Chapter 6 - Grab Many Spiders
Morning snuck up on you on Ralqir, or at least that’s the impression that I got. It could have been the speed of the planet’s rotation or the power of its star. Impossible to know, considering how absolutely smothering the greenery of the place was. Hell, I didn’t even know what color the sky was thanks to never even catching a glimpse of it through the thick roof of leaves.
Consequently, I couldn’t actually know when the sun rose. The light levels on the forest floor transitioned from pitch black during the night to wavy green in the day, and that happened agonizingly slowly.
When it was finally light enough to see, I emerged from my makeshift shelter in the hollow of one of the larger trees. Fog was thick in the air, amplifying the underwater effect of the tree filtered light by a lot, creating a dreamlike world of constant shifting shadows. Hulking building-sized tree trunks stretched on into the distance, seemingly forever, their straight vertical lines only broken by the occasional clump of underbrush or giant fallen log. A carpet of wet, dead leaves rustled under my feet with every cautious step.
Despite my tree’s size, the hollow I spent the night in was only large enough to slide inside and tuck my knees in for an uncomfortable night of adrenaline soaked fever dreams punctuated by sudden starts at strange noises. Even so, my mind felt clearer and more cohesive than it had the day before. My dream about home fit nicely into the gaps I had in my mind, allowing me to make connections I hadn’t before and referencing memories that were just out of reach yesterday. Not many of them were pleasant.
Hurray.
By any standard, my night wasn’t physically restful at all. I was wet, sore, and groggy, but my status screen thought I was doing okay, at least.
Ryan Kotes - Level 0 Animator (Uncommon)
Type: Artificer (Common)
Core: Engine (Unique)
HP: 25/25
MP: 30/30
Body: 10
Mind: 11 (-1 exhausted)
Spirit: 9
Abilities
Shape 1
Consume 2
Skills
Climbing 3
Unarmed Combat 1
Running 1
Stealth 2
Affinities:
Goblinoid 1
Iron 1
Sometime during the night, I picked up the Running skill and leveled up my Climbing and Stealth, the latter of which concerned me.
The goblins hadn’t followed me as far as my shelter, though I’m pretty sure they tried. The gurgling and hooting I’d heard from the trees before picked up in volume and frequency from time to time, but eventually I left them behind after who knows how many miles of blind stumbling I did in the weird twilight and subsequent total blackout. I hadn’t received a Skill up message then.
What, exactly, was I testing my Stealth skill against during the night?
On the bright side, I had a Climbing skill now. The significance of it didn’t hit me yesterday with my brain being a bowl of scrambled eggs at the time, but the disorientation was starting to clear. I’d always liked climbing as a kid, before the accident.
It was hard, but I could recall at least a few memories of Vince and me climbing on the boulders behind the Clan’s big greenhouse and pretending we were heroes on a quest or some such thing. I had this cape that would heroically flap in the wind, and Vince would always laugh and tell me I spent more time posing than doing the hero stuff.
He was right too.
Back then, I felt like I was built for that kind of thing, saving the damsels of the multiverse, slaying the monsters, inspiring the masses to greatness, all while making it look easy.
That naivete didn’t last. The accident made sure of that.
Well, I was on a quest now, wasn’t I? And I was whole. Or something like whole.
I wasn’t one of those transhumanists that believed you could replace your entire body with machinery and still be you, but I’d learned over time that I was not my body. My body was not a reflection of me. If the System wanted to give me a super weird(and kinda cool) prosthetic made of black metal, I wasn’t going to argue. I’d use it and use it well.
Holy crap, I could climb again!
Craning my neck to look up, I slid my eyes over the gentle, shifting beauty of the forest, imagining myself standing under the great redwood trees of old Earth like my ancestors.It was so quiet and so alive.
Vince, I wish you could see this.
I rolled my neck and shoulders to get some of the stiffness out. Flakes of dried blood tumbled down from my back and shoulder, but my injuries were gone. I took a deep breath and ordered my thoughts.
According to my Tutorial quest, I needed to explore my capabilities. Did that mean the quest would be completed once I knew all there was to know for a new Animator?
Yesterday, the quest advanced when I learned about my new abilities, so I definitely needed to do more of that. The only problem was that my tutorial administrator was less than helpful when she was working. Not to mention she was back at the ruined facility surrounded by goblins and infested with black goo. Then there was the big thing that chucked rocks at me and brought the whole structure down around it.
I was flying blind. I needed to go back there if I wanted a chance of getting home. That meant dealing with the locals, a challenging prospect considering I was lucky to kill one of them even with a size advantage.
What I needed were tools.
Alright, let’s get to work on that. Stone age time. Ryan need tool. Ryan find rock.
