As the suns began their final descent in the sky, the forest canopy above was set alight with radiant colors of deepest reds and oranges, richest purples and greens. They made Kya feel truly blessed to be where she was.
Or they would have if this weasel would just die already.
- - - - -
*** NEW CREATURE IDENTIFIED ***
- Wiggler - 1-Star - Uncommon
- The Wigglers are a slippery bunch. They'll track you down from miles away just to scratch you in your sleep and then leave before you can throw something at them. They also have a collection of odd abilities that are extremely helpful to know when fighting them.
- - - - -
Kya swore on everything sacred in her life, the fucking AI voice had muffled laughter at the end of that description. She'd be a lot more bothered by the apparent disdain it had for her life-or-death struggles if this actually felt life or death.
She had walked for about an hour after fighting the small group, when the weasel looking thing from all the way back with the rest of the monsters jumped at her out of nowhere. She had, without even a second thought, slashed it out of the air with a back handed dagger blow.
Only for it to seemingly bend space and move its body like a liquid to avoid the strike.
Any other creature and this would have spelled disaster for her, but this little thing only made small scratches at her exposed flesh with its nails, not even breaking the skin most of the time.
This had been a relief, but as the fight was dragging out, she became more and more annoyed. There was obviously some trick to its insane dodges, but her system wouldn't tell her, leaving her trial and error to figure it out.
If she slashed it wiggled out of the way. If she stabbed, it wiggled around the blade. If she whacked it with her staff, it curled around it like a snake, scampering up to bite her fingers.
Again, it wasn't that big or threatening, only about a foot long from snout to tail, but she genuinely had no idea how to deal with it.
Until finally, something changed.
The coloring of its fur, until now brown and red stripes working their way down its back, changed as she watched. One of the red stripes faded to the same rusty brown around it when it made one of its fantastical dodges.
Catching on, Kya made another slash at the beast, and sure enough, another red stripe turned to brown.
Thinking she had its number now, and it was only a matter of time, she slashed away like a madman, forcing it to use up its now limited number of escapes. However, when it had only a handful of red stripes left on its body, the weasel up and ran, not willing to risk its life for the attacks.
This, more than anything else so far in this place, pissed Kya off.
Every other animal, beast, monster, whatever, herself included, put their lives on the line to get stronger. Win or die, that was the way of this jungle. But when it was out of supernatural get out of jail free cards, the weasel wasn't willing to stay and fight?
No, no, no. That wasn't how this worked. (In the back of her mind, Kya knew that she herself had run from a fight earlier that very day, but truly felt this was different... also she never claimed to not be a hypocrite.)
Pulling it back, Kya slashed again, causing it to use up one more stripe. Squealing in panic now, it began writhing in the air, sprinting in sporadic movements on the ground, anything it could do to try and escape. But finally, with one more stroke of the blade, she got her notification.
- - - - -
- You have defeated Wiggler - 1-Star - Uncommon.
- Progress on Climbing the Ladder updated:
- Kill 10 monsters above common rarity, 5/10
- - - - -
Kya was shocked but delighted to know that the dumb little weasel had in fact been an uncommon beast. Truly, not all monsters were created equal. If the isela had possessed this thing's dodge abilities, Kya would surely be dead.
Taking a cue from her last fight, she didn't stick around at the site of the battle with the wiggler.
She walked for about another half hour in what she again hoped was the right direction, before setting up a makeshift camp.
The smaller sun disappeared first, returning the sunset to its more mundane brilliance. Kya started her fire in the dwindling light, happy with her small precautions.
She had lined her small clearing with stones from the temple she'd stored in her bag and placed several sharpened sticks at regular intervals as well. It was far from an impenetrable wall, more like a vague outline, but she wasn't willing to dedicate too much time and energy to what would ultimately be a temporary camp.
Laying out on her sleeping roll of piled banners, she ate the last of her dinner before downing a health potion for good measure. She hadn't really needed it, but without a readily available water source, figured these would keep her hydrated relatively well.
She stared up at the sky, and the stars beginning to peek out from behind the clouds, and simply hoped for two things, and two things only. One that she wouldn't be rained on, and two that she wouldn't be murdered in her sleep.
