Pain vs. Arachnid Queen

My party consisted of two fully charged skeletons and my Skeleton Warrior armed with the Iron Short Sword +3 and Wooden Shield +1 —I handed one of the skeletons the Scagger +1. I ate two more fish and took 3 Tiny Vials of Healing and Mana. During my training, I learned these potions must be taken with a full stomach to avoid dealing with their side effects.

Back at the entrance to the lair, I knelt down and proceeded to use fire blades, my claws, and a sharpened piece of bone to dig out the opening. The old crusted entrance was easier to dig out than I expected. Once wide enough, I ordered my skeletons in, foot first.

I watched in amusement as they tumbled down the tunnel. I went in after them, and once I entered the underground tunnel cave, I noticed all the eggs were hatched, and the remains were already decaying.

My skeletons moved much more silently across the dirt down here. We walked further than my previous solo venture before a hoard of baby Arachnids appeared from behind a jagged rock. All but a few of them were instantly killed when I lifted my hand and engulfed them in a cone of fire. I scoffed at how much I had grown.

A few arachnids attempted to flank, but my skeletons cut them down. All but one had been dealt with—I saw it flee and attempt to hide behind a boulder. Hmm... I approached it and admired how it backed itself up against the wall. A quick, merciless stab from my Skeleton Warrior pierced through its body and into the cave walls behind it. I watched, unmoving, as it twitched and scrambled in an attempt to flee—a flurry of limbs flailing around uncontrollably until it slowed into a stiff pose. Honestly, I never favored granting mercy to anything or anyone that tried to take my life—just something I believed in. I turned away from its corpse and continued along. The light from the blightshrooms began to fade as I neared the bend.

When I heard a loud crackling sound, I leaped. I looked down, lit the area with flames, and saw a litter of kinan bones leading on. Doom consumed me as the thought of being eaten here worried me. I would be revived and constantly eaten by that beast. How many years would such a cycle continue? I had no clue how long Arachnids live. I sighed at the thought and moved on, doing my best to order my skeletons around the kinan bones.

I peeked around the bend, and my eyes darted around the opening before me. The high ceiling area looked as if it had once served as a burial site, and I noticed blightshrooms in bunches all over the wall as I crept around the turn. There she lay—the queen sleeping in the spacious circular area, motionless, resembling a grayish spotted mound. More blightshrooms plagued the wall while magnificent ruby puri crystal clusters grew in bunches around the edges of the lair.

My eyes fell once more unto the fat sack of an arachnid—it had gotten larger. But something else caught my attention—dozens, no... hundreds of hatched eggs lined the entire base of the walls of the circular room and the ground before the queen. My eyes traced a path leading to the queen in the midst of hatched eggs, and only then did it become clear.

Arachnids were self-birthing creatures, and this arachnid queen had been eating its own babies in a never-ending loop. The newborn arachnids were doing their best to escape, hence the few that fled to the ruins and the path leading to the arachnid. I shivered in disgust... damn fiends.

Abusing the distance between us, I took this chance to concentrate a condensed fireball, moved in close, and lobbed it. The ball exploded in a raging fire as the abomination screeched out in pain. She recovered back onto her limbs, adding four more feet to her height. She looked down at me with multiple beady red eyes—horrified and angry.

PAIN

Hmm? You do not like your rude awakening?

My two skeletons charged in, but the queen's dense chitin underbelly caused their attacks to bounce off. Unlike her younger counterpart, her limbs and the under parts of her belly were hard chitin. It raised its forelimbs weakly and tried to smash my Skeleton Warrior, missing by a wide margin. I squinted at her, watching her sluggish movement as she took several deep successful cuts into her armored limbs from my Skeleton Warrior and my other dagger-wielding skeleton.

She was slower than before when she tore off my foot. I had no pity for her and would not give a damn. I took advantage of her clumsiness and bombarded her with precise balls of fire at her face. She finally smacked my Skeleton Warrior hard enough that the mana upon it drastically drained to heal its cracked bones.

