Spider eggs. Thousands of giant spider eggs lined the inside of a giant tree that I had the genius idea to step into. Granted, there was no way for me to know there were eggs in the tree, but I still didn't like this. I had barely handled one Aetherweb Poisoner, let alone the thousands that had to be in those eggs.

"Nope. Hell fucking no," was the only statement to leave my mouth as I walked out of the tree and back towards the fire. There was no way I was about to leave that someone else's problem, I had to take care of it before it became a danger. The best way was to burn it to the ground as far as I was concerned. To do that I had to test the flammability of the webs. To do that I threw some webbing cut off of the larger strands by my quill, and behold, it went up in glorious flames. To keep the fire burning so I didn't have to try to restart it, more wood was thrown on the fire periodically as I struggled to roll the gargantuan corpse of the spider onto the dinky sled I had made prior.

The spider did not move easily. The thing had to be several hundreds of pounds and was very stiff in rigor mortis. Not knowing if this hurt or helped, I pushed harder, finally pushing it onto its back and onto the sled. Returning to the fire periodically to throw more wood on it between bouts of slowly dragging the spider's corpse exhausted me, but I felt like I was getting stronger already, even though it was all at a limp and leaning on a spider leg turned cane.

Over a few days, I managed to get the spider corpse, which had quickly become infested with maggots, far enough from the campsite to finally burn down the biggest tree in the forest as far as the eye could see. Upon returning to the fire, I built it up a little more, making sure there was sufficient flame for my project. In my head, I just threw a torch into the tree and walked off like in an action movie, but that probably wasn't a good idea in my hobbled state. Instead creating a trail of webbing towards the tree and setting a branch across it to eventually burn down to the webs, and by extension the eggs, in a slower path that I could slowly walk away from.

It never occurred to me that the eggs may hatch soon, and after I set up the trail of fire and got the log set across the webbing that would lead to the tree I heard a tearing sound behind me. I turned to look, but soon thought better of it, figuring that they wouldn't know to hunt me down if I wasn't there. I hobbled slowly towards the spider corpse as quickly as possible. Several hundred dog-sized spiders swarmed the outside of the tree, but they didn't seem to go anywhere else, so I assumed the inferno coming for them would be enough and left it at that.

The corpse hadn't moved, although no one was expecting it to. I wrapped the leaf-covered webs around my waist and started moving inch by inch northwards. Days passed and little progress had been made. I didn't feel safe eating the spider meat anymore at this point, it had most likely gone bad and would kill me. Plus, I didn't have a fire, and, honestly, that first fire had been a fluke. Getting another would be nearly impossible. During this journey, a large flame was visible as the fire quickly ate through the webs and killed hundreds of spiders. Luckily the fire didn't spread far past the tree and stopped on its own for some reason.

"Oh shit, I almost started a forest fire," I remark when I first see the flames above the treetops. Grateful, I continued forward. I was growing severely dehydrated, as the only liquids available to me had been my own urine, which was my main source of hydration, and the blood of myself and the spider. Sadly though, the flow of urination had ceased and now my main source of hydration had been depleted. All I could do was continue through the dark forest day and night and hope I came across some sort of water.

I was starving, dehydrated, and beaten to shit, dragging a giant ass corpse for some reason. My constitution wasn't very good to begin with, I never did naturey things, and this was testing my limits to the max. Almost passing out was my main worry, although the fact that I could no longer feel any of my limbs had been a growing concern over the last few days. Completely lost, with no concept of time or even my own well-being, I dropped my makeshift cane and leaned forward to pick it up, falling flat on my face during the process, and being unable to get up afterward.

"I'm dying here, and this time there is nothing I can do about it," was the thought that spun in my head not for the first time as I slipped into unconsciousness. My face in the dirt, my body falling apart, I drifted off into what I thought was eternal sleep.

Fog fills my head as I regain a semblance of consciousness. I'm unable to make out details but people were huddled over me. They poured water onto my cracked lips and I gained the strength to force my mouth open guzzling the water as fast as I could. I soon drained the water skin dry and sat up with the help of the strangers.

"Take it easy friend, you're in a bad way. Don't push yourself," one of the men said. The words seemed wrong, foreign in a way I couldn't place yet it was completely understandable to me. "Can you speak?"

". . . Yes," I croaked out in the same odd language. The words barely left my lips in my dehydration but at least one of the men must have heard me because they started asking more questions.

"Where are you from? Can we get you back to your people?" the same man asked. I just shook my head in response, not wanting to waste my verbal capacity on a response. "You don't know where you're from?" I shook my head. "You know where you came from but we can't get you back?" I nodded, finally an affirmative response. "We'll take you back to our village then. Why were you dragging this spider around?"

"Thought it might be useful," I croaked out before coughing loudly. One of the other men offered me another water skin and I thanked him before drinking it all down.

"I've never seen a spider like this, and I'm a Hijald," said the spokesperson of the group. "Say, where did you find a corpse this big anyways? Spiders, even the giant kind, almost never get bigger than a dog," he said as a few of the other men put me on a primitive collapsible stretcher made of leather and sticks cut in a way that would allow them to be strong when put together but would come apart when needed.

