Katelyn.

  A blood-curdling scream filled the air as Katelyn's horrifically extended arm snapped back into pce like a rubber band, the blood coating her cws dripping to join her own.

  She peered down—seeing herself looking right back up at her, the odd juxtaposition made all the stranger by the fact that her eyes still apparently functioned as intended.

  Well... It wasn't exactly a surprise given what she already knew about herself; organs were, after all, as much for show as function, even if they did work as properly intended at the moment.

  They had a purpose with Abby's whole 'monster brood' idea, and ignoring that they were utterly turning a blind eye to basic genetic sciences, well, all she could really say about it all was that magic did have a bizarre way of smoothing the rocky bits over with a vague wave of the hand.

  Reaching down as her body crouched, she picked her bisected face off the sand and pced it in a rough position before cannibalizing more of her hoard to make up for the slight difference in mass.

  She was burning through the treasure like a dragon did mortal armies!

  Still, it only took a few heartbeats before she was right as rain again, her mind focusing on the final words of wisdom that the strange man had offered.

  She could meander her way through his probable logic to presume it affected something to the degree of never counting a foe out before they were dead. But—either way, it was a valuable lesson!

  Had she not been—what she was, Katelyn would be dead…

  Show her for being tempted by mercy and a sense of fair py!

  Annoyed, she scuttled over and lifted the man's body, her entire human form splitting at the center into a yawning maw of teeth and darkness before it cmped shut again, her meal secured in her belly.

  Well, not her spider belly, but her real one. The somewhat eldritch one...

  Then, Katelyn turned to spy the ghastly face of the woman who possessed zero apparent survival instincts before she wandered over to her and peered down.

  The girl opened her quivering mouth as if to screech something terribly loud but was abruptly silenced as one of Kate's legs speared her right down the throat, splitting her body with a cracking tear of bones and meat that sprayed gore and viscera all about the sands.

  Once and for all, ending her terror-filled and miserable existence as though she were a bug sptting against a windshield.

  Something about the girl's demeanor had—rubbed Kate the wrong way from the get-go, and there was simply nothing of presumed interest they had to share with each other.

  Thus, she devoured the girl's remains shortly after.

  Last but not least was—

  "Lord Delmonte, was it?" She called out, folding her hands at her waist and kicking her leg free of the remaining gore, patiently waiting as she sensed the shaking young man hiding around the pilr.

  Vibrations were quite noisy to her... or... hmm. Maybe sensitive was the right word... She should say that, while in this current form, she was very adept at sensing the world around her! So much so that she could audibly follow along with the boy's rapidly beating heart!

  When no response was forthcoming, she instead allowed the boy to sit and stew for a moment as she directed her attention to a somewhat surprising happenstance.

  She gained two levels!

  In everything!

  And though she had been reasonably sure to be close to leveling in the first pce, so many at once seemed rather curious…

  Kate wasn't arguing with it, taking it for what it was, but, given what had happened to her, Katelyn couldn't help but wonder what level the strange man had actually been given that he was clearly fudging his own status page…

  "Do you, by chance—know what level that man was?" She tried again, really doing her best to sound polite. "You know, if you don't come out willingly, I'll be—cross with you rather than mildly annoyed. It's likely to mean the difference between a soft touch and a rough one."

  It took a few moments, but the mouse-faced young man did emerge from the shadow of the pilr, leaning into it as if it provided him with a sembnce of comfort and safety as he shakingly looked up at her with wide eyes.

  "There's a smart boy! Now, my question, young man! Do you have an answer for it or not?"

  "He was—gold…" The noble whispered, looking to the drying stain where the man's body had once in before slowly returning to her gaze… "I don't know the level, but usually people say, if you're gold, you're at least level twenty-five…"

  "Really? And what in God's name was he doing here?"

  "Was our guide…" Victor whispered, eyes dull and distant… "Was hired to protect us on our first delve…"

  "That's... unfortunate luck…" She commiserated, her head tilting as her long strands of hair shifted while catching the light.

  "I couldn't agree more… are you—perchance, going to eat me now?"

  "Why do you ask?"

  "O-only so I might request you do so—after I'm gone… I've heard the process is rather unpleasant when spiders are involved…"

  "Oh, it very much is!" Katelyn agreed conversationally, "A lot of people think they just take bites out of you, but, in reality, what actually happens is that they paralyze their food then inject them with a sort of acid that melts you from the inside out… horrifying I know, but it really does make things easier!"

  The boy—wobbled on his feet and promptly fainted… She was so surprised that he'd just up and fallen over that Katelyn actually caught him on the way down, using one of her legs to gently arrest his fall, only to realize he was unconscious…

  Hey, Katelyn was getting good at this whole horror thing!

  Twisting her bulbous abdomen beneath her, She began producing thick and robust strands of thread meant for both comfort and strength, adding in a weave of her stickiest silk to help bind it all together and ensure there was no chance of escape.

