Chapter 80: 74: Riding a Spider

“Hurry up if you don’t want to die again!” You order your summon, while sitting on the back of her lower spider body. You don’t bear her any ill will, simply stating the facts bluntly—if you end up fighting berserked, parasite infested beasts again, the choice between taking the blows yourself or using your summons for shields is pretty obvious.

“No bad feelings about what happened earlier, right?” you ask your spider as you hold on to her human, slim, pale, scorched, naked waist.

“Oh course not, master,” the spider-woman hisses, though not with ill-intent, it’s simply the way she speaks. “It is the solemn duty of summons to fight for our master, not holding back even if facing death itself! It is the greatest honor to give our life if it means saving the life of our summoner!”

“Well, you’re doing a phenomenal job! Keep up the good work!” You encourage your summon, not mentioning the fact that you were considering getting rid of her. Forever.

“Thank you, master,” the spider says and rushes further ahead. A fox dashes out of your spider’s way, and for good reason—if not for the bears and/or shadow dire wolves, your spider would most likely be the apex predator around these parts. Each of her eight legs moves in perfect sync, creating enough noise from crushing leaves and branches to scare off any regular forest animal well in advance, and prevent potential, nasty ‘baby cub/mother bear’ combos.

Now that you think about it, you must look pretty cool—riding a half-human, half-spider monster that obeys your every command. For just a moment you daydream about riding an even bigger and meaner spider-monster on the battlefield, leading your legions to war. You completely disregard the fact that applying even the tiniest bit of strategic or tactical reasoning would mean putting you as far from the frontlines as humanly possible.

Of course, after twenty minutes, the spider disappears in a puff of smoke, and, guided by Newton’s First Law, you fly ahead in the air a good ten-fifteen feet, approaching the ground fast.

“Summon Spider!” you shout and a second later are caught in a net cast by the very same spider, to protect your gentle face from unforgiving hardness of an impartial rock. After half a minute of untangling and getting back on the spider, your journey continues.

With another twenty minutes before your summon disappears, you finally decide to take a look at which spell to level up, and bring up the semi-translucent skill tab. Going through the list of new skills and familiar traits, you notice one new trait that wasn’t there before. And, after doing some math, it doesn’t take long for you to come to the conclusion that the “Energy Pool Trait” is miles ahead of anything else offered to you. You press with your finger on the button of your choice on the semi-translucent tab. The icon lights up and, after a barely audible ‘ding’, your choice is registered.

[Energy 322/322]

Considering how quickly the cost of your spells rises with each level-up, you consider the fifteen percent increase to your maximum energy an obvious choice. You go through your spells and take a look at the [Summon Spider] as an example

[Summon Spider – lvl 2
Energy cost: 50
Summons a Spider with crowd control and assassination capabilities.]

Restoring your energy at two per minute and the spider lasting for twenty minutes means that you will be able to summon about thirty-two times before you run out of energy, which means you can travel for over ten hours without your feet touching the ground. As long as you can figure out the proper timing for re-summoning your ride that is.

“Could you warn me next time you’re about to disappear?” You ask your spider.

“Unfortunately, I don’t know that myself,” The spider hisses in response.

“A pity,” you say, but don’t stress about it too much. After a while, you’ll get used to the timing anyway, and you have more than enough energy to spare to afford a re-summon a couple minutes sooner. After a couple minutes you try just that and say to the spider, “Get ready to catch me!”

You cast [Summon Spider], the spider disappears from under you and reappears just a couple of feet in front of you, right where it should be for you to land on it (guided by the same Newton’s Law) and grab hold of the spider’s giant breasts from behind.

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“Oops, sorry!” you let go of the soft, ample treasures and hold on to her waist instead.

“Nothing to apologize for, my master,” The spider hisses. “It was not unpleasant.”

You’re glad she can’t see your face, because you’re probably blushing a little.

Soon, the trees grow sparser, and, rather abruptly, the forest ends as you ride the spider down the mountain slopes to the green fields below. You pass one weathered wooden sign, driven into the crack between the rocks, then another sign.

“Stop for a moment!” you command the spider and take a look at the signs.

‘Danger’

‘Turn Back’

“So, that forest is considered dangerous enough, that the locals aren’t meant to even enter it?” you ask yourself more than the spider. “Let’s go!”

Is the forest considered dangerous to local farmers and villagers? Or even the adventurers of Ranville? It would explain why that area is such a good hideout for those, who do not want to be found. But what was the dynamic there? Shinde’s monsters did not seem to be the same as the worm-infested animals. At the very least, they did not have those strange eyes. Now that you think about it, the “wormed” animals appeared only after your encounter with Shinde. Something changed. But, for now, you have too many things to worry about already. This mystery will have to wait.

As you ride down you pass small piles of rocks. It takes you a couple of minutes to realize that the rocks are moving. They’re actually sentient! Some kind of rock monsters, though they do not dare attack you or your spider. You don’t want to waste any more time, but you feel it would be useful to at least know your relative power against these monsters, for future reference, if nothing else. It might help you gauge your power level against the inhabitants of the town, if these monsters come up in a conversation.

“Shadow Bolt!” you cast your main offensive spell against one of the rock creatures. The dark beam strikes the monster, and, without letting out a sound of shock or pain, it falls apart.

“Good,” you say, satisfied that you can kill something with minimal effort and bring up your spell tab to examine your upgraded damaging spell.

[Shadow Bolt - lvl 3
Energy cost: 25
Deals 3*X magic damage to a single target by firing a single bolt of dark energy at the speed of an arrow.]

Nearly two times stronger, than it was at level two. More importantly though, the energy cost also spiked, which limits your uses of it.

You re-summon your spider and ride further down from the mountains into greener pastures. As you leave the rock-monster area you realize that you are more likely to run into people the closer you are to the town. You are still about two days of walking from the town, and the spider phenomenally increases your travel speed. On the other hand, you don’t know how exactly a stranger riding atop a monstrous spider-monster in open fields will be received by the locals.

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