"It's an Aetherweb Poisoner. I killed it at the big tree, but then I found its eggs and burned it down." I told them. They stared at me in shock.

"No gear? No weapons? You just killed this giant spider with your bare hands?" one of the men asked, clearly excited by the new man of power they had just met.

"Hey, leave the man alone, he answered all we needed him to for now, we can get the rest of the information out of him when we get home," the spokesperson said.

"It's fine, I can explain later. Preferably after I eat something and get my leg fixed up," I told the man. With some water, I was feeling much better, but that came at the cost of regaining feeling in my poorly mended limbs.

"Oh, yeah. That's got to hurt huh? When I was little my pa set up a trap for some sort of big creature and I stepped in it, got sharp teeth all in my leg, and it broke too. It hurt like mad," he said. I understood the point, relate to me so I can forget some of the pain, but it wasn't working as he had intended.

"Yeah, it's never fun," I said back.

I slipped in and out of consciousness for the remainder of the trip as the people around me talked about whatever it was hunters talked about when they don't get any kills.

It wasn't long after, at least in my skewed perspective, that we arrived at a high stone wall with wood spikes across the top and a metal gate about twice my height that started swinging open as we approached. A man rushed out and started taking charge of the situation. "What happened?" he asked the man that I had spoken with before.

"We found a man, injured, starved, and dehydrated. He was passed out in front of this odd sled carrying a giant spider. We managed to get some words out of him and he told us that this is called an Aetherweb Poisoner and that he was the one who killed it. We don't know where he's from, how he got here, or where he was going," the man responded without missing a beat.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"Did you find the cause of the smoke?" he asked.

"The injured fellow started the fire. He said he found some of the spiders' eggs and he set them on fire. I probably wouldn't have done the same but it's a reasonable response to the situation," was the rapid response.

"Well done then. Take him in and have the Nalkin take a look at him, he does look pretty bad. The rest of you help me bring the spider to the storage shed, we can store it until the new guy is fixed up. After that, it's his problem. Let's move!" the last word was a shout as he waved his hand over his head to motion for the rest of the hunters to follow him. I and a few of the hunters moved in a different direction after entering the gate, approaching a hut that seemed to be two stories tall and rather wide. I assumed this was their version of a hospital.

As soon as we entered into the doors of the shack we were greeted by a girl who immediately started asking questions. "You know the drill, what's the situation?"

"His arm and leg are in a bad way. He hasn't eaten in a while and he had his first sip of water for days just a few hours ago. We don't know if there is any poison and we don't know if there is any infection. As you can tell he's covered the injuries in this sticky white stuff, you'll probably have to cut it off," said one of the hunters in reply.

"Alright, bed five, we'll have Mercy take a look at him before we try to mess with anything," she said before walking off, presumably to go find this Mercy fellow. I, of course, did nothing as I was transferred to a soft bed where I quickly fell asleep.

It wasn't long after I fell asleep that I was jolted awake by someone beginning to remove my clothing. I did my best to help them, but I was still in a bad way. I had never had a problem with nudity, not that I was well endowed, I just understood that in certain situations it didn't make any sense to worry about people seeing you, especially doctors. Eventually, my makeshift armor was all off and the doctors had to move on to the patches of web I had stuck directly to my skin to stop the bleeding. They used knives and bits of wood to stick the webbing onto and throw it out, much more clever than my way of dealing with the webbing.

They managed to get all of the webbing off of me, cutting me in several places to make sure there was none left. I simply sat there, wincing at every bit of pain. Several of the young nurse equivalents rolled their eyes at me repeatedly when I made sounds of pain, but the larger woman who was the Named healer was incredibly kind and even scolded some of the girls that she caught calling me overdramatic. She must have been a hundred years old by her skin, but she had the strength and steady hands of youth, so I felt I was in good hands.

They fed me some food, careful not to give me too much and make me sick, and I washed it all down with water. It was the best crappy bread and chicken stock I had ever had. Quickly the world stopped spinning so fast and I could see the mononyms of the nurses. I assumed mononyms what they called their names because of the Name thing that gave people brands. There was Celia, Grandure, Bottina, and the larger healer was called Sinsa, although my racial trait also showed me that most people call her Granny Sa.

I was slowly being brought back to good health, and one night I decided to start writing out the rest of my journey, seeing my arrival here as the end of the adventure.

"My, where did you get such a fancy book and quill? I didn't see any nearby last I left you," said Granny Sa who had appeared in the doorway with no warning. "Sorry, I've grown bold in my old age. We haven't truly met yet, have we? I'm Sinsa, most people call me Granny Sa," she held out her hand as I stared her down.

I figured I might want to reinvent myself, David wasn't a very interesting name, after all. I could go by my first earned Name, although that seemed weird, especially since it was pronounced so strangely. I realized that I had been staring at an old woman for a long time, and she had grown rather uncomfortable, and it showed. "Sorry, I was just thinking," I said as I took her hand. She pumped it twice before sitting down in a chair near my bed.

