I was under attack. It was a bit later than noon, and a group of five black spiders half my size were shooting their web at me.
I barely avoided their surprise attack because of my connection to roots and trees, with which I felt their presence a bit before they got in my sight.
Running away was an option, but I decided that it was my clearing, and it was now my responsibility to protect it from these unwelcome intruders. If I was to live on this island, I will have to fight whether I liked it or not.
Entangling them with vine at distance was the safer option, even if that did little damage, I could avoid their projectiles and stay out of range of any potential poison their fangs could have.
Slowly but surely my vines were tightening on the spiders, crushing them in the process. There weren’t many of them, so it wasn’t long before the fight was over. I was surprised about how easy it ended up being. Without the element of surprise, they had little to no chance to trap me in their web.
I took some time to see if I could get anything from them. Their web could be useful but as long as I still have my vine, they were just an inferior and sticky rope. Their exoskeleton, aka armour, was not sparred when I crushed them. After strapping their fragmented chitin shell with vine and spider webs here and there, I was able to salvage their body and make some makeshift armour. It wasn’t very solid since I used an already broken part, but I at least got something from that fight.
After throwing the rest of their bodies off the island so that they wouldn’t attract other predators, I spent the rest of the day cleaning the mess they did in the clearing.
Even if that fight was unexpected, I still got valuable experience from it. First was the ineffectiveness of simply using vine to attack and kill. It was easy and relatively safe, but slow and unreliable if the enemy could dodge or cut the vine.
Second is my lack of combat experience and agility. If their surprise attack had worked, I would be spider food right now. As for dodging, while their movements were restricted, there were a few close calls. I blame my slowness and lack of movement agility to my first week out of bed, but it wasn’t going to keep me alive if I were to stay like that.
Water magic was my second-best shot at magic attack, so it was the obvious solution. Agility was less obvious to train without a clear training method, but it could prove its worth by saving my life later. Training is going to be my main focus from now on.
The next morning was spent doing all kinds of athletic stuff like laps around the clearing, tree climbing, and doing backflips… or rather trying to do some. Each time I face-planted on the ground, it reminded me how much harder than I thought it was when I saw it on the internet. Thankfully, my armour only consisted of bracers, a minimalist breastplate and plant leggings, so it didn’t get in the way.
After that and a bath, it was water manipulation training. It was less tiring than my agility training, but way harder.
Controlling plants is like moving a muscle, if I concentrate enough I can do it. Comparatively, water is doing the same thing a bit more easily but with thousands of muscles at the same time. At first, I could only whisk it a little, but in the evening I was able to control a small finger-wide pillar of water out of the pond, but doing anything with it was still out of my range.
Even if I just spent more than 8 hours to achieve that, I call it good progress for just a single day.
Just when I was about to go to sleep in my hammock, I sensed it with the roots. Movement and a lot more than yesterday.
The spiders were back, and they were not just five this time. I wasn’t able to count how many exactly, but at least 15 of them.
I launched a preventive attack while they were still in the forest, and they could not see me. Vine spurted out of the ground, wrapping the spiders in their crush. With the only knowledge of their position being my roots, most of my attacks were missed since I could not see what I was doing. Still, two of them were out before making it to the clearing.
As soon as they saw me, a barrage of webs was raining. Some of them weren’t even directly aiming at me, they just wanted to cover the whole place in their sticky web. While I put my vine to work, I alternate between dodging and hiding behind my fence. It didn’t take long before a third of the place was not walkable.
When the first spider was crushed, it wasn’t long before more were joining it. The problem was that there were too many of them. Half of them weren’t even covered in vine yet, moving too swiftly for my vine to follow. I couldn’t catch up to them, not while controlling this many vines already.
At this point, it was night and a total of nine spiders had fallen.
With only a few spiders still able to move, it got a bit easier to dodge them. The only thing left to do was to wait till some die to assign the plants to a new target. Just when I was thinking it was going to end soon. It was when I felt it, more were coming.
Not many more, but still too much. From what I could tell, they were only four. It was still in a manageable range, but I was getting exhausted at this point. A full day of training didn’t leave me out of breath, but with this fight, it was a matter of time.
I already ate a lot of blue leaves during the fight to help with what I thought was mana at this point, but I couldn’t last forever.
