I stirred, my body sluggish and heavy, like I'd been submerged in deep water. A splitting headache pounded behind my eyes, and my vision blurred, the world shifting and twisting as I struggled to focus. My back rested against something rough, but a softer weight cradled my head, a leather satchel.
A cool touch grazed my forehead, wiping away whatever had dripped onto me. I blinked, trying to make sense of my surroundings.
Vaklira's face hovered above me, her sharp, golden eyes filled with relief. She was dabbing my face with a wet rag, her lips parting in an excited grin.
“You’re awake!” she practically shouted.
Her voice rang in my skull like a hammer on metal. I winced, squeezing my eyes shut before attempting to sit up.
Bad idea.
The pain in my head doubled, nausea rising in my throat like a wave about to crash. I groaned and pressed my fingers against my temples.
“How long was I out?” My voice came out hoarse.
“Not long. A few minutes,” Vaklira said, stepping back to give me space. “You collapsed the second that glowing boulder you pulled out of thin air hit the weavers.”
At the mention of the spiders, I bolted upright, another bad idea. The world tilted, and my stomach lurched. I barely stopped myself from throwing up.
Vaklira snorted. “Relax, you killed all of them. I checked.”
She straightened, dusting off her pants, then crossed her arms.
“By the way… what the fuck was that? You just started bleeding out of your eyes and ears.” She gestured at the still smoking battlefield, her grin widening.
“But that was so cool!” Her sharp fangs flashed.
The headache was starting to dull, but my body still felt drained, like I had poured too much of myself into something unnatural.
I let out a slow breath. “I honestly have no clue. But I have a feeling I shouldn’t have done that.”
Notifications flickered insistently at the edge of my vision, but before I could check them, I needed to take care of the loot. The corpses had a tendency to disappear if left too long, and I wasn’t about to let that happen.
The battlefield was a mess. Most of the weavers were nothing but unrecognizable heaps of flattened exoskeleton, torn flesh, and ichor. The stench of decay, thick and cloying, filled the air. I grimaced and willed a mask to form over my face, dulling the worst of the smell. It helped but the lingering scent of corruption still clung to the back of my throat.
Sweeping through the carnage, I found five common grade crystals, their dull glow barely visible through the gory mess. I grabbed them and tossed them into my ring before finally sitting down to check my notifications.
Name: Alex
Titles: Ascendant (???)
Level: 76 (28024/28720)
Attributes:
- Astral Body: 51 (+6)
- Astral Mind: 95 (+4)
- Astral Spirit: 54 (+6)
Skills:
- Levitation (Common) – Level 35
- Manifestation (Common) – Level 50
- Astral Sight (Common) – Level 29 (+4)
- Inspection (Common) – Level 27
- Astral Echo (Unique) – Level 8
- Looting (Uncommon) – Level 5
- Energy Manipulation (Rare) – Level 10 (Blocked)
Active Quest: Exterminator
- Kill Weavers: (100/100)
- Kill the Weavers’ Queen: (0/1)
Rewards:
- EXP (based on performance)
- Rare-grade item
Eleven levels in one go.
I must have killed close to a hundred weavers, but what really unsettled me was the system blocking my gains. My gut told me it had something to do with whatever I had done back there.
A cold knot formed in my stomach as I scanned my notifications again, searching for an explanation.
Then, I saw it.
Error…
Energy usage surpasses the authorized limit.
Skill “Energy Manipulation” has been BLOCKED.
Contact a Category Five System Administrator or higher for further information.
I stiffened. Category Five?
Velarion’s reaction when we first met suddenly made perfect sense. The system didn’t just track energy usage, it was deeply protective of it. And I had just tripped some kind of safeguard.
My hands clenched into fists. The implications were dangerous. If the system could lock my abilities without warning, what if it happened in the middle of a fight? What if I relied on a skill only to find it blocked when I needed it most?
I took a steadying breath, pushing aside the rising frustration. I couldn’t afford to panic. I’d ask Velarion about this later.
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Right now, I had more pressing matters to deal with.
The queen was still out there.
I took a deep breath, the cool air easing the pounding in my head just enough.
“Do you think that’s all of them?” I asked, still trying to steady myself.
Vaklira glanced over at the still smoking mess, her eyes narrowing as she assessed the carnage.
“Yeah, probably but let’s not assume anything. We’ll proceed cautiously,” she replied.
I jumped down from where I’d been sitting, and Vaklira quickly followed suit. Together, we made our way to the far end of the chamber. The silence was almost unnerving.
I half wished something would break it but soon enough we reached the next tunnel without incident.
“I don’t know how much the weavers expended this way, so we should be really careful going forward,”
The next tunnel was shorter and wider than the previous one. At its entrance, the opening to the next chamber was completely engulfed in thick, glistening webs.
We stepped inside. The room bore a resemblance to the last, except there were no openings in the walls. Instead, it looked like a serial killer’s butcher wet dream. Bundles of webs dangled from every surface of the ceiling; their varying shapes and sizes left little room for anything to hide within them. Hundreds of bodies illuminated by the ghostly green light swayed gently in an unseen breeze.
The air was musty, carrying a sweet, sickly hint of decay that was surprisingly less overpowering than I had expected, given the sheer number of bodies. A sprawling net of cobweb bridges stretched across the entire ceiling beneath the dangling corpses.
Then I noticed movement from above. Before I could warn Vaklira, she had already shot an arrow upward, seemingly toward nothing. A high pitched screech immediately followed, and the drone weaver that had been headed straight for me was hurled backward. I barely had time to offer my silent thanks before a cacophony of shrill screeches erupted and dozens of spiders began bungee jumping toward us.
