...this is...?


　When I came to, I found myself lying in the middle of nowhere.

　I had been prepared to never wake up again, and the hope that I might have been saved crossed my mind.

　It was too dark to grasp the situation, but at least there was no sign of the Lord of the Flies.

　Relieved at that fact, I tried to raise my upper body.

　However.


'........Huh?


　I couldn't move my body. A strong numbness hindered the movement of his arms and legs.

　He could barely move his arms and legs from the neck up, but he couldn't move a single finger satisfactorily from the neck down.

　I was horrified by a sensation I'd never felt before.

　Speaking of horrifying, what is this sound coming from somewhere?



　The sound of something hard being crushed with a crunch.

　The sound of something soft and squishy being chewed.

　The sound of slurping something sticky and sticky.



　For some reason, the sound gave me a chill.

　The fact that he couldn't see anything made him feel more fearful.

　I tried desperately to move my body away from the source of the sound, but my numb body wouldn't budge.



　And that's when it happened.

　A light suddenly shone in my field of vision, which had been shrouded in darkness.

　It was the moonlight pouring down from overhead.

　In the moonlight, the full extent of my current location is revealed.

　A huge space that could easily fit into a small mansion. There are no signs of human intervention on the rugged rock surface, and it seems to be a natural cave.



　However, even though it was a cave, there was no doorway in sight.

　If I wanted to get out of the cave, I would have to go through a hole in the ground above my head.

　The hole looks small when you look up at it like this, but it is quite far from the ground.

　But this is because it is a long way from the ground. Unless you have the ability to fly, it would be difficult to get in and out of the hole freely.

　This means that the person using this place is a being that has the ability to fly and also needs such a huge hole to get in and out.

　In other words...


Lord of the Flies.


　I groan.

　The hope that I might have been saved spills out of my chest like sand.

　No, more importantly, the fact that this is the Lord of the Flies' nest means that the sound I've been hearing from earlier is the one I've been hearing--



　Fearfully, he moved his head only to look in that direction.

　I knew I would regret it if I saw it, but I couldn't choose not to look.

　And then, as I expected, regret set in.


'..........Hi.'


　One adventurer was there. He was probably one of the missing adventurers that Lunamaria had mentioned.

　He was in a horrible shape.

　Both arms were missing above the elbows, close to the shoulders.

　Both legs were missing above the knees, up to the thighs.

　Countless maggots were attached to the wounds, where white bones and reddish-brown flesh were exposed.

　Countless maggots, ranging from fist-sized to fingertip-sized, gathered at the wound as if they were competing with each other, chewing the bones, eating the flesh and sipping the blood.


''........Hee!


　And that's not all that was horrifying. The adventurer was flooding his nose, his mouth and his ears with maggots the size of a grain of rice.

　Only his eyes were safe. That was the next moment.


　--Their eyes met.


　In the height of fear and despair, with a light on the verge of insanity, however, the other side was certainly aware of our presence.

　The proof of this is that the adventurer's eyes widened and he opened his mouth to say something.

　........although what came out of their mouths were not words, but a large number of maggots.


''Heeeeee........!


　They are alive. They have had their limbs eaten, their noses, mouths and ears raped, but they are still conscious.

　The Lord of the Flies catches his prey alive and brings them back to his nest to feed his larvae.

　The larvae of the Lord of the Flies then slowly, slowly, slowly chew the raw food as if it were dissolving, so as not to kill them.

　The information I had read in the documents was unmistakable.

　The horrific scene in front of me was none other than my own slightly future self.

　The moment I recognized that fact--





　Unable to bear it, he screamed out.

　As if it was a signal, the surrounding maggots leapt at him all at once.