Chapter 3: Ch. 3 – Ad Libertum

I think that Newbie was getting in one more petty jab in compensation for our earlier introduction. Usually, a respawn had a small amount of safe space for breathing room for the player to take stock of themselves, y’know?

Not whatever my current situation was with three unknown predators immediately on my doorstep. It wasn’t every day you get sliced up by decks of magical cards acting like a storm of razor-sharp knives while being sculpted into another form of existence. A lady needed a few minutes to cope with that experience.

Thankfully I seemed to be completely awake now. Adrenaline or whatever the equivalent was for my flight-or-fight as my chosen race. However, I could also feel the general direction of their presences through the thin layers of my cocoon. Two further back, one approaching.

Well, at least they were kinda unaware of me.

I raised a fingertip in front of my face. It was putting out the faintest violet glow off of a jumble of tiny symbols on the top of my hand, but turning it over I realized the symbols were actually moving to the center of my palm before wrapping around my forearm back up to my shoulder and beyond.

I recognized them. Hard not to. Not their exact names, but music notes. There was only three lines to the staff which served as the road carrying them across my skin, but I knew quarter, half, whole notes, pauses.

Wait, were they collecting in my palm? It seemed like a tiny pool of purple in my palm was growing with the silent march of musical nonsense down my arm and over my wrist.

Well, at least it was some form of light.

Making a small incision through the cocoon wall with my finger, it was surprisingly easy to do so. Almost like digging into a loose ball of yarn. If I had to guess, this lack of effort was going to be a helpful trait for me, a big hindrance for other things. Sticky, sticky spider goop tangles and all that.

Peeking out of the peephole, I got a good look of my naptime interrupters.

There was phosphorescent moss and mushrooms that provided enough light for me to see almost like an LED light. That was the least weird thing about that. The one time I didn’t check to see all the features and traits of a race from the dozens of choices, it’s incredibly relevant to my current situation. If I had to guess, there was some sort of low-light vision going on that my race enjoyed. I made a mental note to explore the details in the MAP. My theorycrafting build addiction itched for info.

Oh, right, three baddies.

If I had to guess, they looked like giant rats. Big teeth. Bony plates of armor along their spines and sides, spikes here and there. Following stereotypical gaming name conventions, probably dire rats.

Well, shit. I felt through some kind of instinct or second nature that they were still enemies worth being careful around, but that could mean anything in this new system.

But still, giant dire rats! How demeaning. Hardly worthy of being my first prey in my career. On the flip side, they were currently sniffing around my spawn point. Self-preservation had to trump pride.

The second thing I was now noticing was it was very, very cold. Even with this little pinhole, all that warm humid air that I came here with was leaking like a space suit breach in space. My lower half didn’t feel all that much, which maybe was a good thing, but my top sure did. Goosebumps up the wazoo across my arms, shoulders, chest…

One problem at a time, Ari.

Alright.

One of the rat bastards was almost snuffling its ugly mug at the bottom of my cocoon. I think I was suspended by the ceiling, but the problem was that I guess I was so large that it didn’t matter in this room. There was nothing preventing it from just getting on its hind legs and start nibbling on my protection to get the juicy treat in the middle.

Well, I didn’t have the time to pussyfoot around with too much strategy.

Shifting around in my slowly deflating barrier, my eight legs unfurled from around myself. I leaned backwards, putting as much distance between my human-ish half and the beast. On some primal level, this was the way that I knew how to hunt.

Just a little closer…

The dire rat barked in surprise as my front pair of limbs cleaved downwards, stabbing it through the neck and back before lifting it up into the air. My form spilled out with heavy clacking thuds echoing off the cavern walls. I almost expected to be a shaky little foal that was just born, but there was a pep in my step as I expertly maneuvered around to put a little distance between myself and the other two enemies.

Looking down, mama like. Mama really, really like. I needed a mirror to appreciate my new lower half’s arachnid splendor, but first things first.

Throwing the dead rat against the wall, collapsing in a heap with a crunch, my front legs raised threateningly while I crossed my arms with a sniff. Immediately regretted that, the sterile air I had been residing in was no match for the fetid stench of this subterranean world. Death, decay, mold, stinking rot from the dire rats.

