NOVEL WEB Chapter 6: In Fortnight
It’s been a while since I’ve started to live here in this forest, I think? Thought I’d argue with the word ‘Living’. For the most part I have a diet consisting of mostly edible leaves, fruits, berries and flies, sometimes wasps as well. As for my status… I’m not sure if it’s quick progress or if it’s normal so I don’t really have an opinion on how it really is.
Additionally I found out what finesse did.
At first I was a bit unsure but now I’m certain that it helps me with my web building. From what it says, it should be helpful for some other things as well.
The cells in my web are almost perfectly even in size too. And I feel that I can even draw a perfect circle or a straight line without a ruler. How helpful that would’ve been when I used to draw up blueprints and floor plans. Of course my speed isn’t improved directly by finesse, but making fewer mistakes improves my overall efficiency. And for that reason I’ve made a bit more investment into Agile Since I could afford it. Both of them didn’t really make much of a difference in my stat numbers. I was hoping I would get out of this pit of ‘F’. Unfortunately that still seems out of reach for now.
On a surprising note, I’ve had quite a bit of time to ascertain the effectiveness of Stealth 10 and let me tell you it’s great, excellent even. There’s this unicorn rabbitlike thing with one horn in this forest and from what I’ve seen they’re extremely skittish and will bolt away at the slightest disturbance and hide somewhere. Not the step on a stick and make a noise kind of disturbance. More like if you breathe within 200 meters of them, they’re gone. And I could literally go right in front of them and they wouldn’t know it unless if I touched them, when I did they practically disappeared from my sight. That startled me the first time.
I didn’t notice it before but now that I have presence detection 4 I could perceive things that I didn’t even see directly. Now that I did, I realised how many dangerous animals there were all around me. Stealth has been putting in some overtime work as I basically waltzed right underneath their noses.
On the less exciting side, Weaver made my webs much more durable and I had to repair them less often. Though those tall humanoid blue skinned creatures did walk into them on accident and broke my web. Seemed like he had a difficult time getting it off afterwards and ran away because he was making too much noise I guess.
And I feel much safer with stronger venom now that it’s level five, most of my ‘catch’ are almost immediately paralysed. Strangely enough I can change the properties of my venom to do things that aren’t very venom like, such as making them alert or cause clotting and making it acidic or basic. Another thing is that I could inject a mix of venom causing multiple things to happen at once. Now if I remember chemistry correctly, bases usually neutralize acid. But that’s not the point, the point is that sometimes when acid and bases meet, they react with extreme exothermic reaction causing combustion or burning. Although pretty cool to burn your victim with just your bite, I’m not very fond of the idea of being burned alive with them. And as for the recent phobia of mine is… spontaneously bursting into flames because my venom sac mixed the two inside of me. In addition, I’ve been using venom extensively yet I have zero knowledge on how to neutralize them if somehow it seeped into my own body. I should look into what constitution line of skills do, maybe it has something to help me.
I still routinely ‘sleep’ during the night but it doesn’t feel like sleeping and more like me blacking out at certain times. Since it was dangerous to randomly black out, I’ve made it a rule for myself to return to the oak tree before dark. So far nothing dangerous has happened. I feel physically bigger after ‘sleep’ but I think that’s just a false sensation, either that or I’m grow so slightly it doesn’t make much difference compared to before.
Sometimes I forget I’ve placed a web somewhere it catches bunch of insects. Even the would be predators that prey on what I caught are found stuck in my web frequently. Recently this small bird learned about my forgetful tendencies and made it a habit to feed from my webs. I tried changing the location but thing caught on quick and started searching for my webs.
“Now a normal spider wouldn’t think a thing of it but I’m no normal spider. I used to be petty human so I’ll get you back in my own petty way.” With that thought I designed a special web just for the bird.
Before making the web I should get more points into Weaver so my web is strong enough to catch it.
This should work...
Made in a funnel like structure which suddenly gets extremely narrow near the end. Now just place a big enough insect as a bait and it’ll work like a charm. There are loose hanging strings of silk at the start which will get stuck to the bird and pull in the rest of the web along, enclosing it within. Mechanically it’s almost like one of those raccoon cage traps. Less metallic comparatively, effectively… we’ll see how it goes. However it only works if the bird comes in from a specific direction, so I need to pick a place where the bait is visible from a single angle only.
After finding a suitable location for my trap I started spinning the web. My speed has gotten a lot better since the first time I started making webs, what took me about 2 or 3 hours could be done in just under an hour or less. Still it’s a big and complex compared to conventional webs so it took me more time. And in no time at all after placing the bait, a large dead wasp. The bird was already flying around looking for an easy food. Since I haven’t renewed my webs since yesterday, obviously there’s no food in the usual spots. Now let’s see if this works...
Driven by hunger the bird rushed in without a care and was spectacularly tangled up by its wings with feathers strewn all over the webbing. The silken strings were narrow but were considerably resistant. The bird hoped to use its talons and beak to cut the silk but only got more and more stuck.
“That’ll teach you about stealing others’ food… Though now I caught it what next? I can’t eat it, the thing is too large for just me. I could free it, but it will simply just go back to scoring free food from my web and next time it’ll be more careful about being caught. It’s wasteful but I’ll just have to kill you and move on...”
Tired from its struggling the bird was resting still confused as to why it was caught up in a web. Suddenly it felt a sharp sting of pain followed shortly by a numbing paralysis. It was completely paralysed before it could even twitch a muscle and was lulled into sleep it never woke up from again.
“Right… It’s dead but… What do I do with the body? I really should think things through before going through with it… Actually I’ll hang it somewhere visible so the bird will think twice about screwing with my catch again. I can’t carry it, the last 3 points into strength should help me… I’m already becoming insect Vlad the Impaler… Alicia the hanger… That sounds so dumb, damn I’m bad at naming… Come on I can come up with something better than that.”
“Oh I remember my rank being 27. Five ranks just like that huh? Still that’s way too much work for a bird. I’ll find a use for those five points sooner or later. For now, I should worry about getting this winged raccoon somewhere visible.”
The unusual spider somehow carrying around bird carcass much larger than it, stealthily hanging it high up from a tree along animal trail for all residents of the forest to see. At first only few noticed the body, soon scavengers found it and tried to take a bite only to get stuck to the remarkably sticky and durable silk and starve. Thus a domino effect of scavengers coming and dying started. Eventually turning into a mangled mass of emaciated flesh and bones barely resembling its original form. It was seen by certain tribe’s warrior and a hunter from a small isolated village nearby. Giving birth to myths and legends among both of them. The perpetrator was none the wiser until a century later it came to hit her like a spark…