If I didn’t know better, I would have thought we were on a peaceful walk through the woods and the apocalypse was all a bad dream. Kiara and Rowan were chatting animatedly, and I could catch random snippets from them. They were chatting about digital artwork or something from Pre-Initialization. I heard things like layers, vector versus something or other. I knew little about the subject and I let it just wash past me.

Magnus and Cody were talking about the best way to increase their strength attribute using Magnus’s weights. Cody wanted to lift as much as he could each time, but Magnus was telling him it was better to increase the number of reps than to push your max each time. This was another topic I wasn’t very familiar with. Before the apocalypse, I was a three-hundred-and-fifty-pound truck driver. I spent ten or more hours each day in the driver's seat, drinking soda and eating greasy truck stop food, and was probably just a few short years from my first heart attack.

It was blessedly quiet. There hadn’t been a single monster attack in over two hours and our pace settled into a more relaxed walk. Rowan had even dismissed Slate so he could walk along with Kiara.

Rukia played with Koda as we walked. She would sneak up and bowl Koda over before she dashed ahead, not too quickly, letting the little bear chase her. As soon as the bear would catch up, she would bowl him over again and dash away again. Her ears perked up, and she nearly caused hurricane-force winds with how much she wagged her fluffy tail.

My eye twitched as a glimmer of light struck the corner of my eye. I looked around but saw nothing but the slowly reducing trees and the full canopy above. It must have been a bit of sunlight sneaking through the pine needles. I thought as I continued walking.

Those glimmers have been catching me in the corner of my eye for a while now, at least for the last fifteen minutes or so. I dismissed it from my mind once again in favor of listening to the few unaltered birds in the trees and the buzzing of insects… Where were the bird songs I heard just a bit ago? Even the insects have gone quiet…

Keeping my voice level and calm, I said, “Guys, do you hear that?” I said, while trying to keep my voice calm and level. Something was making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end and I pulsed out my Spiritual Sense. I had gone lax in its use over the last couple of hours without realizing it.

My Spiritual Sense came back with an odd result. It was almost like it echoed back, bouncing off of something I couldn’t detect. It also didn’t go out as far as it usually did, which caused my mounting anxiety to spike further. I spun up my Ki through my Bone Meridian just in case. The feel of my Ki rushing through my Meridian, making me more limber and faster on my feet, was reassuring.

“I don’t hear anything,” Cody said.

Kiara froze for a moment but forced herself to keep walking at an even pace. Once she had herself under control, she said, “That’s the problem. It’s too quiet, we’re being hunted.” She reached down slowly and gripped the haft of her axe hanging from her belt. She didn’t have to keep it in her patched-up bag any longer since Cody finished making her a basic set of leather armor the previous night from the bear hide.

I hadn’t had the chance to enhance the armor with a formation yet, but it was better than the ragged clothing she had on. We gave her some clothes we scavenged to wear under the armor. They didn’t fit perfectly, but they did the job for now.

“Magnus, is your Spiritual Sense acting weirdly? Like it’s in an echo chamber or something?” I asked.

“Now that you mention it, yeah. Have you been getting weird glints of light out of the corner of your eyes now and then?” Magnus asked.

Rowan, Cody, Kiara, and I all nodded. We had all seen the strange lights, almost out of sight. We came to a gradual halt and circled up without saying another word. We each faced a different direction, to find the threat we knew was coming… or was already here.

I pulled my spear from my ring and cycled Ki through my eyes, hoping the enhancement would let me see what the fuck was coming for us. I felt my eyes warm as the Ki filled them and I could see the energies interacting all around me. Everything was filled with a diffuse glow, even the air glowed like a thick fog at dawn. It made detecting what I wanted difficult until I somehow managed to filter out the ambient Essence.

Once I could see through the fog of Essence, I saw shimmering strands of blue crisscrossing the canopy above us. They were all interconnected and reinforced each other in beautiful geometric patterns. Patterns just like one could find in the corners of their ceilings, or stretching between bushes on a lesser used hiking trial. They looked like spider webs, and behind those webs were indistinct shapes, rather large shapes that slowly rose up and down…

I opened my mouth to tell the others, but they must have realized that I saw them. Before I could warn the others, the shimmering effect vanished, and they launched themselves at us.

I had a tough call to make at that moment. Time stretched As I tried to call out to the others. The words felt like thick honey in my throat. I counted close to a dozen spiders in the tree. Several were almost drifting down gracefully towards us. Their mottled brown and dark green bodies were as large as my torso. They had eight 6ft-long hairy legs, the front two were slightly longer, and the ends came to wickedly sharp points, great for stabbing through armor.

The dilemma for me was simple: Grace in Combat or Jade Dragon Scale Armor. With this many enemies, I couldn’t afford to be wasteful of my Ki, and using both would burn through over a quarter of my Ki every five minutes, and make everything Ki related more expensive.

Noting how sharp and spear like their forelimbs were, I went with the armor. I could still cycle Ki through my Bone Meridian to increase my speed as needed.

