As the combatants fell through the air, the Ladybug Larva snapped at Adon’s head over and over, trying to decapitate him.

Adon responded by clutching the larva as closely as he could and ducking his head down, out of reach. The close embrace had the added effect of pushing his Venom Spines as deep into the monster’s body as Adon could possibly get them.

Please penetrate something important, he thought. I know insects have vital organs just like humans…

He tried using his own mandibles offensively, too, but unlike the Ladybug Larva’s leg, which Adon had severed easily enough, its body was too tough. Adon’s mandibles closed on a chunk of the outer shell, and it simply failed to chop through.

Starting to see the benefit of those mandible upgrades, he thought.

The Ladybug Larva twisted its head to the side, and though it couldn’t snag Adon’s head with its mandibles, it managed to trap his left front leg.

As they struck the ground, Adon felt a sharp pain and heard a quiet pop as the creature ripped his leg off. Then Adon was rolling across the ground with the force of their fall. Fortunately, the Ladybug Larva had taken the brunt of the impact, landing on its right side and inadvertently throwing Adon clear.

As Adon came to a stop, he lost his focus on the fight for a moment.

No, my leg! Visions flooded through his mind of him spending the rest of his life without the limb. One of his most important limbs, because he used the front two the most when he examined objects or simply moved around.

And it wouldn’t grow back with Shed Skin either. He had seen the Ladybug Larva shed its skin earlier, but some damage, including its lost left front limb, simply didn’t heal.

He crippled me, Adon thought. I’ll be deformed forever. I’ll probably be shunned. And who will want to mate with me now?

Then he saw the Ladybug Larva starting to right itself, and he ordered himself to calm down.

If you don’t deal with the problem right in front of you now, he told himself, you’ll die.

He took in deep breaths through the spiracles all over his body. In, out. In. Out.

Okay, you can do this. You have to do this.

He looked carefully at the Ladybug Larva, which was handling itself very gingerly now. It seemed to have slowed down quite a bit, and as Adon stared, he recognized some of the reasons why.

When its body broke their shared fall, the Ladybug Larva had landed on hard rocks. It seemed that the two frontmost legs on its right side had been pinched between the larva’s tough armor and the rock. They were basically pulverized. It was still trying to walk on them, because it had to, but they weren’t supporting its weight.

So the Ladybug Larva’s front right side dragged on the ground as it tried to move forward. The other side of its body had its own problems, since that was the side Adon had ripped the front leg from, but two out of those three legs were still functional.

Still, by comparison with him, the larva was far more disabled now.

Adon had been fortunate enough to be thrown free from the rocks and land on soft soil. The fall hadn’t caused him any meaningful injuries.

The Ladybug Larva nevertheless dragged itself forward. Perhaps it was thinking that winning this fight, securing Adon’s Biomass for itself, and getting the Evolution Points that a win would net it, would allow it to mitigate its losses.

But now Adon knew that he could win. He aimed carefully with his Silk Spinner, and he shot a short burst at the back right leg. The only functioning right leg.

It stuck fast to the rock it was touching.

Suddenly, the Ladybug Larva was trapped. It tried to move forward, but it was held back by its own leg. It tried to reach back with its other limbs and then with its mandibles to cut the leg free, but it lacked the flexibility. That was the downside of that tough body.

The Ladybug Larva was incredibly strong, though. Despite only having two functioning legs, it returned its attention to Adon, and it used those two legs to drag itself forward. The back right leg and the attached rock dragged behind it.

Then Adon fired a second burst of webbing, sticking the two free legs to the rock they were standing on. The rock was almost as big as the larva itself.

The monster stumbled. Its little bit of forward momentum carried it head first to the ground.

Adon dipped his head up and down in a slow, satisfied nod.

Finally. I got him.

Then he heard his stomach rumble.

Shit. I guess my Biomass is getting pretty low. Fortunately, I think I have my next meal right here.

With the Ladybug Larva secured to the ground, Adon recognized he could run away now. He could even, if he was so inclined, climb back up the plant stem. The larva wouldn’t be able to follow him until and unless it actually managed to cut through the silk with its mandibles. Even then, it would have a difficult time climbing with half its limbs destroyed or missing.

But Adon found himself walking, cautiously but steadily, toward his enemy.

I don’t just want to survive this fight, he realized, though he would have been happy with that result a minute or two ago. I want to win a crushing victory.

He circled around to the Ladybug Larva’s blind side. Though it tried to follow him with its eyes, it was limited by the silk that bound it.

How best to do this? he questioned. He had failed to penetrate the monster’s tough armor with his mandibles before. Besides those and his Venom Spines, Adon didn’t have any other natural weapons.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The only edges he had over this slightly bigger, much stronger creature were his mobility and brains.

First things first, he decided. He stepped in close and clamped his mandibles down on the rear right leg. The Ladybug Larva went wild trying to reach back to him with its mandibles, but its head couldn’t reach. Adon was extremely familiar with the limits of his enemy’s body now.

Adon’s mandibles chopped through the leg after a moment of resistance, and the larva’s body slumped down onto its right side.

There. Now it can’t go anywhere, even if it could cut through my silk.

Just to be certain, he stepped back around and chopped through the larva’s other two healthy legs. It collapsed onto its stomach then, completely immobile except the still furiously snapping mandibles in the front.

Even that motion was weakening, though, Adon judged. The venom and the constant bleeding from multiple wounds where its legs had been amputated had to be affecting it.

How do I finish it? he wondered.

Then he looked down beneath his feet. The answer was right there.

