Nick was woefully unprepared to face an enemy of this caliber. The spider’s ability to anticipate his attacks was even more terrifying than its fearsome natural weaponry.
Making a bad situation even worse, he had a sinking feeling that the beast had far more combat experience than himself. If that wasn’t enough of a problem, he was already growing tired, whereas the spider appeared almost casually exuberant. The longer this fight dragged on, the worse his odds would grow, and Nick had no desire whatsoever to find out who would come out on top in a prolonged contest of endurance. However, he doubted that he would prevail in a melee or that he could outrun the creature and escape without wounding it first.
That left him with only one option. Although he had no real insight into the mind of his opponent, Nick had no choice but to best the spider in a battle of wits, then use the advantage he created to land a critical strike.
I don’t care how clever it is. I grew up with opposable thumbs, the internet, and a smart phone in my pocket. I was raised on Google, Reddit, and Wikipedia, and I have a million random facts stored somewhere in my brain. In addition, through a life of gaming and consuming works of fantasy in dozens of formats, Nick had been exposed to tens of thousands of stories, many of which contained tactics that might help him live through this encounter.
Over the next seven and a half minutes, he managed to battle the spider to a standstill, during which he enacted every plan and ploy that he could think of. He tried posturing and screaming. Throwing dirt and chucking stones. Acting like he was about to fall, then spinning to slash from an unexpected angle.
Unfortunately, none of it worked, although his antics captured the spider’s curiosity. The beast seemed intrigued as to what he was about. Almost as interested in seeing what Nick would do next as it was in ending the fight, occasionally trying out an experimental maneuver of its own.
Observing the spider exposed him to a slew of novel tactics as well. Strategies that he would study at his leisure—assuming that he survived the next few minutes, which was by no means a sure thing at this point. But if there was one thing that a life full of competition had taught him, it was this. When it was time to go all in, always bet everything on yourself.
By this point, Nick was scraping the bottom of his bag of tricks, and he was certain that the spider could overwhelm him in a direct exchange of blows. However, since it had more endurance, the beast was waiting until he was exhausted before launching a decisive attack.
It doesn’t want to have to fend off my sword with its legs. They must not be tough enough to turn the blade aside, although I doubt that I can penetrate the thicker chitin across its body without a massive windup that would be easy to avoid. I need to find a way to pin it in place long enough to execute a sweeping slash down low. If I can carve off a few legs, I think I can manage the rest.
It was at this point that the spider made a single, small mistake. It was slow to withdraw as it completed another rushing feint, remaining in Nick’s kill zone long enough for him to swing the sword into its forelimbs.
Covered in a sheen of sweat, knowing that he would not find another opportunity as promising as this one, Nick brought the blade down in a horizontal slash, ready to redirect the weapon into the spider’s path if it darted to either side. As the sword carved a silver arc through the open air, the spider remained frozen in place, as if it welcomed the razored steel streaking for its legs.
Just before his sword carved the spider’s limbs free from its body, the beast abruptly shot straight backwards, flying five feet without moving its body in the process. Nick was baffled until he saw a single strand of webbing riding the breeze, reflecting the sunlight above. It must have secured a string to the ground earlier and retracted it in order to dodge. Fuck, it’s even more mobile than I thought.
In the pair of heartbeats it took for this observation to pass through Nick’s brain, his sword continued past the point where the spider had stood and struck the protruding root of a nearby tree stump, the top-heavy tip biting deep into the wood. He tried to pull the sword free, strength born of desperation flooding into his limbs. But despite his increasingly frantic efforts, the sword remained stuck for a moment longer.
Unfortunately for our protagonist, a moment was all that the spider needed to close the distance, intending to end the fight then and there. It came streaking straight for him at last. But instead of circling or leaping, it ran straight up to the trapped blade and began to climb, using the flat of the sword as a ramp. A bridge between its fangs and Nick’s jugular.
With the beast’s weight holding the blade in place, he had no way to bring the edge into play, even though, after a final twist, the sword was no longer stuck. The intelligent spider had bided its time and chosen a perfect moment to strike. The nature of its approach had closed the distance and countered the threat of Nick’s sword in one fell swoop. Everything leading up to this decisive moment had proceeded according to the spider’s plan. Now the beast was ready to reap the blood-drenched harvest it had sown.
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A flash flood of adrenaline surged into Nick’s arteries, accelerating his heartbeat to a wild staccato. He knew with utter certainty that the next five seconds would determine who would live and who would perish. The spider must have shared his insight, because the beast didn’t hesitate. In a streaking blur, it finished climbing the sword all the way up to the hilt, poised to lunge for Nick’s throat and land a killing blow.
This would have been the last mistake that he ever made… if Nick had made a mistake to begin with. However, and most fortunately for him, while the spider’s ploy had come to fruition, events had proceeded according to his own plans as well.
