Poison? Not just a limb then. A stinger.
Vir Leaped to gain some distance, but the spider pursued relentlessly, clacking and hissing, enraged over having missed its prey.
The entire forest floor was a deathtrap. Not only was this the spider’s hunting ground, but the ample space between the trees meant the beast could move around with ease. Which also meant its underlings had no issues flanking Vir.
He kept moving. If he stopped even for a second, his enemies would surround him. More and more appeared each moment, and he lost count after a dozen.
Vir recognized a hopeless situation when he saw one. Horribly outnumbered, there was no way to win. Forget winning, surviving was going to be tough unless he evened the odds.
He looked up. The only hope he had was to climb onto the trunk of the Godshollow. The minion spiders hadn’t chased him down, which meant it was a place of relative safety. He was unsure about the massive spider, but the thing must have weighed several hundred pounds. Doubtful that such a beast could scale a Godhollow.
Vir Leaped to the nearest tree, and the spiders remained bent on preventing his escape. He needed more speed. The Talent only took four seconds to activate on the forest floor, but that was still an eternity, so he took micro Leaps instead. He felt like that was the wrong decision—that a fully charged Leap gave him more ground than successive partial ones, but better to keep his legs than risk losing them for more ground.
Dropping his rucksack made him lighter and more agile; he couldn’t spare the luxury of keeping it.
Threading his way through the spiders, rolling, dodging, and jumping away from their attacks, Vir arrived at the nearest Godhollow and began climbing his way up.
To his horror, the spiders behind him did the same. Worse, arachnids above him on a high limb climbed down on an intercept course.
The badrakking things were only pretending like they couldn’t climb! Once more, they’d lured him into their trap. Continuing upward would only spell his doom.
From fifteen paces high, Vir charged Leap and kicked off the tree, sending him sailing through the air, back to the forest floor. He flipped and hit the ground and threw himself into a roll to dissipate the impact, but despite that, his bones shuddered.
The spiders were quick to react and were already beginning to surround him. He wasn’t about to let them.
Vir leveraged his Kalari training to move like the wind, Leaping to the nearest spider. Tough chitin protected these spiders, which made their eyes their primary weak point. But hitting eyes was easier said than done, especially when they always kept two of their eight limbs in front, like a shield.
Luckily, Prana Vision gave him a better option. The Life and Shadow prana coursed through these spiders, blazing brightest at the junction of their bulbous heads and their bodies.
He brutally exploited this weakness, plunging his katar into the base of the spider’s head. Since they lacked necks, the attack required a degree of precision, but Vir’s aim was true. It spasmed for a brief second, then collapsed.
Vir somersaulted and jumped to the next spider, but fate wasn’t kind to him. A series of hisses and clacks from the enormous spider caused its minions to still for a moment. When they began moving again, they banded together, sticking to each other in groups of three or four.
Tch. Vir clucked his tongue. The spiders had already adapted. Going one on three against the minions wasn’t going to work out in his favor.
But he had little choice. To safely escape to the treetops, he had to thin the enemy out. Vir charged the nearest group of three. He reluctantly reached for a chakri and threw it with as much force as his newly developed biceps could muster.
The disk sailed through the air and lodged itself in the face of the first spider, killing it instantly. His second disk sliced off a pincer of another before piercing the spider’s eye. Not quite dead, but injured enough that it scampered off into the distance, leaving its remaining brother all alone.
Vir descended upon the spider like a reaper, using his momentum to plunge his katar deep into the base of its head before backflipping off the beast in one fluid motion.
Unfortunately, the queen spider seemed to understand this strategy and had already laid a trap. Vir landed right in the middle of a half dozen minions lying in wait for him.
He lost no time. Right as two spiders attacked with their limbs, he High Jumped free, sailing clear of the danger.
As he reached the peak of his arc, he locked eyes with the spider queen. He could have sowrn the beast grinned at him as it launched a sticky white goop.
Webbing! Vir panicked. He’d escaped one trap only to fall into another.
The webbing hit him right before he fell back to the ground, sticking to his arms and legs. Vir tried with all his might to free himself, but the material was elastic and strong. It didn’t budge.
“Gaaah!” he screamed, as a spider slashed into his arm, leaving a deep gouge. Its friends joined in, slashing at Vir, cutting into his arms and his legs. All the while, their queen approached slowly from behind.
Vir fully understood the danger. As long as he lingered here, he’d continue to take hits. And once the queen arrived, he’d be as good as dead. His eyes searched the area, looking for something he could use. Anything.
His eyes searched and searched, and then finally landed on a series of boughs, far in the distance.
That’ll work!
Still bound by the webbing, Vir Leaped away, but not before taking several more hits.
He crashed into a large rock, and his momentum shredded the webbing just enough to free his katar. A few swipes later, and he’d extricated himself, Leaping again to safety.
The queen hissed. He didn’t need to understand the beast to know it was furious. He’d escaped its traps three times now.
But it had come at a cost. Vir bled from his hand and legs, and while the wounds weren’t fatal, they certainly compromised his fighting ability. If left unchecked, he risked bleeding out. He had to end this, and soon.
Vir went on the offensive, Leaping onto spider minions, throwing his chakris and timing his attacks so that he Leaped again before its brothers struck him. Even though he spent every effort to recover his throwing disks, he invariably lost ammunition. Now, down to a single chakram and three chakris, the end was inevitable.
Vir dove back into the fray, hurling two more chakris at his foes. He couldn’t afford to throw any more, but his efforts had paid off. The spiders had thinned out considerably, and the queen found itself all alone.
While more underlings were on their way, for now, she was vulnerable.
Vir brought his last chakram up and pretended to throw it, forcing the queen to defend itself in anticipation of the upcoming attack.
Instead, he stowed the weapon around his neck and Leaped to the nearest tree. He didn’t bother to climb—the spider would hit him with its webbing attack—so he did something reckless instead.
Vir bounded up and High Jumped, violently throwing himself up the Godhollow’s trunk. Thorny bark shredded his shirt as he vaulted. Scanning the trunk for handholds to latch onto, he found them an instant before his momentum ran out.
He came to a stop on the trunk and looked down at the forest floor, now twenty paces below. The risky maneuver paid off.
Vir waited the ten, agonizing seconds to reactivate High Jump, then jumped again.
The spider queen fired another webbing attack, but Vir was well out of range now. The sticky white stuff fell harmlessly, which only further angered the spider.