  Weirdly, the same instincts that had allowed her to move so swiftly in her test body also provided quite the helpful amount of muscle memory to spin her webs and her prey.

  While complex and un-spider-like designs left her head spinning to make heads or tails of what she was trying to do, the simple stuff involved in typical arachnid architecture was preloaded, complements of magic and its bizarre ways.

  She had made some progress on branching out with her construction, but it was a learning process not so easily picked up.

  Still, she was getting the hang of it. And a high intelligence doubtless helped her understand some of the more abstract ideas that the natural human brain simply wasn't meant to work with.

  Her legs spun with dizzying speed! Pulling the young man in as he was flipped and turned and webbed and spun and flipped all over again in a blinding process that saw him neatly cocooned in her loving strands up to the neck.

  She stuck him to a pilr, satisfied with her work, before heading over to the portcullis and lifting it with a grunt. The thing was immensely cumbersome, even for an individual of her strength!

  Yet, she put her legs into it and growled as she shoved the thing all the way back up, where it clicked into a hidden tch and didn't fall back down.

  Once squeezing herself through the narrow passageways, needing to hunch to make it though, Katelyn found the final youth who Abby had warned her about. As it happened, her encounter with the short and pudgy boy was perhaps the oddest of the bunch.

  He didn't notice her silent approach until she was nearly right upon him! Her shadow stretched as she closed the distance until the boy turned, a single good eye staring at her enormous form as he just—stood there, mouth gaping…

  "Would you kindly make things easy for us both and lie down so I can web you?" She asked, her soft voice and thin smile offering the cadence of a patient tutor who waited for their student to acknowledge her expnation.

  His gaze seemed to slide from down her human body, lingering at the chest before dipping lower and maintaining sightline with her spidery lower half. Specifically, she thought, with her gracefully crossed pedipalps.

  They weren't too different from a human woman's thighs if she were wearing some kind of bck spandex. However, the real difference could be seen in the vicious cws that gleamed at their tips. Given the boy was well within striking range, Kate felt entirely in control of the situation.

  "I would—rather leave actually… Goodbye." The boy then turned, walking right along the pathway he'd been clearly lost on before spinning right back around not long after and bumping straight into her dark leg.

  He bounced off its armored surface, nding somewhat pitiably in a dirty puddle, the sounds of a familiar and angry goblin screaming bloody murder just around the bend, filling the air and offering explination.

  The young man rose, terrified as he scrambled to his feet, only to hide behind Katelyn's foremost leg… his arms wrapping around its chitinous exterior as thudding footsteps rounded the corner.

  Turlock, the berserk goblin screamer, had all the time to howl his discontent that his programmed rutting had been interrupted before one of Katelyn's other legs turned him into a crumpled piece of meat.

  The goblin boss was summarily kicked free of the spear-like appendage that had both skewered and crushed him, his body wetly spttering against the nearby wall and sticking there like some macabre piece of artwork, gravity apparently uninterested in bothering to make itself known.

  "T-thank you…" The boy whispered, frozen while yet holding her limb, uncertain if he should move, let go, or do anything that wasn't expressly asked of him as the bigger monster in the room softly chuckled...

  Connor.

  Connor Dossit was having a—well, the sort of day he was having didn't precisely have a singur and adequate descriptor.

  Bad seemed both the obvious and easy word to use, but it also failed to exactly encompass the whole reality of his situation.

  Miserable could certainly work; after all, half his teeth were gone, even after he'd consumed the potion, and one of his eyes was completely ruined!

  And he supposed exhausting could rightly make a case for itself given his current state of mind and body…

  Yet, there was also—good, the phrase arriving in a strange twist of fate and accompanying a stranger silver lining.

  Thus, his day was also—better than he otherwise expected?

  In conclusion, Connor's day was, perhaps, best associated with the term complicated.

  He'd been excited, frustrated, angry, betrayed, beaten, and left for dead by those he'd thought to be his friends. His hired guard hadn't helped him, and the girl he was infatuated with had stood by without a word towards his defense…

  Conor's honor had been dragged through the dirt and spit on by those closest to his heart.

  Then, he'd gotten lost, taken a few wrong turns, and encountered a monster! Polite as she was terrifying—among other things, of course… And, in his haste to flee the giant arachnid woman, he'd nearly sped face-first into a profane ritual of monstrous copution.

  Strangely enough, his salvation from the insensate and feral creature had come from a most unexpected ally. And he'd been saved by so said giant spider-woman who'd turned the aggressive goblin to—comparative paste.

  The fact the act in itself had been done so quickly and with the idle expenditure of effort that was stomping with one of her many legs was as terrifying as it had, oddly enough, saved his life.

  That Connor had chosen not only to hide behind one such appendage but scream like a small child while clutching at it like a babe was—just a fairly reasonable representation of how he felt his life, as it currently stood, to be somewhat confusing and difficult to expin.

  Take his current situation.

