Arthur threw away the piece of rope he had been using to scrub rotten gunk off his arms and legs, and looked around at his temporary encampment. A dozen grubs roamed around mindlessly in his near vicinity, sometimes falling into pools of meaty stuff and resurfacing before long after having their fills.

Apparently the things were as aggressive as… well, completely blind and clueless maggots. He grabbed one that had roamed near his impromptu campfire, squishing lightly one of its ends and hoping he hadn’t gotten the wrong side, and growled at it.

“I am so going to massacre all of you,” he threatened, before throwing the creature to the side and letting it resume its pacing. He sighed, and turned to his fire.

Well, he wasn’t completely joking, if he got hungry again he would have to kill some of them for food, especially now that he was down on his last half-gourd of water. He just hoped he wasn’t trading death by starvation with food poisoning.

One of the grubs in the corner of his eyes, a dozen meters away, started to do something different, so since he didn’t have much better to do, Arthur turned towards it to see what was up.

The maggot had gone almost completely still, only one half of it moving and raising itself off the ground. When it stopped, what could at this point only be its butt was pointing towards the sky, and something had started to come out of it.

Arthur scoffed, and exclaimed “Sure, go on, don’t be shy, that’s what I was waiting for all day! Thanks!” But even his frustration with being made fun of by the weird nature of this place could stop what was happening, and happen it did.

A single, hair-thin string composed of some kind of see-through material had started growing from the bottom of the creature, twirling and twisting around itself as more and more was expelled.

At the end, a ball of the material around the size of Arthur’s fist was left, which detached itself from the grub and fell to the ground softly, without making a sound. The grub turned towards it for a second, regarding it almost as if he was thinking about eating it back, but then left it alone and went off for greener pastures, namely by throwing itself in a pool of rotting spider soup.

All through Arthur had watched the process, first with annoyance at having to just see another thing to add to the list of disgusting happenings he had to witness, but then opening his mouth in disbelief as it all came to a close.

“Is that… is that a ball of silk?” Arthur couldn’t help but laugh. As far as he knew the stuff was valuable both in modern and ancient times, in his original world at least, meaning that he should definitely bring it back with himself to at least have a monetary head-start if he couldn’t find a job in whatever society he managed to encounter. If he ever did meet any.

He picked up the ball, weighting it and considering how many he could afford to bring with himself. He decided that, if he wanted to stay light enough to run away from the worms in case they were still circling the carcass, and still have space for some food, then he could probably tie half a dozen of them together with some string, in addition with the smoked meat from two maggots at the very least.

He looked around to see if there were more grubs ready to pop out some silk, but they were all just wandering around as usual, so he would probably have to wait. In the meantime, he could prepare a couple maggots and smoke their meat over the fire, rather than cook it directly so that they would last longer.

He had no experience doing that, but he had read something about it once, so he could make a halfway decent attempt, probably.

Half an hour later and Arthur pocketed his third ball of silk, fresh from… let’s not talk about that, shall we? Since deciding on his next course of action, Arthur had been hard at work building the frame for a small smoker.

Unfortunately his only spell actually required sand or something similar to work, and since he was on top of a massive creature and quite a distance away from the ground, the only way to get his materials was to simply stand there and hope the wind would blow some in his face. Which surprisingly actually worked, but it was a slower process than usual.

He had also kept an eye out for the worms, both in case they decided to climb the carcass somehow, and also to check on whether they were gone for good. It didn’t look like they wanted or even were able to climb up to where he was, although he’d decided not to lower his guard just yet, but he was sure they were still prowling around down below.

Deciding there was nothing he could do about the worm problem in that moment, he went back to getting the finishing touches done on the smoker, namely making sure it wouldn’t collapse under its own weight.

That done, Arthur moved towards the nearest group of grubs and grabbed two, which he then killed as quickly and painlessly as he could. He almost felt bad killing the harmless things, but if it was between them and him it was an easy choice.

After cleaning them off with a newly grown knife, the pieces of maggot were skewered on a couple javelins and placed on the smoker to prepare them for a journey.

Arthur didn’t know exactly how long to leave them there or what the meat should look like when it was done, both because he had never before done something similar and because it wasn’t exactly standard meat that he was cooking. He figured it would be fine as long as it wasn’t completely charred.

He left the smoked grub on its own and went around collecting a couple more orbs of silk, hoping that they had an actual value and that he wasn’t going around collecting worthless maggot excrements.

His preparations done and without anything else to do, Arthur went back to sit by the fire, although he kept a fair distance since the sun was hot enough on its own. Luckily he could still cool himself with fruit juice, although he was starting to think he would end up smelling of coconut and orange for the rest of his life.

