1 Chapter 1 - Encounter

It had been 3 months since he had run away. He moved into a cave on the outskirts of the city. He had always been an outsider. Shunted around by others, including family members.

He was abandoned by his family members and placed in a foster home. They saw him as a nuisance at a young age. He ran away at 16 when he was old enough. Old enough to make his own decisions. This was the safest spot he could find without any creatures from the other side. He had taken the essential items like a bed and micro teleporter from his foster parents before running away into the wild. He had found a cave on the outskirts of the city and made it his home.

Today was no different from any other day, except that a temporal shift happened, and his cave mixed together with the other dimension. He knew this due to a few things, most notably that the cave was normally a quiet place. It was so quiet that one could faintly hear the pool of water that by nature formed inside the cave echo, as water dripped from a crack that supplied it's flow.

After the temporal shift, the same could not be said. He could hear all kinds of sounds coming from deeper within the cave. The most notable would be the sound of something humming and buzzing. It did not sound like anything he was used to, which made it so much more prominent. As he heard the sound got more and more pronounced, he could not help feeling that he needed to inspect the origin of the sound.

He could see the change in his surroundings as he felt that the cave, that he had lived in for so long, had gotten bigger. Before the shift the cave was rather small, at most his spot that he occupied was about six square meters. The area deeper in where the pool of water was would be roughly about sixteen square meters if he had to guess that, he was not sure as he could not measure it. One thing he was sure about, that the cave felt much more spacious. The pathway that led to the pool was now longer and wider, as it took him a while to get close to what now looked almost like a dome of rock and sand encircling a small forest. The sheer drop into the forest opening almost caused him to fall, as he was not paying attention to his surroundings. What had used to be just a small pool surrounded by earth was now a gigantic, hidden world nested within the cave. Packed with foliage and trees of green, yellow and many other coloured so large it would probably take 2 days to climb even if provided with the correct tools. The scene itself left him both speechless and mesmerised at how much the cave had changed. The biggest change had to have been the pool that had once been the only thing visible. The same pool had now also enlarged by a massive amount, so much so that it could probably be compared to a small lake. He had to get down the hill first, but he decided to head over to the pool and see if any changes had happened to the water itself.

***

As he finally reached the bottom of the hill, he started making his way in the direction of the pool located in the middle. As he walked towards the centre, he looked at the trees and multitude of plants he came across. The colours each plant sported was so vivid and almost hypnotic that he could not help but be spellbound.

Being enthralled by the array of colours only lasted for a short while until he heard an unnerving sound of hissing. Not the hissing one would hear from a cat, it was much, much more primal as if to scare you away. And as he tried to take a right turn to head away from the sound, he saw it. The scene alone stunned him to the bone. About 10 meters away, he saw a spider web. This web was not average if compared to that of a normal house spider. The web was gigantic, he guessed that it could probably fit his length three to four times. This meant that the size of the web was about six to eight meters long. The thought popped up for a few moments before he saw the absolute monster that had probably spun the web. It was some form of yellow arachnid. He counted 10 legs, two of which was attached at the top of the creature's abdomen and the other eight attached to the sides of it like a normal spiders'. The creature had a lot of eyes just like a spider and 2 fangs similar to what he read about in books about spiders. The main difference was that this creature was just lower than knee height, and its body was about half the length of an adult. He was 1.78 meters tall, and this thing was almost his height in length alone. This was much bigger than any spider he had ever seen. He read that creatures from the other side were much larger than similar creatures or animals on Earth. Knowing this and seeing it in person was still a bit of a shock. His attention was drawn back to the scene in front of him. The 2 extra legs of the creature started secreting what looked like sweat and was thrown into the distance like a pitcher in a baseball match. The moment the liquid fell on some plants near him, he knew that he was in danger. The plants that came in contact with the liquid started melting away like being hit with acid. He realized that the spider-like creature could use his poison in a liquid acid form to attack his prey.

That is it, he finally remembered that spiders are hunters who wait for their prey to get caught in their web. He started looking around to see what it was trying to attack. He could not go any closer, so he just started to survey the area visible to him. It took him about a minute to find it.

The spider creature's target must be it, he thought. As he studied the situation further, he concluded that what he was looking at must be the creature's target. He was looking at a small little creature about 1 meter in height and about one and a half to two meters wide off to the side close to the lake bed. It looked almost like a bullfrog, but was red and much bigger than any frog he had ever seen. What also drew his attention was that the creature had a tail, and its front legs were far larger than its hind legs, making it look rather muscular.

The frog-like creature looked like it was ready to fight, but it was biding its time, as if waiting for something to happen.

Just before both creatures were ready to attack, he dropped to his knees as he felt that his arm was burning as if being set alight.

He almost could not bear the pain, feeling like he was ready to pass out. A message window popped up in front of his eyes.

A pop-up similar to online games appeared in front of his eyes.

Monster tamer interface has started to integrate. Would you like to proceed?