I woke up gasping. My tongue was dry and swollen, and my mouth was full of the taste of rust and bile. The faint traces of a dream were fading as my conscious mind took over and struggled with the reality of where I was. My heart raced, and I tried to scream through a swollen throat. The only sound I produced was a raspy cough.

I couldn’t move. I tried to flex my arms and I could feel them respond but something was wrapped tightly around me. It covered almost every inch of my body, I tried to stretch the material, but it had almost no give. I couldn’t even close my fingers. The bindings smelled earthy and pleasant, almost like a new silk shirt.

I tried to kick and stretch my arms to tear the bindings. The more I struggled the tighter they seemed to hold me. I finally gave up when the bindings began to constrict my chest and I felt myself getting dizzy from exertion and lack of air.

I couldn’t continue like this. I needed to remain calm and look for opportunities. Whatever had bound my body had left my face free, which was an indication that I was being kept alive for something.

Probably as leftovers.

I tried to relax my nerves by closing my eyes and taking three deep breaths. Finished, I opened them to survey the situation. I could only move my head a few inches in either direction but there was still plenty to see.

The darkness was deeper here; only a faint trace of the blue and green bioluminescent remained. Within the darkness moved long, chitinous limbs, only half seen. It was as if the darkness itself moved underneath me, carrying me forward towards whatever awaited me.

If I was going to escape this would be the best time to do it. Whatever was carrying me was much larger than my attacker, so there were more than one. I remembered the creature that had run in front of me, distracting me as another attacked from behind. They were pack hunters.

It seemed likely there were more of them at the end of this journey.

I needed to try to slip away while I still had the element of surprise. It was likely that these creatures believed me paralyzed by whatever venom I had been injected with. They may not be monitoring me closely.

My body was useless … but that wasn’t the only tool I had available.

Status, I thought.

Information quickly scrolled across a blue, translucent screen that appeared about a foot in front of my face.

Congratulations! Venom coursed through your veins paralyzing muscle and liquifying flesh. Your body was racked in pain, but you were unable to scream as your lungs were paralyzed and slowly filled with blood.

Capable of extraordinary feats of Reactive Adaptability Ⓛ, you have survived. Physical resistances +1, new feat(s) gained: Poison resistance © 2/10!

Reactive Adaptability cooldown … calculating …. 2 days, 47 minutes, 13 seconds.

Readouts also appeared showing a virtual representation of my body highlighting every injury, from bruised ribs to severe dehydration. My stats were displayed as white bars around the human outline that represented myself.

The numbers ran from six to ten, perception being the highest and focus being only a pitiful five. I knew my vision and hearing were perfect, so I guessed that ten was a baseline for human ‘average’ or slightly above. If that was the case, then my own numbers were hardly flattering.

I mean, a five in focus? I could focus on something just as well as the next guy, this was bullshit. Right, I had more pressing concerns. Focus, Finn.

I looked at “Might,” trying to figure out exactly what it measured when a new screen appeared with that exact information. It seemed that whatever was controlling these menus could read my mind. A useful invasion of privacy, considering the circumstances.

Might is a measure of the strength and endurance of your physical body. Citizens with more Might can punch harder, jump higher, fight longer, and take more physical damage. As Might improves, your muscle, ligaments, and bone will become stronger and more flexible. You will be able to carry more, do more damage in melee combat, and your speed will be increased in and out of combat.

That … was impressive. With the way I already felt, a few more points into Might and I really might be able to deadlift a pickup and deflect bullets with my chest. A flashing symbol next to each stat reminded me that I had three unallocated points.

Would three points be enough for me to break free?

I quickly scrolled through each of my stats and carefully studied their descriptions, but nothing stood out to me as a sure solution to my problem. I was just beginning to put all three points into Might, when a thought struck me.

If I can’t think of a solution, maybe I can make myself smarter?

Intellect is a measure of the power of your mind. Citizens with high Intellect will be able to recall memories longer and with greater precision as well as solve problems with greater speed. They will learn faster and gain skills earlier. As Intellect improves, citizens will also be more resilient against mental attacks, while also improving the power of arcane magics and the amount of mana they can channel.

It was between mage and brute, then. Did I trust in the power of my body, or the nimbleness of my mind? Neither was a guarantee.

My bonds were too strong to even stretch, let alone break. I had little confidence such a small boost to Might would be of help. I had even less faith, however, in my only magical attack. Arcane bolts had been amazingly underwhelming.

If I couldn’t break my bonds, then I’d simply need to think of another solution. My mind made up, I stopped hesitating and mentally selected Intellect, putting all three points into it.

Congratulations! You have put three points into a single stat before completing the tutorial!! You have unlocked the feat(s) – Able Learner ®

Able Learner ® - Having focused on Intellect during the earliest part of your training you find that you are more easily able to pick up new ideas and concepts. Where others struggle to learn new skills, you are adept at it. Decreases the difficulty of learning new skills and increases the rate at which you improve Intellect based skills!

