6 Chapter 6

I send two of my tendrils rocketing towards the spider's face, intending to end this in one strike. The spider waves one of its legs at the tendrils. They clash, sending my tendrils off course. They gouge slightly into the plating of its back and then pierce into the wall behind it. Its plating is only slightly chipped by my tendrils which can penetrate metal... how tough is that thing's exoskeleton?!

The spider opens its mouth and spits a globe of acid at me. I jump out of the way and roll to avoid the drops that splash around the room. The acid easily burns a foot deep hole into the cement floor, it's much more potent than the rats' acid.

I grit my teeth. I may have bitten off more than I could chew, but there's no turning back from this now. At least it's only one enemy; if I were fighting the rat horde, I'd quickly get overwhelmed by their numbers.

I recover my tendrils from the wall as the spider raises its front end with its legs. I look underneath to see a soft underbelly, it's only apparent weakness. But I also notice a raised lump with an opening that's pointed straight at me.

My instincts scream, so I lash out with my tendrils just as the spider's spinneret shoots a large, thick net of web at me. My tendrils cut through the web with some difficulty; the web kind of sticks to them, preventing it from being cut, though my tendrils still manage to protect me.

The spider continues shooting webs at me as I continue to dodge, dash, and roll frantically out of the way. I dedicate two of my tendrils to help me avoid getting caught in its web; if I do get caught, it'll be easy for the spider to melt me with its acid from a distance, tendrils or no.

I use my third tendril to slip underneath its body and to pierce its belly. Or, at least I try to do that. But it uses its legs to combat the tendril. Even though it can slash into the legs a little, the spider somehow manages to block with a different portion of its plating each time, preventing any of them from being cut off.

Something has to change, or I'm going to run out of energy, slip up, and die...

I stop dodging the webs and send my second tendril to attack the spider. The webs close in on me quickly, and the spider clicks its mandibles triumphantly.

The tendril I kept with me lashes out, but not towards the web. No, I send it piercing into the wall... and then I use it to pull my body after it, like a grappling hook. I easily escape the web and hang with my paws on the wall, using my tendril to keep me suspended. My instincts surge within me like an ocean, and I can feel that familiar blood-lust start to take hold, sharpening my senses and improving my physical senses beyond what I'm normally capable of.

At the same time, with both my tendrils chopping away at its body and legs, the spider's plating becomes scarred with deep gouges, it's only a matter of time until its limbs start coming off.

The spider starts to spit acid at me now, hoping I'll be helpless while suspended. But I send the tendril into a different portion of the wall, which leaves me falling in the air for only a moment before I'm zipping across the small intersection. The acid splashes where I was, leaving a foot deep hole in the cement and dripping down the wall.

The spider keeps spitting acid at me, and I keep dodging by grappling to a different wall.

The fight is starting to turn around, but I'm anxious about how the battle is developing. After all... the spider hasn't used its mana yet. I haven't sensed any mana in its acid, web, or exoskeleton, which means that those are all only its physical abilities. And yet it's fought me to a standstill despite that. What is it waiting for? It should've used its mana by now to kill me, unless if there's some kind of restriction, or if it can't use mana... But it seems so much more developed than the rats are, and they can use mana. This thing must be able to as well... is it toying with me? I lash my tendrils out with indignant anger.

Slice! One of my tendrils finally manages to cut into the spider's front left leg, making it hiss with pain. I force the tendril to continue its motion, chopping even further into the leg and severing it completely. Blood pours out of the stump of its leg, the severed portion of which drops to the ground in front of the spider's eyes. The spider screeches violently, the sound echoes throughout the small intersection and pierces into my brain, which I shrug off. But it stops launching its acid at me, so I hang on the wall to see what it's planning next.

I can feel a sense of pressure coming from its body with my mana-sense, and the ground and walls start rumbling. The cement around it actually starts to melt, then flows onto its body, filling in the gaps and gouges of its plating, and also capping off the stump of its leg to stop the bleeding.

The cement continues to melt, but now it rises up into the air around it before hardening again, this time into tens of sharp solid shards... I guess it was saving this to repair its armor after our fight. It was probably expecting to kill me with just its physical abilities alone. If it weren't for my tendrils, it absolutely would've.

The shards hover menacingly in the air, and a chill runs down my spine. The spider screeches once again, sending the shards screaming through the air towards me. I hiss madly in rage and in response to the spider's killing intent, and I feel my mind starting to slip into a familiar single-minded craze for blood.

I immediately recall all of my tendrils and use two of them to intercept as many shards as possible while I dodge using my grappling tendril. Stone shards explode into the walls around me, penetrating four of five inches into the cement wall as I swing around the room.

The stone shrapnel creates cuts in my body, and my blood starts to soak into my fur. But despite the pain, I start to feel exhilarated, more alive than ever before in my life. This is what my grandfather was talking about all those times he brought me hunting. This is a fight to survive.

I half-expect the spider to run out of shards soon, but no, it's continuously using its mana to melt and harden the cement of the sewer walls into more shards. The intersection we're in is actually becoming larger due to its ability, not that that helps me much.

If this continues, I'll bleed out before I can kill it. It's time to do something incredibly risky...

