Chapter Twenty-Eight: Royally Screwed

We hadn’t even made it out of the feeding room before Tiana proved her worth. The spiders sprung their trap at one of the few entrances we could reach. A wave of skittering horrors ranging from a few dozen of the dog-sized to four more of the giants to most things in between.

Tiana raised a hand and threw two translucent blue disks into the wave that shredded many of the smaller ones like they were made of paper. Once they’d run out of steam, she dispelled them and shot six simultaneous bolts of force out that had enough power behind them to punch through two or three spiders each before hitting a final one and exploding, each curving and twisting in a different direction. In the span of a few seconds, she’d taken out at least thirty of the smaller bastards.

“The big ones are a bit out of my league,” she said, fear in her voice.

I summoned a greatsword. “We’ve got those.”

The golem bowled through the waves, swinging its sword in wide arcs, tangling up two of the large spiders. Serena took one of the remaining giants while I threw myself at the other. Tiana kept casting the whole time, throwing out more of those disks and using strings of mana coming from her hands to guide them through the throng of spiders. The Valax I fought landed a few blows, but the boost to my Fortitude thanks to Serena’s skill kept them shallow.

I disabled enough of its legs to hack deep into the point between its thorax and abdomen and the beast went down. Then I helped Serena finish hers off, and with the help of the golem and a few spells from Tiana we took care of the other two with some ease.

[Level Up!]

I’d gained as many levels against the spiders as I had in the two weeks prior. As much as I hated them, they made a good experience farm. I sunk both points into my Primal, bringing it up to 24. A delighted sound from Serena indicated she’d leveled up as well. That put her Priestess class at six already, which was fantastic for a single day’s work.

Tiana looked over the corpses with a dazed expression. “You guys are something else.” Her eyes fell on me, and her cheeks darkened. “Especially you. I’ve never seen anyone fight quite like that.”

I shrugged. “I’ve got a thing against spiders.” Rhallani pulled her paring knife out, headed for a medium sized one, but I held a hand up to stop her. “Big ones only. We’re in a rush now.”

She frowned. “Why?”

I debated telling her my theory, but if I was wrong it would just scare them for no reason. If I was right then there wasn’t much we could do about it anyways. “This is one of those times I’ll need you to trust me.” Her brow furrowed, but she just nodded. I looked at Serena. “I hope you got a good skill, something tells me we’ll need it.”

She bit her lip. “I can take another healing skill. It’s ranged but that means it’s probably weaker, right?” she asked.

“That tends to be how it goes, yes,” I agreed.

“Well, I’ve got a distraction spell, too, but it makes the target glow. I’m guessing that isn’t a great match for your skills.”

“Not really, no.”

She chewed her lip harder and rubbed her thighs together. She was very pointedly avoiding looking in my direction. “Um, there are some attribute boost skills, too, but none that are as strong as [Font of Magic].”

Tiana was trying to look like she wasn’t listening, but I could tell she was hanging off every word. Luckily for us, Elisa picked that exact moment to drift back into consciousness. Her eyes grazed over the corpses for a few seconds, then she shrieked. Tiana jumped, turning to calm her friend down.

I took advantage of her distraction and stepped closer so that Serena could whisper to me. I put my hand at the small of her back. “And the one you’re embarrassed to tell me about?”

She turned an alluring shade of scarlet. “It’s—ah, um—I don’t know if—”

“You don’t have to take it if you don’t want to,” I promised.

A heated look flashed in her eyes and I realized she did want to take it, she was just too ashamed to admit it. “W-w-well, it’s called [Shrouded in Faith]. It’s, um, another epigraph skill, but…” I stepped closer, and she put a hand on my chest and closed her eyes. She told me the details of the skill, and I had to use every trick I’d ever learned to tamp down the laugh.

“Vague, but that means the boosts might just scale. Hard to know without trying it,” I admitted, trying as hard as I could to keep my voice level.

Her face turned an even deeper shade of red, and her voice rose. “You aren’t seriously suggesting—”

I rubbed my hand in slow circles. Rhallani heard and looked at us with a raised brow, but I just waved her back to her sac looting with an I’ll tell you later look. “I’m not saying you should take it, I’m saying we should at least talk about it. You don’t want it, you don’t take it. It’s that simple. But,” I pulled her into me and she let out a soft gasp, “something tells me you like the skill a little more than you want to admit.”

