G looked at the spider, and Tocai analyzed it.
Name - Niechosheel.
Magically enhanced Black Widow spider Matron.
Level 5
Hit points 28.
Mana 0 of 10.
This creature is a magically enhanced black widow spider matron commonly found in dark and secluded places. They are primarily web-spinning spiders, with stories of them attacking sleeping creatures that venture too close to their nest. Matrons possess the ability to cast webs, and their sharpened forward arms are used to pierce and hold their prey. They are intelligent creatures that often form large nests when food is abundant. Unlike many spiders, they hunt in packs.
It is advised not to disturb these creatures in their webs. The Matron and her sister, who reside in this area have fed on the life energies of player G, and the raw mana of the surroundings has altered them. They have an insatiable appetite for the blood of Aardsylvians and consider it the most desirable prey.
Special attack: Poison 1-4 damage per round for twenty rounds. This poison damage is accumulative, and damage from multiple bites will each have its own timer.
Special attack: Tranquilizing poison, this venom will paralyze creatures if bitten for 1 to 3 minutes.
Special attack: Web Attack that can immobilize a creature from great distances if struck.
Crewton darted forward and slid beneath the second spider, positioned behind G. He leaped up and clamped his jaws down on the tender coxa joint of one of its rear legs. The dog shook its head and body vigorously, growling ferociously through clenched teeth. The matron spider whirled around, attempting to dislodge Crewton, but the dog held on tightly. The pair spun in a grotesque dance as the spider shrieked in a high-pitched, clicking voice, "Niechosheel, help! It has me!"
Niechosheel's mandibles clicked as she laughed, "Shrashilleth, we have him. I wish to feed! Kill that thing and share in our banquet!"
Shrashilleth let out another wail, and Crewton bit down harder while being flung around, still attached to the base of the giant spider's leg. The wounded spider twisted and writhed, attempting to reach Crewton with her fangs and front legs. However, Crewton had bitten the leg near the joint connecting to the abdomen, and she failed to dislodge him or strike him effectively, instead accidentally puncturing her own body with her front leg.
G rolled and leaned sideways, still attached to the floor, with the ball of webbed glue on his legs. He said the one word and moved his fingers to cast Mana Bolt at the huge spider in front of him. The spider was leering at him as she moved forward, and the spell caught her full in the face. She screeched and chittered as she jumped backward. The green bar above her head went to half, then she chittered loudly and jumped back at G before he could cast another, faster than he thought possible. A single leg lashed out, slashing through his biker leather pants and poking through his webbed leg. G's health dropped by 6 points.
G miscast the second spell as he screamed in pain. His mind reeled for a moment as the spell failed. The spider pulled itself forward as he called his mace out of his inventory, twisting the handle and pushing it towards the open-fanged mouth of the spider. The handle extended upward as the star-shaped end of the mace shot into the spider's fanged mouth, cracking one of its fangs and destroying the opening it would have used to drink his liquified bodily fluids when he died. G yanked down on the mace, ripping it back out as the spider reared away from it, and the cracked fang broke, and greenish-grey venom dripped out onto the floor, sizzling. A tiny drop landed on G's leg, and the leather sizzled, and he felt it burn his skin almost instantly. He took another two points of damage.
Niechosheel moved back away from G now as her health was three-quarters gone, and her bar was deep red.
She hissed and spoke through her broken mouth, "Sister, stop playing with that creature and help me kill him. He has a stinger!"
G's leg was in agony, where the spiders piercing leg had been ripped out of his flesh. There was a flashing red image of a blood drop in the corner of his vision.
Debuff: Bleeding 1 point every 10 seconds till stopped.
Crap, just that bit of distraction was enough for Niechosheel to again leap toward him. This time, she leaped high into the air and landed on top of him, pinning him down with her massive body. One of her front legs slammed through the flesh of G's forearm, which was holding the flanged mace, and pinned it to the ground. The pain was excruciating as she leaned in to bite his shoulder. Unable to cast a spell while struggling to push the spider away with his free arm, G was trapped beneath her hairless underbelly. The pain in his forearm intensified as he tried to move the mace and strike her.
G could hear Crewton growling then he heard a yelp as his pet companion went skidding across the floor, and the other spider matron freed herself from the dog's hold. G watched as the large spider above him slowly pushed down on him, and the fang grew closer. Crap, another respawn?