They hissed and chirped menacingly at the death of their comrade. Nipping at each other, they split up. I realized that, looking back and forth, the pair of rodents also blocked the singular entrance into this room. All things considered, maybe this was some backhanded joke that I was a Raid Boss for a triplet of rats.

Oh. Oh, right! I looked at the MAP and tried to pull up something, maybe a skill window, a list of attacks, something!

+In combat.+

Wut.

I blinked furiously and kept getting the same error as I desperately tried to get an idea of what I could try out right now against trash mobs. My vision hovered over the four-colored diamond, outlining each color in turn as something I could, I don’t know, activate? Definitely didn’t want to mess with that, not with a mysterious term called Wanderer and the fact that a Bard shouldn’t have a stance to begin with.

Shit, shit, shit. Looked like it was unarmed combat then, but at least I had natural weapons.

I felt my body weight shift as I adjusted my guard, getting a closer look at one of my forelegs. They definitely looked sharp and went pretty far as I flexed them outwards to test their reach. Both sides carried edges like a sword for slicing before terminating in heads perfect for spearing things like a shish kebab – or, y’know, just walking, but it was obvious movement was not their focus.

Looking back at my lower half, my ash gray carapace was adorned with swirling orange patterns that I thought were tattoos at first. Fanciful depictions of musical notes and different clefs wove their way across the canvas of what passed for my skin down here, moving in the same slow magical drift. Each leg had one or two staff trails wrapping around the limb and wove up and around my abdomen. Multiple little pools of orange and tangerine drifted lazily across my Arachne half, slowly absorbing and sending out musical notes to each other along those connecting lines.

I turned my head a degree and realized that the front two merely had a deep burnt ochre running down their spines, scorched and twisted equivalents of the beautiful notes. What they lacked in dreamy quality, they made up for in the elegance of simplicity. They showed no evidence of wear and tear from the first rat I killed aside from blood neatly dripping off in neat rivulets.

Out of curiosity I took in a whiff of said blood and immediately gagged. I wasn’t sure if it was because it was just bad, I wasn’t use to dead animals, or some other explanation locked behind the damn MAP.

I threw out my palm toward one of the giant dire rats with a frustrated cry.

Nothing.

I swear the two rats looked at each other in confusion. Then they charged at me.

Trying to back up, my legs tried to dig into the cave wall. All that succeeded in doing was carving out huge gouges that nearly made me slip. A quick glance, looked like the material was too soft for my bulk. I was packing a lot of junk in the trunk!

The lead pack rat hopped and skipped towards me. I cried out while slashing horizontally with one blade limb, the other preoccupied with keeping my balance. I carved it in half, bringing a smile to my face.

But no blood came out. I didn’t even see its guts. The two halves just went poof after a second.

Two of the new eyes partly covered by my bangs spotted the real rat as a shimmer leapt at me from the out of position blade’s side. With a guttural squeak – which if smaller and in any other setting might have been adorable – it tried to gnaw ferociously on the dangerous leg.

It tickled a little. Fangs slid off the chitinous armor as I settled and tried moving back towards the empty cocoon. I chuckled at the display. At least I also seemed to have a natural armor too!

The small triumph was cut short as I felt the other’s jaws clamp down on my top half’s arm. Hard.

Now, as a food service worker, burns in varieties of colors, accidentally cutting something I shouldn’t have, banging knees against counters were a fact of life. They hurt, most of the time I knew they were coming and could brace. Or a doctor’s appointment for certain examinations or procedures that they walked you through.

I’d never been attacked by an animal before. Let alone one that pierced the skin and felt like it was gnawing right on the bone.

“Ow, shhhit-fuck-dammit!” was my eloquently devised reply.

What was worse, I could feel the other rat suddenly begin chipping off flakes of my chitinous armor with an uncomfortable pressure on the soft bits within.

Curse? Pack tactics? Defense down debuff? Any number of terms came to mind that might be the videogame analogue but I couldn’t be bothered to sift through them all! I wasn’t going to die my first actual time to some goddamn rats!

