The creature crawling above him spread its legs across the room and moved through the air towards him. It was lowering its body from the ceiling, vicious fangs arched towards him.

"You've come to your death, beast."

With a startled shout he sliced at the nearest dangling limb, his sword slicing right through the creature’s skin, unleashing a torrent of green blood that covered the floor. The creature let out a shriek that tore into his ears but he tightened his grip on his sword and sliced at it again, carving out a chunk of its stomach and unleashing its insides into the air. The creature’s wail died out and he quickly rushed out from underneath it, covered in green ooze.

'For a big guy he sure went down easily.'

He took a step back and eyed the creature wearily. It was a giant spider, but a kind he hadn’t seen before. He knew that the forest spiders would fake death when injured, only to strike when their enemies had relaxed their guards. He didn't intend to become one of those fools.

Under the light of the crystal he could see twelve shimmering black eyes gazing lifelessly at him, seven legs folded into its body as they contracted at the moment of its death. Thrown to the side was the single hairy limb he’d cut off.

He stood in silence as he waited for the creatures bleeding to stop. There was no need to approach it to stab it again because time was finishing the job for him. He could be sure from the pool of green on the stone floor that it was dead. There was no way for a creature to survive that much blood loss with such a small body.

‘Are there more of them?’ Arcturius frowned as he imagined more spiders dropping on him while he slept.

He didn’t mind fighting more of them face to face, but the idea of those fangs digging into his sleeping body caused him to back away from the corpse and slowly look up to examine the hole. If the spiders had hidden in there, he wanted to confront them now, armed with his sword and bursting with energy. He hadn’t even pushed his muscles as he sliced through the creature.

It was almost as though there had been no resistance at all from its flesh and bones. If it even had any bones. But from the look of its corpse, it covered its skin in tough hairs and skeletal plating covered its legs and body.

'Yet somehow my ordinary weapon had cut through it? Weakling.'

Arcturius looked down at his sword curiously and an odd sight met him. His sword was glowing with light.

‘That’s new.’

It wasn’t strong enough to illuminate the entire cavern, but it was definitely a marked improvement from before. Arcturius studied the phenomenon carefully. It didn’t look like the creature’s blood was causing the glow, in fact, it seemed to come from within the sword itself. Arcturius had heard his father’s tales about magic weapons. But he was sure it was just an ordinary sword.

He moved the crystal ahead of him and pointed it towards the ceiling. ‘A mystery I'll solve another time.’

He didn’t have the luxury of standing still and admiring his sword’s new qualities. Moving backward, he slowly made his way to the cavern filled with crystals. He knew it was a dead end but if those things came after him and he started running around aimlessly he could end up in a worse situation. At least here there was light.

Arcturius thought up a plan as he moved. The important thing for him wasn’t surviving; It was staying alive until his father brought help to come and rescue him. He was confident that his father had survived the attack. There was no way that the battle-hardened warrior had fallen to a creature that needed to resort to cheap tactics. That he hadn’t come straight down after him meant that the hole probably wasn’t a viable way to access the caverns he’d fallen into.

‘Anyone that fell down that hole would probably die on impact.’ Arcturius thought glumly.

That didn’t mean the hole was useless. It would definitely serve as a marker for where he should be, so he resolved to stay as close to it as possible. There was just the issue of the spiders. If more were inhabiting it then he didn’t want to be resting right next to an entire nest of them.

‘I have to clear them out properly.’ He finally reached the cluster of crystals.

Nothing had changed since he’d left a few minutes ago.

A low growl floated into his ears and his back shivered. He swiveled around with his sword drawn. In the attack's confusion, he’d completely forgotten about the other inhabitant lurking in the area.

The wolf pup.

The growling sound grew louder and deeper, and from behind a small rock the wolf pup emerged. Arcturius eyed it warily. It was clearly hostile. But it wasn’t growling at him. It was growling at something behind him.

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Arcturius jumped to the side without hesitation and watched as a glob of yellow liquid flew into the space his body had been in. It splashed against the wall and with a faint sizzling sound the rocks began to cave inwards and dissolve before his eyes.

He turned around with his sword drawn and froze as he spotted his attacker.

The seven-legged giant spider was blocking the corridor. It’s guts hanging out from the cut he’d made underneath its stomach and its cold black eyes darting in every direction. Its fangs were dripping yellow and drops of acid were splashing down as its body moved from side to side, watching him.

Judging from what they’d done to the rock wall he didn’t doubt that the liquid would kill him if he let it touch him.

"You’re one tough bastard." Arcturius shuddered at the sight of it. "But a dimwitted one if you came back for seconds."

