Path of Dragons - A LitRPG Apocalypse (BOOK TWO STUBBING AUGUST 15)-11-37. Resin
The spider felt wrong, and in a way that sent fear and anger coursing up Elijah’s spine. Fear, because the thing was terrifying to behold. With a body nearly fifteen feet long and spear-like legs that made it feel even larger, the thing was sheer arachnophobia given physical form.
But Elijah had never had an issue with spiders – at least the non-fleshy sort. What he found truly horrifying was that it wasn’t really a spider at all. Not completely, at least. From the creature’s thorax sprouted the body of an elven woman. But unlike any other elves Elijah had seen, she was anything but beautiful.
She had the same sharp and delicate features as any other elf, but her skin was predominantly black, though with jagged ridges of red carapace tearing through in various places. The overall effect was that she looked like she had stripes, almost like a tiger, though with the added horror of those ridges looking more than a little painful.
She was also bald, though with tall carapace ridges that made it look like she was sporting the world’s most gruesome mohawk.
“What are you?” he demanded.
“It speaks!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands like a gleeful child. She leaned closer, though still too far away for Elijah to snap his jaws around the creature. He remained in his scourgedrake form, and he suspected that one good bite would end her. The problem was that he was entirely immobile.
“Free me, and I won’t hold you accountable,” Elijah said, far more calmly than his racing heart suggested he should speak.
“Oh, I won’t be doing that,” she said, latching onto the side of the crevasse and climbing the wall. She finally came fully into view, giving Elijah a better look at her horrifying appearance. His initial impressions were all accurate, though she was followed by a swollen abdomen that bore the markings of a black widow.
A skittering sound announced the presence of thousands of other spiders. Elijah could also feel thousands of wasp larvae swimming through the surrounding earth.
She added, “My children need to feed, after all. And your ethera is strong. They will benefit greatly.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Elijah growled, gritting his teeth. In his scourgedrake form, that meant his fangs dug into the softer parts of his mouth. He ignored the resulting pain, focusing instead on the rest of his surroundings. He’d fallen into what was effectively a large pit. The resin hadn’t hardened until he was fully submerged, and only then after an injection of ethera.
He cursed himself for falling into the trap. In his defense, it had been concealed by some sort of ability, and he’d fallen into the monotony of long travel, letting his mind wander. He’d been lulled into distraction by the rarely-changing terrain, the lack of true danger, and his many, many responsibilities.
He couldn’t let that happen again.
But before he could make good on that resolution, Elijah knew he needed to escape his current predicament. For good measure, he intended to kill the spider-woman, though not before he got some answers.
“You’re allied with the wasps,” he stated.
“Allied? No.”
“Then what is it?” he asked.
She didn’t answer, even when he asked again. He knew he didn’t have much longer. The smaller spiders – which were true arachnids, as far as he could tell – were skittering closer with every passing second. The wasp larvae would soon burst through the sides of the crevasse as well.
He had no intention of letting them burrow into his flesh and use him as food for their eventual metamorphosis.
“You’re not going to tell me?”
She gave a slight laugh. “I do not answer to dead beasts that should not be able to speak,” was her answer.
Elijah let out a sigh that came out more as a hiss. “So be it.”
He’d never intended to spare the spider-woman. Everything about her felt wrong to him, and not in a monstrous way. The instinct to kill her came from somewhere else. Somewhere more primal.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t disappointed that he hadn’t gotten any answers.
He initiated a transformation into his smallest form, and just as he began to change shape, the wasp larvae tore free of the walls and fell into the ravine in a cascade of grotesque flesh. Before they could reach him, Elijah had already taken on the Shape of the Master.
The massive difference in size between the two forms meant that he had plenty of room to escape, and he used his newfound freedom to leap into battle. As he sailed through the air, a massive blob of webbing erupted from the spider-woman’s abdomen. He knocked it aside with a swipe of his swiftly summoned scythe.
That was when the first of the smaller spiders leaped in his direction.
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Elijah’s increased reaction speeds stood him in good stead, and he twisted to avoid the first few. Like many amphibians, the Shape of the Master’s form could move almost bonelessly, and he was more than capable of contorting his body to avoid the leaping creatures.
Through Soul of the Wild, he sensed that they were venomous. No surprise there, given that they were spiders.
His scythe arced out in another sweeping attack that destroyed a handful of the smaller creatures. They burst upon impact, spraying ichor and bits of carapace in every direction. Both the spider-woman and her apparent progeny were very different than the fuzzy friend he’d made back in the Hollow Depths. Their legs were spindly, their bodies covered in shiny carapace.
And as he’d previously established, they felt wrong.
Combined with the fact that they’d been the first to attack, that was enough to firmly support Elijah’s aggression.
He whirled about, destroying smaller spiders and wasp larvae while dodging their clumsy attacks. Heart of Fire continued to build, but the battle was further complicated when the spider-woman spun a webbed net over the top of the ravine. She skittered about almost too fast for Elijah to track.
