I dived to the side, narrowly avoiding a swipe from the huge spider’s hairy leg, slashing out with my daggers as I went.

The overgrown arachnid howled with pain as my dagger tore into it and the skin around the leg started to bubble violently.

I saw my reflection in its eight, crimson eyes as it glared at me. I’d say it was shooting venom with that glare, but why use a metaphor when it literally shot venom from its hairy, horror movie mouth.

The purple liquid fired from its fangs in little spit balls of death as I narrowly avoided them with a matrix-style dodge. Sadly, I was no Keanu Reves and as I leaned backwards to avoid the venomous glob, I fell on my ass and had to roll to the side as the spider tried to impale me with its front leg.

I slashed at that leg too, but the arachnid was too quick and all I managed to do was slice through some of its thick hairs.

“That was a close shave!” Bell quipped from the sidelines as she and the rest of the team watched my struggle.

I was battling solo at Sally’s request. She wanted to see us all in action against various types of monsters. We’d been at it all day and I was the last one to perform.

“I’ve been in hairier situations,” I shouted back as I threw myself to my feet and pressed my attack.

Sally had forbidden me from starting the fight with a Soul Shot. She’d said I was becoming too predictable and she wanted to see how I fought when I couldn’t use a sneaky power attack.

Naturally, I instead produced both of my daggers and ran at the overgrown spider like a madman. I wasn’t the best melee fighter, the bow was definitely my speciality, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t fight without it – or at least, that’s what I’d hoped to prove to her.

I ducked under the spider’s carapace and slammed both of my daggers into the underside of its body as I ran between its legs. A shower of bloody, purple gore gushed from its belly behind me, giving me all the more reason to keep going.

There were no showers in the palm tree jungle and I did not want to be known as the guy who smelled like spider guts and put everyone off their dinner.

The arachnid screamed in a distorted, high-pitched, monster voice as I opened its stomach. Its blood mixed with venom and burned at the grass below it. The hissing sound and burning smell were terrifying, but as long as I didn’t get any of it on me, I should have been ok.

I reached the other side of the carapace and combat rolled the last few meters, turning around swiftly and raising my blades across my face to block an incoming kick.

However, spiders don’t kick, they web.

And as I raised my blades to protect myself from an incoming attack, I realised I had made a big mistake. I was on the wrong side of the spider, with the wrong weapon to help me.

A thick, gloopy web fired from its backside and hit me straight in the face. My daggers did very little to prevent the spider bukkake that covered me from head to toe.

So much for staying clean. I sighed internally.

The underside of the spider burned as the acid made short work of the arachnid’s guts and innards. It stank like rotting flesh and burnt arm hair. Hopefully, it would be dead soon, reduced to a steaming pile of venomous goop. I’d barely taken any damage either. However, I was still going to be known as the guy who took fresh webbing to the face.

“Hey, Kaleb!” Bell shouted, cupping her hands around her mouth as she struggled to contain her laughter. “Do you spit, or swallow?”

Yup, I’m never going to live this one down.

“Ask your mum Bell,” I yelled back. I didn’t have time to waste thinking up a better comeback, and mum jokes were classics.

I heard Panda chuckle at my retort as I dove back in and slashed at the arachnid’s spinnerets. I didn’t need to continue attacking. The spider was as good as dead, but I had frustrations that could only be taken out on eight-legged creatures, and frankly, I needed the violent therapy.

The spider dropped to the ground with more of a whimper than a scream and the familiar notification filled my HUD.

You have defeated Giant Spider (lvl 39)

Bonus experience rewarded due to level disparity.

The giant spider was three levels above me, yet I defeated it with relative ease and without using my bow. I’d take that as a win, even as I pulled chunks of thick, sticky web off my face.

You know that feeling you get when you think about spiders, or maybe you see some web as you’re walking through a wooded area, and suddenly it feels like you have web on you.

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I bet you’re doing it right now, aren’t you? Maybe a loose strand of hair has brushed your forehead and for some reason, it feels like a spider web, so you brush it away and then the same feeling happens again except on the back of your neck.

I felt like that. Except it wasn’t a phantom web, it was a real, tangible web from a giant motherfucking arachnid who had webbed all over me, and now I was never going to be free of that feeling again.

Oh god, how I hate spiders. I shivered as I moved in to loot it.

Do you want to loot Giant Spider?

Y/N

You have received a new item:

Spider Silk

Venomous Sack

X1000 gold coins

The silk and sack were both crafting items, according to the system. I was getting more and more crafting items recently and I made a mental note of hiring someone to make something for me with all of my new materials when I got back to Havar.

I was sure Panda knew a guy. Probably a small shop on that same street where all the other shops were. The scope of his Havarian contacts was pretty limited now that I thought about it.