“SPIDERS ABOVE!” the words finally managed to leap from my throat as everything snapped back into normal time. My Ki billowed out of my skin and condensed down into hardened scales coating my whole body as I threw myself to the side, rolling and springing back to my feet with my spear raised and ready to thrust.

Magnus and Cody both had their shields and weapons out. Cody’s armor fazed into being around him, glowing slightly with silvery light. Malakai already had his golden shield manifested and was ready to deflect a blow meant for his master.

Rowan blink stepped thirty feet away and immediately had his summoning staff out and started calling out one of his Aeons.

Kiara rolled away from the group and already had green light flickering over her fingers, preparing to root the spiders as soon as they landed.

Magnus and Cody managed to use their shields to knock two of the giant spiders to the side, diverting their strikes. In the same motion as the shield, Magnus swung his hammer around and it impacted the body of the spider with a muffled boom.

As I reset myself with my spear ready to thrust, I pulled up the Spider’s info with my Identify Skill.

Fey Touched, Glimmersilk Spider

Fighter

Level 9

HP: 140/140

Stamina: 280/280

Mana: 160/160

Defense: 28

Ok, this shouldn’t be too bad. Most of us were level nine, equivalent or higher. They only doubled our numbers, so as long as we are careful, we should be able to clear these mobs.

With that thought to help bolster myself, I sprang forward, thrusting my spear into the spider’s body. I thrust hard, but the point only managed to pierce a few inches in. Their carapace felt like it was made of boiled leather. It was rigid, but still had some give to it. The base damage of my spear was only twenty-four points, plus my skill bonus and my strength bonus. It could ignore thirteen points of light or medium armor from its design.

The spider I attacked jumped back and dropped its abdomen below its body and sprayed at me with its shimmering web as another spider pounced towards me.

I leapt to the side, but as I landed, something latched on to my foot and tugged me backwards. I fell face first as they dragged me. I managed to roll over and look. A pile of branches and pine needles opened like a hatch and a spider was rapidly pulling me into its hole.

“SHIIIT!” I shouted. I brought my spear around and managed to stab into the hole as my legs entered. I dumped twenty Ki into the sharpness binding, increasing my armor penetration by twenty, and shoved it right into the spider’s face.

Fey Touched, Glimmersilk Trapdoor Spider

Fighter

Level 9

HP: 60/140

Stamina: 280/280

Mana: 160/160

Defense: 28

I managed to completely bypass its defense and landed a critical hit. Grey ichor oozed out of its cracked carapace around the spear head. The spider let out a lout hollow sounding screech and tried to shake my spear off. I pumped fifteen more Ki through the projection channels and launched it right inside the thing’s head for another critical.

With a dull whomp, the head exploded. I was coated in gore from the waist down and my foot was still entangled in the damned things webbing. I had to wrench my foot out, barely managing to tear the sticky fibers, and pulled my ass out of the pit.

“Watch out for Trapdoor spiders, one just grabbed me,” I called out to the rest of the party. I took a moment to assess the situation and determine where I was most needed.

Rowan already summoned Ember, his fire dragonling, who was using its fire abilities to burn away at the webbing. It was quite effective at reducing the giant spider’s crowd control abilities. Tess was providing cover using her arcane bolt and shield spells to cover Rowan while he worked on summoning one of his other Aeons.

Kiara managed to get her root spell off and entangled two of the spiders and was using her camp axe to impressive effect on their carapaces. I could see the corrosive ability take effect as the wounds inflicted by the axe bubbled and hissed, dissolving the exoskeleton and reducing their defense drastically.

Fey Touched, Glimmersilk Spider

Fighter

Level 9

HP: 80/140

Stamina: 210/280

Mana: 160/160

Defense: 13

Status Effect: Acid Burn -10hp/second, -2 Defense/second. Duration 5/10, 9/10 seconds

Each strike Kiara made, while the Corrosive effect was activated, left a D.O.T. that dealt five points of acid damage per second over ten seconds. It also reduced the creature’s defense in that area by one per second for ten seconds. So, even though she couldn’t get through their defense with the damage from her axe directly, she dealt fifty points of damage and dropped their defense by ten in a foot wide area around each strike. And it looked like the D.O.T. stacked at least a few times as long as she hit a unique spot.

Malakai was doing wonders with his holy shield ability, managing to intercept and block each attempt of the spiders to entangle Cody with their webs. Cody wasn’t smashing through the spiders with the same brutal effectiveness of Magnus, but he was managing to keep Rowan defended as he gradually brought out his entire suite of Aeons.

It was when I laid my eyes on Rukia that I felt my heart swell. She was protecting poor Koda from the spiders. The little bear was still extremely weak compared to everyone else, even though he managed to increase to body rank two already. Koda wanted to climb up a nearby tree to reach safety, but Rukia understood the trees weren’t safe, not with spiders. She knocked the cub down each time he tried to scramble up a tree until he just huddled behind a nearby bush.

Rukia used her speed, strength and ice abilities to keep the Spiders at bay, slowing their movements, draining their stamina along with their health and keeping them from sneaking up on easy prey. She deserved all the loves and scritches for this showing.

