Chapter 13: Razor Claw [2]
Alden raised his right hand.
His fingers curled inward in a shape of a claw.
The spider let out a piercing screech and charged.
It came fast. Much faster than he expected, tearing through undergrowth and low branches like they were paper, the distance between them collapsing in seconds.
’Too fast—’ He slashed his hand through the air.
Nothing happened.
His heart dropped.
’Did it fail?’
The spider was already close enough that he could smell it. Its bladed leg pulled back to strike.
SKRRRK.
The spider’s screech changed pitch entirely.
Three deep claw marks tore across its face simultaneously, perfectly parallel, carving through chitin and one of its crimson eyes. Dark green blood sprayed across the forest floor in a wide arc.
Alden stared.
"...It worked?" he realized.
’There’s a delay. It doesn’t hit instantly, there’s a gap between the swing and the strike landing.’
He raised his hand and slashed again without waiting.
A second later,
SKRRRK.
Invisible strikes carved through the spider’s abdomen. The enormous body staggered sideways, its legs scrambling.
A grin spread across Alden’s face despite everything.
’It delays for a second, travels invisibly, and hits right where I aim.’ He looked at his hand.
’This ability is insane.’
The spider, blinded in one eye and bleeding from two separate sets of wounds, turned toward him and screamed. It charged again.
Alden tried to step back. His legs didn’t cooperate.
’What?! Why can’t I move?’
The poison had been moving quietly through him this whole time and it had apparently reached whatever line it had been building toward, because his vision blurred sideways and his knees buckled before he fully understood what was happening.
He caught himself on one hand against a tree, breathing ragged, fingers trembling around the sword he was barely still holding.
’My body’s hitting its limit.’
The spider covered the remaining ground between them fast.
He couldn’t run. His legs were done. He could barely stay upright.
His jaw locked.
"If I’m going down—" he straightened up on shaking legs and raised both hands, "I’m taking you with me."
He slashed the air.
One. Two. Three.
Four. Five.
He kept going, every motion pulling from whatever his body had left, sending invisible strikes forward in rapid succession. His vision was narrowing at the edges now. The ground under his feet felt unstable in a way ground shouldn’t.
"Die," he said, and the last one left his hand.
His knees gave.
He hit the forest floor on one knee, head dropping, both hands barely catching him. His lungs were working but it didn’t feel like breathing anymore, just the mechanical motion of something that hadn’t gotten the message yet.
"...Did it hit?"
He forced his eyes up.
The spider stood completely still.
For a moment nothing happened and he thought he’d missed entirely.
Then its body split open.
Deep claw wounds tore across it from several directions at once, the delayed strikes all landing in the same second, and dark green blood hit the forest floor in a wide spread.
The massive body folded and dropped with a sound that shook the ground under his hands.
THUD.
The remaining strikes that had flown past the spider hit three trees behind it.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Identical claw marks carved straight through each trunk, wood fragments scattering across the undergrowth.
Alden looked at all of it.
A weak laugh came out before he could stop it.
"...Good."
He sat there for a moment, swaying slightly, the poison still burning through his arms and chest, his vision doing unreliable things. Then he got moving because staying still wasn’t going to help.
He staggered to the corpse. Nearly went down twice. Made it.
He pressed his palm flat against the spider’s body.
FWOOOOSH!
Black energy poured upward from the corpse in wide spiraling streams, wrapping around his arm, sinking beneath the skin.
[DING!]
[Soul Successfully Extracted!]
[Beast: Giant Spider — Rank: B]
[Spider Soul Fragment ×1]
[Spider Blueprint: 0% → 10%]
[+750 EXP]
[Level Up! — 3 → 4]
[ Level: 4 EXP: 1400 / 1500]
[Razor Claw Used — Wolf Blueprint: +3%]
The burning stopped all at once, like a switch. The numbness in his fingers disappeared.
The heaviness in his legs cleared. Even the cut on his cheek had gone from a hot constant throb to nothing.
Alden looked at his hands.
"...The poison’s gone?"
[Upon successfully extracting the soul of a venomous creature, the Host permanently gains immunity to that creature’s poison.]
He read that, then sat back against the nearest tree and let out a slow breath.
"...So I’m alive."
He stayed there for a moment just being alive, which felt like a reasonable use of several seconds after what had just happened.
Then the next notifications came.
[New Species Registered!]
[Soul Library Updated!]
[New Concept Unlocked!]
He opened the library.
________________
Soul Library
________________
Stored Species:
Wolf — (Fragments ×3)
Spider — (Fragments ×1)
________________
He selected Spider.
________________
Species: Spider
________________
Soul Fragments ×1
Blueprint Progress: 10%
Known Concepts
✔ Thread [Unlocked]
Undiscovered Concepts
??? [Requires 50% Blueprint]
??? [Requires 75% Blueprint]
Supreme Concept
??? [Requires 100% Blueprint]
________________
He went still.
’Supreme Concept?’
He opened the wolf page immediately and went through every section.
________________
Species: Wolf
________________
Blueprint Progress: 53%
________________
Known Concepts
✔ Keen Hearing
✔ Predator’s Instinct
✔ Razor Claw
________________
Undiscovered Concepts
??? [Requires 100% Blueprint]
________________
There wasn’t any Supreme Concept in it. Just regular Concepts at different percentages.
He went back to the spider page.
’Why only on the spider?’ He turned that over for a moment.
Higher rank creature? A specific trait of certain species? Something that only appeared when a beast had a particular kind of unique ability? He didn’t have enough information to know which.
What he did know was that whatever a Supreme Concept was, it sat above everything else in the section. It required one hundred percent Blueprint completion on a rank B creature.
And it had its own separate category.
A slow grin.
"Looks like I’ve got a reason to hunt more spiders."
He shook his head and pulled his attention back to the unlocked Concept.
[Thread]
[Description: Create and manipulate durable spiritual threads. Strength and length increase with Blueprint completion.]
’Spiritual threads.’ He turned the concept over, thinking about what that actually meant in practical terms. Restraint? Trapping? Something to use at range when Razor Claw wasn’t the right tool?
The description kept it vague, which the system seemed to enjoy doing handing him the concept and letting him figure out the application.
He’d learned not to dismiss anything the system gave him as minor.
Keen Hearing had saved his life once before. Tonight, Predator’s Instinct had kept that leg from going through his chest. Razor Claw helped him kill the spider.
He’d figure out Thread by using it.
Alden stood up. His body felt properly functional for the first time since the spider’s leg had grazed him.
He looked back out at the forest. The night had gotten louder while he’d been sitting against the tree.
He picked up his sword from the ground where it had fallen during the run. Checked the blade.
’Keen Hearing. Predator’s Instinct. Razor Claw. Thread.’
He rolled his shoulder. The numbness was completely gone.
"This hunt is only getting started."