It was honestly a bit eerie hearing no response from my spider queen other than a vague sense of grim determination, but Cytra is on the move in the treetops. I don’t want to risk potentially revealing my hand by looking back over there, which… Means I can’t watch what’s happening.

I’m nervous. I don’t want to just look away, this isn’t like the time with the druid, a group of warriors might deal actual harm to Cytra, maybe even kill her. I… don’t want that. For a multitude of reasons, chief among them being that she is currently my first and last line of defense.

If she survives this… That must change. No, either way, I will act as though I have already won. After a flex of effort and a growth pulse of plant mana over my garden, I turn my attention to the baby grazer me and Cytra had been looking at before the men got here. Sharper teeth, more powerful legs, antlers, these alterations I make with perhaps a bit of bloodlust fogging my thoughts. At least, until I feel a poke from Cytra.

‘Master, the one with the manasight spell is dead.’ Excellent! I’m coming, don’t lose focus.

I hadn’t expected her to have time to do something like that, but when I pan over to the fight, I see why.

Indeed, the elf, Alen, is on the ground just below Cytra, partially covered in webs and… melting. Maybe I made Cytra’s poison too strong with her recent improvements. Not my problem. I flick to manavision to ensure the mana from the man is being properly ferried to my orb before observing the rest of the fight.

Cytra is standing over Alen’s corpse, and the other three, Kenny, Marc, and the one whose name I don’t know, are just brandishing weapons at Cytra nervously from several feet away. Kenny seems to be the first to truly understand the gravity of Cytra’s ambush. Kill him first, if you can.

“So this is a new dungeon… Fuck! Marc, watch the trees there could be-”

Cytra rushes forward at him, and I get to properly compare her size to theirs now. She is about the size of a german shepherd, at least in her body. With her legs included, that body actually sits at variable distances from the ground based on what she’s doing. It’s rather uncanny to watch her skitter so quickly across the ground yet still effortlessly stick a leg or two nearby trees and use them the same as any other foothold.

Kenny stops trying to give orders and instead dodges to the side, behind a tree, while Marc turns to slash at Cytra’s legs with his sword. Watching it in manavision, the sword does have mana, and two distinct types as well. There’s a silvery one I assume is metal, a bunch of mixed alignment mana it looks like Marc is just projecting onto the sword.

Cytra pulls her legs back in time, but the half-elf whose name I still don’t know, looses an arrow from a small bow which embeds itself in Cytra’s midsection. I don’t know how much that hurts, or what it will do to her, but I don’t like it, and clearly, neither does she. Either way, she turns towards Kenny’s position around a tree, and darts off before the archer or Marc can try their hands at attacking again. I watch as Cytra briefly skitters onto the trunk of a different tree, and then leaps off and spins in midair.

If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

I couldn’t even follow what happened. Kenny is going to die quickly, though. After Cytra jumped, she spread herself out, using only two of her legs to protect herself. Kenny’s sword ended up braced against her pounce, but judging by the fact that Cytra is uninjured and has her mouth around Kenny’s neck, she turned the blade aside somehow. The pounce had forced Kenny to the ground as well, and I watch in real time as dark veins spread across his body, visible even through the skin.

From manavision, it honestly worries me a little that Cytra’s poison seems to be like hostile blood magic, but I’m sure she’s unaffected. Cytra picks herself up just in time for me to see Marc and the archer snap out of shock. The bow is a problem… Cytra was fine enough to kill one after getting shot, but I can tell she’s bleeding pretty badly. This needs to end fast.

I think I know how to help. Cytra, the archer will have problems aiming upwards and maintaining his footing at the same time, and the swordsman is useless if you stay at range. She doesn’t respond, but she does switch directions, climbing up a tree that has some of her own webbing on it, which gives me another idea. Apparently, I don’t need to share it, because she pulls some mana out of her supply with no regard for type.

Once she’s got a big enough ball, she loops around the tree to face the two men once more, and an arrow flies towards her instantly. Rather than be hit in her head, she pulls a little bit of her own webbing over her ball of miscellaneous mana and traps the arrow in the webbing against the tree with greater speed than should have been possible.

Yes! I knew that the druid had a reason for putting air mana over her hand when swatting bugs, or that Marc currently has a thin layer of the stuff on his sword! Evidently, it allows for superhuman, or in this case superarachnid feats.

Cytra does another one of her pouncing leaps, but Marc and the archer opt to sidestep her rather than try and attack her as she leaps. The archer has time to fire another arrow as he does, but it goes wide. It also earns him his death, because he doesn’t have even a single way of stopping Cytra from jumping at him a second time. She doesn’t get a clean bite, on account of his bow being in the way, but a mana-enhanced spiderleg to the throat is good enough, I suspect.

Marc charges her as she pulls out her leg from the dead archer, but even I can tell that he knows he is going to die. That sullen look in his eyes, that subtle sadness. I didn’t think people could actually look like that, I thought that was only for the movies.

Cytra doesn’t have time to dodge entirely, but Marc’s slash doesn’t have the range to reach her body either. I can feel through the link as Cytra braces before her frontmost left leg is severed about halfway down. The reason her leg got cut off is because she jumped into him at the last moment, and I watch as her weight knocks the two of them to the ground. The bite delivered to his shoulder signals his imminent demise, though he does punch her once before succumbing to the paralysis.

Cytra! The arrow, and the leg, my poor spider… how do I heal you… Shit! Marc, you’re still dying, can’t use yours… Archer! Your mana, all of it!

----------------------------------------

Healing Cytra with mana was more difficult than I expected. It seems the line between growing and healing is very, very thin, as she’s got about 20% more mass than before. The arrow was easy enough for me to just remove, but the leg was a problem. My best solution was to alter her design to not have that leg, wait for it to thusly fall off of her, then put a new one back with a burst of mana to grow it quickly.

She was in pain the whole time. Not just from the wounds, but from my own sloppiness. I’m just glad she’s sleeping now. The purple mana, memories or whatever they are, from the four men have reached my core, but I haven’t learned anything from them. I suspect it might be a thing for living creatures only. I won’t give them to Cytra unless she asks for them, but I can tell she got a bit of the archer’s during my haste.

I’m angry. For a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is my incompetence. But also… Whoever sent those four here, and that druid, when I find you… Thinking like that won’t do me any good. A second baby grazer wandered out of the spawning pool at some point. I don’t think I’ll give it the same hasty modifications I made to the first while I was panicking. I hadn’t even seen it grow to be an adult yet, what was I thinking, giving it all those combat upgrades? I know it isn’t smart like Cytra, but I am sorry, child. I will fix you. It’s male. I’ll call you Tom, then.

Cytra is stirring, though clearly still resting from the changes. I won’t disturb her, I have more… pressing concerns. I kind of wish I had someone to talk to about dungeon stuff, about what to do now that I think I understand the… gravity… of the situation. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Even if I did have someone to tell it to, I’d only have one thing to say.

Thanks for the wake up call. I won’t be wasting it. The flesh plants, as well as the egg plants, oh yes… I’ll start with those. I already decided to treat Cytra as queen of my creations, I might as well give her an army. I can't think of a better way to tell meddling adventurers I don't want them here than a wall of webs and legs.