Author's note: I was sick, got better, then the sickness decided that it wouldn't give up that easily, making me much more sick than i originally was. I finished this chapter while I had a slight fever... So please excuse me if there's a sudden drop in quality. Don't know if i can get a chapter out, will depend greatly on how I feel.
anyway enough complaining about my health... Please enjoy the chapter!
________________________________________________________________________________________
FAST Zaran thought as he saw the spider rush towards him. In no time at all it appeared in front of him, lifted its left front leg and struck down at him, trying to impale him. Zaran dodged the dark-red-colored leg by the edge of an hair, jumped up and kicked at it to put some distance between him and the spider.
Looking closer at the spider he noticed that it had a huge dark-red colored body with black hair scattered around it. Its legs looked more like spears than usual spider legs. Noticing that it missed, the spider shrieked in anger and this time delivered a rapid series of stabs towards Zaran. Shifting his body to the side, he quickly slid his left foot behind him, pushed off and rolled towards the spiders abdomen. Noticing what Zaran's intent was it quickly jumped back, creating some distance between the two again.
Why is it so darn fast... Time to change the approach. Zaran stored away the longsword and took out the greatsword instead. He wieled it woth both hands and through lowering his stance a little more he was ready to evade at a moments notice. The spider ran forward once again, attacking him with boundless fury. Zaran dodged again by quickly backstepping, but something felt off this time. As the spider's spear-like leg struck the ground, sharp rock shrapnel shot off towards his direction. While not all of the shrapnel hit him, quite a few pieces did and his health dropped noticeably.
- 10 (90/100)
Cheeky little basterd! He thought while swinging the greatsword towards the leg.
"PENG"
A loud sound was emitted as the leg and the greatsword collided and a piece of bronze immediatly broke off from the greatsword. The spider let out a shriek that sounded like a laugh and kicked Zaran away with its leg. While the kick itself barely did any damage, it had enough force to make him crash into the wall of the mines.
- 20 (70/100)
The spider did not waste any time and lowered his abdomen towards Zaran, shooting a small white ball out of it. Zaran pulled himself free from the crater that his impact with the wall created and dropped to the ground to avoid it. When the small white ball hit the mine's wall it split open like a net and enveloped the crater that had formed. Seeing that its enemy had dodged the Hellweaver shrieked again and shot another white ball from its abdomen. Zaran quickly rolled to the side to avoid it and scrambled up, raising his greatsword in front of him. Yet another shriek was heard and a smaller but much faster white ball flew at him. Zaran raised his greatsword slightly, then struck down at the small white ball. The white ball was effectively slashed in two but because of it's high velocity it still shot towards him, luckily due to the ball being slashed the two pieces were off course and with just a slightly twist of his body he could evade both shots.
Noticing that the Hellweaver hadn't recovered from the attack yet Zaran took the time to check its hp bar. His eyes widened as he saw that it was not there. He clearly struck the spider, even a part of his weapon was gone but... the health bar did not appear. This meant that he had not dealt any damage. I struck it with my greatsword and it didn't lose hp? How tough are those legs?!?
The Hellweaver continuously shrieked as it tried raising it's abdomen again. Zaran looked at it in confusion, wondering what it was doing. Noticing green liquid dropping from his abdomen and multiple large puncture wounds, Zaran couldn't help but feel pain in his heart. "Never there before... appearing with multiple wounds... Another predator has taken up their territory" Zaran muttered. He had seen this before. Whether through a natural disaster or human influence, predators would sometimes switch territories and fight with the existing predators. The ones who lost would be swept out all at once, forced to move somewhere else with countless wounds on their bodies. Only luck would decide if they could recover.
"The least I can do is give you a quick and honorable death." Zaran said towards the spider. He ran at it, rolled under it's abdomen and stabbed at one of the puncture wounds. The greatsword became firmly lodged in it and noticing this, he rolled forward causing the greatsword to slash through the upper-layer skin of the whole abdomen, drenching him in green bodily fluid. Finally the hp bar appeared and a huge number appeared on the Hellweaver.
-50 (100/5000)
For a moment i forgot it's originally a level 58 beast... How scary would this thing be at it's original level?
The spider let out a heart-wrenching shriek as it turned around and quickly made a small net in between it's second pair of legs. After finishing the small net, it waited for Zaran as it felt that going on the offensive was not the correct option.
Seeing this Zaran's expression turned sour. He couldn't use the same tactic anymore and had to use another way to damage it. If it keeps protecting it's back I will lose... wait... it can't shoot out those small balls of web anymore...
