Mikayla didn’t know how long she sat there and moped, but eventually the ground shook once again. Startled awake from the daze of emotional overload, she looked up and through the car window to see that the spider had disappeared.
“It . . it left?”
It took her two seconds to process what that meant. This was her chance.
Mikayla fumbled with the door handle, wasting precious seconds forcing it open against the loose dirt that had piled against it. As soon as it was opened just barely enough for her to get out, she took off, scrabbling on the unsteady footing towards the spot she’d noted with the bundle. “Scan?” she muttered experimentally. Once again, the distant bundle was highlighted in her field of vision.
It occurred to her a bit too late that trying to figure out this mysterious Ataraxian System and what it could do would have been a better use of her time than bawling her eyes out.
Against all odds, she reached her goal without any sign of the spider returning. The bundle was half-buried, and she had to rip away stunted shrubbery full of brambles that left small cuts on her fingers. The pain was no match for the adrenaline driving her to uncover the mysterious cache. But she still froze for a moment when she realised what she’d uncovered.
It wasn’t a bundle. It was a corpse.
One that had been dead for a long time by the look of it. Decaying scraps of cloth and leather hung from yellowed bones. But it didn’t seem to have any armour, or even a weapon that might have helped her stay alive. The skeleton’s empty eye sockets and worn-away teeth grinned as if to mock her for risking her life for something so useless.
“What? This was supposed to help me? Right?” Too late, Mikayla realised that the Scan had never promised that whatever it highlighted would necessarily be useful. That had been her own wishful thinking.
There was a noise, behind and above her. It sounded like the spider was already on its way back.
Mikayla hissed to herself, ripping the whole torso of the dead man out of the ground. The adrenaline of desperation filled her limbs. If nothing else, maybe she could make a club out of his ribcage or something?
Then she saw it. There was a rusted metal cuff of some sort wrapped around the skeleton’s left wrist, with two jewels set into it. Mikayla wouldn’t have paid it any mind at all, except that it was glowing almost bright enough to dazzle her in the Scan vision.
Impulsively, she grabbed it and yanked at it. There was a crack, and the skeleton’s hand broke off, allowing her to pull the cuff directly off the bone and inspect it more closely.
It was made of a metal that might have once been silver, with an eroded protrusion that looked like it had originally been a sculpted flower, but only half of the flower remained and the left side of it had been worn down into so much grit. There was a blue sphere set into the centre of the flower, and a red ruby tucked between two of its petals. Two more open slots indicated that there had once been more gemstones attached to the bracelet.
Mikayla’s lips pursed in distaste and disappointment as she regarded the bracer, which was probably a hundred years old and looked every bit its age. “Oh, sure, I can accessorise, that’ll save my life,”
There was a deafening crash behind her, and she span, fully anticipating the return of the spider.
Instead, what looked like a rat the size of a bus had been thrown into the hole and landed on its back. Its claws scrabbled at the air and its long, fleshy tail lashed back and forth as it tried to flip back upright. Before Mikayla had time to question the new arrival, the Cavemaw Spider jumped down from the distant canopy and landed on top of it with enough force that its legs left dents in the rodent’s ribs.
Unfortunately, the angle of its descent meant that its gaze fell squarely on Mikayla, exposed amidst the scrub that she had just torn up. It screeched, a high-pitched and terrible sound, but then the rat took advantage of its distraction to twist its head and sink its jaws into the nearest of the spider’s legs.
This was her best chance to escape, Mikayla realised. The spider knew she was here now, there’d be no more hiding, but it was distracted by what she presumed to be its dinner.
She had to climb out. Even if the slope above her was unstable and dangerous, it was her best shot. She had to at least try.
To free up her hand, Mikayla slipped the cuff around her own left wrist and stuffed the arm bones into her belt just in case she needed an impromptu weapon, already throwing herself towards the wall of the pit.
The first sign that there was more to the cuff than met the eye was when it tightened to perfectly fit around her wrist. The second was the blue boxes that popped up in her vision.
[EQUIPPED CORE BRACER (DAMAGED)]
[EQUIPPED LAPIS OF BLACK KNIGHT (CORE)]
[EQUIPPED RUBY OF SWORD (CORE)]
Wait, what?