She then eyed me and stood tall before unhinging her jaw. Despite the continual barrage of fireballs that riddled her face, she proceeded to use magic. A white hieroglyphic symbol constructed before her face, and along with it, a strong gust of wind spiraled toward me.

The bolt of gust was fast—I Quickstepped out of the way as the bolt of wind exploded upon the ground lifting me off my feet and through the air. I reoriented midair, jumped off the upper wall, and headed straight for the top of her head, impaling my claws into her soft dome.

She screeched and squirmed, but I continued to stab, trying to get deeper and deeper. Her body began to emit a golden glow—I heard it first—coming from behind me—the hairs on her dome were erecting rapidly like deadly spike traps. I leaped off of her dome and landed meters in front of her. I took notice of the gashes in her rigid limbs done by my skeletons—they were slowly regenerating.

PAIN

Shit.

I chugged down two Tiny Vials of Mana, and as I got done with the second one, she charged at me. I focused my attacks on her face and noticed her green blood on my hands was combustible, adding fuel to my fire. She swung at me from the left, and I ducked towards her, thrusting my stiff, flattened claws into one of her large beady red eyes. For a moment, I did not think I would pierce it—her eyes had a rubbery feel.

My claws eventually melted through, and a gush of red blood nearly engulfed me as I leaped back, carefully dodging her predictable swings. Petty Body Control aided me, giving me increased flexibility and balance. She then swung at me using two limbs, and I tumbled through the gap between them—burning one limb with Fire Blades and clawing out chunks from the other.

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Using two limbs to attack caused her to lose her balance and fall over. I seized the moment, dashed in, and exploded a firebomb in her face, powerful enough that it sent me flying back—which I intended to—allowing distance between her and me. I did well to land on my back to safeguard the vials in my pocket and quickly rolled to my feet.

She was harmed far more severely than I was as she struggled to stand. My unarmed skeleton began to wail on her injured eye with its bare fists, causing mana burn with every hit, preventing her eyes from regenerating. She finally stood back up and smacked it aside with all her weight shattering the skeleton completely.

PAIN

Behind you...

She screeched out in pain—my Skeleton Warrior stabbed her from behind, where she had no hard chitin. I saw a pile of green blood spill onto the floor behind her. As she wailed, a pool of acid spewed out her mouth, completely destroying my dagger-wielding skeleton and nearly reaching me as well.

With the bit of mana I had left, I lobbed another fireball—she dodged! The fireball continued on toward my Skeleton Warrior ...

PAIN

Dammit...

But to my surprise, it bounced off, enlarged, and combusted upon the queen's open wound. Hmm... I wondered if it was typical for her blood to be combustible... I could not linger on the thought as a chain reaction went off within her body. Chambers in her body began to explode in a horrific pattern as if a giant was kicking his way out from inside her.

Her limbs gave out, letting her collapse in her own pile of acid. I stood there... eerily waiting for her to suddenly pounce at me. After staring at her still body for a minute, I gathered mana into another ball of fire and hurled it into the pool of acid. The enormous explosion produced a shaft of flames that almost touched the ceiling, followed by her agonizing cry that echoed off the walls.

PAIN

Playing dead will not save you!

I lobbed more balls of flames, adding fuel to the fire until the room spun, and I fell to a knee. My mana was drained, and my adrenaline began to fade. I drank my last Tiny Vial of Mana and approached her, close enough to touch her. Her face was truly something from a nightmare; eight bloody beads of eyes upon a hairy insect face—the hair, long curly strands that resembled the dead weeds of a dying grass field. Poison and acid dripped from its damaged eyes and mouth, causing my mind to picture the queen silently wailing.

