Shadow Walker (Part 1)

Seeing the intentions of the spider and knowing that he may not be able to match it's speed with his current stats, Grant pumped every single one of his free stats into Agility in a bid to increase his speed as much as possible.

He knew that now was one of the moments he had been saving for so he didn't hesitate to spend all the free stats. He had made a promise to Ally and he would do whatever he had to do to fulfill that promise.

Before Grant could took his second step towards the monster, he had already added the free stats, noticing a difference immediately. With his newfound speed, the ground underneath his foot ended up cracking under the pressure of his steps. Using the force generated by his strength and agility, Grant shot towards the spider like a bat out of hell.

Instead of trying to position himself between Robin and the spider, Grant aimed to attack the spider directly in its mid section. Thankfully, the new stats had pushed Grants speed past that of the spiders and he managed to catch up in milliseconds.

Before the monster could react, Grant having already reached it's side, dipped his shoulder and rammed it into the mid section of the spider as hard as he could to force it off course. He was going to attack it with his sword, but he was afraid that he may not be able to puncture its exoskeleton and it would continue towards Robin unimpeded.

He had miscalculated however because in the heat of the moment, he had used his left shoulder to impact the spider which caused a searing pain to shoot up into his mind. He was staggered by the amount of pain coursing up his arm.

After the impact, the spider went careening across the room and out through the windows that overlooked the rest of the building and fell down to the first floor.

Grant took a moment to collect himself and forced his mind to ignore the pain before he ran towards the now broken window, planning to jump out and follow after the spider.

He made sure to tell Richard and Robin to stay where they were and use the tables to barricade the opening where the door used to be just in case something else tried to come in.

After getting a nod of approval from Richard, Grant didn't hesitate any longer and jumped through the window and landed on the floor below with a loud thud.

With Wet Noodle in hand, Overlocked Perception working overtime, and looking around vigilantly, Grant pushed his other senses to the fullest trying to either see or sense the spider.

Grant was concerned because moments after it had flown out the window and while he was fighting back the pain from his wounded arm, he had lost track of where the monster was and was once again unable to pinpoint its location.

[Sherlock, is the spider still within the building? Why can't I sense it??]

For some reason though, Sherlock remained silent. Grant wasn't sure if Sherlock didn't know the answer or if their was something else going on.

But he would have to figure that out later.

Although Grant couldn't sense the spider with his passive or see it with his eyes, he was still getting the same feeling that he had earlier when he thought that someone or something was watching him. That was when he had a sudden and, simultaneously, terrifying idea.

[Hold up, is this fucking spider capable of invisibility or something?!

If that's true, how the fuck do I fight this thing? Why wasn't it invisible when it attacked Richard and Robin? Is there some kind of requirement for it to activate what I can only assume is a skill?

And if it has a skill that means.. that spider has already started on its Path?!]

Grant stood rooted to the spot, mind whirling at top speed, trying to figure out what was going on.

Suddenly all the hairs on the back of his neck stood up on end and, reacting purely on instinct, Grant launched himself forward and dove onto the ground.

He rolled a few times before he sprang back to his feet. He did his best to avoid rolling on his injured arm but he nonetheless had to deal with that pain while trying to analyze the situation.

The moment he popped back up to his feet, he threw Wet Noodle in the direction that he thought he felt an attack from.

If this spider was capable of using a skill, then it was highly likely that it was over level 25 and his sword would be practically useless so he had no qualms using it as a projectile.

It may still be able to make some small cuts on the monster but it would be a mammoth task to do enough damage to kill it since the sword wasn't sharp enough.

Grant had figured out while fighting the giant javelina that the level limits set by The Path on weapons and armor were more of a hard cap than a soft one. Meaning a weapons sharpness basically became useless against any monster over the cap listed in its description.

After flying a short distance through the air, the sword ended up hitting something before it rattled to the ground.

After the impact of the sword, Grant saw the silhouette of the spider start to appear from the shadows. It looked like the spider had somehow been hiding within the shadow itself.

[You've got to be kidding me.. this thing is capable of phasing in and out of shadows?! Is it some kind of ninja?!

No wonder I couldn't sense it earlier... If it's within the shadow does it even count as being within our plane of existence?

Shit Grant, that's not important, be impressed later! Don't get distracted! Focus!