Fortunately, Rukia wasn’t protecting Koda by herself for long. Rowan sent Sparks over to help as soon as he had it summoned. With the help of the lightning based dragonling and its stunning effects, Rukia could go ham on the spiders in her area.

After taking those few seconds to assess the battlefield, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise and I immediately dove forward, somersaulting away from the pounce of another spider. I managed to pull off the maneuver and spun around, whipping my spear across my body and slashing with it.

The spider raised its right spear like leg to block the slash and stabbed out at me with the other. I let the spear rebound off of its block and used that momentum to bring around the butt and knock its counter attack to the side. I continued the movement, stepping to my right around the spider and bringing the blade in hard and fast. I stabbed it between the joints of its rear two legs, not doing much damage, but it damaged the joint and made the leg spasm.

The spider spun around, thrust out with both of its legs again. I managed to deflect one, but the other skittered off of my Ki armor with a squeal like metal on metal. One scale chipped and released a tiny puff of Ki. Even though its attacks couldn’t get through my three layers of defense, it could wear away at them, eventually making my Ki armor fail.

These fights were proving to be a lot tougher without using my Grace in Combat movement technique. It did so much more for me than just boosting my Agility. This spider was almost as fast as I was, and its skill with its natural weapons surpassed my skill with the spear. I had already used nearly a third of my Ki pool between the first two spiders and needed to manage my usage if I was to last against this horde of spiders… pack of spiders? Troup of spiders? Swarm? What does one call a bunch of spiders together?

I shook my head as I avoided another shot of webbing from a different spider trying to take me unawares. I needed to focus, and I needed to pump out more damage, even if it meant using more Ki than I liked. Hell, that was why I made the Ki batteries, wasn’t it?

I quickly checked the Ki pool in my spear. It still had all forty of its Ki, since I used my own Ki to power it so far. With a deep breath, I poured all of its stored Ki into the Sharpness binding. The edge of the spear’s head took on a dangerous gleam. The spear would consume one point of Ki per point of defense. It bypassed beyond the natural armor penetration it had, which meant that the first hit would completely ignore the Spider’s defense, but the second hit would be less effective.

I pushed the Ki through my Bone Meridian as fast as it could go, getting every bit of agility I could manage, and went on the offensive. The clamor of battle filled my ears as the Spider and I traded blows. Each strike being parried or blocked, dodging under and around blows I couldn’t deflect, until I had the right moment. I managed to knock one of the Spear-like forelimbs further to the side than before. A weak spot opened up where its forelimb connected to its thorax. I thrust my spear in as quick as a viper and managed to fully sever the leg at the same time as the Spearhead penetrated deeply into its soft inner tissues.

Since detonating ranged Ki attacks internally had been so effective before, I did it again and blew the spider up. Ignoring the gore raining down, I spun around and engaged another.

Rowan almost got snagged by another trapdoor spider, but fortunately for him, Slate had already been summoned. He used his massive stone like body to crush the spider like a… well, like a bug.

Aside from a few near misses like that, the fight was going fairly smoothly. Everyone managed to avoid the venomous bites, and any major injuries. It was all going well… until the spiders’ big brothers showed up.

Six absolutely humongous spiders skittered between the trees. They had bodies as thick as a fifty-gallon drum, only twice as long. Their legs extended nearly fifteen feet.

Fey Touched, Glimmersilk Spider

Hunter

Level 14

HP: 189/189

Stam: 324/324

Mana: 240/240

Def: 38

“Fuck me!” Kiara swore when she saw the incoming behemoths before immediately casting her root spell. The roots sprang up and wrapped themselves around one of the spider’s legs. The spider paused a moment from the impediment before ripping the roots and moving again. She only delayed it by only a second or two.

“How did you hold that bear back if these guys can rip through those roots so quickly?” I asked.

“My bloodline lets me strengthen the roots, but I have to be within range.”

“What’s the range?” I called over.

“Twenty feet. It’s not really meant for combat.” She called back.

“We will have to make do then.”

I took a quick glance at my resources to see what I was working with.

Health points: 130/130

Stamina: 225/325

Ki: 24/225

I still had full health thanks to my cracked Ki armor. I only had a little over ten percent of my Ki remaining. As I started pulling Ki from my Ki battery, I noticed my stamina. It was still over two-thirds full. Shit, I forgot to use my new Combat Arts. I had been using so much Ki to increase my armor penetration, but forgot that I have a combat art made specifically to help deal with that. Bakayarou!

Shaking my head at my utter stupidity, I pulled the seventy-five Ki from the Manticore claw Ki battery before putting it right back into my storage ring and topped myself off from the Knucklebone battery. It only had thirty-seven Ki left in it.

Since it had just enough Ki left in it, I dismissed my armor before quickly reforming it. It was pristine once again, with full durability and protection. I pulled thirty more Ki from the battery to top me off once again, leaving only seven Ki in it. I put it away and downed one of my stamina potions to top me off on everything. I gripped my spear, ready for the next round.

Magnus crushed the last of the spiders we were fighting and lined up with the rest of us. The Hunter Spiders were about two hundred feet away when they all leaped as one.