I give in partially to my blood-lust, using it to enhance my senses to the absolute limit. I send my grappling hook into the wall opposite from me and send myself swinging down towards the spider and straight into its shards. I release the grappling tendril from the wall once I start rocketing at the spider's body, focusing solely on using my tendrils to defend myself.

With my eyes squinted and my body curled up to protect my belly, my tendrils slash and smash wildly into the shards, desperately protecting me. I use my enhanced senses to detect and destroy the shards I know will kill me if they hit, and ignore the rest. I make it through the first wave of shards with cuts all over my body and my blood dripping to the ground, bits of shrapnel stuck in my flesh. My mana core surges within me, and I can actually feel it now as it uses more mana to stop my bleeding.

I approach the spider's body as the second wave starts to fire.

I use my third tendril to grapple onto its back, this time shortening the length of the tendril to send me sliding against the ground and under its legs, which stomp at me. But I use my other two tendrils to send its legs off course, causing them to miss me.

The spider tries to back up as I slide under its body, but now that I'm here there's no way I'll let this chance go. My tendrils surge forwards into its soft underbelly, easily penetrating into its body. The spider squeals pitifully, but I ignore it.

Tear it to pieces, and rip it to shreds, my blood-lust screams at me. My tendrils oblige, and black blood rains down on me from above, mixing with mine and pooling underneath me.

My tendrils slice and dice through its body rampantly, and the spider can do nothing to stop it. It tries to shoot webs at me from underneath, but I allow a tendril to slice its organ into bits. The spider collapses, trying to crush me underneath its weight.

But I pour my mana into my tendrils, unwilling to give the spider a chance to recover. As its body closes down on me, my tendrils tighten into thick pillars of shadow and strain upwards, supporting the spider's body despite its massive weight. I shiver and shake as my mana core rapidly becomes empty. I surge my mana into the tendrils one last time, and in a titanic effort, I use them to throw the spider onto its back.

Its legs scramble in the air, trying to flip itself. But my tendrils keep it pinned to the ground despite its furious attempts. I jump on its stomach and dash to the underside of its upper body, around where its eyes would be on the other side. I tear furiously into its body with my claws, shredding through its soft fur and skin and digging inside its body. My fangs sink into its body, and a horrible taste fills my mouth as I swallow its meat, causing extra energy to flow inside me.

Flesh and blood flies out with every slash, tear, and bite. I start to scream and hiss in rage and blood-lust as I give in to the storming sea of emotion inside me, no longer willing to remain coherent in such a fucked up situation. My mind goes red, and the world slips away.

...when I come to, the spider is no longer moving. It's lower body resembles a place my grandfather took me to once, the Grand Canyon. There are large valleys of missing flesh that crisscross its lower body. I bet he'd praise me right now, if he saw what I did to such an enormous spider as a tiny cat.

As for its upper body, there are also some slashes and stabs, but... there's a hole filled with bite marks inside of it that goes out to the other side. And inside that hole is me, soaked in blood and covered in cuts and spider flesh, exhausted and struggling to stand upright on my lower legs, peering over the lip of the hole and at the rest of the spider's body.

Only one tendril of my shadow remains, it's curled around a glowing orb which it holds up and away from the spider's body. Is that the spider's mana core? It's the first time I've seen one. I'd like to examine it, but first I need sleep. I really have to stop ending my fights this way...

I drag my tired body out of the spider's corpse. It's an incredibly disturbing experience, one that I feel I'll relive every night in my nightmares. But I'm still alive, so who cares.

I stumble past the spider's body and to the source of the water that's forced to flow around it. I roll in it for a bit, doing my best to wash my fur of blood and cement shrapnel. The water makes my wounds sting and cut, but I'm too tired to care. I can somewhat feel the tingling sensation of the water, but it goes straight to my near empty mana core.

After I'm reasonably clean, I go up the flow a little bit to drink some clean water. The tingling sensation becomes stronger and fills my entire body, but it's nowhere near as bad as before when I drank it with a full mana core. Now, it's mostly just nourishing and energizing me.

At this point, most of my wounds have scabbed over, and I'm no longer bleeding. I'm just tired and need to rest. I stumble over to the ladder, and am somewhat shocked to realize that most of it is gone, burnt away by the acid. But then that means... the crate I slept in before has also disintegrated, just a hole and some wood scraps remain where it once was.

I turn around and glare angrily at the spider's dead body, a flare of blood-lust and madness kindling inside me. That was the most comfortable and clean space I could ask for in a sewer, and now it's gone. If I could, I would kill it again... not. I barely survived this fight.

I let my eyes wander around as I think about what I should do now. I can't continue exploring, but I definitely don't feel safe just laying here out in the open. My best bet is to find a new hiding spot, maybe if I... oh. Right, I almost forgot.

About halfway up the wall of the tunnel which I came from is a wide circular hole. It looks like it's about a foot wide, and I think it's deep enough for me to sleep in. It's one of the many holes in the wall created by the spider's acid during its attempt to fry me.

I take the spider's mana core into my paws from my tendril and then use my tendril to grapple to the hole. The hole curves downwards slightly, but it's deep enough for me to sleep in with the mana core snuggled safely against my chest.

I curl up around the mana core and once again fall gratefully into sleep.