A tingling started in his ears, and a bright flash happened. A Mana Bolt shot out of his hat as Tocai cast Mana Bolt right into the damaged open mouth of the giant spider. The Matron convulsed back gurgling a scream in pain, releasing G and pulling the leg from his forearm out.
Debuff: Bleeding 2 points every 10 seconds till stopped.
G glanced at his health bar. He had 8 points left and dropped. Shit shit shit shit… The arm holding his mace could hardly move with the pain that was his torn muscles, and he dropped his mace.
Niechosheel screamed again as her health bar flatlined all red, and she fell onto her back and started twitching her legs, flailing above her much like the smaller of her kind.
G heard Shrashilleth chitter and screech right beside him. "Sister, NO!!!!" the Matron let out a wheezing, chittering scream that caused G's ears to hurt. Shrashilleth, the last remaining Matron spider, ran towards the webbing and started to scurry up into the darkness, missing a leg and dripping ichor as it fled. G looked over to see Crewton trotting up, shaking his head back and forth with what remained of the giant spider's hind leg where the dog had caused the spider to rip its own leg off to remove him.
G felt a sudden burst of pain. He only had six hit points left in his health bar. He quickly cast Healing Petals with his left hand. The one-word spell and two-fingered gesture conjured a glowing yellow flower in his hand, resembling an all-white daisy about the size of his palm. Without hesitation, he shoved the whole thing into his mouth and ate the end off it. The stem vanished as soon as he removed the flower. It tasted spicy, like paprika. The petals dissolved in his mouth, and he immediately felt a warming sensation as they entered his system. His hit points slowly began to rise, but he could feel the debuff from the last few seconds of blood loss. After ten seconds, he lost two of the hit points he had just gained. He looked at his forearm and then his leg, where the injury was much more severe, with a large hole in his thigh. Blood continued leaking from the wound, and the pain was excruciating, hitting him hard once he looked at the damage.
Tocai whispered, "You should use Mending. "
Yea, damn, he had forgotten. He quickly reread the ability description.
Mending - Ability to bind a wound to stop bleeding or splint a broken limb. You can use this skill three times a day.
He looked at the wound in his leg, which was still stuck to the floor by the webbing. He looked at his mini-map again to make sure there was no red on it. He put his hand over his bleeding leg and thought about mending his leg.
Failure: You need a suitable material to bind this wound closed.
G took a deep breath as another couple of hitpoints disappeared from his bar. It had been steadily rising, but it was only 16 of his 22 hit points. He needed to stop this bleeding now. He looked in his inventory and didn't see any bandages or cloth. He thought about the wool blanket, and he could cut strips from that if he needed to. He looked at the ball of copper wire. G just needed to close the wound?
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
He took out the wire and imagined wrapping the torn leather down over the wound with copper wire. He thought about using Mending, and his hands lept forward of their own accord and quickly wrapped several long strands of braided copper around his leg and leather.
Debuff: Bleeding 1 point every 10 seconds till stopped.
Good! That was one. It hurt like hell wrapping it, but the pain was subsiding quickly.
G looked at his right forearm and again thought mend with the much smaller ball of wire in his left hand. Again his hand went forward of its own accord and bound the leather of the jacket closed over the torn wound.
G saw the red blood icon of the bleeding debuff disappear. He took a deep breath as his hit points slowly ticked up. The flower had essentially dissolved in his mouth and was doing its magic.
G realized that next time, he needed to cast the Healing Petals spell before he got into a fight, just in case he couldn't move. If the Matron spider had hit him in the chest instead of his legs, he would have been dead. The web would have encased him, likely pinning his arms. He wondered if he could pull items from his inventory directly into his mouth. He tried it with a bit of wire, but it only went to his hand. It seemed that it wouldn't be that easy. Maybe Tocai could help with that. His hat had stayed on throughout the ordeal, and he suspected it was because of the hat's magic rather than luck.
Across the room, G heard a muffled noise coming from the hobgoblin, who was trying to say something with his face still wrapped up. The creature was a dozen meters away, but G couldn't make out the words. He didn't see any red dots on his mini-map, not even for the Matron spider or the hobgoblin. He found this strange since the hobgoblin had captured him, attacked him with a spell, and caused him to be killed by the spider Matrons, who had evolved from drinking his blood. It was like some creepy spiderman in reverse. He had so many questions.