Without all his buffs to his reaction speed, he might not have been capable of keeping up. As it was, he managed it, though only barely. In the space of thirty seconds, he managed to kill most of the smaller spiders and a good portion of the wriggling wasp larvae.
But each time he tried to attack the spider-woman, she managed to evade him.
Through it all, he built nearly sixty stacks of Heart of Fire. But he didn’t unleash it. Not until he was certain it would finish her off.
The ravine itself was around sixty yards long and a quarter as wide. The sides were nearly sheer, suggesting that, rather than forming naturally, it had been dug. But the fight was complicated by two major factors. First, the ceiling of webs cut him off from escape – or from using altitude to his advantage. Second, the crevasse’s floor had turned into a slurry of spider corpses, wasp larvae, and unhardened resin.
Whatever ability the spider-woman had used to solidify it had either lapsed or been purposefully canceled.
Probably the latter, given that she was at least sentient enough to speak.
Not that it mattered. The combination was that Elijah could neither ascend nor descend, and instead, was forced to keep to the walls as she fired hundreds of web-balls at him.
He dodged them, and with each one, built another charge of Heart of Fire. It wasn’t long before he reached the maximum number, though he didn’t immediately use them to fuel one of his abilities. Instead, he continued to dance around, mostly because pinning down the incredibly fast spider-woman was more than a pain.
Fortunately, once Elijah got into a rhythm, he had no real issues staying ahead of her chosen projectiles.
So, of course, that was when she changed the paradigm by erupting into a massive wave of webs that covered every inch of the ravine.
Elijah saw it coming, recognized that he had no chance of dodging, and did the only thing that made sense. He used Dragon’s Echo, then opened his mouth and let loose with Incinerate.
The wave of fire that followed was so powerful that it instantly turned the webs to ash. The second wave swept across the ravine, supporting the first. Elijah clung to the wall, waiting for the smoke to clear. When it did, he was surprised to find a giant cocoon before him.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened, but it was still a shocking development. The spider had somehow surrounded herself with webs thick enough to block even his most powerful attack. But that was far from Elijah’s only option, so he shot across the ravine, already transforming.
When he hit the web cocoon, he was already in the Shape of the Scourge. His talons lashed out, slicing through the crispy webs with ease. Finally, he reached the spider-woman, who had curled up into a ball. Her black sin was smoking, and some of her carapace had melted.
Clearly, she had not spun her webs quickly enough to escape entirely unscathed.
“Kill me, beast!” she hissed. “You will not escape their wrath!”
“Who?”
“The vespirans, fool! They will destroy you all. Those who do not follow will be enslaved!”
Before Elijah could ask any other questions, her spindly legs unfolded, and she launched herself at him. Her jaw unhinged, and her mouth gaped – far too wide – exposing enormous fangs. Elijah knew better than to let her bite him.
And he had fangs of his own.
He dodged to the side, dipping low and darting onto her bulbous abdomen. That was when he used Spreading Blight, latching onto the base of her skull. He bit down hard, and the sound of cracking carapace filled the ravine. It was followed closely by an all-too-human and much too feminine scream of pain.
Elijah’s venom flowed into her flesh, infecting her with Spreading Blight and Ethereal Sepsis. At the same time, he used Lurking Swarm, and his phase spiders leaped into battle. Her flailing legs shattered a few, but most of them managed to inflict their own afflictions upon her.
She must’ve had some natural resistance to venom, because she lasted much longer than her apparent level suggested she should. She was clearly close to, if not over, level two-hundred, but even then, Elijah’s venom should have proved much deadlier. Still, it only took a couple of minutes, during which Elijah remained latched to her skull and biting with all the force he could muster, for her movements to grow sluggish.
That spelled the beginning of the end, though it took almost ten more minutes before Elijah felt her skull shatter beneath his jaws. When it did, it sent a foul-tasting and obviously poisoned substance into his mouth.
And there was something else in there, too. Something he couldn’t quite identify.
But he knew it was the source of the wrongness he’d initially felt – at least in part. Elijah had difficulty determining exactly what that meant, but he wasted no time before shifting back into his human form and washing the taste out of his mouth. For good measure, he also used his Mantle of Authority to ensure that whatever it was would do him no lasting harm.
That was when he embarked on a campaign of slaughter against the remaining spiders and wasp larvae. By the time he’d finished, he’d killed thousands of them.
Doing so netted him some experience, bringing him ever closer to two-twenty-two. However, he was unsurprised to find that it didn’t grant much verifiable progression. The fact was that, aside from the spider-woman, none of them were high enough level.
But more importantly, he’d gotten a little information. Vespirans clearly came from vespid, which was another name for wasps and hornets. But did that refer to the creatures he’d already encountered? Or were the vespirans something else entirely?
Elijah had no idea.
He gave it a little thought as he climbed free of the ravine and, after seeing the sun still hanging high in the sky, decided to continue his search for an entrance to the Hollow Depths. As he set off, he resolved to be a lot more careful. From now on, he wouldn’t let monotony dull his instincts.
11-37. Resin
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