Surprisingly, these spiders did not shoot webs but instead, spit an acid substance that melted any obstacle that I tried putting between me and them. Worse, they freed some of the spiders who were about to die, and I had to start their slow and not unavoidable death all over again.
If I count the new Spitters, there were in total 10 spiders alive, four still entangled.
The Spitters were my new priority and needed to be dealt with before the web shooters. With my fatigue, it was getting harder to keep control over my vine, and the number that I could reliably control at the same time kept decreasing as time passed. The leaves I was eating were reaching the limit of their effectiveness.
I needed a new tactic, and fast.
If they want to play dirty, then don’t mind if I do the same. I rush for the Spitter near the pond and tackle it in the water. Making sure it couldn't fire at me, I held it underwater till it drowned. Distracting the others with vines.
“One out of three to go,” I say with a big smile on my face. As I pull another one towards me and drown it the same way.
In the end, they all finished in the pond, and I could finally relax and get a good night of sleep.
Clearing the field first thing in the morning seemed like a waste of time with how much it got wrecked with web and acid. Training myself was the best I could do rather than trying to salvage this place, especially if they were going to come back again. Looking for a new place to settle would be too dangerous with giant spiders roaming around. It was a miracle that I didn’t encounter them sooner. If they had come just a day before, I would’ve been dead by now.
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Contrary to my expectation, they did not come that day, but for safety, I slept hidden on top of a tree, holding myself with vines.
For safety, I needed to find new ways to defend myself, my actual skill set wasn’t going to be enough. Without knowing when or how many spiders will come next time, I got to work the next morning.
The first discovery and definitively the best was the vine whip since I could control it the way I wanted. Even better I would finally be able to defend myself in closer range if one spider ever got too close, actually getting closer was probably better now than staying far away.
The other find was the use of magically hardened leaves as projectiles. If they rotated extremely fast, while I shot them at distance, so they could get momentum and speed, their sharpness was impressive. Cutting even spider legs when I tried it on the dead cadavers of my enemies. Their main bodies were still too solid to be pierced by simple leaves, but without legs, I doubt the threat they could pose.
Happy about my discovery, I got another calm night in the trees.
Since I haven’t seen them in two days, I finally decided to clean the mess of the previous fight. Even though I didn't have to dirty my hands and could do the entire work with plants, it was nonetheless annoying to clean up everything.
When I got back to practising my water magic, I tried applying my discovery to it, with decent success. The best I could manage was a finger-wide trail of water, but I was able to move it freely while it was still connected to the pond.
Magic wasn’t that hard to use, only the basics were. Once you master them, the rest was way easier. From the difference in difficulty between plants and water magic, I could tell there was probably some affinity difference at work. With time, however, I'm pretty sure I could learn them all. It was so exciting learning magic, a tutor, or a book on the subject would be helpful but learning everything by myself with trial and error is so rewarding when I get it.
Should I try learning a new form of magic? In most fantasy books, elemental magic includes wind, water, fire, and earth with sometimes the bonus of lighting or ice magic. Light and dark magic appear too, but generally, they are more complicated than others. Since plant-based magic exists, the possibility of other less common variants is high. With the limited knowledge and resources at my disposal, meaning none, the only magic I could try is earth.
Well, not for today, it seems. Looks like they are finally ready for round three, made me wait long enough. So at least 30 spiders this time, I detected them sooner than before since my root’s detection range got better.
I had more than a minute to prepare myself before they arrived, so what should I do? Last time I simply stood there waiting for them but now why not try something else? Did they use smell to track me? If I remember correctly, spiders mostly use vibration and touch to track prey. Most of the eight eyes are just for show and shouldn't have very good eyesight. Though all of this was based on the spiders back on earth. The one here probably had more difference than just their size, but it was worth a shot.
For now, I hid in a tree and moved some roots near the middle of the clearing.
When they arrived, I could almost see the confusion on their arachnid faces.
In addition to the Spitters and web shooters which I now recognize with the pattern on their backs, a new type of spider was there, a head taller than the others. At this distance, I wasn’t able to see any difference except the pattern, but there were only six, compared to 13 Spitters and 12 Shooters. Some of them were still hidden in the forest, but not from me.
I go for them first since they are separated from the main pack.
