After successfully hunting another mutated rat, Benny's survival chances had improved significantly. He now had some rat leather to work with, though he lacked any real knowledge of crafting. He also didn't have the necessary tools and materials for proper leatherwork.
For now, he'd have to make adjustments to his armor with the rat bone as the new available material. The leather would have to wait until he could find something to use as thread.
While all this was happening, Benny was also growing stronger bit by bit—strength he'd need not only to survive but to conquer this particular labyrinth.
Now that he was starting to believe the bugs he'd encountered before were real, he began questioning what to do when he faced them again. The problem wasn't whether he could kill them or not—in what he'd called his "dream state," he'd actually managed to injure those bugs. The real problem was their numbers, which would certainly overwhelm him.
As for how he'd encountered the bugs before, it seemed those little fucking roaches had come from the place where he'd thrown the rat's innards and head. He'd figured this out when he noticed the rat head he'd kicked away could no longer be found. Most of its meat and insides had been eaten, leaving only bones behind.
To make logical sense of what might have happened, the roaches were—let's just say—the labyrinth's cleaners. Their actual job was to clean the labyrinth of any dead bodies and rot.
That made a lot more sense to him, and he'd stick with that theory for a long time. Which he wasn't wrong about, by the way. He was actually correct in his deductions and assumptions about what had occurred.
So he could use what he'd learned to his advantage. But for now, he wanted to test his theory using the other rat's head and innards.
He threw them to a place where he'd positioned a light crystal so he could observe the bugs and see if his hypothesis was actually correct.
Within a few minutes, he could hear the buzzing hum of their short-burst wings and the skittering of those that crawled along the ground.
For now, he wouldn't make the same mistake as before. He'd observe the bugs' behavior both individually and as a group. The creatures came in hundreds and carefully avoided the light source, going straight to the scattered innards of the mutated rat he'd recently killed.
"Ha! I fucking knew it!"
He exclaimed at the success of his hypothesis. The bugs came and ate the scraps like the good little cleaners they were.
He returned to the sanctuary after his fruitful observation. All he could say was that these little buggers had proven their usefulness to the labyrinth's ecosystem.
But watching them work gave him other ideas. If they were cleaners, they'd probably show up anywhere there was rotting flesh. That meant he could use them to locate other dead things—maybe even find areas where monsters congregated and died. Monster nests, battlegrounds, anything that might give him more resources or information about this place.
He also noticed something else during his observation: the bugs worked methodically, stripping everything edible down to bone and then moving on. They didn't linger in areas they'd already cleaned. This meant timing was crucial—if he wanted to scavenge anything useful, he'd have to get there before the cleanup crew arrived.
"Clever little bastards," he muttered, almost admiringly. "But not clever enough."
Now that he had more weapons and significantly upgraded armor, it was time to venture to the second level of the labyrinth—where the dangers only increased with each floor you descended.
But first, he wanted to test something. During the fight with the second rat, he'd noticed his movements were faster, more precise. His broken sword had cut cleaner than it should have. His stamina held out longer than expected.
Something was definitely different about him, even if he couldn't pinpoint exactly what. Maybe it was just experience and practice. Maybe it was his clearer state of mind. Or maybe something else entirely had changed.
Either way, he wasn't about to waste it. If this labyrinth wanted to kill him, it would have to try a lot harder than a few oversized rats and cleanup bugs.
He gathered his gear, checked his newly reinforced armor one more time, and looked toward the passage that led deeper into the labyrinth. His hands still shook slightly, and his heart still pounded with fear. But underneath that familiar cowardice was something new—a grim determination to see this through.
"Alright, you ancient piece of shit," he said to the labyrinth itself. "Let's see what else you've got."