He had known that the spider would catch him before long. It was only a matter of time. The beast’s unpredictable maneuvers, extreme agility, and ability to adapt on the fly meant that Nick could only counter its attack if he knew exactly when and where the beast would arrive. And the only way that he could anticipate its approach was if he created the opening himself. This was the reason why he had intentionally disarmed himself, lowering the sword like a drawbridge leading to his unprotected vitals.
Thus, by this time, he had already released the hilt of his sword, both hands darting down toward his belt. His right hand grabbed the metal canister clipped to his toolbelt as his left unsheathed his wand. The instant Nick had realized the spider was intelligent, he had decided to use his wand and flashbangs. Despite his desire to conserve their limited uses, the weapons wouldn’t do him any good if he were dead and rotting in the ground.
Letting the lid fall to the grass, he had placed the body of the metal canister over the business end of the wand while waiting for the spider’s fang-filled face to appear over the hilt of his sword. Half a heartbeat before the spider struck, he committed to his gambit. Mouthing a silent prayer, Nick took aim and pulled the trigger, knowing that if this failed, he was a dead man. There was no time to come up with another ploy.
With the metal container directing the force of the blast, instead of unleashing a spreading cone of force, the wand discharged its energy directly into the makeshift projectile. With explosive vigor, the canister rocketed forth, like a metal-encased fist swung by an angry ogre. Nick’s hopes rode alongside the makeshift missile as it burst into flight.
The canister went streaking from the end of his wand, just as the spider committed to its lunge. Its fangs were halfway to his throat when metal met beast with extreme prejudice. The improvised missile caught the creature completely by surprise, striking it square in the head. The ensuing impact reverberated across the open air. In that moment, he was terrified that it wasn’t going to be enough to stop the beast; that before his heart beat again, he would feel its venom surging into his veins.
But on this occasion, luck was on Nick’s side. The canister rendered the spider’s face concave and kept right on going, rupturing the beast’s organs and shattering its exoskeleton before sending the corpse rocketing across the clearing and into the woods.
He stood sweating in the sunlight, frantically scanning his surroundings in case the spider’s friends were nearby and wanted to settle the score. But he could hear nothing over the ragged rise and fall of his breath and the wild beating of his heart; see nothing besides blades of grass swaying in the breeze.
When Nick glanced down to holster the wand, he noticed that the device held two charges, even though he had just used the last one to end the fight in his favor. The gems seem to light up when I kill some creatures, but not others. The ratmen and the spider gave charges, but the komos and bonecrunchers didn’t. Weird. I need to figure out the mechanics governing the wand as soon as possible.
While thinking the matter through, Nick walked in the direction that the spider’s body had flown. Though he had no desire to do so, he had one more task to complete before he called it a day. Twenty minutes later, he found the beast’s body pressed into the trunk of a tree, its segmented legs curling in toward the center.
After stabbing it in the head a few times to make sure that the spider was deader than dead, Nick gingerly grabbed one leg and then dragged the body back to his cave. He needed to retrieve the corpse if he wanted to send a message to the spider colony. It was his only hope of convincing them to leave him the hell alone.
But that could wait until he finished processing his near-death experience. The moment that he stepped behind his barrier, he proceeded to freak the fuck out. Going head-to-head against an arachnid capable of tactical planning was an entirely novel form of terrifying.
After he came down from what he assumed was a mild anxiety attack, Nick walked back to the shipwreck to retrieve another length of pole about as thick as his wrist. He sharpened one end after returning to his shelter, then drove the pole through the spider’s corpse lengthwise, creating a makeshift taxidermy. He then carried the pole over to the eastern edge of his territory and planted it in the soil, where it was in clear view of the spider colony.
Before hiding behind his barrier for the rest of the night, Nick built a roaring bonfire in front of the entrance to his cave, where nothing could enter without revealing its silhouette against the flames. He refined his plans for the days ahead with a spear clasped between his hands, since he wouldn’t be able to sleep until he learned how the colony responded to his gruesome memo.
If he was lucky, the intelligent spiders would get the message and decide that he wasn’t worth hunting, as prey was plentiful on the island. Hopefully, they would decide not to kill him in retaliation as well. When he spotted the first rays of dawn bleeding light into the world of shadows, Nick carefully emerged from his cavern, making his way over to where he had left the corpse-draped pole sticking out of the earth. To his surprise, the spider’s remains were gone. In its place sat a fat pile of fresh fruit, which he hoped was some sort of peace offering.
When he scouted the area, to his immense relief, he decided that the move appeared to have worked. Nick discovered no further traces of the spiders within the pack’s former territory, although he had a hunch that he would see them again before the tutorial came to an end.