After five days of walking north, the forest starts to change. In my months here in the black forest, I've seen more of the same, the same types of trees, the same foliage, the same colors. But here, as I walk north, the trees look dead, the foliage dry, the bark gray as if the slightest touch would send it falling to the ground.

Oddly enough, this is the brightest part of the forest I've been in months. The lack of foliage helps the sun reach the ground.

Barely after one day of walking, I spot the first sign of life. A one meter tall spider, eating some furred animal on the side of a tree.

As I get close, the many eyes on top of its head focus on me, its black keratin body, full of hair as thin and sharp as needles.

Immediately after seeing me, it tries to run away. But simply by opening my mouth, an extremely fast and hot spear flies out, and pierce its body, burning its insides, leaving a weird sweet smell in the air.

Turning the spider around, I step on its head, and pull out its insides, to find where its dantian is. In all creatures that i’ve fought so far, their dantian were in their center of mass, so that's where i look.

Finding the core and inspecting it, i feel that the energy inside it is of a kind that ive never seen. Its heavy, dark and stationary. The complete opposite of the one inside my dantian.

Trying to absorb it, i instantly feel a intense pain run through my body.

Thankfully i started slow, if not I'd be crying of pain on the ground.

Storing the dantian for later, i keep walking north, killing the occasional spider.

Some hours after finding the first spider, after turning around a big tree, I spot a five meters tall spider hanging ten meters high on a tree with six of its legs holding it in place, and the other two holding a dead animal.

Thankfully these spiders don't make any web, so the path is clear.

Preparing for the attack, I gather a lot of ki near the arrays at my mouth.

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Coming out from behind the tree, I sprint towards the black spider. Launching three flame spears at it in rapid succession.

With quick reflexes, the spider jumps from the tree to the ground. Tugging on my mental link with the spears, i bring them down, piercing the spiders head once and abdomen twice.

As the spiders body hits the ground, i step on its head, sending blood and exoskeleton to all sides.

As i am searching for its core, I feel eyes locking on me from all sides. Turning my head up slowly, i see dozens, maybe even hundreds of spiders, all around me.

The majority is four to five meters tall, but there's some that are ten meters tall, and one that is thirteen meters tall.

“Fuck.” I say.

Instantly all the spiders jump in my direction, making a skreeching noise.

As the innumerous spiders craw form all sides, i turn the flame armor array on, and to the max, letting out such powerful flames that the ground around me immediately melts into lava, and a big ball of flame is created around me.

All the closest spiders are reduced to cinders, killing dozens of them. But I am forced to lower the temperature, given that this single use has diminished my ki by ten percent.

Turning the array down to a manageable ki expenditure, the heat is lowered, and the spiders resume their attack.

The smaller one still dies from the heat around me, but the five meters tall and taller seems to be ok with it.

Locking eyes on the tallest one, i send three flame spears up, holding them around me with the connection with the array, while running straight at it.

Taking my sword out of the ring, i bring it above my head and as i get close to the spider, I bring it down with all my might.

As the spider jumps to the side to evade my strike, I send the spears to intercept it while air bound.

It manages to strike the sides of two of the spears with its legs, changing their course. But the last one hits its abdomen.

Not giving it any time to think, i cut its head off with the sword.

Crunch!

At the same time that I kill the spider, I feel a portion of my scales get crunched.

Looking back I see a five meters tall spider biting my ass.

Kicking it with both my legs, i send it flying, with its exoskeleton destroyed.

Focusing on the remaining spiders, it only takes a swing of the sword and a flame spear to end with each.

Five minutes later, all the spiders around me are dead. Some cut in half, others melted. The rich smell of burning carcasses impregnates the air, making it even difficult to breathe.

Collecting all the dantians that i can find, i take a pause time to recover my ki.

But as soon as I get on my knees, i see a thirty-five meters tall spider walking towards me. Its black exoesqueleton reflecting the sun, and big legs towering even me.

“Should I fight it or not?” I think out loud.

As the spider gets to a hundred meters from me, it opens its mouth, and breathes out a black fog.

This fog rushes into the body of all dead spiders, and reanimates them all. Even the melting and decapitated parts do their best to stay up.

“Fuck it.” I say as I start running in the opposite direction.

As the giant spider lets out a powerful cry, all the hundreds of reanimated spiders start running at me.

Circulating my ki to my muscles, i give my best to run away.

The army of spiders running behind me only growls as time goes by.

And some small groups start to appear in front of me as well.

Making me change paths constantly.

Finding a river, I follow it downstream, hoping that the spiders don't like water.

Suddenly the river ends in a giant hole, so big that it can easily fit a whole city.

Looking back i see the giant spider and its now thousands of minions approaching me, barley a hundred meters away from me.

Looking back down at the waterfall, all i can see is darkness, and i can't hear the water hitting the ground, so it should be pretty far down.

Calculating rapidly the best probability, i jump down, into the hole.