Looking down at his pinned legs, G pulled out his knife and began to work on freeing himself. Crewton sat nearby, gnawing on the leg of the Matron spider like a chew toy. It took twenty minutes, and G still had bits of spider stuck to his leather pants, but he finally managed to free himself. His hands and the knife handle were sticky with spider webbing, but the pain in his legs was gone. He unwrapped the copper wire from his leg and found that the skin underneath was whole again. He returned the rest of the wire to his inventory, which now had a new name for the item.
Crude mending kit.
It still sat in the crafting tab, and he needed to get something better than crude. It probably would not have worked at all if the leather of his outfit had been more damaged.
G noticed a couple of flashing messages and dismissed them. He needed to locate the other spider and finish the battle. The last thing he wanted was the creature sneaking up on him or lying in wait at his respawn point. G scanned the dark room, spotting a walkway wrapped around the perimeter with stairs leading to upper levels. The walkway was an old, unpainted iron catwalk with patches of rust.
Casting Healing Petals again, he placed the flower in his inventory. It now had a 23-hour, 59-minute countdown timer attached to it. G glanced at the ensnared hobgoblin, confident it wouldn't break free from the spider web. He then approached the staircase with the least number of webs.
G and Crewton carefully ascended the walkways, searching for the matron spider Shrashilleth. He believed he had sufficient mana to eliminate the spider, but then a thought crossed his mind.
"Tocai, how much mana do you have? " asked G quietly.
"44 of 100 at the moment. " Tocai whispered, "Your hat can store 100 mana, which keeps me alive. "
G whispered to Tocai, "Make sure you don't go down to 0 mana. Try to keep at least 10 mana in reserve at all times." He paused briefly to scan his surroundings, ensuring that he wasn't too distracted. He didn't want Tocai to sacrifice himself for G's sake, although knowing he could assist in an emergency was reassuring.
They ascended several levels and reached a large circular room with railed walkways wound around the circumference, each level ascending higher. G peered down and saw the multitude of plants and their planters below. Strands of copper were interwoven throughout the center of the webbing, formerly used to hold lights at the ends. The room appeared to have been a missile silo at one point, given its circular shape and the gaping hole at the top, funnel-shaped webbing protruding into the ceiling.
As they neared the top, G had to carry Crewton over his shoulder to ascend a ladder to the final level. The ceiling here was narrower than the lower floors, and he could almost see the opposite side of the chamber. It was a smooth, natural stone that had been excavated from the earth. In the center of the dark room, he saw the bottom of a funnel-shaped webbing that led up to the center of the ceiling.
G walked around until he located a large iron handle similar to the one that controlled the massive door in the tunnels. After inspecting it closely, he glanced up at the web funnel leading into the hole in the ceiling, about ten meters away. He could discern the green ichor of spider matron's blood on the threads and was convinced that Shrashilleth had crawled into the opening. He was reasonably certain that this female spider had also maneuvered the sliding iron door that sealed off access to the hole. Before the elevator was installed, the room may have been designed as a missile silo or as a means of transporting equipment in and out of the tunnel complex. The mechanism was less complex than the tunnel doorway; by turning the crank, a thick slab of iron on metal wheels would roll along simple tracks to cover the hole.
Relying on Crewton to alert him, G tested the wheel and moved the door slightly, causing a rumbling sound from the metal-on-metal movement. Hoping to draw Shrashilleth out, he repeated this process two more times before using the large wheel to shut the metal hatch over the hole. Although it wasn't a tight seal and had a gap of a few centimeters near the edges, G was confident that the giant spider wouldn't be able to come through.
After scanning the room for any other holes and finding none that were larger than a few centimeters, some with copper wires hanging from them, G concluded that Shrashilleth couldn't move the door or break through the metal. He searched for something to jam into the wheel, preventing it from accidentally opening, and eventually used a broken office chair to bend the remaining metal through the wheel's openings.
Once G and Crewton had descended the platforms and returned to the ground floor, he noticed the earthy scent of vegetation in the room. In his darksight, with webs and wilting plants surrounding him, the scene resembled a Halloween horror show. He shuddered at the thought of the other matron spider and looked up at the darkness above for several moments.
G walked around and examined the wilted trees and plants, feeling unusually sad for them. A nagging feeling persisted, urging him to save them. He wondered if this was a characteristic of being an elf, druid, or both. Despite not having the means to provide the necessary light for the plants to survive, his mind tried to solve the problem subconsciously. He took a deep breath, focusing on what he could do instead.