Her lips became a thin line. “It’s just… it’s such a perverted skill. And it seems counterintuitive for my class synergy.”

“Yes and no.” I started trailing my fingers along all the exposed skin I could reach. “Your current outfit is pretty revealing, but thanks to my magic you’re still protected. Not to mention it does synergize well with your other skill. A boost to your Divine stat means a boost to [Aura of Reinforcement], which affects you, too. If we get to a point where your Divine is high enough, then you’d be better protected going naked than wearing any armor.” She opened her mouth to protest and I put a finger to her lips. “Hypothetically, of course.”

“You’re not just saying that because you want me to start dressing like a s-slut, are you?”

I grinned at her. “Serena, you’re beautiful no matter what you’re wearing. If I didn’t think you wanted the skill, I wouldn’t bother arguing.” I wasn’t trying to convince her to take it, I was giving her the arguments she needed to do what she clearly wanted to do. I leaned down so I could whisper directly into her ear. “Though I’d never object to getting to see more of you.”

She shivered. “It—it would make everyone else safer, too.”

“That it would,” I agreed.

“Okay, I—I’ll take it, then.”

I gave her a pointed look. “You’ll take it because it’s something you want. Not something you think I want.”

She rubbed her body against mine. “Fine,” she whispered, “I like the way it makes me feel just thinking about it, but please don’t tell anybody.”

I grinned, then pulled her chin up to give her a kiss. “Our secret. Now grab it, we should get moving.”

I knew the moment she did, since I felt the change in my Fortitude. I checked. Four more points on top of the ten I already had. I gave her a questioning glance.

“E-eight. I get eight extra points from this getup,” she admitted.

Damn. That wasn’t bad at all. I wondered how much of a boost she got when she was fully nude, but now wasn’t the time to bring that up. I kissed her again. “Come on.”

Rhallani was cleaning up, and Elisa was looking at us with wide eyes. I conjured the bucket long enough for Rhallani to deposit the large sacs, then banished it again. “I’d like Tiana to have her hands free, do you think Rhallani’s support will be enough for you to get by?”

She nodded at me wordlessly. Then, after clearing her throat, she said, “are we really going to make it?”I offered her the most confident smile I could manage. “If I’ve got anything to say about it, but we’ve got a lot of ground to cover and not a lot of time to do it. I want to try to get out before nightfall hits and some of the nastier breeds come out to play.”

Tiana’s brows drew close. “We saw some other types of spider when we were coming down. I got bit by a red recluse. I thought Valax didn’t play well with other species.”

Damn. I was hoping none of them knew that particular tidbit. “There are certain cases where there are exceptions, but none of them are good. We should get out of here while we can.”

I could tell she wanted to ask more, but she cut a glance at Elisa, who was trembling and decided not to. “I’ll help Elisa walk for now, then if combat starts I’ll leave her to Rhallani. That way we can move faster.”

“Good idea. Now let’s get the fuck out of here.”

The others apparently agreed, because we set off at a rather quick pace. I set off ahead with a stick of chalk so I could mark the walls and the others grouped up about fifty feet behind me. I had faith that if they were attacked, Noelle, Serena, and the golem could protect them long enough for me to get back.

Once I’d left the lantern light behind and my senses boosted, I reached out. Old memories kept trying to surface, but any time they did I glanced back at the women behind me. They were my anchor. As long as they were around, I was grounded. I periodically marked the wall with the chalk so they knew I was okay and stretched my senses out. In the pitch black, I could sense the spiders coming from a mile away. I could feel the vibrations on the webs around us. I could hear the pockets of air behind the false spots in the walls where the spiders would come out.

I conjured Serena’s normal spear and used it to clear out the murder holes we passed. Most of the spiders were small enough that I dispatched them easily, and only once did I encounter enough that I had to fall back into the light and allow the others to help. Anytime we reached a fork I smacked my spear against the wall and listened to the echoes. I used my best judgment to keep us headed for the surface, and I made sure to leave nice big chalk marks at any forks to show them which way I’d went.

They started off in silence, but it wasn’t long before conversation started. I bit back the impulse to tell them to stay quiet. The spiders already knew where we were, and I more than anyone else understood the need to break the silence when you were in dark, scary, underground tunnels filled with things that wanted to kill you. I also knew it wasn’t nearly as loud as it felt to my boosted senses.