Mikayla paused, staring at the small lines of text floating past her field of vision, then glanced down at the bracer once again. Were the popups talking about it and its two jewels? Hold on. Core? She’d seen that word recently, hadn’t she?
“Learn a technique or acquire a core to initiate mana assistance?” she parroted the words that had crippled her momentary hopes of learning magic.
[MANA ASSISTANCE ENABLED]
A warmth erupted in her chest, a feeling that reminded her of swallowing food that hadn’t cooled enough yet, and the ruby attached to her wrist glowed.
Red lines drew themselves in the air before her eyes, tracing a wireframe of a long shape that ended in a sharp point. The lines flared outwards into a cross-shaped pommel and then grew further, forming a textured cylinder that ended in a ball. The shape gained definition and solidity with a strange sensation like something was flowing out of her body to give it form, like a long and constant exhale.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Mikayla stared, amazed, at the glowing sword that had just appeared out of thin air.
With one hand she snatched the hilt of the weapon, and with the other she pulled the desiccated bones out of her belt and threw it away. It was gross and she had a much better option now.
There was a crash, and she risked a glance back. The spider had thrown the rat into a tree, knocking it over. The rat struggled back to its feet, bruised and bloody all over. It had given a good fight, three of the spider’s eight limbs were dangling uselessly, but the outcome was clearly a foregone conclusion.
Mikayla had a bad feeling that, even with the sword, the most she would accomplish was giving the spider indigestion. “Okay then, time to climb!”
The dirt came away under her hands and feet as she scrabbled up the steep slope, but couldn’t get enough friction to hold herself up. On an impulse, she stabbed the glowing sword into the side of the pit, and, to her surprise, it held, sinking deep into the soil until it reached the stone beneath and lodging there.
The sounds of battle behind her, interspersed with frequent screams of pain, harried her as she carved handholds for herself with the sword. Mikayla tried to focus on how the sword seemed to have much more cutting power than an ordinary blade should. It was almost like a lightsaber, and glowed like one too, but didn’t seem to burn anything. It wasn’t hot, just phenomenally light and sharp.
The dirt shifted under her grip, and Mikayla was forced to use the holes she’d just cut again as footholds. Even though loose dirt was caking her shirt and hair, and with every second step her shoe slipped - fortunately, she was wearing boots, trying to do this in heels would be a nightmare - but through perseverance and the admittedly very cool sword, she was making headway.
She braced herself against a tree root and forced herself further upwards, but almost lost her grip as a wail rang out. She risked a look back, and found her fears realised. The spider had emerged victorious, and the rat lay dead beneath its legs. But it was already turning towards her, and was she imagining the hunger in its eight eyes?
She was almost to the top. With a violent motion that she hadn’t known she had in her, Mikayla forced herself over the edge of the pit even as it crumbled, scrabbling on all fours until she finally reached solid ground. She didn’t stop, though, picking herself up and rushing to put a safe amount of distance between herself and the spider’s hole - a precaution that saved her life, as a hairy leg with the weight of a tree trunk slammed down where she’d been a second ago.
Mikayla stared at the leg as it strained, another leg crashing down nearby as the spider started pulling itself up and after her despite its injuries. In a moment of desperate fury, she brought the sword in her hand up and cut off the end of the spider’s leg.
The monster shrieked in agony and crashed backwards as Mikayla let out a pearl of triumphant laughter. She tried to do the same to its other leg but it retracted too quickly, and she could see the massive creature scrambling away. It slid between the trees, dragging its injured legs, and straddled the edge of its nest a hundred metres away.
Seeing what it was doing, Mikayla started running, clumsily trying to balance the sword without cutting herself or letting it dangle. But the spider was too fast, and by the time she had caught up with it, it had joined her outside the pit. She blanched as it reared up to its full height and snarled at her.
Mikayla drew up, holding the blade in a clumsy defensive stance. “If this magic sword has any special tricks, now would be a good time!”
[IDENTIFY FUNCTION IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE]
“Thaaaaaanks,” she sarcastically hissed, barely avoiding a strike from the club-like spider leg.