~ ~ ~
It seemed the universe had a sense of humor.
No, Kya was not dead, thankfully. But she was woken up by a sharp bite to her hand.
Tearing off the banner she used as her blanket, she saw to her horror, a spider.
Now, Kya had of course gotten fairly used to bugs in the woods. If she went into the woods, that's where they lived. It would be like going to someone's house and being shocked and appalled that they were there when you walked in. They live there, of course they're going to be there.
What she had failed to consider, however, was that this wasn't some backyard wood in Wisconsin. This wasn't a training area outside of Columbia. This was an unknown region in a far-off planet, and she had absolutely no right to assume anything about this place.
So, she used the term "Spider" quite loosely. It had a body like a baseball, with eight shiny black legs glinting off of the dying embers nearby. If ever someone were to ask, Kya would not hesitate to say that eight legs... was far too many legs.
After it bit her hand, it had crawled down her torso and was currently making its way up towards her knee.
"ewaojnfoaejno" was her only thought, as she backhanded the demon spawn with all the might of Zeus himself.
However, it didn't even have the decency to die from the smack, but squished around her hand like a water balloon, before bouncing to the ground several meters away... where she then noted that the light of the embers came to a sudden and abrupt stop...
- - - - -
*** NEW CREATURE IDENTIFIED ***
- Necro-Spider Soldier - 1 Star - Common
- The Necro-Spiders are rather vulnerable individually. They can deliver small amounts of weak neurotoxin with each bite, so don't let them! Oh, and the thing about Necro-Spiders though... They're never individual. You sleep tight now!
- - - - -
Slowly, and with deliberate calm, she put on another piece of wood, and coaxed the fire back to life, then immediately wished she hadn't.
There was not one spider. There were dozens... hundreds of spiders. All in a ring around her sleeping mat.
"Ewoonhnowohnownodh" She shuddered violently, looking around at the mass of eyes and legs.
At the coaxing of the flames, the wall retreated slightly.
"Okay, not a fan of fire" observed Kya "which makes fire my absolute best friend right now."
Remembering the mantra slow is smooth, smooth is fast, she worked as quickly and efficiently as she could to pack up her little camp, wrap a spare strip of cloth around one of the sticks, and catch it ablaze. Despite all the resistances it boasted, the cloth from the banners burned wonderfully, giving her an easy path out.
Walking haltingly towards the wall of arachnids, she held out her makeshift torch. Blessedly, it had the intended effect. The spiders hated or feared the flames enough to stay away, and back away when she approached. She took her time, ensuring they were all, each and every one, backed a good distance away before taking another step.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
This repeated for several steps, truly terrifying her with the sheer number of soldiers that had managed to surround her. Finally, she saw nothing but forest ahead, and the exact same moment she had the thought "I'm going to make it!"
The universe played part two of its joke. It was a good one, Kya could even see the punchline objectively as funny. But in that moment, rather than humor, she felt more as if her stomach had just fallen through a hole to exit her body completely.
It started to rain.
Panic began to overwhelm her rigidly held discipline, as hisses of steam and wisps of vapor started to erupt from her torch. She began to walk faster... and faster... and behind her, the creatures began to pursue, easily keeping pace.
But, as the rain began to fall in earnest, her torch's light died, allowing darkness to reign. With it, had died her last shred of hope.
And so the spiders attacked.
Although resistant to her slap, it seemed pointy objects were just the trick. Every single movement of her blade led to a death. They really were like water balloons, a single puncture or slash, and they leaked out a sickly green fluid while deflating, and ultimately dissolving into shadows. She got notification after notification, but simply minimized them all and kept slashing.
Yet Canute could not hold back the tides.
For every spider she killed, five more took its place. For every slash of her knife, three more got bites in in her shoulders, or neck, or knees, or hands. Certainly, their venom was weak, but ten doses a second, and it didn't really matter.
Her arms began to feel leaden, and soon it was all she could do just to stay standing. With her last bit of strength, she stored her dagger back in her bag, and slumped down to the muddy ground, paralyzed.
Above the neck, she still had full control of her body. Which was fortunate, as she didn't lose consciousness. Even if she wished she would.
