Fight. Level. Survive.

Before delving into the topic of this book, I urge all readers to take heed. under no circumstance should this book be read out loud. This book will use certain words that will are taboo and can result in unfortunate occurrences. You have been warned.

- Introduction to ‘The G Word.’

Chapter 17 - Stab-them-in-the-face method

Intrigued by the orange blur but not wanting to be caught in a trap, he edged toward the tunnel and peered inside. Seeing nothing unusual, he used his dagger to slash an X on the wall next to the tunnel’s opening, marking it as his next destination.

Before investigating, he walked over to the lake in the middle of the cavern and drank.

You have consumed purified stone water.

Resilience +5 for 30 minutes.

“Ah, sweet.” He whispered to himself. Trying to add the water to his inventory, he found it didn’t work. Taking out an empty bottle that had contained a stamina potion, he filled it with water and tried again to add it to his inventory. This time it worked. He guessed any liquid needed to be in a container before being added. Annoying but fair enough.

Splashing some water on his face, he stood up and stretched. He was procrastinating and did not want to get into another fight just yet, so he opened his status menu.

Name: Mason Hughes

Level: 7

Current XP: 841 / 1000

Race: Human

Class: N/A

Health Points (HP): 230

Mana Points (MP): 225

Stamina: (SP): 160

Stats

Strength:21

Agility: 11

Endurance: 12

Vitality: 13

Resilience: 9(+6)

Intelligence: 25

Perception: 12

Willpower: 11

Free points: 0

Skills:

Identify (Basic), Magic Missile - INT (Advanced), Emotional Wreck - PER (Basic), Camouflage - PER (Basic)

Base Skills:

Universal Translator, Inventory (Advanced)

Current Quest:

One quest or the 'Other.' There are others in this world who come from another place. Find out more.

Exterminate Exterminate! You have been tasked with clearing out a cave full of giant stone-eater spiders, good luck! Those things fucking suck!

He didn’t think he was doing too bad. He was eager to test out his new Magic Missile but knew waiting would probably be safer. Hoping to reach at least Level 10 by the time he left the cave, he headed off looking for his next fight.

Starting to wonder how big this system of caves was, he came to yet another open cavern. This one held another few spiders but nothing else of note.

Killing them in much the same manner as he had done before, he cleared out the room, racking up a few more Venom Glands, 12 more bronze coins and a butt ton of silk. He also gained another 150 XP, which left him one kill away from level 8.

Before he left this cave, he heard skittering noise from above him. Looking up, he saw two of the biggest spiders he had seen so far standing on the ceiling, looking down. From their perspective, three of their kin had just disappeared. Curious about what was happening, they started lowering themselves, using their webbing as rope.

As they got closer, Mason could appreciate how big they really were. All the spiders he had seen so far had been about the size of large dogs. By comparison, these were the size of horses.

Placing his back against a wall, he considered his options.

He could try his trusty stab-them-in-the-face method, but the two spiders stayed close to each other, so sneaking up and taking them out one by one would be impossible.

He could use his bow, but there was no guarantee he would hit his target, and missing would alert them of his presence.

Magic Missile was an option, but again, causing a cave-in was something he wanted to desperately avoid.

His final option was his last ace in the hole. The basilisk eye would instantly kill the two spiders, but he was sure he would have a greater need for it another time.

He decided to go with a combination of the first two options.

He would try and get as close as possible to the spiders and use his bow to inflict depression on one of them, hopefully taking it out of the fight. If he timed his shot right, the second spider should only notice the first spider’s change in behaviour and not that it had been shot.

He would then stab the second spider in its face and, only if absolutely necessary, follow it with a Magic Missile once he had retreated a fair distance away.

Creeping closer, he withdrew his bow and an arrow. He held it in the same way as he had done before and let the arrow loose. This is where the plan went slightly wrong. The moment after the arrow hit the spider, it went berserk. Where the arrow had hit, a sickly black colour spread on the usually brown spider’s body.

Realising his mistake, he backed away from the slowly rotting spider. Mason had stupidly forgotten that the bow could also inflict necrosis. Whirling around to look at the second spider, Mason saw that it had also backed away from its partner, probably not wanting also to be infected.

Camouflage has been deactivated due to low mana.

=========================================

Things just hadn’t been the same since the new boss took over. He and his partner had been some of the biggest spiders, so they held the most respect; that was just the way things worked. Now that feathery fuck treated them all like slaves, making them bring it food, forcing them to attack humans. It even made them fight one another when it got bored. Sadly there was nothing he or his partner could do, it was bigger and stronger, and so they had to fall in line and follow orders.

They were currently on the ceiling of one of the caverns, just keeping an eye on the smaller spiders, ensuring they were doing their jobs. Huh, weren’t there three smaller spiders a moment ago? That’s od- that one had just disappeared. There one moment gone the next!

Getting the attention of his partner, he pointed out to her what he had seen, but she had already been watching. They knew for sure something was happening when they both saw the third spider pop out of existence. They needed to investigate and do it quickly before the boss showed up and blamed them.

They slowly descended, using their web to lower themselves.

They reached the floor and looked for clues. They found some blood but not a whole lot else. Very strange.

They were sticking close together as many of the beasts they had killed in order to take control of this system of caves had been opportunistic hunters, only ever attacking when their prey was alone.

He turned his back on his partner momentarily when he heard a short thwip. Looking around, he still saw nothing. Seconds later, his partner started acting erratically. Twitching, staggering around, attacking the air as if trying to fight something invisible.