"Might I ask what?" she asked as she settled into her chair.

"Oh, nothing really. Just my uh, mononym. I go by Sigurd," I finally responded. Sigurd seemed to work well, and while I didn't know much about the Vikings, I did know the legend of Sigurd snake in the eye.

"Well, it's nice to truly meet you, Sigurd. I am still curious about how you got the book and quill. I've never seen any quite like that," she said, pointing a finger in the direction of the leather-bound piece of my soul.

"Oh, well, you see," I wasn't sure how much to tell her. I wasn't sure having another subrace of humans would bode well for my fate, but I wasn't sure how else to explain it. I decided that these people deserved the truth, regardless of the dangers. "It's a racial trait I have. I can pull these out of my soul," as a demonstration I put them back in and pulled them out without moving.

"Racial trait? Not some sort of spell?" she asked, wrinkled eyes growing wider.

"Yes. I'm human, just a different kind. Because of that, I have a different racial trait. I understand you get a system message ability, which seems super convenient, but I don't have that one. I do have a spell, but it just turns a quill into a sword," I spouted out as quickly as I could.

"Different human. . . And a spell I've never heard of. . . There is a young man I think you need to meet. Just give it a couple of weeks. I'm sure he will take a liking to you. Take that as a promise from Granny Sa," she said. After another moment she stood up and left the room. I willed my book to open to a blank page and it flew open, but Granny Sa paused in the doorway to say one final thing as a goodbye. "I'll leave you alone, I wouldn't want to intrude on one working on their craft. A Name is not easy to earn, but worth every minute spent on the craft you love,"

I smiled and turned my attention to my book, writing out what I remembered of my time between the spider and now. I made an effort to include Granny Sa, my favorite person in this world so far. She deserved it, regardless of the fact that there was no intention for this story to go public.

The next day Granny Sa must have blabbed about how I could give some useful information because I was questioned heavily by a man called Jim. "What is your mononym?" was the first question.

"Sigurd," was the simple answer I gave, trying not to be difficult.

"Where did you come from?" asked the brown-haired man with the scar on his cheek.

"Georgia most recently. It's where I went to college and I liked it there," was what I responded with instead of anything helpful.

"What?" he responded, confusion tightening his face.

"Oh, um, it's very far away, and college is like a type of school." I elaborated.

"How far?"

"Um, all the way? I can't go back anyways, I was, uh, exiled," I told him, the lie obvious. The man must have assumed that I had lied for a good reason, probably because of the innocent expression on my face, and let it go.

"How did you get so far?" was the next question.

"I'm not sure. I just kind of. . . Woke up close to here," was my response.

"You cant possibly think im that stupid. Alright, how did you kill the big spider? I noticed all the gear you had was made out of pieces of it, so how did you kill it?" this question seemed far more pushy.

"I used a spell and my racial trait to cut it until it died," I told him truthfully.

"What racial trait? And what spell?" he asked. I decided to just answer both by demonstration, pulling my quill and book out of my soul, and then running the dark green Mana in the shapes and frequencies to create a blade around the feather. I decided to make it bigger than normal to get people interested, and it came out to six feet, barely short enough to prevent it from cutting into the wall. "The spell makes a shittier version of a Mana blade, and the racial trait makes a book. Sinsa was right, you are something else. I'm just not sure if it's good or not," he said in response.

"Shittier? What makes mine shittier?" I asked, slightly offended.

"You need a quill for it. A normal Mana blade just appears and you can change it to whatever shape you want. Yours just looks inconvenient," he said as he popped his back.

"Oh. I guess your right then," I said to him dejectedly.

"Look, you seem like a good man, but you don't seem to have any useful skills. You need to contribute if you're going to stay. Or, you could find someone to take care of you, and I know Sinsa won't. She has too much to take care of already without another person relying on her," the man said. I looked at her and she just nodded.

"I can teach! I'm good at math, and I know some science. I'm very good at problem-solving and I'm sure I could figure out magic, it can't be too different from my job back home," I told the man.

"What was your job?"

How did I explain computer programing to someone who had never seen a computer? "Well, you know lightning?" he nodded in the affirmative. "Well, I used to use bits of that in certain patterns to store information. My job was to give the lightning commands to make it move in the patterns I needed it to transfer information," That was the most butchered explanation of computers ever, but it got the man interested.

"So you can do this in our village?" he asked, clearly excited by the concept.

"Uh, no. I do know enough to get started with harnessing lightning. It's not the same, but it's a start," I told him.

"Alright, I think you can stay. We'll have to find you somewhere to live. You can work off the debt of the building, it won't be too much but we have to compensate our architects somehow, you understand," he told me.

"That's fair, I wouldn't ask for more than you've already given me, but I don't have any money," I said.

"That reminds me. You have a spider corpse, was there anything you wanted done with it?" he asked, turning to me and meeting my eyes again.

"There was nothing, in particular, I wanted to be done with it. I think you can consider it a token of my gratitude," I told him.

"I'll tell the Corpasi. Welcome to Salandia," he told me before turning his back and rushing out of the room.