Skippity-do

-Before their lunch-

Remaining in the shadows near the window of the butchers hut, hidden from view, 6 was crouching listening to Karkum talk.

He noticed Karkum's demeanor change the moment he exited Cypius' house earlier, and hearing him speak confirmed that he was once again acting like the man he argued with this morning.

Although he was the one in the wrong for eavesdropping to begin with, it irritated him that his argument this morning was mostly fabricated. It took away from his sense of satisfaction, made him feel as though all the stress he relieved from the argument was now rebuilding itself inside of him.

6 didn't initially suspect Cypius or Karkum to be hiding anything major, and merely decided to eavesdrop on Cypius' house to gather any information he could. Eavesdropping was hardly the worst thing he had ever done.

He expected Karkum to be gathering information on him, you don't allow and outsider into your town in this type of situation and not take precautions, but the 180° change in personality threw him for a loop.

The Karkum he spoke to felt all too real, even in the circles he had experience in, personality changes to such a large extent can cause issues in a person's psyche. He also never expected the relationship between the two to be what it was.

Having someone that isn't completely subordinated to you doing such an important task as spying and gathering intel on a priority like himself, he thought as he stoked his own ego, was a risk he wouldn't take in Cypius' position.

The conversation in the butcher's hut didn't give him any other useful information, aside from the first-hand experience of how slow the Landless here at Folrost truly are, so 6 made the decision to leave in advance before Karkum exited the hut. He needed to have a substantial lead on him in order to prevent suspicions, so his task of following him was done.

All he had to do now was get back to the inn, look foolish, hungry, and innocent, and his day would be off to a good start.

He dodged through the various yards and houses, making light work of avoiding the eyes of the dull villagers working, quickly heading towards the inn in total silence, his footsteps not producing any sound.

In one of the yards he passed through, between two nearby houses, he spotted a kid. He had seen several of the children of the village already today, so that alone didn't surprise him, but what the kid was doing made him stop moving. The young girl, perhaps 12 or 13, was kicking a wooden plank buried halfway into the ground, wrapped in several layers of cloth.

More than just kicking, she was furiously attacking it, and though 6 could not see her legs, he was certain that they were bruised and possibly bleeding.

She looked angry. Her face was bright red and it seemed like she would begin tearing at the wooden plank with her nails if it meant it would die.

Her form was terrible, basically lacking entirely, but her physical fitness was remarkably good for a child. Despite having been attacking the plank for some time, she still wasn't out of breath, and each powerful kick threatened to break the sturdy looking wood.

6's desire to be nosy and his need to hide the fact that he was spying on Karkum today were at war within himself. He wanted to poke his nose into the child business, but he also didn't want to give up on his plan to hide his whereabouts.

He quickly made his decision though, his mission taking a greater priority, disappearing from the yard in mere moments, arriving back at the inn shortly after, before Karkum returned. He entered through one of the windows, avoiding the front of the inn where someone could see him entering.

Karkum arrived shortly thereafter, not long after he took his seat in the dining room and began trying his best to look innocent.

-After lunch-

Once he caught his breath, 6 began walking. He headed directly towards the area of the town he entered from.

He swiftly left town, his pace oddly fast for someone walking. There was almost a skip in his steps. None of the people he passed minded him, like he wasn't a stranger skipping through their yards.

He left town and entered the forest, this time taking the time to look and compare the differences between forests here and the ones he was used to.

The greenery and trees mostly appeared the same, but you could definitely notice a difference if you looked closely. The bark was unlike any tree he had seen. The cracks between the pieces of bark were nearly to the center of the tree. He grabbed a fallen thin branch to see how deep the cracks were, only to pull it out as a sticky mess that was dripping with tree sap.

"Thank god I did not put my knife in there like i was planning. Would've been a nightmare to try to clean." He said to himself.

The few trees he noticed with small things hanging off of them, resembling a large nut of some type, lacked the distinctive cracks of the other trees. Instead, they were smooth, unnaturally smooth. You could see little claw marks on them, as if they were pierced, but very few. Aside from that, they looked sleek, like you'd slip right off of the bark should you try to grab it.

Upon noticing this, 6 immediately ran up to one and jumped, hugging his entire body around the tree. He latched his arms to each other and gripped his knees together as hard as he could. His body slipped down the surface of the tree immediately, as if he was gripping on ice, and he fell onto his ass.

Despite trying several more times, it proved impossible for him to climb the tree. The branches were too far too reach, and the bark too slippery to grip onto. With his lesson from the sap of the last tree, he wisely decided not to stab his knife into it, in fear that it would blow up on him.