Elisa was the one to break that silence first. She started asking about the others, their names, where they were from, harmless things like that. Tiana stayed quiet, but she listened closely to every word. I tried to ignore how she perked up when Elisa asked if Serena and I were dating. She’d seen how close we were standing before, and naturally made the assumption.

I also tried to ignore her stumble when Rhallani proudly announced they were both in a relationship with me. Then Noelle made a hum and Rhallani quickly amended that all three of them were close to me, and I did my best to tune them out. I knew that she knew I could hear her every word, but I still felt like I was spying on them.

Whatever came next in the conversation I missed when two of the giant spiders lurched out at me from magically concealed trapdoors. In the light I might have been in danger, but I had no blindspots in the dark. With the boost to my Fortitude from Serena’s skill, they barely even touched my health before I’d slipped their attacks and used my boosted shadows to take them apart.

In this level of darkness, all twelve points of [Release the Darkness] were in my Primal stat. I’d come down with twenty, but right now I was wielding thirty-six. They were faster, stronger, and longer, and they carved into the carapace with ease. I hardly even used my actual weapons. I’d dispatched them before the others even caught up to me, then used my shadows to cut them open and pull out their silk sacs.

I’d made it maybe thirty feet past them when I heard gasps, then Rhallani his “Zaren! I swear, if you’ve been making me carve into these things this whole time when you could do it this quick I’m going to kick your ass.”I chuckled, but I didn’t answer. Tiana gave one of the corpses a kick. “Okay, your boyfriend is both fucking terrifying and kinda awesome.”

“Isn’t he?” Rhallani replied dreamily.

I shook my head. Here we go. I could hear Tiana’s hesitance. “If I’m alive tomorrow it’s because of him, so the last thing I want to do is pry, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious. Tall, dark, and brooding, crazy strong yet alluringly mysterious…”

“You can mention he’s crazy hot, too,” Rhallani said with a laugh. “We won’t mind.”

“Alright, fine, he’s definitely easy on the eyes. And he isn’t a pervert, otherwise I doubt he’d have been so hesitant to cop a feel when he found me.”

Rhallani cackled softly. “Oh, he’s a pervert alright. Just a really repressed one. I’m working on it, though.”I was dispatching another group of spiders, so it took me a second to find a suitable rock and use my strengthened shadows to hurl it back towards them. It caught her on the shoulder, just where I’d been aiming. “Ow!” she said.

Tiana froze. “The fuck was that?”

Rhallani rubbed where the rock had hit her. It had been little more than a pebble, and with her new Fortitude it wouldn’t do much more than sting. “Hm? Oh, that was Ren’s way of yelling at me.”

“He can hear us?” Tiana hissed.

“Definitely. He can also hear spiders coming from like, a mile away, but only when he’s in the dark.”

“That’s…equal parts worrying and reassuring.” Then she cleared her throat. “Um,” she said loudly, “sorry if I’m prying, Ren. I don’t mean to ask about you behind your back or anything.”

Rhallani just waved her arm. “Nah, he doesn’t mind that much. If he was here he’d probably say something like ‘it’s better to know each others’ skills when in a situation like this,’” her imitation of me involved dropping her voice low and talking in grunts, so I chucked another rock, “Ow! Oh, come on, that was spot on!”

Serena giggled. “She’s right, though. I use spears and my secondary class is a support healing class, so please be sure to tell me if you get hurt.”

I missed the next part of the conversation when another giant leapt out at me, but one on one I dispatched it with ease. By the time I tuned back in, Tiana was asking, “…skills seem kind of…”

“Off putting?” Rhallani offered.

“That’s a better word than villainous, to be sure.”

Rhallani made her thinking noise. “Well, without giving too much away, he ended up with a bad guy class because it’s coincidentally really good at hunting bad guys. He’s a good guy, trust me.”

“A really good guy,” Serena added.

Not really how I would have phrased it, but not entirely incorrect either. It did make some heat rise in my cheeks, and I was glad I was in the dark. “In that case,” Tiana said quietly, “even if he can hear me, I have to ask. What’s his deal? Nobody is that strong and that good without some kind of deal breaker. Not in my experience.”

“Boatloads of unresolved trauma,” Rhallani said immediately.

I chucked a third rock at her, but she must have known it was coming because she managed to sidestep it even while holding up Elisa. Tiana leaned close to Serena and whispered, “is it bad that I find that attractive?”Serena hummed. “I sure hope not.”