Adon picked up the largest rock he could hold in his three frontmost legs. Then he swung it down at the back of the Ladybug Larva’s head.

There was a faint crunching sound, but when he looked down, he couldn’t see any damage. Adon’s vision remained one of his weak spots, of course, so he wasn’t sure if he was correct or not. And he thought there was a better way to be sure of killing this thing.

Adon walked to the Ladybug Larva’s side and began pushing its body forward, toward the plant where they’d first met. It continued snapping its mandibles, but more and more weakly each time now. Most importantly, it couldn’t reach him where he was, so he basically ignored it.

Then he found the rock he had swung against the larva’s head. Adon attached a short silk thread to it. He walked back to the plant stem, dragging the large stone behind him. It was easier this way than trying to pick it up again in his clumsy limbs.

Adon walked past the Ladybug Larva and climbed up the side of the plant, pulling the stone up by the thread that still connected him to it. He advanced patiently up the plant, careful of making any missteps due to the absence of one of his front legs.

When he was near the top of the plant, he looked down.

The sun was coming up now, and he could see better than he’d been able to before. Adon could see where he’d left the Ladybug Larva, and that it hadn’t moved. He leaned out, judged angles and distances, tried to aim accurately, and then cut the thread connecting himself and the stone.

This time, when the rock struck the monster, Adon heard a very distinct and loud crunch.

He knew immediately that this was the end of the larva.

There was a little part of Adon that felt sad to kill the creature. But that corner of his mind was heavily outweighed by his feelings of relief and triumph. He had not only defeated an enemy. Adon had beaten a creature that was naturally designed to prey on his kind and others like him. He knew he wasn’t supposed to win this fight. He almost felt like jumping up and cheering.

Of course, it had helped that the two falls to the ground ruined some of the monster’s legs. But both of those falls were also because of Adon. Unlike the ant fight earlier, when he’d been saved by the spider, he had finally won a big fight on his own. Adon was pumped.

Now I just need to figure out how to deal with my missing leg, he thought, turning his head to look down at his asymmetric body. But first, food!

He climbed down the plant stem at a brisk pace. He wasn't going to let some scavenger steal the prey he had rightfully conquered. He also felt tired and hungry. His stomach growled several times on the way down to the Ladybug Larva corpse.

Yes, yes, I’ll feed you in a moment, Adon thought.

As he drew nearer to the body, his antennae began to pick up an odor. Foul.

Ugh.

It only got worse as he climbed even lower.

That son of a bitch. He recognized the smell now. It was the same rotten odor the Ladybug Larva had emitted to make Adon back off when it wanted to shed its skin in their fight earlier.

In his last moments, that bastard must have decided to try and ruin Adon’s dining experience. The stench infused the whole area around the larva’s body. Adon felt mildly sick standing in it.

I’m not going to let you cheat me, he thought furiously.

He rushed over to the Ladybug Larva corpse. Its body was shattered. The rock that struck it had cracked the upper part of the exoskeleton and smashed the head entirely, before bouncing a short distance away.

The image that presented itself was disturbing and disgusting to Adon. For once, he was grateful for his terrible eyesight. There were some things he would not want to see in high definition.

But there was one advantage to this horrible mess.

The corpse was open for easy consumption now. He didn’t have to penetrate that tough outer shell. Adon dove in where the head had been and began eating. He held his antennae away from the body as much as he could as he went. The terrible smell was more intense this close to the body.

The taste, unfortunately, was just as rancid as the smell had been.

I don’t know how I’m going to get through this, Adon thought. He was determined to eat as much of the Ladybug Larva as his body could hold. He thought this victory might be the fuel for his next set of improvements. But he also felt as if he might vomit.

Just have to hold your nose, so to speak, he decided. It wasn’t as if there was any possibility the meat was bad. The body was extremely fresh, after all!

Adon continued eating, ignoring how it tasted as best as he could. He tried to induce a feeding trance, though it wasn’t coming the way it usually did.

Munch munch. Ugh. Chomp chomp. Disgusting. Gobble gobble. Not gonna hurl… Gulp.

Bleh.

But even worse, as he ate, he began to feel funny. At first, the strange feeling was almost a tickle.

When he was around a third of the way done consuming the body, though, the tickle turned to a stabbing pain in his insides.

Oh Goddess, I’ve been poisoned, he realized. Curse that spiteful larva!

He turned and began climbing up the side of the plant, before a particularly painful stab in his insides caused him to curl his limbs. He lost his purchase on the stem and fell the short distance back down to the Ladybug Larva’s body.

Then he vomited all over the roots of the plant. He threw up, by his reckoning, most of what he’d eaten.

And Adon’s insides still felt pained and unsteady.

You’re laughing at me now, aren’t you? he thought, casting an accusing glance at the barely recognizable corpse of the monster and then looking up at the sky.

Somewhere up there, you’re laughing at me.

He staggered toward the body, felt weak again, and then checked his Status. Looking at it, he realized that his Biomass was as low as it had been when he started eating.

Don’t know how I’m going to find something else to eat, he thought. He could barely move. For that matter, he wasn’t sure how he would stay safe during the day when his body felt so weak. This damn ladybug might be the death of me yet.

Finally, Adon crawled near the corpse and began to pull and scrape away dirt from beneath its body. He dug a shallow hole and then dragged himself inside of it, though he didn’t cover himself up completely. He still needed to breathe. The stench of the dead larva was at its strongest where he was now.

But at least here, that repulsive smell would hopefully keep other predators away. Such were among his last thoughts before he lapsed into a semi-conscious state.