Crouching down, I dug into the rotting vegetation that was pervasive in this forest, down to the top soil. Then I expanded my clear circle wider and wider until it was 10 feet across. The soil was spongy and loose under my feet, moist to the touch when I dug down into it with my hands. Stringy brown fibers, disintegrated leaves, and hollow chitin from yet unencountered insects made up the majority of the top layer. Deeper were the roots, a net of burrowing, shoe-string sized plant mouths so thickly interwoven with each other, I had a hard time burrowing past even with my metal hand, strong as it was.
One thing I didn’t find was rocks no matter how hard I looked, at least not ones larger than a fingernail. By the time I was done digging, the hole was deep enough that I had to lay down to reach the bottom with my arms, and I hadn’t found one stone to use as a tool, not even one big enough to throw at a goblin.
I got to my feet, filthy and sweating in the humidity despite the temperature. My mouth felt dry after doing so much, and the incidental grit in my mouth triggered my hunger reflex. Angry gurgling emanated from my stomach as it voiced its displeasure at doing manual labor without any fuel to burn.
I shook my head and growled in frustration, angry at the expenditure of so much time and energy without anything to show for it.
My priorities shifted. Tools would need to wait until I took care of the basics.
Now that the morning fog had somewhat dissipated, I could see that the land had a gentle slope down and away from the hollow where I’d spent the night, the vague shapes of gentle hills and valleys only sort of visible at this distance.
Low ground meant water. Water meant food. The only problem was my place on the food chain. I was going to be the gazelle to Ralqir’s lions, but there wasn’t much I could do about that right now. On my way to water, I would try to find something to use as a weapon, maybe a heavy stick.
I let the slope carry me downward, but I was careful about noise and visibility. The birds were awake now, as well as the bugs. A constant backdrop of squawks, chirps, squeaks, and fluttering wings almost drowned out my shuffling footfalls through the spongy forest carpet. Long, frilled reptiles skated lightly over the humus and leaf litter, away from me, usually darting up the nearest tree or diving into a hollow to hide.
Hissing, spitting creatures warned me away from the underbrush when I got too close. I never got to see the actual animal, as they tended to burrow under the leaves and pop up only when it was time to tell the stranger to keep his distance.
I only had to walk for an hour before the land changed significantly and for the worse. The gentle slope I’d been traveling down intersected with many others here, forming an intricate series of draws and thin creek beds that cut deep into the earth, so deep I couldn’t see the bottom in the dimness. Waist-thick, hungry roots crisscrossed the gaps in the land, like stitches holding together scar tissue. Some of these stitches grew wildly, up and out of the cracks, catching on my clothes, desperately looking for soil but finding air instead. The sheer walls of the crevices were tightly packed clay or something similar, slick with moisture that would discolor the roots holding them together, giving them a uniformly muddy appearance as they wove their way from one end of the cut to the other.
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Generally, I followed the flow that I imagined the water took, next to the draws and deep ravines. I hadn’t spotted water yet, but I was confident I would, eventually, if I kept going down. The footing here was tricky, though. The wet clay and ever present layer of leaves were loose and slippery, and the leaf litter sometimes covered the openings of crevices that my heavy tread would slip into. Another problem was when two separate crevices would intersect and form larger, steeper drops into darkness that I had to skirt around.
Eventually, the confluence of draws became so common, I found myself having to leap over the smaller ones to avoid the larger ones, then having to double back if I found one too wide to traverse. Then it was about jumping and climbing to get to ground level again.
Skill unlocked: Jumping
Current skill level is 1.
Climbing is now level 4.
It was in jumping over one of these ravines that I ran into my first predator. The terrain was steeper now, and the gouges in the ground were that much more frequent. I was at the confluence of two separate draws that would then combine and continue downhill wider and steeper.
One of the giant trees was at my back, keeping me from getting too much of a running start to make my jump. I wasn’t too worried about falling to my death, considering how thick and pervasive the root system was under me, but I most certainly didn’t want to spend time climbing up and out of a ravine, not with so many unknowns about this place. The darkness at the bottom didn’t seem inviting, and I didn’t want to spend any time dangling directly over it.
Pressing my back to the tree, I prepared myself for the jump. This was one of the reddish brown behemoths that grew here with intense white lighting bolts growing into the pattern of its wood. I didn’t know what caused it, but quite a few of the trees were like that, two toned with crazy patterns like they had a glitch in their DNA. I just wished this one gave me a little more space to get my jump on.
Two preparatory breaths and a handful of running steps and I was in the air, sailing over the crevice, arms outstretched to catch myself on the other side.
