even register it before... Shhhhik
Pain exploded through his chest. Or rather, where his chest used to be before several inches of spider leg pierced it and then retracted.
He looked down, almost curious. There was a hole, a big one. He could see through to the other side.
Huh.
Blood poured down his front, soaking into the stupid robes that he'd never asked for. His legs stopped working. His arms felt like they weighed a thousand kilos each.
The weird thing was, it didn't hurt. Not really. There was pressure, sure. A feeling of wrongness. But no pain. His vision was starting to fade at the edges, going soft and fuzzy.
Shock, probably. That last-ditch survival mechanism his body was throwing at him. Keep the pain away for a few more seconds. Let him die without screaming.
The spider pulled him closer, lifting his skewered body toward its waiting mandibles. The smell was worse up close.
Alexei's consciousness was slipping away, fragmenting into pieces. Random thoughts bubbled up: memories of Moscow, his cramped room, the webnovel he'd been reading, his mother's disappointed face when he'd told her he was dropping out of school.
Guess she'd been right to be disappointed. Look where he ended up.
But before the darkness took him completely, he managed one last act of defiance.
With the last of his strength, he raised both hands. The movements were slow, clumsy, his arms barely responding to his brain's commands. But he managed it.
Two middle fingers. One for the spider that was about to eat him. One for whatever cosmic force had dropped him into this forest just to turn him into monster food.
He couldn't speak, his mouth was full of blood, but his thoughts were kind of clear:
Fuck you. Fuck you both. I hope I give you indigestion.
The spider, with its not-particularly-intelligent brain, didn't understand the gesture. It just saw food. It leaned in, mandibles opening wide.
Alexei's vision went dark.
His last thought, before his consciousness scattered completely: Suka blyat.