I tossed a rock at her, too, but it just bounced off her pauldron. “Fortuna’s tits!” Tiana exclaimed. “How fucking good is his hearing?”

Rhallani blew a raspberry into the darkness. “When it’s pitch black, really fucking good. When it’s dark out, if he isn’t worried, then I’m not worried.”

Tiana huffed. Then, so quietly that even I could barely hear her, I heard, “why are all the good guys always taken?” Then she sucked in her breath and said, “fuck, please tell me you didn’t hear that.”

I chuckled, then was promptly distracted by the next ambush. It took me about a minute to take them all out, and by the time I was done the others were under attack from behind. I could hardly start in their direction before they finished off the attack, but it still made me uneasy. If the spiders wanted to take us out, then they’d throw everything at us all at once. What they were doing now wasn’t enough to do much more than slow us down, and I didn’t think that was just a coincidence.

Either the Valax weren’t as smart as I feared or smarter than I’d given them credit for. Either way, while the others took out the last of their ambush without suffering more than a scratch or two, I pulled out a mana potion. I was under half, and it was always better to be safe than sorry when in enemy territory.

It was just after I’d drained the final drop that it happened. The ice-cold rush of energy spread all the way through my body, making my fingertips and my toes tingle, then I was weightless. The ground under me fell, and I fell along with it. Then it fell faster. No, it wasn’t falling, it was being pulled down. Giving me nothing to push off of. Leaving me free-falling into pitch black open air. A trap, but one that involved the entire floor underneath me being ripped away. Enough rock being moved at once that I hadn’t even considered it as a possibility.

The last dregs of light that bounced from the girls’ lantern vanished and I fell into open air. I could tell by the way the air around me moved that I’d fallen into a massive cavern. I didn’t scream, but the sound of stone grinding and the way none of it bounced back told me that I was far from any walls.

Then I heard whistling. The faint sound of something sharp cutting through the air, moving towards me. Fast. I conjured tendrils and lashed out at whatever it was. I’d been expecting the fangs or claws of Valax, but what my shadows found instead was threads so thin they’d be all but invisible to the naked eye. Without my senses boosted to the max, I’d have never even noticed them. Magic radiated through them, making them incredibly strong despite their width, and they cut right through the tendrils I’d sent at them.

I wrapped myself in what shadow I had left, and it saved my life. Instead of being cut in half, I merely received several deep gashes on my arm and torso and was ripped out of the air, flung across the space. I managed to soften the landing with my tendrils and conjured a few more just in case, which turned out to be a good instinct as the threads chased me. This time I managed to use my senses and shadows to avoid them completely, but they sheared through the solid stone where I’d been standing as easily as if it had been paper.

I reached out with my senses looking for the owner of the threads. They moved too fluidly to be a trap, they were being manipulated by something sentient. Something powerful considering the mana I’d sensed when they’d connected with my shadows. I’d just tracked the general direction they were coming from when I heard movement. Heavy movement. Something that sounded larger than—

Fuck.

Me.

The spider that emerged from the deepest corner of the cave made even the largest spiders we’d seen so far seem small in comparison. It’s abdomen alone would be big enough for all six of us to stand on. Each segment of its limbs was longer than I was tall. It must’ve stood nearly twenty feet tall, and I could probably run underneath it and not have to duck.

A royal Valax.

I was so screwed.

It let out a rumbling screech, as if furious that I’d had the nerve to survive it’s initial attack, and charged me. I felt the thundering of each step through the stone underneath me. No sooner had I set my feet to try and dodge than I felt the whistling again. I narrowly avoided the first three of the threads, but the fourth cut deep into my thigh. Pain exploded from the wound. The threads were infused with the Valax’s magical venom.

By the time I recovered the spider was on me. Bladed limbs as thick as my torso slammed down, missing me by inches. It pounded the ground around me in a flurry of blows that I only dodged thanks to my shadows, but I wasn’t quick enough to dodge the next wave of threads it flung at me. This time I felt the hairs on its back twisting and pulling them, twisting them with magic to cut deep into my back.

I threw myself forward to escape, landing under its body. I tried to slash upward, but I had to leap to the side to avoid its massive carapace that slammed down to try and crush me. More threads bit into my neck, narrowly missing my arteries but pumping more venom into my blood. I got away without losing my head, but I still had to drop a [Shadow Stitching] as the blood started to pour from my injuries.