He hadn’t gotten a good look at it in its full glory before, but now he could see that it was far bigger than he was, and he knew that its legs made it a difficult opponent to catch. Luckily for him, the corridor wasn’t wide enough to support its full frame. He raised his sword towards his enemy and charged…

Only to see the spider shudder as the wolf pup bounced through the air and clamped its jaws down tight onto one of the spider’s eyes. With a growl, it locked on tight and its mouth splashed with green blood. Arcturius rushed towards the enemy, ducking under its body and severing its exposed guts with a strong cleave of his sword.

The spider let out an inhuman shriek as its organs were severed, and it struggled to turn towards him while the wolf pup continued to gnaw at its eyes. It couldn’t reach him as long as he was underneath it, but its fangs splashed acid across the room as it moved.

He lifted his unused arm to block the drops as they approached him and he gasped in pain as the acid splashed onto his defensive arm. Within seconds he could see the bone underneath as the liquid burned through his flesh. He immediately lifted his sword with his good arm and stabbed it into the creature, running it through.

The spider’s shrieks immediately grew quiet as the sword passed through its stomach, blood and organs spilling over Arcturius and the floor. The spider’s body fell to the ground with the pup still clinging on and its legs curled up into its body.

"No." Arcturius had already seen this trick. "You won't trick me this time."

He stabbed the spider several more times to make sure that it was dead. And then he cut off its fangs just to make sure that it couldn’t spit any more acid on him.

‘The acid.’ Arcturius grimaced as he raised his injured arm up to examine it.

Now that the adrenaline was wearing off he knew the pain that would hit him would be worse than he could imagine. The liquid had dug into his bones. It wasn’t an injury he could afford to have while staying in this hostile environment.

“What?” Arcturius gasped as he viewed his arm.

There was no pain, no broken flesh and no exposed bones. There was only a faint red rash where he’d seen the acid spilling onto him. And even that was fading away quickly.

"Something strange is going on here." Arcturius' voice was low as he took in the situation.

It wasn’t just his wounds.

It was more than that. He had seen the spider die before his eyes. But now it had come back to life. He’d only survived thanks to the warning of the pup. Something was wrong in this place.

“Is it these things?” He stared down at the crystal he’d been keeping in his hand.

The crystal he’d been holding had shrunk. He hadn’t noticed it because of the sudden attack and the added glow from his sword, but the crystal had definitely grown smaller. Before he could hardly fit it in his hand, and now it snuggled comfortably in his palm. Even as his wounds grew smaller and smaller, he could see the crystal shrinking visibly before his eyes.

"Crap." His light source was going to run out soon.

But there were immediate worries to deal with. If these crystals were involved in healing his injuries, then they were a serious threat to his health because they would continue to heal his enemies. There were still plenty of crystals left because the cluster was large, but that meant that this spider was a more immediate concern.

"Looks like I'll have to stop you from getting back up." He turned to the bleeding corpse with malice in his eyes.

He couldn’t afford to let it revive again.

There was only one thing he could do. If these crystals could heal even his injuries from falling into the cavern, then he would have to make sure that he injured the spider beyond healing. He sat down in front of the bleeding mess. There was only one method he could think of that would guarantee its death.

'I'll carve out its organs.'

The main body of the creature was only the size of his back but when it had spread out fully it dwarfed him in size. He was lucky that it was so weak to metal. The body squelched as he dug his sword into its eyes and began carving them out one by one. It was a quick process, and the spider didn’t move at all so he could assume it was well and truly dead, but he couldn’t be sure.

So he continued to dig out its remains from the main body until he’d completely hollowed out the creature. In the middle of the ground lay a pile of spider guts and innards, and one hollowed out spider carcass. The material of its outer shell was actually hard enough that his hands couldn’t even squeeze it. It surprised him that his sword had carved through it so quickly.

He placed the spider’s hollowed-out carcass in front of him and watched it closely. He’d only taken his eye off of the spider for a couple of minutes before and it had somehow managed to get back up with half of its body hanging outside of it.

He placed its insides to the side and the wolf growled as it kept its head pointed towards them. He felt a small shred of a smile tugging at his lips as the wolf turned its blind eyes towards the spider’s remains. Even if it couldn’t see this was the second time it had spotted an enemy he couldn't see.

It had saved his life.

“Maybe I will keep you around. Just for good luck.” The pup’s ears perked up as he spoke to it, and it tilted its head towards him curiously.

Then it let out a little yip and he smiled.

“At least you’ll make for better company than the spiders.”