  Wide awake and cognisant, entirely in control of his loopy faculties despite the brutal pummeling he'd endured at the hands of his supposed best friend. Just having in down in the dirt upon the lovely spider's request so she could wrap him in her silk for assumed ter consumption.

  One might even go so far as to question his sanity for willingly subjecting himself to such a dooming demand. The act in itself is not entirely indifferent to one willingly handing a murderer a sword and saying, 'Go at it; do your best.'

  And yet, from a certain and logical perspective, it was also the safest choice he could make! Given the monster was capable of rather prodigious strength, anything that extended the span in which he continued to survive was, in point of fact, genius when compared to the grim alternatives.

  As it happened, the monster was rather courteous! Her wrapping of him was gentle, and her silk was of the finest variety that had ever graced his skin. He should know, as his father dealt with textiles as one of his main enterprises!

  "You know," He spoke up, deciding that a little complementation likely couldn't hurt, "Your silk is—exquisite, my dy, probably the softest I've ever come across… My—family trades in the stuff you see, and I just felt the need to voice my appreciation for fine work where I deem it due."

  The monster paused in her wrapping, though it promptly resumed a heartbeat ter. Still, as he felt himself lifted in his weave of supple webbing to be tossed over a shoulder, he caught sight of the woman's slight smile as she carried him off to her ir.

  "I'm assuming you killed the rest of them then?" He continued, talking as much to calm his nerves as cking any real notion of what to do. Panicking seemed wholly pointless, and despite the simmering rage he felt for Arthur and—the others, it just wasn't in him to really kick and scream and promise curses upon her soul…

  He was, in effect, far too weary for that…

  "I did kill some of them…" She admitted with a cool and prim voice, her rge body gliding through the winding passages with but a faint hiss of her passing. "The strange one who was hiding who he really was, and the girl."

  "Ellie…"

  "I do think that was her name, yes."

  "How'd she die?"

  "Squished… and—partly chopped in half… I speared her from mouth to rear with a leg. Useless creatures… just—sat there the whole time crying…"

  "Good," Connor whispered, his eyes dimming with distaste, remembering the way she'd just watched him as her brother's fists hit him again and again…

  Once, he'd fancied that he might marry her… A match that perhaps wasn't ideal but, would be just close enough that her father might allow for it.

  She was of noble blood, her father of an ancient house, one of the very same that had first tamed the dungeon oh so many years before.

  Hers had been a pedigree that was undeniable, if not supposedly muddled by her mother's commoner heritage. Yet, he'd still dreamed that Baxton Tinterwell would uplift his daughter once he realized that she and Connor were in love...

  The whole affair would perhaps require a small word from his own father and some choice opportunities for investment with his family businesses, which would further tie their family together through commerce and blood, but it had always felt at least somewhat possible...

  Nevertheless, it had been a boyhood sort of fantasy… he knew that…. Besides, Ellie had only ever seemed to have eyes for Victor… despite the boy looking like a clubbed foot.

  Still, Victor was tall, athletic, and confident, while Conner was… well, short, fat, and petunt...

  It wasn't all his fault… he had anger issues! And though he was working on them, oftentimes, he let things slip that—others found distasteful…

  It just so happened that he'd overstepped this time… and though the reprisal was questionably merciless, he did understand why it had happened.

  Connor wasn't dumb.

  Deficient athletically as he was cking, at times, in self control, but he wasn't dumb. In fact, he had a mind for numbers that his father said was better than his own. Heck, he'd even offered him a substantial loan so he might go out and apply his capabilities towards an enterprise of his very own making!

  Yet, instead, he chose to pretend at adventuring with his—friends… Spending a fortune on personal instruction in fencing and commission of a beautiful sword that was—somewhere, presumably being used by some goblin as a toothpick…

  What he was not expecting to see, however, was the Delmonte boy stuck to a wall and looking like he'd just wet himself.

  Understandable, really, if Connor wasn't so—positive he had lingering brain damage despite the potion he'd drunk; honestly, he'd have expected himself to be equally as concerned as the other boy if all his faculties were currently present...

  What really infuriated him, though, was how the other man, the slimy cur that he was, turned away after meeting his eye as though disgusted by his ruined face.

  "Oh, nothing to say, Whiskers? No apologies, or insults, or even mumbled regrets?" When still the other boy didn't look his way, even as the spider paused, as though allowing them this moment to speak, Connor simply huffed at his old friend, "And whose the pathetic worm now? At least I'm not shitting myself like you are!"

  "You know," The spider commented, "You're very talkative…"

  "Apologies, I merely wished to convey my disdain for your other meal."

  The spider effected a drawn out sigh, sticking Connor to a nearby wall so the two boys faced each other at what was just beyond a casual distance for conversion. "You two be good; I'm going to go and retrieve your friend from my web."

  So saying, the spider walked towards Delmonte's pilr and—simply began walking up its side... Not looking in the least like the change of axis from horizontal to vertical bothered her the slightest bit...