Whipping around with a speed I thought unbecoming a creature the size of a Clydesdale horse could muster, I shoulder checked the giant critter trying to nibble through my leg against the rock wall. It was enough to leave it stunned, trying to recollect its senses. Almost immediately, it seemed like the attack from the guy trying to strip the flesh off my arm weakened. That partially answered that debuff question.

Scruffing the creature by the neck, I almost began pulling it off.

Wait.

That would potentially cause more damage if it made a fuss and took my new luscious skin meat with it.

My blades couldn’t bend backwards enough, neither could I lean down with my range of motion correctly to quickly deal with the problem. Worse yet, my hands didn’t exactly seem well-suited to straight up fighting.

I grimaced, gritting my teeth as it got a few more bites in while attached to my forearm.

Grit my teeth.

Teeth.

Fuck.

Welp, I didn’t know how to do anything else, let alone magic or anything else remotely spidery, so this was gonna have to do.

Pinning the dire rat’s neck down to keep it from moving, I brought the whole thing close to my face. Closing my eyes – all two default Ari blue ones and the additional six violet dots – I couldn’t believe I had to resort to doing this.

It screamed, high pitched note cut short, as I tore out the base of its neck with my own jaws. Sharpened fangs and teeth of me, a Monstrous being asserting her dominance, piercing straight through the bone plates and rending all the delicate nerves needed to live!

It.

Was.

Disgusting.

The rat went limp immediately and I in turn spat out the chunk of furry hide, gagging the whole way. There was nothing to upchuck so I was left with dry heaving after the act. My arm hurt a lot, but was a toe stub compared to the card deck iron maiden. My frustration was vented out by pitching the dead rodent across the room where it splattered like a splash of paint. And stuck to the wall.

Oh. Oops. Well, maybe I was a muscle bard?

Admiring my handiwork for a moment in mortification, the presence of an enemy was still nearby. My eyes looked this way and that. A weird sensation to have more than two, but it kinda felt like I was sitting at a desk with six giant gaming monitors while my actual Arienna pupils were looking at one. My extra field of vision was with a muted lilac sheen over what the six saw. My original two were more or less the same, but I could see much finer details from way further away.

Like how the lead dire rat was attempting to slowly sneak away with its own little shimmy shimmer trick.

I wanted…

To capture it.

Yes. I needed to do some tests. This one also seemed to be the only dangerous thing considering how its lackeys died almost instantly.

You are reading story Arienna’s Cadence at novel35.com

There wasn’t any kind of buildup. Maybe an innocuous rustling sound that had the occasional squish. Wondering what the hell was the noise, I splayed my front legs outward and placed my hands on the joints to support my weight to lean down and look. My shoulder-length hair seemed to have grown out way past what it was back on Earth so I had to swing my head to flick it aside to see.

Ah. Yes. That. It was me making that noise. More specifically, my butt. Even more, my spider butt. Squinting, the word escaped me. Spinners? Threaders? The tiny leggy bits that made the webs.

I snapped my fingers. Spinnerets! Then nearly face planted into my forelimb blade as I lost my balance to do said snap. That would’ve been embarrassing.

There wasn’t much time to examine anything else, aside from the fact that it looked like I had subconsciously made a work order for a rope. Silk rope. I grunted in exasperation as I tried reaching with my human hands towards the white loops dotted with what looked like orange sparkly specks.

“Come-… on…!” I growled. I had to right myself when all the blood rushed to my brain and gave me a headache. Gasping for air with the exertion, I put my hands on my hips.

I couldn’t reach across more than two or three times old Ari’s height!

Leaning forward again, my fingers held on top of one of my massive chitinous legs which bent to support my shenanigans. Then it hit me, literally and figuratively, as my legs shifted in unison like a factory line, each knowing what to do, to pass the silk I was weaving forward. One of my bladed legs began acting as a spool for it.

“Oh.”

My eyes kept track of the escapee rat. Maybe halfway to the exit and unaware that I was aware of it. Nasty trick back there it pulled off. First an illusion of some sort, then a kind of invisibility, finally the two-pronged attack. However, knowing what to look for, the rat was firmly on my shit list.

The only question was, how do I use the silk?

