System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 1999 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 102
Sunlight warmed the grass. On a lush meadow, a gaunt, dry-faced old man strode up to the black den and raged.
“Beast! Filthy whoreson! Son of a bitch!” he roared, hurling a turnip into the dark mouth of the cave. “Why take my son? Come and kill me, you cur!”
“Damn!” Roy’s face went white. He abandoned all pretence of concealment, yanked the old man by the arm with one hand and grabbed his waist with the other, dragging him back into the brush. “Are you mad? Do you want to die? That does nothing but hand meat to the beast!”
“You’re right, I’m already mad!” Old Hark panted, eyes blazing as he strained to wrench himself free of Roy’s vice-like grip. “If it has harmed my child, I’ll take that beast with me!”
No sooner had he spoken,
a black shape burst from the cave.
They barely had time to flinch before the thing exposed a pair of ruby-bright eyes and fixed them on the two of them.
Its four hairy legs tensed, pressed to its belly, then released. Like a black cannon it flew over the grass and leapt more than forty feet.
Roy’s breath stole away. He dragged the pale, gaping Old Hark into the shrubs behind him.
A sick wet smack sounded nearby; a clump of white, steaming, gelatinous matter splattered onto the trunk of a paulownia.
“Damn it,” they both scrambled deeper into the brush, but how to outrun a four-legged creature?
The Metamorph Spider’s hairy legs blurred as it cleaved the ground, a reek of iron and rot sweeping over them as it bore down.
Old Hark, behind them, was knocked flat by the calf-sized Metamorph Spider and screamed in a single, terrible cry. The spider’s chelicerae crossed over his chest and tore a cross-shaped rent. In the spray of blood, its two fist-sized eyes shone with hungry light.
It was almost on him.
Roy’s nostrils filled with the stink of earth and rot. He could have touched the bloodied fangs under that fly-like head; at that moment the creature’s attention was entirely on Old Hark, blind to the boy before it.
A perfect opening.
Roy drew Gwyhyr from nowhere and in a flash drove the blade into the creature’s grotesque skull. The Metamorph Spider screamed in a sound like tree-splintering thunder; its black, furry body convulsed and staggered back off the old man.
Its two crimson eyes flared venomous; its mouth opened and spat a web-mass.
Roy guessed its move.
As it recoiled he rolled low with a cat’s grace, dodging the web. When he straightened, he feigned an empty grip with his right hand and Gwyhyr became a crossbow. He loosed a quarrel at the spider’s swollen body.
Carnage plus Crossbow Mastery and the special bolt pierced the spider and drew a gush of rank blood. But the bolt was tiny against that bulk; the wound was limited.
The spider’s legs hugged the ground and it sprang, like a small mountain, over the grass, lunging at the youth. On flat ground Roy would have been trapped.
He had chosen this patch as his battleground deliberately; bushes, trees and tufts of grass limited the spider’s terrifying speed.
He rolled aside again, brushing past its slicing chelicerae, and flung himself toward an alder trunk thick enough for several men to hug. As the spider turned its ugly face, veins stood out on Roy’s hand; he drove Gwyhyr into its mouth with a single thrust while Gabriel’s bolt shattered a bloodshot eye, spraying gore.
The spider convulsed as if struck by lightning.
Roy did not press the assault.
The great spider still had a third of its life left, and a dying beast is the most dangerous.
He used the creature’s ragged cry to slip behind the opposite alder, circling trees to delay, buying time for the Paralyzing Venom to take effect, or for the Dancing Star in his hand to flash—
He had a chance. Without resorting to bombs he might fell this weakened one-year-old spider.
The Metamorph Spider skidded over the turf, its movements growing sharper and faster. For five seconds the two chased one another around the alder, then the spider leapt, defying gravity to climb the rough bark and scrawl claw marks as it climbed.
It hung above the fleeing shadow, eyes flaring, and then dropped.
Intimidate!
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