The Mysterious Man And His Spider II

Suffocated by the man's killing intent, Tega stared at the masked man through his blurry eyes.

Easily hiding the fear he felt, Tega sat up. Staring at the man, he defiantly asked, "You're not from here either, or am I wrong?"

Amused by Tega's response, the man burst into a deranged bout of laughter. After catching his breath, he said, "That you're right. Aren't you gonna ask why?"

"No, I won't. You'll tell me if you want," Tega replied bluntly, walking closer to the campfire.

For some weird reason, the masked man seemed pleased by Tega's response. "I'm here on a super secret mission, you see—"

"Should you be telling me that if it's supposed to be a secret?" Tega interrupted, raising an eyebrow while searching for something edible or at least familiar in the pot.

Sighing, Tega muttered in a slightly irritated tone with traces of disgust, "On Earth, I didn't eat frogs, but now I have to eat one on this strange planet."

"That's if this abomination can even be called a frog," he added, staring at the thing in his palm.

It was the only slightly familiar thing he had found. It looked akin to a frog, but with saggy leather-like skin.

"Earth?" Hearing Tega's muttered words, the man hurriedly asked, his tone slightly cold. "Tell me all you know about that place, and don't leave out a single detail."

Unbothered by the man's threat, Tega failed to notice the eagerness in the man's voice and pressed on with narrowed eyes. "Do you know that place?"

"I said tell me about it!" The masked man yelled, slowly losing his calm. His voice carried anger and a trace of unease.

Silent, Tega stared at the man before saying, "Well, Earth is the third planet in the Solar System. Our nearest neighboring star system is the Proxima Centauri System. Earth has eight continents and about two hundred countries, which were reduced to a measly ten due to war."

"Tell me about those wars, or rather, which side were you on?" the man demanded, sounding like a completely different person.

Unaware of the subtle change in the man's aura, Tega took a bite of the frog-like creature.

Immediately spitting it out after a terrible taste assaulted his tongue, he replied with a disgusted look on his face, "As you can clearly see, I'm dark-skinned, and I was the same back on Earth."

"If you want to know why the war started, it was because others wanted to enslave my kind," he added, soon finding another edible-looking thing. "And it was all because we looked like these things called monkeys and seemed inferior in every single way."

"It was what people of past generations called racism, but it soon became common to have my race as slaves in the late twenty-sixth century."

Gritting his teeth, he continued as memories of his enslaved friends flooded his mind. "It was hell, and going to war was the only option."

Easily ridding himself of the anger he felt, Tega summed up those incidents as the past and said, "Well, before I died, the war was already ending with the decision to avoid each other, but some didn't agree and thought wiping out one race was better."

Putting the fruit-like thing in his mouth, Tega was oblivious to the man's rapid breathing.

Surprised by the amazing taste, he muttered, "Quite tasty, just the testicle-like look that gives it an L."

Honestly, when he had picked up the fruit, he expected it to taste disgusting because it resembled a grown man's testicle. Surprisingly, it was quite delicious.

---

Author's note: He's straight. It was his hunger that caused it.

---

"Were you a soldier?" a voice asked from behind him.

The voice carried traces of controlled hostility, as if it would flare up if Tega failed to answer or if his answers displeased the man.

"Yes, yes, I was." Absent-mindedly, Tega paid no heed to the man's questions and kept searching for more of the testicle-looking fruit.

Feeling his rage increase with every answer Tega gave, the masked man asked, his voice cracking and body trembling slightly, "What was the name on your dog tag?"

"Tega Bridges," Tega replied, picking up another fruit and stuffing it into his mouth.

"Bridges?" Surprised, the man's rage toned down as he stared at Tega with bewildered eyes. "Was your grandfather Oma Bridges by any chance?"

"Yes." Tega replied, savoring the taste of what he ate and lowering his guard.

"You mean that Bridges?" Sighing, the masked man added, "I would have treated you better if you had said so earlier."

Crack!!

With a snap of his fingers, cracks crisscrossed around them as if reality itself had broken into countless fragments.

With a friendly smile, the masked man pulled out an apple-like fruit and said, "Here you go. You need to eat better to grow up healthy."

"Huh?" Like he had just woken up from a dream, Tega stared at the apple-like fruit, and his face swiftly darkened.

Immediately shifting his gaze to what he had been eating, Tega's expression twisted with disgust as he stared at the pile of monster corpses he had been feasting on.

What made him feel even worse was that they were all rotting.

Soon, he puked everything he had just consumed. His horror-stricken face turning to look at the masked man. "Please tell me that testicle-looking fruit wasn't actually a—"

"Yes, it was," the man interrupted, laughing. "It's the balls of a skunk I killed a week ago."

Ignoring the bloodlust that Tega radiated while vomiting, the man teased, "You're quite lovable when you're not being all defensive and shut off."

"Being carefree around you basically equals death," Tega cursed, remembering all the pleasant illusions he had experienced and the horrible reality behind them.

"It's just my nature," the man shrugged, staring at Tega. He continued with a slightly worried tone, "You're completely devoid of mana."

"I'm trying to say the person who reincarnated you did you dirty by making you unable to ever use mana," the man clarified, interrupting Tega before he could speak.

Unfazed by the revelation, Tega said, "Doesn't really matter. I have access to better things."

If only Tega knew the goddess would be laughing her ass off if she heard what he said, he might have cursed her instead of feeling slightly grateful.

Slightly disappointed by Tega's attitude, the masked man shook his head and said, "Anyway, sorry for letting you inhale the poisonous air back at the lake and everything after."

"How splendid. First day in this world, and I'm already the guinea pig for some deadly poison," Tega said, a wry smile etched on his face.

"So shall we keep the past behind us?" the masked man asked, acting like he hadn't heard Tega.

Reluctant, Tega had a bothered smile on his face as he weakly replied, "Yes."

'I have to find a way to deal with his illusions,' Tega thought, staring at the man before him.

The fact that he could be placed under an illusion without realizing it was terrifying, but what was even scarier was the man's clear insanity, making it impossible to know what he was thinking.