[SECONDARY FUNCTION DETECTED. ENABLE?]
“So there is something? Sure! Couldn’t hurt!” Mikayla snarled, holding the sword up high and focusing, as though she could will it to catch fire through sheer desire.
[GOLIATH ENABLED]
There was a strange pulling sensation, as though the blood was rushing towards the tips of her fingers, and Mikayla was suddenly acutely aware of her beating heart as it tried to keep up with the demand.
The sword did not catch fire. Instead, it began to grow.
The blade lengthened, the glowing lines of its composition unfolding and revealing hidden depths. The handle stretched like an uncoiling snake, and Mikayla was forced to raise her other hand to keep ahold of it as the sword doubled and doubled again in length.
The spider stilled for a moment as they both beheld the sword, which had stretched from less than three feet long to more than thirty.
Mikayla stared up at the implausibly massive weapon. “Size changing sword. Okay. That’s awesome,” It wobbled, feeling much lighter than something so massive should be but noticeably more heavy than it had been before, and she realised it was going to come down whether she liked it or not.
So she let it fall forwards.
Despite its growth, the sword was still supernaturally sharp, and large enough that the Cavemaw Spider had no hope of escaping the blow. It had gotten too close in its attempts to pin Mikayla down, and now it could only stare in resigned horror for the seconds it took for the Goliath blade to split its head and crush its body. Blood and brain juice erupted from the wound and splattered Mikayla’s face and chest in gore.
A scream of visceral disgust shook the forest.
She flailed in horror, her grip slipping from the engorged hilt of the sword and causing it to vanish into a cloud of red sparks. Mikayla’s frenzied attempts to wipe herself off were interrupted by yellow text boxes popping into her vision.
[YOU HAVE EARNED XP POINTS FOR KILLING A CAVEMAW SPIDER!]
[LEVEL UP! LEVEL UP! CONGRATULATIONS, YOU ARE NOW LEVEL 3!]
Mikayla blinked at the notifications. “. . Okay, so my first problem with this is, that thing was the size of a truck and I only got two levels for killing it?”
The panes didn’t respond, so she waved them away. “Right. Okay,”
Spying a nearby log, she sat down and stared at the mostly-bisected corpse of the massive monster for a few moments. “Is . . is this really happening? I’m in some kind of portal fantasy adventure? In a video game world?”
She looked down at the bracer on her wrist, with the two gems set into the half-rusted flower. “Okay. Okay. If . . if this is happening, then I’m owed a plot hook or something, right?” A deep breath helped her centre her thoughts. “I think that’s how this goes, and I’m guessing this thing is what I want,”
Her eyes fell on the second gem set into the flower. “If the red one on the side gave me a magic sword, then what does the blue one in the middle do? Mana Assistance, turn this one on. What was it called?” She’d seen the popup but had been so busy trying to escape that it had escaped her mind.
[ACTIVATING LAPIS OF BLACK KNIGHT]
“Black Knight, that was it . . that’s a weird name, what’s it going to -“ Red lines erupted around her wrist, spreading outwards in both directions. They traced her hand, forming a semi-translucent glove, which was rapidly filled in by what looked like black glass. The material spread up her arm, wrapping around her shoulder and forming a massive pauldron covered in spikes, which then grew outwards into a breastplate that contoured around her torso. Rivers of light trickled out of it and ran down her groin, forming into chain mail that then pulled armour into existence around her legs, while another, matching pauldron appeared on her right shoulder. The red and black energy spread down her other arm until it was clad in a matching gauntlet, and she felt herself get lifted into the air by a couple of inches as thick and heavy boots manifested around her feet.
Mikayla couldn’t see it, but she felt more of the strange black material, carried aloft by red threads, wrap around her head and form a visor that tinted everything slightly darker.
She looked herself over, first one arm, then the other. Her entire body was clad in a glossy black material held together by glowing red seams. Swirling patterns like the night sky were embossed on her gauntlets, pauldrons and breastplate, and serrated ridges lined every exposed edge. “Whoa. Now this is cool,”
The voice of an unfamiliar man echoed through the inside of the helmet. “Indeed it is! And might I say, it is a pleasure to see daylight once again!”