My Resilience kept the venom from doing any real damage to me, but it did little to dampen the feeling of fire in my veins. Already the pain had spread enough that I hardly noticed the stitches pulling the cuts closed. My enhanced senses boosted that pain to unimaginable levels, and it was already starting to take its toll.

The spider’s body was too far for me to hit still, so I threw some knives at it. They bounced harmlessly off its carapace, and I had to back away to dodge the next wave of threads. No sooner had I avoided them than its bladed forelegs were trying to eviscerate me again.

The threads took on a new tactic, this time coming at me from different directions. They left no window for me to avoid, so I was forced to use my shadows to block two of them. They wrapped around my leg, cutting deep into the flesh of my calf, and pulling me to a stop long enough for the spider to catch me with its leg. Sharp-edged limb ripped my front open, cutting deep into the flesh of me left pectoral and tearing all the way down my abdomen and through my thigh.

Blood sprayed from the massive attack and I knew I had to cast [Shadow Stitching] immediately or risk bleeding out in seconds. I did so, feeling a chunk of mana fade away while I expanded the shadows under the thread wrapped around my leg enough to slip free. I staggered forward, stumbling over the uneven ground that was the remains of the tunnel I’d been walking in a minute ago.

I only made it a few feet before I hit a web and fell. It had been laid in advance and stationary so I hadn’t been able to hear it, and it sliced my leg open just under the knee. I’d barely hit the ground before I felt the Valax thundering behind me. I rolled in time to keep from getting impaled, but not fast enough to get out of the way of its next attack.

It lashed out and flung me across the space. It’s leg shredded my shirt and cut deep into my chest just above my solar plexus, crossing the sewn shut gash from a moment ago like a cross. I slammed into the wall and heard something in me crack. The spider lunged at me with more threads, and I ended up with two cuts on my side and even more venom in me. There was so much pain rushing through my veins it was getting hard to tell where my limbs ended.

But the spider knocking me away gave me the half-second I needed to search the room for anything that could help me turn the tide. Nothing jumped out at me, but I sensed a smaller hole nearby that could at least allow me to catch my breath. I lunged forward and conjured a sword, wrapping two tendrils around it. When the threads came back I swung the blade at them. It slowed them down for maybe half a second before snapping into pieces, but it opened a window I could slip through and hurl myself towards the hole.

I felt the spider rushing after me. Each one of its steps reverberated through the stone under me and rattled the rubble from the trap. Pain exploded in my back when more threads tore into me. Reality faded, and for a moment I was on my knees, a barbed whip biting into my back. I shook the memory away in time to narrowly avoid the next thread. I stumbled, but stayed on my feet. I cast another [Shadow Stitching] and threw myself into the hole.

I made it, mercifully, and dragged myself as deep in as I could. I didn’t get far before it dead ended, but I was at least out of range of the royal for a few seconds. Already I could hear and feel it using its armored front legs to carve into the stone to reach me and knew I didn’t have long.

[Health: 27/220]

[Mana: 15/120]

I had enough Valax venom in me to kill a small village, and I was being held together by my shadow stitches and spite. I pulled out a health and mana potion and downed them both with fumbling fingers I could hardly feel. It was generally a bad idea to ingest so many potions back to back, and I could already feel the cold burn in my gut that was magic poisoning. I pulled out an antidote and drank it, but it only added to the roiling waves of pain in my veins.

The cold burn grew worse. Each potion I drank from this point forward would have reduced effects until they started to do more harm than good. I wouldn’t be able to rely on them for a few days, likely. If I wasn’t careful, the next health potion could kill me. I needed to get back to Serena, but there was a multiple-ton spider currently in my path. One I didn’t know how to deal with.

Guardian Valax—the ones that ranged from dog-sized to person-sized—were clever. Capable of putting together ambushes and traps. Royal Valax were intelligent. Smarter than most people. A trap like this was meant to take out an entire company of soldiers—preparation for when the Valax became enough of a threat that the city above was forced to send men down to contain the threat. I should have been honored that the creature had used it on only me.

The ambushes hadn’t been to slow us down, it had been to learn. Somehow it had figured out that I grew stronger the more enemies I faced, so it was facing me down alone. I was still weak at range, which meant its long legs and threads were my worst enemy. By extension, my senses were one of the very few counters to it’s attacks, but that advantage wasn’t nearly enough to make up for the gap in raw strength between me and the monster.