While examining the plants, G noticed several piles of seeds arranged in almost perfectly round circular piles where plastic containers had previously been on each concrete planter's side. He assumed it was an eco-display, experimenting with various plants to promote ecological preservation. It was something that Ryan and his marketing team would likely have worked on, but G didn't believe that Ryan was truly invested in saving the world, given his dealings with devils.
Regardless, G knew he needed to stop Ryan from doing further harm.
G spent several minutes collecting each pile of seeds into his inventory, with each slot filled by an unknown seed that had a number between 50 and 200 next to it. Only some seeds had names, such as apple, coffee, oranges, and apples, while the others remained unidentified. G heard the hobgoblin mumble as it hung upside down in the spider web, attempting to speak or shout, but G chose to ignore it for the time being. This hobgoblin had captured him and caused his death, making him the least significant thing in G's eyes. The creature's name appeared as "unknown" when G analyzed it. As someone who had spent much time streaming and trying to attract customers, he understood the frustration of being ignored when you were right in front of someone.
G also watched his mana bar refill, knowing he needed to talk to the hobgoblin and be prepared if it tried to cast a spell or attack him. Although he considered smashing the creature's head in and moving on, he didn't know Ryan's whereabouts and couldn't risk passing up any valuable information that the hobgoblin might have.
G stumbled upon a few small glass bottles with some water in them, which he poured into a depression on the ground for Crewton to drink. The dog hadn't had any water in a while, and they needed to find food soon. Although he could eat the seeds, G preferred another food source if possible and wouldn't consider eating spiders unless absolutely necessary. He returned to the corpse of Niechosheel, which lay on its back with its legs curled up and no longer twitching, and activated his harvesting skill.
You have failed to harvest the matron spider, 1 of 3.
That was different, 1 of 3? He tried it again, and this time he had success.
You have harvested a Matron spider's eye.
He looked at what he held, and it was an eye with a bit of nerve stalk hanging from it. Ick, he put it in his inventory with a thought and tried again.
You have harvested a matron spider's carapace.
G struggled to hold onto two large half-round pieces of jet-black chitin, one of which bore a giant red hourglass symbol. They were both trash-can-sized and filled his hands, making it difficult to maneuver. He willed both of them into his inventory and wiped his hands on his pants, looking back at the dead matron spider, which now looked ghastly with half of its outer shell missing and its face warped and bashed in. Blood began seeping onto the floor, and G realized the stench would soon become overwhelming.
Turning his attention back to the hanging hobgoblin, G carefully cut away the strands of webbing covering the creature's face and neck, revealing his face. Although the hobgoblin was still hanging upside down, G opted not to cut him down just yet. A red point flickered on his map for a few seconds where the hobgoblin hung before disappearing and turning a pale grey. G wasn't sure if that meant the creature was still aggressive, waiting for something, or if there was another explanation. Although bits of spider gunk remained stuck to the hobgoblin's hair and eyebrows, he had not spoken a word while G cleaned him up.
G took a closer look at the hobgoblin now that he could see him clearly. The first thing he noticed was the creature's beard, which resembled two large furry wings descending from his outwardly pointy ears down his cheeks like sideburns and out past the length of his chin. His hair was tied back in a top knot similar to that of a Japanese samurai or San Francisco hipster, with the back part falling down over his shoulders and merging with the split-jowled beard on each side. The hobgoblin's broad nose pitched from a sharp eagle curve to a roundish end, with a high forehead featuring a widow's peaked hairline. In the center of his forehead ran a blue tattoo over his green-gray skin, down to his eyebrows, linking them together in a patterned blue Celtic knot-like image. His eyebrows would have stuck out on each side of his brow by an inch or two if the spider's sticky webbing didn't still plaster his hair in odd angles.
The hobgoblin's green-grey ear tips stuck out from the spider's thread that clung to his hair. One ear had a small gold earring, and the other showed a jagged scar along the bottom, likely from a large piece that had been ripped out. The creature looked like a half-elf goblin samurai, and G couldn't help but wonder about his origins.
He noticed that the hobgoblin's ears poked almost straight out to the sides, unlike his own elf ears, which went up along his skull to brush against his hat lightly. G also observed that the hobgoblin's health bar, located under his head as he hung there, only had a bit of red left in it. The spiders had been draining him for food, leaving several marks on his encased torso and legs.
The hobgoblin's face twisted into a snarl as he spoke, "Kill me and get it over with, elf!"