He smelt it first, rotting flesh. He saw the arrow sticking out of his partner’s thorax. The rot spread from where the arrowhead had landed. He backed away in horror, watching his partner rot from the inside out.

He saw the human appear out of nowhere, seemingly popping into existence as if to taunt him. This must have been the humans doing. There was no other explanation. Perhaps if he killed the man, the effect would be broken, and his partner would live.

He leapt at the human, furiously attacking him in every way he could. He swiped at him with his many legs, bit at him if he got close enough, and attempted to squish him with his body. The human, while incredibly clumsy, managed to evade his every attack, even slicing one of his legs off when he had gotten too close.

He didn’t understand. Compared to him, this human was tiny. He and his partner were big, which meant they were strong, didn’t it? So how was this scrawny meat bag beating him?

Losing his leg had unbalanced him, but he could still fight! The bigger of his species had an attack that the small one didn’t. He had the Human in sight and concentrated his venom into his mouth. It tasted disgusting, like meat that no one had eaten for days after it had been killed. He ignored the taste as best he could and waited for the human to attack again, when he did, he spat the mouthful of venom onto the human, covering him, making the stupid creature blind.

He was going to enjoy this.

====================

It stung, it really stung; it felt like he had bleach poured into his eyes. Mason, didn’t really understand what had happened. One moment he had been avoiding the spider’s attacks. It was big but relatively slow, so he had managed just barely to avoid each of its attacks. He had cut off one of its legs, making it lose balance. Thinking this was his chance to finish it, he moved in for the killing blow.

There was a splat. His eyes stung like a bitch, and he had gone blind.

Freaking out, the fear of not knowing when the next attack would come or even from which direction was making his heart race. Oddly he felt his Emotional Wreck skill activate. He must have been more afraid when facing the Basilisk, but he didn’t remember it activating then… maybe he just hadn’t noticed?

Feeling a vibration from his ring. He stepped to the side, slashing at where he had been standing. He felt the dagger sink into something, but he wasn’t sure how much damage he had done. What he did know was where the spider was now standing.

Focussing on the ring, waiting for the next vibration, he gripped the dagger tight using both hands. Feeling the ring go off, he held the dagger out in front of him, pointing it in the direction he knew the spider was attacking from. He felt a giant weight slam into him, knocking him down, head slamming into the stone floor, causing him to black out.

He woke up to a massive weight pressing down on him. Thinking he was still being attacked, his concussed mind did the first thing it could think of and shot a Magic missile into the dead spider on top of him.

The resulting explosion managed to totally eviscerate the dead spider, causing blood and guts to rain down on Mason, who was, luckily, mostly unharmed.

Laying there, he attempted to catch his breath and spat out the spider gore that had made its way into his mouth, he took out some water from his Inventory and carefully rinsed the Vemon out of his eyes, restoring his sight. However, he still couldn’t see much as, getting slammed to the floor, he had managed to knock his nightshade sunglasses off his face. His Perception stat allowed him to see basic outlines but not well.

*DING*

You have slain – Beast – Level 13 Stone Eater Spider X2

You have received 260 XP.

Level up

You have reached Level 8

Stat points allocated.

Feeling the usual rush of levelling up, he took a breath, feeling a little better about being very nearly killed for the third time that day. Sitting up, he froze in fear. He saw two plate-sized white eyes staring at him from the absolute darkness. Keeping his eyes locked on the horroresque scene, he felt around frantically for his night vision sunglasses. Finally, finding them and putting them onto his face, the eyes had gone. Now that they had disappeared, he could tell the eyes had been staring at him from around the corner of the tunnel he had marked.

He got the annoying sense that a Boss fight was imminent. His system kindly confirmed this for him as he got a new quest.

Quest Received! Kill the Monster, save the girl. Except there is no girl. Shut up.

Objective: A Monster has infiltrated this cave and taken over command of its denizens. Kill the Monster, and then probably kill the denizens too, but that’s another quest.

Reward – Magic KFC Box

Accept? Y/N

“I mean, yes… but what the fuck is with that reward?” Shaking his head, he threw 2 points into perception just in case he lost his glasses again and 1 point into Resilience because he didn’t like that one of his stats was still under 10.

Raising each of your stats to at least 10 has unlocked a Perk.

Perk Unlocked: You are the only Ten I See

Effect: Your highest stat + 10% for as long as it is your highest stat. If another stat becomes higher, it will be given the + 10%, and your current highest stat will lose it.

“Huh, cool. Perks Help?” Mason asked the air.

Perks are unique, permanent abilities you unlock by raising stats in specific ways.

“Hm, Are you just making this up as you go along?”

Nothing.

“One day, you’ll answer me, and I’m sure we could be besties. But until then, I have a boss to kill.”

Taking the spiders’ bodies into his inventory and getting more of the same stuff he had been getting, he reactivated his Camouflage, approached the tunnel he had seen the eyes and followed it through. Reaching the end, he saw what was undeniably a Boss Monster.

Monster – Level 36 Crack Hen – These feathery assholes are batshit insane. They come from a world where they start life as elemental spirits. When they reach a certain age, they gain corporeal form and become one of two creatures. The first is an incredibly beautiful, powerful and immortal bird. A Phoenix. The other is a chicken. The ones who end up as chickens don’t commonly take it well. Take that situation and then add a fuck ton of their world’s version of crack, and you get the Crack Hen.

They appear in this world from time to time, find the nearest cave and assume command of any beasts within. They are this world’s big bad wolf and appear as monsters who steal and eat naughty children in many children's stories. They often display odd abilities and are a bitch to kill.