Staring at my target wasn’t doing anything useful. The MAP was still locked behind active combat. No info panels were showing up about target stats, not even name plates like some games. Except for this, like, sixth sense gauging how difficult this creature was, I was in the dark.

Some spiders wrapped silk around their legs and used it like a net to trap things. Looking down at my somewhat thick limbs that shared more in common with small tree trunks than stick-thin saplings, I doubted that would work for me. Wolf spider came to mind rather than black widow. Inch by inch more webbing was being made. I could sort of feel it being drawn out and seeing it in front of me looked the shape of twined rope.

What was the trick to using the rope as a rope?

I dragged my hands down my face. Closing my eyes, it was really annoying to find out that I could see the violet pools within my palms through my lids.

What was the rope trick?!

Wait.

Wait, wait, I knew a spell. It was something from one of the tabletop games. Literally moving your hands around while holding a length of rope and it’d go do what you wanted. Also could float in mid air and be used to, well, climb, but usually the games I found myself in had ropes used for everything except tying down and climbing. Actually, plenty of tying down. Climbing was replaced with moaning.

I pictured my threaded silk in my mind. The orange glitter seemingly part of it. Stretching my arm to the left, the one with the still bloody bite, I closed my fist around empty air as if I had grasped the loops of rope. Peeking at the spool, I gasped.

There was a faint lilac aura around the web rope. It was working. I had it! Now I just had to fling it over at the rat and-!

Slinging my hand around like I was wielding a whip didn’t have the reaction I was hoping for. The grasp I had over the length began to slip as if I moved too fast to keep hold.

Crap, crap, crap! I could use magic. I was a Bard! How am I supposed to do it? Fucking MAP combat state, my ass.

“Okay, calm down Ari. Let’s think about this,” I spoke aloud. Maybe it would convince the rat that I was distracted. “I’m a Bard. Bards use music. Songs. Instruments. I don’t have an instrument. Damn! Okay, well, something else. Snapping my fingers? Voice? Use my legs as a drum set?”

Hitting my forehead with my knuckles lightly, I then pinched the bridge of my nose. Not having a focus was perhaps the worst part of this, something to channel into maybe. I looked at my health and mana bars for the first time. It looked like both were only a percent or two off from full. Not sure exactly how I could tell, aside from some instinctual fill-in-the-blank guess.

“Maybe… Maybe some other system. Uh, a book. Not a game,” I murmured to myself. “Verbal, somatic, material. But how does the system know? I had two of the three just now.”

I held out my hand and closed fist, image of the rope conjured up. Once more it floated and this time I willed it to my other waiting fingers. It was soft. I liked the feeling. The orange specks also seemed to be part of the silk itself and not visual texture glitches.

Soon as I tried focusing on the escaping giant rat, the power that brought the rope to me ceased. I whined, stamping a bladed limb into the ground. It sunk more than a little into the floor, making a screech that hurt my ears as it cleaved through rock.

“So I can’t use this as a spell. Okay? Now what?!” I sighed in exasperation.

The system so far had locked me out of the conventional inventory and skill lists because of combat. There weren’t any hotbars giving indicators as to what I could do. There weren’t even name plates hanging over these monsters that illustrated what they could be. I was leaning heavily toward some form of realistic fantasy world, but even then there had to be some form of rules as to how things worked I could recognize. Some kind of consistency even I could follow!

“Then again, I am a magicless Human from Twenty-First century Earth,” I conceded with a grumble, hanging my head. Ruffling up my hair, I thankfully found out that the silk didn’t stick to it, so that was a major crisis averted. “Something to ask Newbie about making a tutorial.”

Taking a calming breath, nothing was preventing me from bum-rushing the bastard and sticking him on the end of my spear-like forelimbs. That was the last resort to keep him from running away.

However, I wanted to overcome this hurdle. This wasn’t going to be the last time I would have to solve a problem without any tools to guide me.

“Magic doesn’t do anything except move it. Alright. Use magic on it to move it, it’s like an object?” I whispered quickly. “Not an extension of me. It’s silk. Rope, material of silk. Made by me.”

I half-expected a MAP panel to pop up and confirm my supposition. No such luck.