Taking them by surprise and crushing them was easy since that group was mostly composed of Shooters and one Spitter.
The main group seemed to notice but got there too late to save their brethren.
With the element of surprise lost, a fourth of them have already fallen.
Their accuracy was noticeably better this time, and the new type all made a beeline to me.
Close range then, lucky me I got two brand-new whips to try on them, so thanks for volunteering. I jumped from tree to tree to escape when they got too close, and whipped them whenever I could.
Their armour seems more solid than the others, and they only use their fangs and razor-sharp legs to cleave at me. A small green liquid dripped from the fangs whenever they got close and tried to take a bite out of me, so probably poisonous. From now on, I will name them Reaper.
Ensnaring them proved impossible, with the ease they escaped my plants. I still was able to do decent damage with my whip, I know because each time I hit them, they recoil from the pain.
Before I knew it, I was back in the clearing. Whipping at entangled Spitters and Shooters. Cutting at their legs with thrown leaves. Making sure they couldn’t save their comrade when I killed them one at a time.
My dodging skill was getting quite good if I might say, and the roots acting as a sixth sense to know everyone's location saved me more than I'd like to believe. I was even able to pull out one of these insane horizontal flips when I dodge an acid spit coming from a blind spot.
From the start, I was trying to use one whip in each hand, but with plants to control, web and acid to avoid, all while being outnumbered, it was impossible to use both whips effectively, so I had to discard one.
After a straining fight, the only one left standing was me and the Reapers. All six were alive with varying degrees of injuries. For my part, I only had minor cuts, with an acidic burn on my left forearm from a shot that I wasn’t able to dodge, melting my armour and causing a second-degree burn. It didn’t hurt that much anymore, and I could still use it, but it would definitely leave a scar.
I still had plenty of energy left, and it didn't look like they were going to back down now.
It surprised me how willing they were to fight to the death. I thought that an animal's survival instinct would tell him to run when the chances were overwhelmingly against him. Not like these are animals in the first place anyway, monster was a more appropriate word to describe these oversized arachnids.
Continuing to whip them to death would take a long time. Something I do not have if they are going to get reinforcement like last time. Drowning seems the best option, but each time I tried to pull them underwater with ivy, they were able to free themselves or cover each other.
I need something to either do immense damage or pierce their armoured skin.
Sharp leaves can’t scratch a Spitter’s skin, let alone a Reaper's.
Wait! Isn’t armour in general weak to blunt damage? If I can find something hard enough to bonk them to death, it might do it. I doubt a tree stick would do the job, and the only thing I got is my whip.
Couldn’t I just harden it to a staff-like shape with my control over it, but it would still be just a plant, there is no way it would get solid enough to not break. A tree root could do the job. It was more solid than a vine, or ivy, and if I was lucky might hold long enough to kill one of them.
Throwing away my whip, I pulled out of the ground a wood staff as tall as myself and struck the closest spider. It did not kill it, but I could see a small crack on its skin. I clearly did more damage than with the whip.
After a few more bonks on the head, the first Reaper had fallen. Its head cracked open like an axe cut through a wooden log.
From the beginning I was the one dodging and being preyed upon, now it was my turn.
The others were more careful, but they were still no match for the best weapon ever invented since the creation of mankind.
THE MIGHTY STICK!!!
In the end, there were no more spiders, but only unrecognizable slumps of insect meat lying around.
My hammock was fortunately safe from all the fighting. Relaxing was just what I needed. Not that I was that exhausted, just mentally fatigued. Thinking during a fight was much more demanding than I expected, and I even had to come up with a new tactic on the fly, give me a break.
Using a weapon magically made with wood, why didn’t I ever think about that before? Even if I was more comfortable at range, it was a fun change to get close and whip at them. I also never thought that hitting something with a stick would feel this good. The feeling of something breaking under your strike was so invigorating.
I’m sure most people would have been afraid in my situation and would have run away in the hope of not dying. Personally, for all my life I couldn’t even run away from certain death, waiting for my ever prolonging fate was the best and worst I was allowed to do. So I'm done being scared of dying, I wasn’t allowed before, no reason to be here.
I was going to do every single thing I can to enjoy myself and if butchering monsters and even humans was necessary for that, I’m not going to back off, EVER!