She stared out, unable to move, as the spiders crawled all over her body, burying her. A single tear left her eye, before getting washed away in the rainfall.
But they didn't kill her. Not yet at least.
They instead wrapped her in webs. Binding her arms to her chest, and her legs together, they were going to continue working, when suddenly they all stopped moving.
Each and every one turned as if on cue to look somewhere in the forest. All was still for a moment, before, as one, they stopped their webbing, and simply began to drag her through the woods.
This was the exact moment that Kya decided, no matter how wonderous or splendid this new world could be, she would never again think of it as such. This wasn't a vacation to a theme park. This was... this was a nightmare. And she was terrified she'd never see the sun again.
After what could have been minutes, could have been hours, could have been days, the dragging and scuttling came to a stop. During the entire transit over, the spiders had given her small, but regular bites in various places. Keeping the paralysis going, she assumed.
Now from the limited field of view that she had, she tried to take in her surroundings. It almost looked like a layer of snow had covered the forest. With a sickening twist, she realized it was webbing. All of it. The trees, the branches, the sky above was covered in webs.
Coming to stop just above her, was the largest and most horrifying thing Kya had ever seen. With a body like a watermelon, and an enormous head jutting out in front, this spider was too... much. It was too much. Its legs were too long, its pattern too distinct, its pincers too close, its eyes... there were too many. Far too many eyes. Each showing back her face, each showing how absolutely powerless she felt.
As if reflecting her situation, even the narrator of her messages seemed subdued. Not quite so enthusiastic, more somber.
- - - - -
*** NEW CREATURE IDENTIFIED***
- Necro-Spider King - 1-Star - Uncommon
- While the Necro-Spider Queen is the most important member of the colony, the King is ultimately in charge. Through sheer oppressive control, he maintains a firm grip on the order of arachnids it calls family. Real Dad-of-the-year material over here.
- - - - -
After what felt like a lifetime, the King clicked his mandibles in what must have been an order, and she was taken up to hang from a tree. A single spider was left on her hand, biting her about every minute or so. It was apparently his job to ensure that she stayed sedated and docile.
However, for what she felt like the first time, her identify had actually seemed to try and help. With that single hope forming into a plan, her mind clung to it like a single life raft in a stormy sea. It didn't matter how reckless, how stupid, how ill-conceived an idea was. When the alternative was death by a thousand spiders, Kya would do anything.
Her moment came after biding her time for what felt like an eternity. In truth, with the rain still pouring down, she had no way to measure time other than the regular bites of the spider on her left hand.
Just before each bite, she felt her strength return for the briefest moment. She wasn't sure if it was due to her constitution, the potion she had taken before bed, or whatever... but she ever so slowly was beating back the toxin in her blood.
Now, after having waited, and waited, and waited, she put her plan into motion. She still suffered mildly from the toxin, feeling sluggish and uncoordinated, but able to move, nonetheless.
Just as the spider on her hand was about to bite her again, Kya used her hand, strapped right next to her spatial bag, to pull out some rat meat she'd taken from one of the countless beasts she'd slain over the past couple days.
Instantly, the spider froze in place, before scurrying across her body after the meat. Involuntarily shuddering at the sight of the spider, and renewed sensation of it touching her as it moved, she dropped the meat.
That was it, her plan was for naught. This would surely alert the other spiders, and soon she would be killed for being more trouble than she was worth...
But... no. The spider on her hand simply lept down after it and started eating it up where it had landed in the mud several meters below. The rain seemed to be muffling sound or smell or both, because not a single other arachnid in the nest noticed a thing. She was now alone.
"Slow is smooth, smooth is fast" she repeated again. Thinking through every action before taking it, she once more reached into her bag to retrieve her dagger.
Bending her wrist as far as it could go, Kya could just barely reach the webs binding her arms to her side. With simple precise movements, she wore away at the webs.
Every second was ten heartbeats, ten beats on a drum to her ears. Every slash that didn't release her and send her rocketing forward into the next part of her plan was a moment of agony, a moment of unadulterated dread.
She stopped. Kya's hands had started violently shaking, and if she dropped the knife, no. No. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Deep breath in. Deep breath out.
"Free yourself" she thought "Then take your revenge."