I created a fire blade around my hands and carved her head out. She did not move once I began indicating her death, but I continued—I had to make sure. Once done, I lobbed a tiny flame onto the decapitated flesh, and it combusted more chambers within her body. This was how revenge was done, and as I thought about it, that brute purple lady etched her way into my mind. Whoever that rude lady was, I will make sure her head rolls onto the insect-infested ground if I ever lay my eyes upon her.

My eyes started to sting, and my vision became foggy. A pungent smell tortured my nose—the acidic air was now stinging my eyes and throat. I retreated to the bend, breathed clean air, and chugged one Tiny Vial of Healing. Instant relief throughout my body—my stomach churned a little, but nothing dire. Back in my room, I grabbed the robes I had made into a towel, took another Tiny Vial of Healing, covered my face, and returned to the cave. Most of the acid had already dissipated, and my eyes only tingled from the lingering effect.

Now that the queen was dead, I could look around the room in detail. Covered in thick webbing, I saw four coffins around the room. I burned off the webbing and used every ounce of strength to push over the slab.

Nestled neatly in the coffin was a simple old kinan skeleton. My eyes darted to a ring on his finger, emitting thumping waves of mana unknown to me. It was a ring enchanted with mana far more significant than mine, and I did my best not to touch it as I carefully searched around the skeleton—nothing.

The other three coffins were identical to the first, and each skeleton had an ominous ring nestled on the right middle finger. At the center back wall, covered in thick webbing, was another coffin but upright. I almost missed it due to the webbing. I thought about it for a second and decided to use my towel to remove the rings from the skeletons and then carefully wrapped them in the towel.

I approached the last coffin, seared the webs away, and cracked it open. The four skeletons sprung to life just as I predicted they would—a common trap I read about in books. From the looks of it, the magic upon them was similar to Summon Skeleton Ritual. They were unarmed and wobbly but held out their bony hands in an attempt to cast a spell. Nothing happened, so I incinerated them all, and as I turned back to the main coffin, I noticed them rising again.

I reduced them to ashes, but they revived once again, and again, and again. Then I felt it; mana was building up from behind me. I turned and forced open the coffin, let the lid shatter upon the hard ground, and saw a petrified corpse within the coffin. Upon its neck was a black necklace emitting pure mana. I would have loved to keep this, but it seemed to be keeping those skeletons alive. I grabbed a piece of the coffin lid and shattered the necklace. With that, the four summoned skeletons crumbled into dust.

Something fell from within the necklace prism—an Obsidian Puri Gem +1. This was my first time seeing a crafted mana crystal. Mana crystals, or puries, were mana-infused metals that grew from the ground over a few decades or centuries. This was the source of pure mana, but whoever set up such a trap was quite skilled in controlling pure mana in such a way without tainting it with his or her own mana.

I discovered a break inside the coffin behind the corpse after additional inspection. I blasted it open with fire and revealed a cramped hidden room with a chest in the middle and walls covered in blightshrooms. As I searched the area for traps, I spotted metal flecks along the entrance walls.

The iron and leather chest was not at all impressive and had a rusty lock on it. Hmm, this image was too suspicious. With the tip of my Fire Blade, I melted the lock away, hoping to trigger a trap—nothing. I summoned my Skeleton Warrior and ordered it into the room to open the chest. As it lifted the lid, I could hear a gear locking into place, followed by a dozen arrows bouncing off my Skeleton Warrior.

I knelt down and inspected the tip of one of the arrows. The poison upon it had dried long ago, but it might still have caused me to pass out if it had been really toxic.

My Skeleton Warrior continued to open the chest, and I approached from behind to lay my eyes upon the items within the chest. My heart thumped. I could not have taken my eyes off of it even if my head was to be suddenly decapitated. It shimmered with pure mana and was piled neatly in a fat red leather coin purse.

I dropped to my knees in complete awe. I ran my fingers over the coins and dug deep into the pile—nothing but gold puri coins. There had to be at least three hundred gold puri coins in here.

PAIN

I... I cannot believe this.