"Okay, okay. No more herbology or agriculture or whatever." 6 said, despite the fact that he was still actively searching for more interesting looking plants and trees.

He spotted several different animals, including birds, rodents, insects, and even a few lizards. Large animals seemed to be entirely missing from the ecosystem. There were no tracks, no markings, nothing that would signify any animal larger than an average housecat. It contrasted with the unusually large population of Folrost, although that may be a unique characteristic of Folrost.

The one specific thing he was searching for eluded him for an entire hour of searching.

Until.

In the deep cracks of the first tree he discovered, which he aptly termed the deep crack tree, the found webs, crossing throughout the cracks, thicker than the typical spider webs of Earth.

It spawned a large section of the innards of the tree, wrapping around 60 perfect of the trunk and about 4 feet large.

Another large difference he noticed in this particular spider web was the spider's. It housed at least 10 spiders that he could see, around the size of a fingernail but speckled with enough red to poison you just by looking at it. In his head, he raised the importance of watching out for the color red nearing him the moment he saw the spiders.

Not long after he got the hang of locating spider's in the dense forestry. He found several more of the red spiders in the cracks of the trees, a few spiders that made webs in the leaves low to the ground, these were the ones that resembled the various spiders of Earth the most, and finally he found one very elusive spider, hidden in the canopy above him. It was large, dinner plate sized, which is why he was able to notice it.

Confirming that spider's still lived in the area, though he failed to see any within the village itself, ruled a few things out about the super massive spider's nest he came here to investigate. Whatever formed that nest shouldn't still be attracting spiders.

If it were still attracting spiders, then he wouldn't be able to find any here.

Alternatively, it may only attract certain kinds, which would also be good news for him. It would limit the potential variety of spider's, making countermeasures easy to come up with.

Additionally, spiders here didn't seem too far-fetched compared to the spiders of Earth. Though he wasn't 100% certain about the spiders in the deep crack trees, he was fairly certain they would prove venomous, which was often the case on earth. Obviously the various spiders he found in the greenery on the ground bore common resemblances to the spiders he was used to, and though he had few experiences with the large spider's of Earth himself, he knew of them, and the spider in the canopy wouldn't have seemed too absurd even on his homeworld.

However, it is possible that this is due to the spider's nest. The specific spiders it attracts may be exclusive to the more threatening types of spiders, thus leaving behind only the boring ones. This could be evidence of an artificial infestation. Only selecting certain spiders is suspicious for any type of 'natural' reason for attracting such a massive amount of spiders, however natural a spider centric treasure that summons spiders to protect it could be.

That would raise the level of threat the nest posed to yet another tier for him, and anyone else who may have an interest in ridding this world, who's name he still didn't know, of the infestation it was facing. Intelligence is often scarier than power or numbers, and the threat it poses is further intensified when combined with one, or in this case, both, of those.

"Please, please, just let it be some spiders I can squash and then get some super cool web power from. Preeettttyy please." 6 shouted at the spider in the canopy above him, half hoping to get a response, half fearing it could somehow communicate with the spider's nest and warn them of his desire to kill them and steal their web spinning treasure. "I'll even take something poisonous. Oooh, or both, poisonous webs. That's the one."

With his light investigation work of the spiders around the forest done, 6 finally reached the edge of Folrost's forest, leaving it entirely.

Just as he did.

-In Folrost-

Cypius was preparing dinner in his kitchen, a larger amount of food than the amount 6 and Karkum had for both breakfast and lunch combined. Plono was at the table behind him, placing out two dinner plates and silverware.

She finished her job, and walked toward her father, planning on assisting him in cutting the freshly baked bread while he got the rest of dinner ready for the two of them.

The door slammed open, the cool breeze rushing into the sweet atmosphere of a loving father and daughter dinner the two were preparing.

Cypius and Plono snapped to attention, Plono raising the knife in her hand to a ready position and Cypius stepping towards his daughter, both staring at the figure in the doorway.

"6 has left." Karkum said, his voice split between the personality of the innkeeper, and his original emotionless one. "He has left Folrost."

"Where has he gone? Has he taken anything?" Cypius said, skipping formalities and complaints and getting directly to the point. "Did anything happen?"

"He left Folrost in the direction of the spiders. Not just the town, he has fully left our land." Karkum said, the voice of the innkeeper becoming more prevalent. "As far as I can tell, for no reason at all. He was happy as he left, but he has been happy since he arrived."

Plono dropped the knife in her hand. She looked at her father, hoping he would say something, but his eyes were down, lookin at the floor with his mouth shut. He slowly turned to face his daughter, reached down to pick up the fallen knife, and placed it in her hand.