With two more cuts, she felt the webs loosen, and a savage rip later, her arm was free.
Stowing her knife for the moment, she now had to move as quickly as possible to make sure the rest of the plan went accordingly. She pulled out and downed a healing potion instantly. Taking another out, she held it in her mouth for the time being.
Then scanning her surroundings rapidly, she found her target. Sitting at the highest point in the tangle of webs, the king lounged in the rain. Countless smaller spiders moved quickly around him, carrying-
No. She didn't want to know what they were doing. It didn't matter.
Taking out her staff and dagger again, she took aim. With not just adrenaline, but health potion in her veins, she felt alive. She felt fury. Cold, righteous anger that would frighten kings. That would frighten this king. That would kill this king.
"Rot in hell" she growled past the potion in her mouth, as quicker than anything she had ever launched before, her knife disappeared from her hand, and appeared again sticking out of the king's head. Right in the center of his multitudinous eyes.
Just as his smaller brethren did, the king gushed out an eerie green liquid. With a deafening screech heard across the forest, it dissolved into shadows. Already cutting herself free from the final restraint holding her in place, Kya almost missed the definite and noticeable spark that appeared in the center of the spider King's demise.
The moment the notification appeared chaos overcame the nest.
Several hundred of the larger spiders came forward, and with reckless abandon, began killing and eating one another. The several thousand smaller ones either tried to join in the fight below, only to immediately get crushed and killed by their larger counterparts, or else fled into the heart of the camp where there was a large cocoon bigger than her apartment.
But either way, none of the spiders spared her so much as a thought as she used the webs like ladders and climbed to the ground. Kya would finish this tonight. One way or another, she would need to kill the queen.
Not wanting to approach the melee happening in front of her, she instead prepared the final part of her plan.
During her time hanging from the tree, she'd had a lot of thinking and planning going on. A good chunk of the time was also spent suppressing her disgust, fear, and revulsion at the circumstances in which she found herself, but a good portion she had been in relative control.
So of course, she identified the one thing that was almost universally around her, and that was truly when her ideas cemented into plans. Coincidentally, that was also the moment she felt true gratitude towards her identify skill and its narrator.
- - - - -
- Item: Necro-Spider Silk
- Rarity: 1-Star - Common
- Description: Soft. Strong. Burns when mixed with water.
- Enchantments: N/A
- Requirements: N/A
- - - - -
Using the metal gray coin of the isela and her dagger, Kya made some sparks against the webs in the still falling rain.
Downing the potion in her mouth, Kya walked through the inferno of hell's own flame towards the cocoon holding the queen spider. Notifications absolutely flooded her mind, until she simply muted them for the time being. Apparently, she was being credited with the deaths of every spider consumed in flame.
Perfection.
The cocoon burned hotter and brighter than anything around it. However, the inside remained untouched for now. As it was still dry from the layers of webbing on top, it was not so easy to burn. But as those layers burnt away, the exposed webs would get wet in the rain, and the fire would reignite in them.
It was only a matter of time now. But Kya wanted to do this personally.
The common spiders flew at her as she entered the heart of the colony, only to be blown back with a wave of concussive force. She instantly had blood leak from her eyes after using the staff on so many so quickly, but the potion in her stomach kept her walking forward, kept her lucid and focused.
The walls of the cocoon started to burn.
The queen was nothing like the king. He had been massive and built for war. She was big, yes, but was only here to lay eggs. She was softer, rounder, her legs were fuzzy, like enormous pipe cleaners. If the king had been a black widow, she was a tarantula. Somewhere someone might have thought it cute.
Kya ran through the collapsing roof and fiery walls and stabbed the queen. Again, and again, and again. Through each eye, through every reflection of herself, she stabbed.
Long after it had dissolved into shadows, after the spiders had burned or fled, after the entire forest had gone silent, Kya sat in the rain, her knife sunk to the hilt in the mud.
~ ~ ~
As the blue sun broke over the horizon, the purple and green sunrise heralded in a new day. Kya retrieved her dagger, placed the sunrise to her right, and kept walking towards the city, leaving billowing black smoke in her wake. She intended to keep her promise.
She would not sleep in this forest again.