“That means I have to actually whip it out and hit the target with my own hands,” I continued, looking over to the dire rat as it continued its slow retreat. “No help offered or needed. Unless…”

Wait.

No.

There is no way in hell that the multiverse of magic in which I have been thrust into would be ordered like that. Cool words and chants for spells was one thing!

But…

Goddammit. The window of opportunity was closing.

With another whining grumble, my fingers worked their way through the threads. It was an instinct not completely my own, but I looked down to see glistening beads of Arachne glue gradually pool closer to the end of the rope. Tying it off to give a little more weight, I gave a few strokes with my fingers to cut strands apart so they’d splat and catch better. However, it wasn’t so much my nails cutting it as… my sheer force of will, shaping the silk into what I desired?

Moving toward the center of the cavern nonchalantly, I started to swing the silk overhead. My extra eyes were trained on the unsuspecting rodent which dared end my career before it started.

Assuming I was right, the silk was an item. An item needed skill to use in a game. But, in order to activate that skill…

I breathed out slowly, taking aim as much as I could with my own conscious mind.

The smorgasbord of words that came to mind was overwhelming. However, the more basic and general meant the easier and wider the application. Also, bigger words meant they took longer, even if they sounded cooler. I had to rely on the former. Investigating the MAP for answers came after.

“Lash.”

As expected, my very best efforts as a boring young human were corrected by that second nature which had been filling in some of the blanks. My aim shifted, my legs turned, my body swayed to the right rhythm.

The sticky lasso let fly, hitting its target without fail.

I let the giant dire rat flail about. After about a minute he had been caught up so badly he couldn’t do more than wiggle his cute little toe beans. I began reeling the oversized rodent back over to me. It was breathing heavily and quite pinned. The coils it tried to chew through had gagged it rather effectively, its limbs were in a tangle, and if I didn’t know any better it was halfway to being cocooned and hung upside-down like an ornament.

My stomach churned at a thought.

What if I had to eat things a specific kind of way? That would mean no more beef, no more steak, no more bread! Everything would be some form of, I don’t know, smoothie? I mean, self-contained packages like poor Mister Rat would be easy to move around and use, but how the hell would you flavor-

+Encounter end.+

“Oh, thank god,” I exclaimed, sinking to the floor. My legs splayed out eight different ways while my human half teetered forward.

And summarily fell face down, massive ass up, because there was nothing to brace me from falling.

“Wh-, woah, fuck!”

My face ate dirt while my considerably larger lower half thumped onto the ground to try and compensate. I hope I didn’t sprain something. Do spider bits even get cramps? Will I have to find a specialized masseuse?

Woo, boy, this new center of gravity and different ranges of motion was going to be a doozy to try and navigate.

However, now that the adrenaline was wearing off, I looked down and shivered. Gooseflesh still plagued my fair lily-white skin despite the purple magic music notes flowing across it. Waist-length scarlet hair with its black highlights was doing nothing to warm my bare chest, and neither was the newly improved endowment helping.

I really had come into this world with nothing but the skin of my back. Fought my first battle and won too. It was tough. It was going to be tough, navigating this more or less by myself.

Rolling onto my side, I didn’t care how painfully awkward it was for me to maneuver and lay on my back. Bioluminescent moss and shrooms glowing on the ceiling greeted me as stand-ins for a starlit sky full of opportunity. I leered at the traitorous MAP symbol but enjoyed the respite. The health bar slowly returned to full, announced by a ruby red flash that lasted for a few moments.

Even if every hurdle from here was going to be a struggle, it was going to be because I chose this path. No one else.

That made it worth it.

However, I did sigh heavily.

Manual reading time. Time to try learning how the hell this World worked.

Yanking on the silk rope, I squinted over at the struggling Mister Rat.

“Lash?” I timidly commanded with a flick of the wrist.

And almost sent him flying into the wall, like his friend plastered on the far side. A split second before that happened, I managed to swing him towards me and caught the silken bundle within my eight legs.

“Oh no, Mister Rat! I’m so sorry!” I cried out.

“Creehk!”

I wanted to play the viol, dammit.

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