The only positive right now, is that it seems incapable of maintaining that power if it is somehow influenced by the world outside the shadows.]

Once the spider had fully phased out of the shadow, Grant and it just squared off for a second. Grant was convinced that he was stronger and faster than the spider at the moment but he wasn't sure if the spider had any other skills that would be troublesome to deal with so he just stood their waiting for it to make its move.

[Well, I guess the only way to find out is to force it to use the skills! Whether it can walk through shadows, control them, or something else doesn't matter, that ugly ass thing is going to die.

I detest spiders with every fiber of my being!]

For a few more moments, the two just stared at each other. Since Grant wanted to end this quickly, without waiting any longer, he made his move. He lunged toward the spider and attempted to slide, similar to how a baseball player would slide feet first into a base.

His goal was to pass beneath its belly and get behind it.

Before he could get close to it though, the spider lifted its leg and stabbed it towards Grant. The leg was like a small tree trunk flying at him so instead of continuing on his attack trajectory and taking the attack head on, Grant shifted his weight to his one good arm and using it and the strength of his legs, he pushed himself up out of his slide and jumped to the side.

Grant realized that fighting in this confined space wasn't going to make things easy for him since the spider could basically defend all directions with at least one of its legs.

Knowing he needed to move to a more advantageous spot, Grant tried to taunt the spider to make it follow him outside. He knew there may be other monsters outside, but the sheer strength that both him and the spider had should be a deterrent to any intelligent creature.

After going back and forth with the spider for a few minutes Grant realized it wasn't a feasible strategy to lure the spider away, though. Every time he reached a certain distance from the spider, it would just start to phase back into the shadows in an attempt to go invisible.

To stop the spider from completely phasing into the shadows though, Grant would grab whatever was within reach and chuck it at the spider. Flying cans of food, bottles of soda, and whatever else he could find would go flying through the air and strike the spider.

Grant knew it wasn't doing even a small amount of damage but it was enough to stop the spider from blending into the shadows and that was what was important.

After a few failed attempts, Grant finally accepted that luring it out into the open wasn't going to work, so he immediately refocused his attention on trying to fight the monster straight on.

While dancing around to avoid the strikes of the spiders legs, Grant would intermittently try to attack it with his right fist.

It was clear that he wasn't doing any significant damage though and he was becoming more and more frustrated by that fact.

None of his passive skills would be useful in this situation. Even the Blind skill from his tracksuit wouldn't be effective since the spider had already entered its Path.

[This blows man.. I need a new weapon... I should have used some of my random rolls before we started this little excursion... it wouldn't be so bad if I could use both of my arms too...]

The spider also seemed to be getting annoyed, because it increased the amount of attacks it threw towards Grant, and even started to try and bite him with it's oversized jaw.

Wolf spiders weren't normally poisonous but they did have a strong bite because of their size so Grant had to focus even more to avoid danger. He might be able to survive a strike from the spiders legs, but he was unlikely to survive if it managed to get him between its jaw.

After a few more exchanges of Grant dodging the spiders bite and legs, he started to sense something was wrong.

The spider was becoming lethargic at a quick pace which made no sense for a monster of its level, but before Grant could move away to observe what was happening, a shadow shot out from under the spider and latched onto Grant holding him in place.

"Shikamaru?!"

Naturally unaffected by Grant's little quip, the spider charged towards Grant with its jaw wide open, getting ready to bite his head off.

"Oh shit! BLIND!"

With a bright flash of light, the shadows holding Grant in place faded away and he managed to push himself back and away from the spiders' bite.

The spider itself seemed unaffected by the skill but thankfully the light created by the skill was enough to free him from the shadows that were binding him.

Now that he had used the skill though, he would have to wait 24 hours before we could use the skill again.

Which meant if the spider was capable of using whatever skill it had used, again, then he was royally fucked.

Grant, at the moment he used Blind, wasn't even confident that the light would be enough to cancel out the skill but he was even less confident that using the light from a Random Roll would be enough to accomplish what the Blind skill had accomplished.

While taking a deep breath, Grant observed the spider intently, waiting to see if it would activate the skill again.

While he was patiently waiting for the Spider's move, Grant shouted as loud as he could,

"RICHARD! Grab Robin and get down here right now! I need your help!"