Cave
You don’t have a map to guide you to where you should go like most games do, but a feeling in your gut pulls you into the right direction. Just before you hit the outskirts of town, you walk past a cafe with delicious aromas emanating from inside. Your stomach growls to remind you of your intense hunger and before you know it, you walked inside to see what they have for sale. A pastry with a meat filling catches your eye and you see that it only costs two coins, the exact amount that you have left. You purchase it and scarf it down quickly before continuing to your destination.
Half an hour later, you are standing at the entrance of the cave, preparing yourself to complete the quest. It should be easy enough, or at least that is what you tell yourself. The cave seems like a dark maw, hungry for everything that dares to come in. You aren’t sure how you will be able to see your enemies once you enter the darkness, but your first step forward gives you the answer.
Torches on the wall light themselves as if by magic as you walk past them. Even then, the cave is only dimly lit at best with long shadows flickering on the walls. On multiple occasions, you almost mistake them for enemies only to laugh at yourself quietly.
At a sharp turn, you encounter a little spider. You don’t like those in real life and definitely not in virtual form, so you quickly squish it beneath your paw. A little bit more XP appears in the bar above you, but not as much as you got from killing the desert scorpion.
What you see as you turn around the corner is something that no amount of foreshadowing could have prepared you for. Spiders are streaming out of every crack in the wall and rushing towards you. While they are easy to kill, there is an incredible amount of them. You manage to kill about fifteen of them before one manages to bite you, causing a red bar to appear beneath the blue one. It is mostly full, but after a second bite, a small chunk of the red glow disappears. You quickly realize that this is your HP bar, and you don’t want to find out what happens when it is empty.
You’re filled with something that isn’t exactly courage, but enough to keep you from being overwhelmed by the spiders. After killing approximately thirty more, you finally level up. To your joy, you realize that you regain all the health that you have lost when you do so.
Written by Quuentong on 21 September 2018