It was getting closer and closer. Just in the last few seconds it had covered nearly half the distance between us. From the distance I’d fallen, I knew scaling the wall was out of the question. It could climb faster than I could on my best day. If this was the kill pit I knew it to be, then there wouldn’t be any other person-sized tunnels nearby. Even this one was little more than a crag in the rocks I’d slipped into, and I couldn’t count on finding another one.

I’d never outrun it. Not in a million years. This trap was designed to take out entire companies of armed and armored soldiers, and after seeing the destructive power of those magical threads I understood why. Anyone without my senses would already be meat chunks on the floor, and even with them I’d only earned a stay of execution.

I tried to make a fist only to realize my hands were already clenched. Everything below my neck was just an ocean of dull pain. I could move, but I couldn’t feel myself moving. I wasn’t sure I could handle this thing when I was in good shape, let alone when I was carved up and full of venom. I took a risk and drank another mana potion. The burn grew worse, but the potion still worked at half efficiency. I could handle maybe one more, but now wasn’t the time to risk it.

Escape was out of the question, especially in my current state. If I died here, there was nothing stopping the Valax from hunting down my friends. The thought of them falling into the trap, sliced apart before they hit the ground, was unthinkable. Even if I couldn’t win, I could at least make sure the bastard couldn’t hurt them.

My hands went slack. I reached in and unlocked a door I’d closed long ago. I didn’t bother with the Zaren Nocht who’d fought against Grimsbane. He’d been trained and determined, but he wasn’t the one I needed right now. I was trapped in a hole, thousands of tons of earth and stone between me and the sun, alone and in pain, with no hope of seeing tomorrow. I’d been there before. I lived it. Thrived in it.

When I stood, it wasn’t as Ren or Zaren. I was Slave Thirteen. I was little more than an animal that was too stupid to realize it was already dead. There was no making it out alive, there was just buying myself a little more time. This monster might kill me, but not without a cost. I left enough mana for a single cast of [Shadow Stitching] and dumped the rest into conjuring tendrils.

The royal was only a few feet away. I took most of the tendrils and wrapped them around my body. They merged and twisted together until I could feel and control them all. They had no veins for the venom to affect, and though I couldn’t feel my body I could feel the shadows. They could tell me where my flesh ended and my enemy began. Even if I couldn’t move my muscles fast enough, I could use my shadows to pull myself around like the Valax manipulated its threads.

The rest of the tendrils I thinned, making them not much wider than the threads. If there was nothing I could do to block them, I could at least see them coming. I twisted them around myself like a cloud. Wisps of darkness that would at least tell me from which direction death came even before my ears detected it.

I could feel the wind coming from the royal’s limbs. If I was going to do anything to it, I needed to get to its body. I considered using the cursed blade, but with how much damage the venom had done and the magic poisoning there was no guarantee my body would be able to handle it. It would likely kill me the moment I undid the clasp.

I couldn’t wait for it to come to me. I would have to throw everything I had at it. I’d never known any other way. There was a rhythm to the slams, and I picked the perfect gap to hurl myself out. Immediately I felt the threads close, but I was ready. The shadows told me where they were coming from, and I hurled weapons from my storage in either direction. The threads carved through them effortlessly, but their direction was changed just enough for me to slip past and lash out at one of the spider’s back legs with a shadow-wrapped fist.

It’s outer shell cracked under the force, and the spider whirled on me. It brought its forelimbs down in another barrage and I danced to the best of my ability. It was like I was watching someone else be attacked, pulling their body out of the way of each strike. On the fifth, I reached out with my shadows and wrapped around the limb just before the spider ripped it up to strike again.

It tore me into the air, but my body just added the pain onto the pile. I let go at the peak of its pull and was weightless for a second, then I lashed out and caught the top of one of its other legs and used it to swing myself onto its back. I twisted multiple shadows together and plunged them into the carapace, spreading them out and digging into the spider’s innards underneath.

It screeched and pitched underneath me, but I used my other tendrils to carve deep gashes into the spider’s shell-like flesh until I could rip away a chunk of it. I reared back to strike directly into the exposed flesh beneath, but I wasn’t quick enough.

