Goldie looked down at the fox’s blood-stained smile, gathered her courage, and tried to remember every single thing she could do.

Her silk was stronger than it had ever been. Her Silk Manipulation Skill had reached a new tier of power following Evolution. Her venom remained at the highest potency she could concentrate it into. Her fangs were adapted to spray her venom now if she chose. And, of course, she had Mana.

She thought she would need all of her abilities as both a magic user and a spider to win this fight.

Finally, she steadied herself on the tree and leaped straight down toward the fox.

A part of her expected it to dodge and let her fall straight down into the clover beneath the fox’s feet.

Instead, the fox opened its greedy maw wider than Goldie would have imagined possible and positioned as if to swallow her.

Not as smart as I thought.

Goldie infused Mana into her body as she fell through the air, preparing to endure the predator’s crunching teeth and inflict her deadly bite.

The fox surprised her again.

Its gnashing teeth twisted and moved to the side, and she realized the fox was actually pivoting and dodging her now. Had it somehow understood that she was doing something dangerous when she started harnessing Mana?

Goldie tried to spray a quick stream of venom at the still wide open maw, but as the liquid spewed from her fangs, a furry object struck her and interrupted the stream. As it hit, she tried to flip her body so that she could grab onto what she quickly recognized was the fox’s tail, but she was not quick enough.

The spider went flying through the air, body tumbling backward.

At the last moment, as she was about to be too far away, her body, acting almost on its own, spun a thin silk string, as strong as she could make it so quickly. Her front limbs looped the end. Then she used her Silk Lasso Skill and threw the slender thread, almost invisible, at the fox’s tail.

Goldie could not tell for a moment whether the silk loop had actually managed to make contact with the fox’s body at all. Her unstable position as she threw would seem to argue against that idea.

Then the beast turned and began to run away, and Goldie felt it. A sharp yank on the end of the silk rope that was still connected to her body, touching her front legs. The spider had a moment to wonder whether this had been a good idea, and then she whipped forward, pulled behind the fox as it began to run away.

The sudden reversal of direction was not too jarring, but Goldie could not help wondering where the fox was taking her now.

As her body was thrown through the air, she moved quickly to begin winding in the cable she was tied to. She could easily envision herself smacking into trees and other random objects as the fox ran, if she failed to pull herself closer.

The fox continued fleeing, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Goldie had attached herself to its tail. The reversal of its attitude was puzzling.

It went from trying to swallow me up to running away in a handful of seconds, she thought. Was that really just because it noticed me using Mana? Does it understand what Mana is?

As she questioned the fox’s thought process, her limbs never stopped moving, reeling her body in closer to the fox’s tail, where her lasso seemed to be secured. Fortunately, the fox did not seem to notice.

As Goldie reached the tip of the tail, the fox darted into a hole in the ground, and Goldie found herself plunged into darkness. She could still see; reality had just turned a bit lower resolution.

She began pulling herself further up on the fox’s tail, gripping it as well as she could as the fox continued moving, albeit more slowly, deeper into the hole. It did not seem to be fleeing anymore as far as she could tell. No animal would just rush headlong into an unfamiliar burrow like this.

The fox was going home. This must be its den. It had become instantly more secure once it passed through the hole. It probably assumed the strange, nasty, magic spider would not be able to follow it here.

Goldie managed to reach the base of the fox’s tail, and then she began to disabuse the fox of that notion. She immediately sank her fangs into the fox’s lower back and injected venom. The fox’s whole body stiffened noticeably as she did this. Goldie paid little attention. She found another spot, slightly further away, and injected venom again.

The fox let out a pained yowl, and it slammed the side of its body against the wall. Goldie managed to shift out of the way so that her legs were not caught between the fox and the wall, and she infused Mana into herself again.

Then she nipped the fox just above the back left leg and injected more venom.

The fox continued to make pained noises, and Goldie stuck her fangs in its flank again, injecting another burst of high potency venom.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Then she saw the fox’s head trying to snake around and get at her, and she quickly crawled down to the nearest leg. There she clung, biting and injecting more venom, while the fox tried to scrape her off against the walls and continued stretching its neck and gnashing its jaws, trying to get Goldie.

The beast simply lacked the room to bite into her or grab her with its teeth, and her Mana reinforcement kept her from being hurt too badly by the efforts to smush her into the dirt sides of the burrow. The angles shifted. For a moment, Goldie had a little more room, though the fox almost immediately smashed her against the wall and tried to scrape her away.

Then the fox was running, and Goldie realized that in the time that the fox had been trying to snake its head around and bite her, and even when it was trying to scrape her onto a wall, it had also been turning its body fully around. The tunnel flew by them, but all Goldie could focus on was maintaining her grip on the fox’s leg and, more importantly, her Mana enhancement of her exoskeleton. Otherwise the fox’s scraping could actually crush her.