My theory about coins also seemed to be proving correct. As with the last monster I looted, I received 1000 gold coins, instead of the usual 10 which I had become accustomed to.

The only thing that those two monsters had in common was that they were both phase two. As was the slime queen I’d killed ages ago, which also gave me 1000 gold coins.

I think it was safe to say that the amount I looted correlated to the phase the kill was in. Phase one’s netted 10 gold per kill. Phase two’s netted 1000. If I could get to a point where I was regularly killing phase four’s I’d be super fucking rich in no time.

Maybe I’d be able to hire someone to isekai my family to me with that kind of money. I could buy my own skull-shaped island and sit on a swivel chair with Panda in my lap. As my arch nemesis entered my lair, I could turn around menacingly and tell them I’d been expecting them.

Pulling myself from my Bond villain fantasy, I opened my penultimate notification.

Achievement Unlocked!

Arachnophobia

So you’ve taken web to the face? Now you know what all those poor girls on Porn Hub feel like. You’re a dirty little slut, aren’t you?

Seriously though, spiders are gross and you need to kill more of them. If I could shiver, I would, but I’m the system and I don’t have normal bodily functions.

Anyway:

Did you hear about the spider who ate a fly? He was a real buzz kill.

Reward: Bukkake Loot Box

“Oh come on!” I shouted up at the sky to the backdrop of Panda’s howling laughter as he saw my reward through his ability to see my HUD as my familiar.

I shook my head and pulled up my final notification.

Dagger has advanced to lvl 11.

Well, at least that was good. I needed to improve my dagger as much as possible if I wanted the skill to evolve as the bow skill had done.

Theoretically, if I got the dagger skill to level 25, it would evolve into a better skill. At least, that was what had happened with my bow skill.

“The system called you a whore didn’t it?” Bell smirked as she and the rest of the group strolled towards me.

“Something like that,” I grumbled, picking web off my face and out of my stubbly hair.

“See, this is why I always thought Spiderman was a creepy dude.” Bell mused. “Shooting web at people, it’s just a bit of a gross metaphor.”

“You leave Spiderman out of this!” I gasped, pointing at her face. “He is a national treasure. There’s a reason his franchise has been rebooted so many times in such a short period of time.”

“…Because the writers lack creativity and the shareholders love a good cash grab?” Bell replied innocently.

“Well yeah, probably,” I sighed, scratching the top of my head where loose bits of web were still clinging to me. “But they do it with Spiderman because he’s such a great character.”

“Wolverine is better,” she said folding her arms and giving me a deadpan look. “He’s not tied down by annoying morality. He smokes, drinks and is an all-round badass and they got Hugh Jackman to play him, which means he has the voice of an angel… and the claws, can’t forget about those.”

“In the most recent Spiderman, they got all three of the actors who played him together and recreated the meme,” I replied arrogantly. “Did Wolverine do his meme in his movies? No, he didn’t. He just used crappy CGI and butchered Deadpool’s character so badly that Ryan Reynolds had to reprise the character in his own movies to try and salvage the hatchet job that was done to him.”

“Shut up!” Sally yelled, thumping us both on the tops of our heads. “Quit talking nonsense and let’s move on.”

My brain literally rattled around in my skull as I looked up and saw multiple Sally’s pointing and shouting at me. Damn, that steroid kitty could hit.

“Honestly, it feels like you two talk in code sometimes,” she sighed, rubbing her palm on her face. “Your performance was pretty good Kaleb,” she said with a fangy grin. “Next time though, try not to get bukkaked. You’re an adventurer, not a porn star.”

She walked away as Reggie and Jamie doubled over with laughter, clutching their stomachs. Tilly and Panda followed her and he also giggled, but less enthusiastically.

Something was still wrong with him and I knew I needed to find out what it was. He was acting so strange, normally he’d have been the first to tease me. The little guy loved banter. Yet he barely ribbed me at all during, or after that fight.

“Come on,” Sally yelled as she left the battle site. “There’s a small village at the foot of the mountain. We’ll rest up there for the night.”

We had been travelling through the palm tree jungle for about a week. After our fight with the dinosaur, we had plenty of chances to fight as a team.

Slowly, we’d honed our teamwork and our solo ability with instruction from Sally. I’d hoped to learn a thing or two about bowmanship from Tilly the elf, but she’d refused to take me along on her hunts.

I didn’t know how she did it, but every night she left for an hour or two and came back with a bountiful collection of meats whilst we set up the camp.

The woman was a genius at living off the land. Maybe she’d give me some tips before we fought the dragon, though considering its lair was at the top of the mountain, I doubted we’d have time.

I trudged after the rest of the group as they followed Sally out of the clearing, wondering if we had what it took to defeat something as legendary as a dragon.

One sleep, and then we’d fight it. It was like counting down the days until Christmas.