A smirk appeared on his face as he realized how he could get close to it. It was risky but he was sure that he could pull it off. He quickly changed the greatsword for his longsword and ran towards the spider. The spider raised it's front leg again and tried to impale Zaran with it, but as he had already predicted that course of action he easily dodged it. He then stuck his sword in the ground and threw some dirt in the spider's eyes, temporarily blinding it.
The Hellweaver went berserk the moment it lost it's sight and started to stamp on the ground with it's legs, creating craters and making rock shards fly all over the place. Zaran ignored those and focused on dodging the legs. He ran past the first set of legs, then ran to the side of the cave as to dodge the net between the second pair of legs and then finally arrived at the abdomen as a spider leg flew right past him. Zaran quickly used flutter on the spider's side, deeply lodging the sword in it's abdomen with the final strike and tightly holding on to it. The Hellweaver shrieked at the unexpected impact and ran forward, but it couldn't lose it's attacker. Exhausted from the fight and mainly from the damage it had already taken, the spider quickly stopped running and dropped to the ground, too exhausted to keep fighting.
-80 (20/5000)
Zaran took the opportunity and placed his hand on the Hellweaver, quickly trying to discover what had happened.
The Hellweaver cocked his head a little as it was trying to understand why the human-looking thing didn't deliver the final blow but instead placed its hand on him. Noticing that the human-looking thing wanted to make a connection with him, he guessed that it wanted to know what had caused these wounds on it. The Hellweaver forcefully connected to Zaran and showed what he wanted to know. Quickly, Zaran's consciousness started to slip away.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Slowly opening his eyes, a fiery cavern filled with cobwebs and Hellweavers entered his view. It was a barely bearable heat and in the distance he could see a magma waterfall crashing down on the rocks below. Hundreds upon hundreds of them walked around in all different sizes. They lived a communal life, every single one having a role, every single one serving their king and queen. As there were abundant prey nearby they had lived a life of abundance, causing their numbers to swell to a size that had never been seen before.
This day was just like one of many for this Hellweaver and he had just returned from hunting some nearby Fire Caterpillars and Flame Moths with the other hunters. Having strapped a Flame Moth on his back with some silk, he, the other hunters and all other Hellweavers made their way to the part of the cavern where the king and the queen's quarters lied.
They arrived at a large grotto within the cavern, which had an open area in the middle surrounded by mushroom, dark red grass and various flowers and trees. The Hellweavers all put their spoils in a big pile in the middle of the clearing, then formed a neat line while waiting for their king and queen to arrive. While there was an abundance of food, if the king and queen decided they wouldn't get to eat today... they would oblige to that order. Their word was law. The community's rules were as simple as that.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Rumbling was heard as a colossal 4 meter long spider appeared with 8 meter long legs. Their king! The Hellweavers bent their front legs, making them look like they where prostrating themselves. After the king arrived, rumbling was heard as an even bigger spider pushed herself through the foliage. It was a 6 meter long Hellweaver with 12 meter long legs and a hellish red body. Even the king lowered himself upon her arrival. If the queen wanted the could devour him on the spot, he was not the first king she has had and he certainly wouldn't be the last.
The queen looked at the pile of animals, shot out a string to the biggest creature, nodded to the others and as soon as she turned around all hell broke loose. Pitch-black flames were shot at the various webs that were spun for safety and instantly disintegrated and soon afterwards a swarm of 50 cm long wasps flew at them. With one shriek of the queen, every Hellweaver started to shoot small web balls at the attackers, but they just blew out the pitch-black flame balls and the balls instantly disintegrated. Soon, the wasps were upon the Hellweavers and started to sting them, creating unsightly puncture wounds on them. But this did not come at a small cost for the wasps, a large amount still got impaled by the Hellweaver legs or bitten to death by a Hellweaver.
Especially the king and the queen were reaping carnage with their mandibles and legs. Every sweep or stab caused multiple of the wasps to die, but the numbers didn't seem to decrease and more and more wasps entered the grotto. For every wasp that died at least 10 would replace it.
Seeing that they couldn't possibly win the queen shrieked and fled with the nearest Hellweavers, the ones at the front kept fighting, trying to buy some time for their king and queen. They escaped through a narrow path that led to the surface. When they were at an appropriate height, they created a cave in, stopping the wasps from being able to follow them. Yet during the retreat they were constantly attacked and virtually all of the Hellweavers were close to death, even the mighty king.