A few seconds of bumping up against the tunnel wall later, they burst out into the sunlight again.

The sudden glare was startling for a moment, as Goldie had just been pressed up against a gray surface in the dark.

Her grip relaxed involuntarily as she adjusted to the bright light.

Then she was sent flying, as the fox, finally able to stretch its legs, threw an abrupt kick that dislodged the surprised spider from around its hindquarters. Goldie had lost her grip on the silk thread she had used to reel herself into the fox’s body while she was attacking the fox in the burrow, so instead of pulling herself back to close proximity, she just went flying.

The spider’s body rolled through the air, wheeling like a multi-legged frisbee toward a tree. When her eyes were turned in the proper orientation toward the fox, she could see it scratching and nipping at its backside where she had injected her venom. Even when she could not see anything of the fox, she could hear it whining.

Goldie knew she had done serious damage to the fox then.

Finally, her body collided with a tree, and the spider tumbled lightly to the ground.

Goldie stood up and took a quick look at the fox just to make sure that it was not charging straight at her. But her adversary seemed to be too absorbed in the pain the spider had inflicted.

As she watched, the fox continued nipping at its own hindquarters, and a chunk of the fur came away in the fox’s jaws. The flesh underneath was blackened and looked slightly rotten. It was appetizing to Goldie’s eyes, but to the fox, it must have been a sign of its imminent demise. The creature let out a low, agonized wail.

Goldie took that as her opportunity to attack once more. She charged forward, taking the ground in big lunges, eager to catch the fox while it was still in pain and off-guard.

The fox immediately paid attention to the spider. It bared its teeth at her and issued a low growl from the back of its throat. The beast even took a step toward her, though Goldie did not slow down or change her direction as a result. It seemed as if the fox had forgotten its newfound fear of her for the moment. Perhaps it simply lacked the capacity to run away now and was bluffing; Goldie detected a slight limp as it tried to move on the leg she had envenomated.

Regardless of the reason, the fox chose aggression over retreat. As Goldie closed to within a foot of the fox, it lunged forward, teeth bared, right front paw raised to swipe down with its claws. The spider allowed the fox to get even closer to her, claws only inches away, and then she unleashed a full spray of her venom right into his face. She saw a stream of the liquid strike the fox right in the space between its eyes and then spatter into both eyes.

The claw it had aimed at Goldie smashed into the dirt beside her, and the fox staggered to the side, off-balance and whining with pain. It stumbled snout first onto the ground, paws reaching up to those fierce orange eyes, which were already growing visibly irritated from the venom Goldie had sprayed. She saw the fox move its paws as if it wanted to claw out the poison in its eyes. It had to awkwardly bend its paws so that the claws were not at the forefront before it began rubbing at the irritated places.

Goldie realized now would be the ideal time to try to end the fight, before the fox attempted any further resistance.

She remembered the one experience she’d had of using Adon’s Mana ball. She walked around behind the fox, so it would be less likely to see what she was doing. She was not certain if it would be blinded by her venom attack, but it had shown some capacity to recognize Mana as a threat before.

And she began to charge the Mana ball. Power gathered from her core and migrated through her abdomen and across the area just under her exoskeleton until it made its way to the space just in front of her mouthparts. It gradually gathered until Goldie herself could see it. A brightly glowing ball of energy, slowly growing.

Just like earlier in the fight, the fox reacted. It was just slightly slower to the punch this time.

First, its ears twitched. Goldie wondered if it could hear her Mana charging.

Then it turned its head to face her. The eyes opened. They were in terrible shape. The flesh all around them was puffy and irritated, but the eyes themselves were clearly much worse. The orange was fading, replaced by a dark, slightly rotten brown at the center of each, streaked with a raw pink at the edges.

The fox’s eyes were slowly rotting out of its head. The rubbing had not done the creature any favors. Dimly, Goldie was aware that she was about to put the fox out of its misery, and that was a good thing. Practically, however, she was most concerned with the fact that, even with its probably permanently damaged vision, the fox was clearly looking straight at her and conscious of the threat that her next attack would likely pose.

Goldie was not certain if she had the discipline and control of Mana that would be required to reinforce her body at the same time that she charged her final attack. In fact, she was fairly certain that she did not have the level of skill necessary to do that yet.

So, as long as she was charging her attack, her tiny frame would be vulnerable to the brutal force the fox could unleash with its mostly still healthy body.

Goldie and the fox stared at each other for a long moment as these considerations rushed through the spider’s mind. Then she resolved within herself that she would not stop charging her attack. If the fox attacked her, she could still try to run and dodge. If it tore off a leg or two, she could heal those injuries. Only catastrophic damage would kill her.

It was better to risk that small chance of death than to abandon her advantage in the moment of her triumph.

This is what Adon would do, she thought.

As Goldie made this decision, the fox blinked.

Then it turned and ran.