Only, I didn’t make it to the other side. From my peripheral vision, something fast streaked through the air and slammed into me. I spun from the blow, down, falling straight into the web of roots in the crevice. I landed on my side, my feet suspended by one set of roots and my torso slightly lower on another. The wooden ropes supporting my neck were holding a significant portion of my weight, choking off the cry of pain that would have been incredibly satisfying to let free.
Unknown attacks you for 2 damage.
Unknown attacks you and misses.
You take 3 impact damage.
You are stunned.
I peered down into the yawning maw of the ravine, at the muddy roots, the slick walls, the thick shadows at the bottom. I coughed, finally able to get some fresh oxygen in my lungs.
Then the walls moved. What I thought were clumps of plant matter affixed to the clay, detached themselves from their positions and began to crawl their way up from the deep, pincer tipped feet making wet *thwap* noises as they jammed their way into the ravine walls.
My eyes widened in terror watching them take their jerky vertical steps in defiance of the gravity everyone else had to deal with.
I wriggled to free my hands and reorient myself until I was semi-upright, then I sprang up the wall like my life depended on it, leaping from one root to the next, clinging to them with everything I had with strength born of desperation. They didn’t always hold, sometimes coming away from the wall, turning loose from the soil like a string being pulled from a seam, forcing me to lose ground and try for another.
I didn’t have far to climb, only about ten feet, but it felt like miles. It was a mad dash to the surface, all the while hundreds of hairy legs scrambled up after me. The only sound they made were their powerful legs stabbing deep into the mud.
Climbing is now level 5.
A bright bordered box appeared, obtrusively, in my vision.
Not now!
Upgrade paths available:
Iron Grip
Tireless Ascent
Safe Fall
Shaking my head to get rid of the box, I lunged for the surface, getting an entire arm up onto the lip of the ravine. Holding onto the slippery leaves proved impossible. I slid backwards, leaves coming away layer by layer, taking me with them back the way I’d come. Then my metal arm was up, digging its fingers into the dirt and giving me enough purchase to swing my legs onto solid ground again. My chest heaved with the effort, and my arm shook from exhaustion.
Rolling, I got distance between me and the lip of the crevice just as the forelegs of the monsters crested the ledge. They weren’t huge creatures, maybe just a little larger than the goblin had been, at least in mass. They stood on eight legs, low to the ground, about knee height, but with a wide stance. Their brown hair constantly shed clumps of mud they’d been using as camouflage.
A dozen spiders, probably more, climbed out from the depths, slowly fanning out to box me in, their forelegs raised up and out in what I guessed was some kind of intimidation tactic or an invitation for a hug. Where one might expect to find big, black eyes on a regular spider, these seemed to have a sort of visor of carapace over their faces with only slits to look out of with their fangs dangling from the bottom.
I backed away, knowing I didn’t want to be surrounded but unwilling to turn my back on them to run, but the spiders matched me. We slowly edged away from the ravine, the circle closing in bit by bit. Then my back hit one of the immovable giants Ralqir had instead of trees. At least the monsters couldn’t get behind me.
The standoff broke as a spider in front of me charged forward, forelegs and pedipalps spread wide, its hiss splitting the air, but it was a feint. The real attack came from my left side, a heavy chitin body slamming into me and bearing me down to the ground, its legs curling around my back and digging into my skin.
Armor Spider attacks you for 3 damage.
Status gained: Bleeding [1 HP/sec]
I’d already had my arms up in a lazy guard position when the spider tackled me, and that’s what saved my life. By instinct or luck or whatever decision making process spiders had, the monster tried to sink its fangs into my arm. Maybe it was the easiest thing to reach. I didn’t know.
However, the spider’s fangs came down on cold, unforgiving metal, over and over again, the venom meant for my insides, instead, sizzling on the dark metal and evaporating into acrid smoke within a second. I braced myself against the ground, widening my feet and getting my right elbow underneath me. Then I rolled, trying to take some of the spider’s weight off of me. The creature reacted by gripping me tighter and bringing its head down to bite my side, which had a good deal more flesh than I was comfortable losing.
Grunting, I reached up with my prosthetic, toward where the spider’s eyes were supposed to be, and grabbed the first thing I could wrap my fingers around: the spider’s ‘visor.’ Its progress arrested, the Armored Spider kicked out jerkily, jostling my body, trying to dislodge my grip and digging deep grooves into my stomach and thighs. If the stalemate went on for too long, I’d end up dead from blood loss even if it never bit me. All that stood between me and liquified insides was my prosthetic’s strong grip.
You take 1 bleeding damage.
Armor Spider attacks you for 1 damage.
Armor Spider attacks you for 1 damage.
My grip! Please let this work!
The obtrusive box returned to my vision with a thought. Only one of the options looked like it might have combat applications.
