38 Man-eating Spider

After making it past the first fork in the caves the ground started to shake underneath John. He started sprinting because the quake seemed very localized and followed him as he ran. Snakey hissed on his shoulder and shot fireballs at the ground as if she could recognize whatever was under ground and didn't want it to get near.

"Don't waste your mana!" John yelled as he third one slammed into the ground and he sprinted out of the corridor and into a wide chamber.

Nearly 25 feet tall and 100 feet wide, a giant spider's web hung invisibly from the ceiling. Without the time to look for traps or monsters, John sprinted into the web and got snagged in an insant. Trying his best to stay calm, John moved all of his limbs one at a time and found that his left hand could move slightly, the rest of his body was completely stuck at this point. John summoned one of pistols and tried to shoot the threads only for the regular bullets to bounce off, the soul bullets just passed right through the thread, and Armor Piercing bullets where in his backpack which he couldn't reach.

"Snakey, I need you to get into my backpack." John said, trying his best to ignore the numbing sensation coming over his body the longer he was stuck in the web.

Unfortunately for him, Snakey had already moved. Feeling John's fear, she decided shoot a fireball at the web where John had shot it before flooding her mouth with poison and chomping down on in it. To John's dismay Snakey was stuck 7 feet off the ground with her tail drooping as she wiggled, trying to dislodge herself.

"Well, shit." John said, struggling with the web as hard as he could trying to pull even a single part of his body lose.

The ground that'd been shaking under him all this time picked up in intensity, and the web started swaying violently back and forth as a massive crocodile emerged from the ground eyeing John's legs hungrily.

"FUCK!" John yelled as he picked up his efforts, trying to reach the teleportation talisman in his backpack.

A chittering sound came from above as a massive spider appeared, clacking it's limbs together as it approached it's most recent victims.

Since he couldn't look at the crocodile, John looked up and instantly recognized the monster as a Rank 7, level 3 Man-eating spider. A passage from the 4th volume of the Encyclopedia of Beasts and Monsters suddenly sprang into John's mind. "A Man-eating spider is easily confused with the more commonly found Giant Spider species during childhood. The only difference between the two before adulthood is that the Man-eating Spider is able to reinforce it's web with mana making it nearly impossible to break. In order to reach adulthood a Man-eating Spider needs to eat a human. After eating a human, it's form will grow out of it's back. At this point, the Man-eating Spider will become incredibly deadly as it keeps it's ability to reinforce webs and incredible poison while gaining the equivalent of an elemental turret."

This Man-eating Spider hadn't eaten a human yet, so John was it's perfect prey. The spider rushed down the web about to chow down when it noticed the crocodile approaching John's legs from underneath. The Man-eating Spider couldn't have any of that, in order to properly reach adulthood it needed to eat the entire human form.

Ignoring John and Snakey, the spider turned and lifted it's front legs off the web to expose it's mouth. A gland in it's abdomen spasmed and a massive glob of corrosive poison shot at the crocodile.

Closing it's eyes and mouth, the crocodile lowered his head so the poison wouldn't get into his nose and let the poison slam into his neck and slide off of his scales. The poison hit the ground and started hissing, eating away at least a foot of rock.

While the croc's eyes where closed, the Spider silently leaped from the web and using a thread of silk to hold itself up it took aim and covered the croc in several layers of sticky mess.

Screaming in anger, the croc tried to move and broke a couple of layers with it's incredible strength but quickly found itself stuck. Suddenly, the ground started to shake again as the croc lowered itself into the ground before coming back up a couple feet to the left of it's original position.

Raising his head, the croc bellowed a warcry so loud that it shook the room and a stalactite fell from the ceiling, shattering on the ground. Lifting his front left foot, a brown glow came from the croc's chest and gathered on his foot before he slammed it into the ground.

A massive spike shot out of the ground, just barely scraping John's forehead as it tore through the web, freeing Snakey and slamming into the Man-eating Spider's rear. Blood splattered everywhere, and John could feel the numbness in his body spreading as the poison in the Spider's blood combined with whatever was on the web.

Now that he'd had a moment to freak out, calmness had returned and John suddenly realized just how stupid he was being. Why did he need to break the web when he could just swap places? Telling Snakey to hide, John closed his eyes and focused completely on creating a doppelganger.

The image of a 2nd John appeared and started running back to the entrance of the room as quickly as it could. Unwilling to see it's prey escape, the croc lunged and bit into the illusion as the Spider hissed in anger, freeing itself from the spike.

Thinking it'd stopped John's escape attempt, the croc turned back to find the bleeding Spider launching itself from it's web to land on top of it's back. Mandibles sharper than many swords pierced through scales and poison seeped into the croc's body slowing it down.

While all this was happening, John's doppelganger found a spot just out of sight of the fight and closed its eyes in focus. Taking a deep breath, John started to activate the switching ability only to feel the force of the world slam into him in rejection. According to Dame Eleanor, who had helped John pick out this technique, the switching ability incorporated the laws of Space and was incredibly difficult to use. However, if he managed to fully comprehend the technique while in the Soul Formation Realm it'd be a major boon in his attempts to find his own Dao.

Taking a deep breath, John ignored the tiny bit of blood trickling out of his nose due to the backlash and tried again.

And again...

And again....

And again......

Finally, after 17 tries the world seemed to move around John and he found himself coughing up a massive chunk of blood mixed with what looked like pieces of his heart and lungs. In incredible pain, John shakily reached into his backpack. He had to try multiple times to grab two tiny two tiny bottles because his hands were shaking so much that he couldn't control them. Drinking the vomit green colored one first so that the 2nd one could work properly, the numbness and vision loss that'd started creeping into him left in just a few seconds.

Drinking the orange one, a heat blossomed within him and his strength returned. Continuing to cough, dead blood and organ tissue streamed out of his mouth for nearly 30 seconds, Health potions work by removing damaged and dead portions of your body before stimulating the growth of tissues and supplying the necessary energy and matter to almost instantaneously rebuild the damage done. This particular one worked on humans, beasts, and monsters so he'd splurged and bought 10 of them at 200 credits a pop.