My mind instantly felt clearer, but the change was minimal. No genius solution presented itself in a moment of inspiration, nor did I gain cool psionic powers. It seemed I would still have to figure this out by myself. I let out a sigh of disappointment.

What was I thinking? This was life or death, not a classroom where I could study every variable and come to the perfect answer. I needed action. I doubted the giant spider demons would agree to a game of riddles.

“Don’t panic,” I recalled the words of my father, “take stock of your surroundings, inventory your assets, and formulate a plan. The enemy will make a mistake. wait for it and capitalize on it.”

The memory came unbidden and felt like it had happened only moments before. Was this my own subconscious, or the effects of increasing my stats? It seemed a violation to let something external have access to something as private as the memories of my father.

Inventory my assets, but what were they? I was a little more resistant to poison and venom, I had a weak arcane bolt that could barely singe denim. Oh, and I could learn faster … but that advantage had yet to be seen. With some experimentation, I found that I could blink out Morse code, something I would never have been able to remember without the improved memory brought on by increasing Intellect.

I waited and watched.

The cocoon I was trapped in seemed to be dangling from a single strand from the base of some truly large abomination. I would sway back and forth as the creature walked, occasionally giving me brief glimpses of it through the darkness.

Its legs, each of them black and hairy, moved with quick precision. We seemed to be slowly moving towards an area of greater light, giving me a better view of the legs that moved beneath me. All twelve of them.

At the front of the monsters were two legs covered in barbs and ending in long stingers. Behind the monster trailed a long tail, that was segmented and flat. It curved downward and thickened the further it got from the creature’s body.

I was also able to get a better view of my bindings. They were white and made of millions of overlapping threads, exactly like the cocoons spiders made around their prey. They seemed sticker than before, and with an experimental flex, I realized that they had become more elastic.

Despite the new give, I found the cocoon completely unbreakable. My new power of memory, however, was enough for me to realize that I had not just imagined the inflexibility of the threads when I had first awoken. The silk was becoming stickier and had more stretch. Was it decaying with time?

Congratulations! You have learned a new skill(s)!

Analyze ©- While others fight, you watch and listen. You learn mysteries and secrets unknown to others, secrets obvious to those with the ability to see them. Activated: 1 Mana per second, reveals the background, strengths, and weaknesses of objects and creatures.

The new skill seemed useful, just not immediately so. What I really needed was firepower. What was the use of magic without flashy powers like lightning bolt or fireball?

When my cocoon swung back around to give me a view of the underside of the creature’s thorax, I activated the new skill.

Gwerlum, the Gloomweaver. Arachnid Matriarch. Lvl 24.

The name was highlighted in purple, but I couldn’t find a way to determine the significance. The level was enough, however, for me to know that I had no chance at all. This did mean that whatever system was behind these skills could feed me information.

This gave me hope that I could find a way to figure out what was going on. Was I even still on Earth? Why had magic and fantasy creatures suddenly become real?

My first priority was to survive. Answers could come later.

Brute strength was out of the question, but if I could analyze the silk binding me perhaps I could find a weakness to exploit. I looked down at my own chest and activated Analyze, and immediately felt a pull on my mana.

Cocoon of the Gloomweaver. This cocoon was spun by Gwerlum. The silk has a tensile strength greater than steel, but it is the elasticity that truly makes it unbreakable. It is vulnerable to fire, slashing, and magic, but cannot be torn without truly prodigious strength.

Gwerlum has sprayed this cocoon with her venom, this deteriorates the strength of the silk but helps to digest the prey more quickly and increases the adhesive properties of the silk. This process is unnecessary for common consumption and is only done in preparation for producing an egg sac. It is likely that the prey trapped in this cocoon is intended as food for the spider’s spawn, thereby continuing the unholy lineage of Ungoliant, the Primordial Spider.

Great, I was breakfast for a bunch of spider tykes. The same venom meant to digest me might just be what saved me. If I could wait for Big Mama to spray the cocoon with more venom, it may weaken enough for me to escape.

In the meantime, I needed to focus on speeding the process up.

Over the next few hours, I focused on using my arcane bolts to try to destroy some of the silk around my left hand. My current mana was enough for me to cast six arcane bolts, but it slowly regenerated enough for me to get off an additional bolt every five minutes or so.

When the spider queen finally stopped I had created a pocket of free space around my left arm and had drilled a hole large enough for a single finger to poke through the cocoon. It was a start, I only had to hope that I had enough time.

Additionally, I had gained 3 levels in Arcane Bolt and Analyze, and a single additional level in Poison Resistance. It seemed that the first three levels of each skill were relatively easy to learn, but I was unable to advance any of the skills to their fourth rank. There was not much to analyze during the trip, but there were the occasional rock, mushroom or fungus that caught my attention. What was curious, and potentially helpful, was that it seemed each increase in skill gave me something called FP. A counter was kept on the top left corner of my stats screen calling out for my attention.

I mentally selected FP, and I smiled at the results.