A wall of threads flew at me and I was forced to relinquish my grip or be ripped to shreds. I pushed myself into the air, but several still caught my leg. I spun in the air from the force of it, but my shadows lashed out towards the spider like they had a mind of their own. I dug into the spider with hooks of darkness and collected tendrils around my fingers like claws. It pitched under me and the hooks slammed me down onto its abdomen. I felt something else in me crack, but at this point what was a little more pain?

I slammed my claws into its abdomen in a similar fashion to how it had been burrowing into the wall. Green blood poured out, but I was wrapped from head to toe in the shifting dark of my shadows. I ripped into it until it went sideways underneath me, climbing up onto the wall, then the threads returned. I was too slow this time and they caught me on the side, hurling me to the ground and damn-near cutting through my arm in the process. It hung limply, connected to my body by only flesh and muscle, but I just wrapped it in shadows and shoved it back in place.

I slammed into stone and bounced into a chunk of rock that I managed to roll up. I could taste blood—a coppery taste that was magnified a thousand times by my senses—and my body was begging me to stop. If I wasn’t pulling myself around with shadows, I’d be completely immobile. The Valax hurled itself off the wall at me, slamming into the ground hard enough to make the walls rattle, and lunged towards me. I was on my back, but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to move in time to avoid the fangs lunging for me.

I held my hand out, and the cursed blade sprung to existence. The fangs would have cleaved me in two, but they weren’t strong enough to damage the magic in the scabbard. One of the fangs snapped entirely, spinning off into the darkness. I lined my near-severed arm up and used [Shadow Stitching] and felt something shifting inside me—bones and muscle being pulled together—then I swung the sheathed cursed blade with my one working arm and smashed it into the royal’s head.

It jerked back and I rolled forward, slamming the blade into the spider’s leg. I’d pulled out my trump card, now I had to use it before the royal adapted. Carapace split under the first strike, then snapped under the second. It twisted, trying to get its armored legs between us, but I lunged forward and caught the leg I’d hit earlier. It snapped too.

More threads than ever before came rushing at me. Two cut through my shadows and left deep gashes in my side. I swung the blade down on them and they wrapped around the scabbard instinctively, but they couldn’t snap this steel. I ran between the legs with the threads trailing behind and the spider tried to follow in its six remaining limbs.

More threads cut into me, but they were quickly tangling with one another. I felt the blade tug, and I tugged back. My shadows dug into the ground and pulled me along. The threads I’d hooked around one of the legs had pulled taut when the spider tried to step and the leg had paid the price. Four feet of the limb were sheared off and the beast roared again. It sagged to the side and more threads cut into me, but each thread that drew close was caught and twisted by the sword. I crossed under to its other side and pulled the blade with me, the strength of my shadows fighting against the spider’s armor.

It struggled while lines of blood started to seep from the cuts where the threads were starting to bite through. I pulled the blade around the limb and slammed it back into the threads I’d pulled across, twisting it so that it knotted. The spider started to thrash, but that only caused it to fall on its side. I launched myself at the spider and slammed my shadowed claws into the bottom of the thorax, digging until I found something that felt important.

The spider rolled, trying to get its wrecked underbelly away from me, but it only made it as far as its back before I yanked. Something tore out and the spider’s thrashing intensified before going still. The limbs curled in, letting the sword hang lower until it was nearly touching the bottom of the upside-down body. I slumped down and sat heavily on its stomach, leaning against its abdomen that had curled up behind me.

[Level Up!]

I bit back a laugh. I’d leveled up, but a quick look at my health and mana meant there was a good chance I wouldn’t get to enjoy it.

[Health: 23/220]

[Mana: 9/120]

The cuts were deep. Too deep for bandages to be of any use. I still used what little shadows I had left to try and staunch what bleeding I could, but it would come down to which came first. Either I’d regenerate that last point of mana and be able to cast [Shadow Stitching] or I’d bleed out. I conjured a mana potion. A healing pot wouldn’t do much and I’d still be bleeding to death, but a mana potion could kill me outright. With how little of my body I could actually feel now, I had no real way to gauge how much magic poisoning I’d accumulated.

I swirled the mana potion around. I’d wait until I had three health left, and if I hadn’t ticked up a mana by then I’d drink the potion and hope for the best. Odds were it would be the last thing I did, but I was also sitting on the corpse of a beast I shouldn’t have been able to kill in a hundred years.

I kicked the underside of the carapace I was sitting on. “Damned idiot. You still haven’t figured out how to die,” I said to myself.