Luckily their queen was only heavily wounded so they could still slowly recover over time. Riddled with wounds, they kept going up until they arrived at the mines. Quickly clearing the cave system from all the two-legs and four-legs they created an area for the queen. Once it was sufficiently comfortable, the queen forced herself to lay eggs. However this caused her to grow increasingly weaker and smaller... Eventually so small that she could fit in ones' hand. With her power weak, the king and the others started guarding the caverns...
Zaran slowly felt his consciousness fade away again.
________________________________________________________________________________________
As the flashback ended Zaran looked at the Hellweaver, with mixed feelings. The connection made him feel what the spider felt and having to kill it, just didn't feel the right thing to do at the moment. Seeing that Zaran was struggling with himself the Hellweaver shrieked and seemed to nod at him, telling him it was okay. Being killed by him would be a good thing for the Hellweaver, it would be an honorable death and the endless suffering would end.
Zaran nodded at the Hellweaver and quickly swung his sword down, ending it's life. A yellow light circled around him, starting from the ground and then slowly circling upwards, until finally disappearing above his head. He had finally gotten to level 2. He quickly opened his stat window and grumbled as he saw that only 5 distributable stat points had appeared. He put all of the points into strength. Then tried to wield the greatsword with one hand and much to his surprise it worked. Even though it wasn't in the item description, he felt that it made sense that you can't just lift a greatsword with one hand with little strength.
Zaran then noticed that a small brown sack with coins had fallen on the ground, along with a long dark red spear. Zaran picked the items up and checked the spear's stats.
Hellweaver lanceAttack damage200-250Required statsLevel50Strength200agility150
Although he couldn't use it yet, he felt it was a good item. He checked the item info to see if there was anything special about it.
A powerfull spear made from a Hellweaver's legs, which makes the lance very durable, flexible and strong.Skill: Hellweaver's auraA dark and vile aura attacks the opponent, capable of causing fear to them.
Flexible... I just found my spear for when I get level 50. Unless there's some almighty spear I can get instead... The aura skill might be good, depending on how the fear aspect of it works. All in all... thanks buddy. Zaran thought as he smiled towards the place where the Hellweaver's corpse used to be.
Suddenly a notification popped up in the corner of his eye. He opened it and saw that his sister sent him a message. "Hey brother i'm going to make our dinner... could you stream? Then i can watch what you're doing :>"
"Sure, give me a second." Zaran whispered back as he opened the menu and looked for the stream feature. He fiddled around with some settings and then pressed the stream button. "Should be good to go now sis. Can you confirm if it's all good?"
"Yeah, you're streaming! Wait a few minutes, i'm gonna run to the kitchen, don't do anything for 10 minutes okay!!!" Sylphie said as she quickly terminated her connection and ran to the kitchen.
Seeing that he had some time to waste he took out the ki skill book and started reading it earnestly. A few minutes later he closed the book, stood up and started walking deeper in the cavern. What is lighting up this mine though? He thought as he arrived in a small hallway where 2 different routes could be taken. He saw some white ore producing a large amount of light on the ceiling. Even thought it gave off light powerful enough to match the sun, it didn't burn his eyes at all and he even felt like the light was reinvigorating him a little.
While Zaran was busy looking at the light 2 small Hellweavers came out from the 2 tunnels. They were about half the size of the previous ones and they were already limping. He ran to the closest one and gave it one blow from his greatsword, pushing it back and making a crack appear on it's head. Then he swung is completely backwards into the air, striking the other Hellweaver straight in the abdomen while it jumped at him. Slightly turning his hand allowed him to bring the greatsword in front of him again in a wide arc, smashing the two Hellweavers against each other. This caused one of them to instantly die and with one more swing of the sword the other one died aswell. Compared to the first Hellweaver, these were very, very weak and should not even begin to be compared.
Zaran took the right tunnel and cleared some more of the Hellweavers, even leveling up to level three. At this level Zaran recieved a bonus of 1 stat point to every stat he had. He guessed that the 50% penalty meant he would only get those extra points every other level compared to everyone else who would get them at every level. This time he did not use the stat points but merely kept them, he might need them later on.
The right tunnel ended in a dead end, forcing him to return to the small hallway and taking the left tunnel. Again, he met a lot of Hellweavers on the way, but with his increased stats and his experience with them, they weren't much of a big deal. About an hour after arriving at the small hallway and after killing nearly 50 Hellweavers, he reached level 4. Again he did not assign any of his stat points and merely kept them. He continued to go deeper in the mines and finally arrived in an enormous cave where he saw a colossal 4 meter long Hellweaver lie. As soon as Zaran entered the cave he could hear a shrieking voice in his head.
Intruder... For my queen, you must die!
As soon as he heard the voice the collosal Hellweaver started to rise...