Still, since for the first time in a while nothing new was happening, Arthur sat by his fire and rested, watching the meat hopefully in the process of being smoked.

“How long does it even take for this to work?” Arthur asked himself, his head turning as if looking for an answer. Instead, he found grubs, just he and them on the back of a massive rotting carcass.

An hour later Arthur looked at the meat and threw his hands in the air, arbitrarily deciding it was ready. While it didn’t look good, it at least looked cooked, and that was enough for him.

Taking the meat off his javelin-turned-skewer, Arthur strung together the cuts on a length of string and tied it all on his rope belt. Now officially wearing more rope than cloth, Arthur felt he was ready to get off mount carcass and face off a murderous horde of desert worms.

He had rations, weapons, rope, something of possible value to trade in case he wasn’t the only one suffering in this hell, and more importantly he was out of all water, meaning he had no other choice but throw himself into danger willingly.

What worried him even further was the sun, which was still in mostly the same place since he had arrived, meaning hoping night would come to help him stave off the heat was a fruitless endeavour.

Preparations done for the journey, Arthur took off towards the head of the spider, from which he had seen he would be able to get off without having to climb a literal wall, as he had done to get up.

Arthur took exactly three steps before the sound of something cracking broke the stillness and made him froze. It was soon followed by a second crack, which broke him from his paralysis and had him on a swivel trying to find the source of the sounds.

He soon found it, as the noises quickly multiplied and were joined by the sound of torn meat and dozens of ticking and clacking. As his eyes zeroed in on a spot far behind him, the carapace of the spider broke apart, and a monstrous creature emerged.

A massive mound of pinkish white flesh as big as a house raised itself from a giant pool of rotting fluids and blood, tendrils sprouting out unevenly from all over its body and a gown made from a hundred moving spikes holding it upright.

Under Arthur’s terrified gaze, the mutated thing vomited a handful of small maggots from one of the many holes spread on its body, before emitting a guttural sound out of those very ‘mouths’ and charging at him.

Just its weight was enough to make the carcass they stood on shudder and break, and as Arthur turned around and started running for his life, he realized the whole thing had started breaking down.

Whole segments were detaching themselves from the edges, and as he was about to reach the head portion, it simply fell off, cutting his only way out.

Without hesitation, knowing he was still being followed, Arthur swerved to the side, trying to gain time to think about his next move even as the distance between him and the abomination grew shorter and shorter.

As Arthur ran out of space, he was a pillar of flesh and chitin stripping itself off the rest of the carcass and starting to fall to the ground. There was no more time to think, and as he reached the end of the road, Arthur jumped off the side and threw himself on the detaching column.

Luckily, as much as he could call the whole situation ‘lucky’, Arthur managed to land on its feet, and rode out the pillar as it fell to the ground.

Looking behind in the short time he had before it all crashed in the sands, he saw the creature had decided to slide off the side rather than throw itself after him, which was quite a relief.

Judging by the distance and speed they were travelling at, Arthur would have a good head start as soon as he landed-

Sand rose up high in the air as the pillar of flesh hit the ground, throwing Arthur off head over heels in a nearby dune. Swiftly he jumped to his feet, almost eating shit as his sense of balance had seemingly decided to shut itself off.

The dizziness passed quickly, and Arthur took off at a sprint as he heard the monster land a couple dozen meters behind him. While he ran, he checked his equipment, making sure nothing got loose from the fall, but thankfully nothing had.

He was almost tempted to chuck a javelin at the creature following behind him, but for now he refrained; he was waiting for something to happen, and turning around now to throw something would only waste his time. Not to mention that he was definitely going to miss a moving target while he himself was running.

Instead, he focused his eyes forwards and ears back, trying to keep his distance while making sure he didn’t hear the monster getting too near.

He didn’t have to wait long for what he was waiting for to happen, and as he saw the sand shift in front of him he used [Desperate Dodge] to roll off to the side. Since he was ready he was able to get to his feet almost immediately, even as he felt the worm impact the sand once again some meters behind him.

The area around him filled with the sand worms, and Arthur had to concentrate on evading and dodging away from the many maws trying to take a chunk out of him. Since he could no longer run, it didn’t take long for the other monstrosity to reach them, and as it did Arthur sincerely hoped worms and maggots were not on friendly terms.

As it turned out, they weren’t, and Arthur actually ended up being almost completely ignored by both groups as just a couple of the smaller worms continued to harass him.

These were more or less half as big as Arthur was and he thought he would be able to handle them. He put some distance between the maggot monstrosity and the rest of the swarming worms, which was already turning in a battlefield, and brought his spear to bear.