Ability unlocked: Iron Grip
Iron Grip: Grip strength increased by 30% [.1 MP/sec]
Opening my status screen, I focused on my new Climbing related ability and prayed I was right.
Iron Grip [.1 MP/sec]
Strength surged into my limbs, specifically my hands.
My metal arm was already very good at grabbing things, probably much better than my natural one. I’d found that out dangling over the pit back at the tutorial facility, where I could just hang from a piece of rebar seemingly forever with no loss of power or sign of fatigue.
Doing this with my new Iron Grip on a living creature produced immediate results.
With a crunch, the hard carapace protecting the spider’s vulnerable eyes came away in my hand, stringy connective tissue dangling from my fist.
Consume Armor Spider Armor? Y/N
Armor Spider Armor Consumed.
Status gained: Engine [+6 MP/sec for 2 minutes]
You gain knowledge of material: Magnesium [1/10]
There was that orange flash of something being Consumed by my core followed by a much brighter, much whiter, much hotter *FWOOSH*
It was blinding, so bright I couldn’t look at it, so hot I could feel blisters forming on my neck and face. I closed my eyes and screamed, shoving the spider back and scrambling for distance.
Armored Spider takes 15 fire damage.
Armored Spider takes 13 fire damage.
Ability synthesis discovered: Consume + Iron Grip
Synthesize? Y/N
The spider let me go, rolling and thrashing on the ground, digging into its own eyes with its claws to stop the burn. I shot to my feet, stumbling back to get away from the flailing monster, the glowing prompt dragging my attention away when I really needed it. I chose ‘Y,’ hoping I was making the right decision again.
Ability synthesis: Consume + Iron Grip
New ability: Devouring Grasp 1
Devouring Grasp: Increase grip strength by 50% x E (where E = current MP/s value of Engine). Able to instantly consume grasped material. Cost [5 MP/sec]
The next spider was upon me. This one’s jump was less accurate, only catching me with the tips of its legs. The spider was heavy, but I’d braced myself. It ended up wrapping itself around me like the other, but I didn’t go down to the ground this time, instead, stumbling a step to the left before planting my feet.
Armor Spider attacks you for 2 damage.
I twisted, bringing my metal arm around, practically feeding it to the spider. I let it go to town on the metal, just like the last one. The creatures’ first instinct seemed to be to bite whatever they could get a hold of, and I could work with that, biding my time until I could get a hand around the thing’s head.
Devouring Grasp [5 MP/sec]
My metal fingers sank into the creature’s armor and carapace like it was a rotting pumpkin, bending metal, breaking through to the soft insides of the creature’s cranium or whatever spiders had in place of it. Viscous fluid and globs of brain dribbled out of the opening I created, sliding down my arm and dripping onto my pants.
Critical hit!
Your Devouring Grasp does 60 crushing damage to Armor Spider.
Armor Spider defeated.
This one didn’t get a chance to flail. It just died, releasing its hold on me and sliding down to the ground, its leg pincers taking bits of my flesh with it.
Armor Spider defeated.
You have been awarded 10 experience points. [10 base (+2 level, +6 group, -8 non-combat class)]
You have been awarded 12 experience points. [10 base (+2 level, +6 group, +2 chain, -8 non-combat class)]
The Armor Spiders closed in around me, hissing and waving their forelegs still. If they knew fear or loss, they didn’t give any indication. Maybe their strategy was to envenom me then let that wear me down while they waited.
I still hadn’t let go of my piece of spider or armor or whatever I had.
Consume Armor Spider Armor? Y/N
You gain knowledge of material: Magnesium [2/10]
You gain knowledge of material: Magnesium [3/10]
You gain knowledge of material: Spider Chitin [1/10]
That warm thrill spread from my core throughout my body, all the way to the tips of my fingers and toes, and it didn’t stop there. Waves of heat radiated from my center, pulsing, compounding, until my skin burned and my vision tinted red.
MP 30+/30
Status gained: Mana Overflow
Mana Overflow: Your rate of regeneration far exceeds your rate of expenditure, resulting in an oversaturation of mana in your body. Severe Mana Overflow may result in serious injury or death.
Despite the fight only having been going for about twenty seconds, my breathing was absolutely ragged, like I’d run a marathon. I was bleeding all over my back, my face stung from being burned, and there was spider ichor dribbling down my body.
I was alive, though. I was alive and fighting, and that warmed my (probably)metal heart more than anything I could feed it. As I swayed drunkenly on my feet, I bared my teeth at the things who’d thought I was easy prey.
My dry throat coarsened my voice and made speaking painful, but I didn’t care. “Who else wants to try Mister Grippy?” I asked.
The fingers of my metal hand flexed expectantly, and I got back into a ready stance.