I sprang toward the scout and scooped her up as she shrieked, “Let me down!”
Activating levitation on the fly, I began hopping , I couldn’t help but think this was quickly becoming my favorite way to move around.
“Sorry, sorry, there are too many of these things!” I shouted as I weaved through the onslaught, dodging spider after spider until I reached the tunnel entrance.
“Hide and don’t take any risks,” I ordered, then darted back into the chamber before Vaklira could even respond. I trusted her ability to take care of herself, but with my Energy Manipulation skill blocked, I wasn’t willing to take any unnecessary chances.
Once back inside, I quickly manifested two spikes on my feet and a kite shield. I plunged into a frenzied, almost nostalgic brawl reminiscent of my 2D childhood memories. I blocked as much as I could with the shield, but it wasn’t long before I found myself overwhelmed, covered in sticky webs that clung relentlessly. I hopped back toward the tunnel, hurling an odd wire trap to slow their advance. I even tried to manifest blades around me, but they only poked ineffectually through the thick webbing. When I finally put enough distance between myself and the spiders, I shouted, “I’m stuck! Hurry the fuck up!”
Vaklira emerged from her hiding place behind a boulder, laughing. “Are you trying to catch all the webs or something?” she teased.
I pouted, “There’re like a hundred of these fuckers!”
She quickly cut off the bindings that held me, and I dashed back toward the chamber. At the entrance, spiders were crawling on every surface. I couldn’t possibly lead them back to Vaklira, and barreling straight through them wasn’t an option either. In a desperate move, I detached the largest chunk of energy from myself. I wasn’t ready for the backlash, it felt like losing a limb, though not in the literal sense, since the pain wasn’t excruciating, but I knew I’d definitely lost something important. With no time to dwell on it, I morphed that energy into wires.
They shot out from every angle, lashing around the weavers. I didn’t catch all of them, but the chaos was enough to send several falling into a pile, a writhing heap of chitin, bristling, sharp legs, and glowing eyes.
I manifested my trusty hammer and became a veritable whirlwind of brutality. I wasn’t aiming for accuracy, after all, it wouldn’t have mattered much but every blow landed like a sledge hitting a mattress. Some weavers tried to leap free, but Vaklira’s arrows provided just enough cover for me to counterattack.
I was riding a high, feeling invincible, even as I unleashed a ruthless assault on these arachnids. I lost myself in the carnage. Then, without warning, everything changed.
I’d barely passed through the entrance threshold when I was speared through the gut. I didn’t even see it coming until I looked up. The leg that had impaled me was as thick as a light pole, covered in spiky hair and armored plates. From my angle, all I could see were enormous clicking mandibles drawing near, and I realized with horror that I was being lifted toward them. The pain hadn’t fully registered at first, but when I was jolted upward, it exploded through me. I screamed, and in a split second of desperate clarity, I managed to block the mandibles as they attempted to decapitate me.
The creature was far stronger than I, its mandibles slowly closing, slashing at my arms. Viscous liquid seeped from my injuries. In a final, desperate act, I leaked some energy from my stomach into the monstrous leg. The energy felt sluggish at first; without any open wounds to channel it into the creature, I had to force it. I pushed until a trickle of energy seeped between the exoskeleton plates. The monster, was devoided of any original thought and driven by the usual raw hunger and basic instinct, it behaved more like a flesh puppet under the control of some unseen force.
At the edge of my perception, I caught a glimpse of the golden ocean, a surreal vision, and noticed something new: my blocked skill was reacting to it. Before I could try anything further, I sent a jolt of my consciousness toward the entity controlling the spider. Immediately, the connection was severed. The spider flicked its leg, sending me careening through the air. I didn’t even have time to think about activating levitation before I was smashed into the wall. I slid down the wall and crashed onto the ground.
“This is bad,” I thought, feeling the steady drain of my energy. I was almost too afraid to check my status.
Total Energy: 35/600
Energy Regeneration: 9.9/s
Status:
? Poison: –5/s (50 minutes remaining)
? Injured: –3/s (3 minutes remaining)
I could see the hole in my stomach slowly knitting itself shut, a gruesome sight, watching my own intestines writhe and wiggle in the process. The poison blurred my vision further. I’d gotten high back in college, but this was nothing like that.
Every detail, the pain, the degradation of my energy, the sticky, suffocating webs, made it painfully clear that I was fighting not only for survival but also against a something that could strike without warning. And as I lay there, battered and on the edge, one thought cut through the haze of pain and fear, I had to survive this, no matter what it cost me.
The silver lining was that the spider looked unsteady still recovering from the severed connection. I took a moment to assess what I was dealing with: it was the size of a small truck, covered in a spiky exoskeleton.
Guardian Weaver (Lev 87)
These weavers were usually culled from any domesticated colony, as numerous attempts to use them as guard beasts invariably ended in tragedy.
My wounds were mostly closed, and I was beginning to get used to the poison coursing through me. I stood up just in time for the second round.
The beast lunged; its enormous mandibles snapped shut mere inches from my face. Gritting my teeth, I raised my hammer. I dodged its initial swipe, my weakened body barely managing to rise using levitation and struck at a vulnerable joint. Sparks flew as my hammer slammed into its chitin.
Pain exploded when its venomous fangs sank into my arm, but I forced a surge of energy into a desperate burst. My shield flickered on, deflecting a torrent of web strands. The guardian let out a deep, clicking roar.
Seizing the moment, I channeled every last ounce of strength. With one final, furious swing, I drove my hammer deep into its head. The guardian shuddered violently as the system registered its defeat.
Panting and battered, I slumped against the wall, blood and sweat mingling. I had survived this round.