Left had been the wrong path to take, despite what labyrinthian tales might have informed her. This way be poachers. She was running through the hot trees, her breath at a low, quiet rhythm. Her hair was sticking to her back, the tight ponytail swishing. She was nervous. The trees were familiar aliens, in the same way that a theme park costumed character was familiar yet wrong. They, like everything else when the Ysari System hit, had gotten bigger, stronger, and in some cases, much more animate. She kept her eyes on them as she ran.

Movement in the tree ahead. She grimaced and counted down until she ran over a tall, dead stump, fallen in some forgotten storm. Leaping to the top of the lop in a fluid motion, she attached a web to the log with the ball of her foot as she landed, connecting the other end to the trunk of the tree ahead, about thirty feet up. Even as she landed and connected both ends of the line, she was tucking herself into a crouch, still on the log. She activated her skill.

She abruptly shot forward over the web, her crouched form shooting over the web line, still balanced on the one foot, like a wooden duck moving across a shooting gallery. She was much faster than even the most rigged of carnival shooting galleries, however. She reached the higher tree trunk in less than a second, and immediately snapped the short sword out of the leather sheath at her side, slicing deeply into the side of the man sitting in the tree. She felt the sword slice cleanly through two ribs, puncturing both lungs. She twisted the blade on the way out, releasing the air from his lungs entirely before he could scream, using her foot to stop the massive rifle he had been aiming from falling out of the tree. She grabbed the back of his head and attached a short, permanent web to the tree, holding him in place.

She looked him up and down. Typical poacher. No, wait. Maybe not typical. She looked briefly at the string of teeth around his neck. Maybe not just a poacher. This one has been active for longer than the rest. She looked him over for other equipment, and aside from a few coins with an elephant skull on them, found nothing. She snapped each massive bullet she found open, letting the contents spill on the ground. The poachers had no way to replace these, and some only had primitive weapons. She worked as quickly as any four people, and the bullets were soon ruined. She closed her eyes and activated another skill, shivering as she felt her mana drain to almost nothing.

She focused on the information World Wide Web was giving her. As much as she hated the name of the skill, this was definitely one of her most useful skills. There were none she had met who could hide from her while this skill was active, and the longer her poor opponents let it continue, the worse it would get for them.

Fourteen seconds had passed since her leap to the top of the log.

The first effects of her skill began to intensify. The strands of ghostlike spiderweb that were stretched from tree to tree, branch to branch, and from the ground to both were beginning to become numerous enough to glisten in the moonlight. Soon, they would become difficult to move through.

For you, she thought, pointing one of her fingers just so.

Finally.

She touched the chest of the man in the tree, attaching a web, and then propelled the end of the web out towards the man hiding in the thorny mammoth eucalyptus (as she was calling them, and who could gainsay her?). The web connected and she gave a small tug on it. “Gotcha!”, she yelled, cupping her hand. She heard him cry out as the line tightened. She gave another small yank and said “oh crap!” a little too loud, giving a small amount of slack on the line.

As she expected, the man yanked on the web with all of his strength, pulling the dead man from the tree. She yelled “Agh!” in her best imitation of a person caught off-guard as the corpse crashed down through the branches. She hoped her voice wasn’t too high, but there was nothing she could do about that. The man in the tree gave another good series of yanks, but he realized that the mass at the other end wasn’t moving after it hit the ground with a piercing crack.

“Yes! So hungry... Thank you!”

He hopped down to collect the corpse before something else decided to make a meal of it. Hunts were no good if the prey couldn’t be collected, and that was getting harder and harder, these days. They had been hungry. He got out of the tree silently and approached the mass at the end of the web, using the strand to guide him. He didn’t dare activate a light until he got closer. This body was bigger than he thought. And the armor… Where was her stealth gear? How did how she sneak around them so easily and so often? He rolled the corpse over and then fell back, the shock on his face matching that of his friend. He was still backing up in shock when the blade pierced his neck from behind, cutting his spinal cord and killing him instantly.

She cleaned her blade off on his pants and then searched him, as well. This one had an ivory coin with the same elephant skull on them. She pocketed it, as well as the four golden ones he had, each also bearing the image of the elephant skull.

She stood up and started running again. She had to make it back to the facility. She hadn’t been far outside originally, but everything got so much bigger… Meters had become kilometers. She could still see the reflection of the main dish on top of the facility broadcast station, a small building roughly forty meters from the main building. It had been her main guiding star on her quest to resume her post.

It didn’t take long for her to reach her destination. She had chosen to go left around the massive rift that had appeared behind her back out of nowhere right after the Ysari System Notification, rather than brave the newly-extant mountain range bordering the other side of the rift. She had been hoping it would be less wide further on, there would be a bridge, or that she would get lucky and the facility she was tasked with guarding would be on the same side of the rift as her. She stared in dismay at the massive “science facility” perched on the edge of a cliff on the opposite side. The dish itself was rooted in the ground on her side (though it seemed to have grown and covered itself in runes, which she ignored), but the broadcast building was nowhere to be seen.

There is no possible way my webs can reach all the way across that. Not without them getting me. She looked at the distant forms of the massive birds flapping in the mist of the rift below. They were much faster than they looked. She had tried her luck before, hoping to cross from a narrow outcropping, but the birds had been slashing at her with their half-meter long claws before she had made it more than a few feet out of the tree cover, and well before she made it over the edge.

Thank god. If I had been further out, they would have ripped me to pieces.

She sighed. It was time to get moving. The poachers were gaining power just like she was, and the facility was going to be hard to protect from the increased threat. The group of meth-heads that lived out a few dozen kilometers from the edge of the rather expansive grounds of the facility had changed, just like many of the more extreme human elements of society.

Her smartphone had died two or three days ago, but she had read every update she could before that. Some people, usually the more extreme of a person, ...changed. She had heard that one of the larger cartels had changed, every single one of them, into Dark Elves, actual purple-skinned, white-haired, red-eyed Dark Elves immediately after the YS came online. It had reportedly been disastrous for undercover operatives, who did not transform. After a report of a group of ISIS-related extremists transforming into orcs, her phone had died, so she hadn’t heard about any others… but she could tell them about one, though it … wasn’t quite the same..

Poachers. They looked uncannily similar to humans, but the differences were obvious once you knew what to look for. The first thing to look for was the single, painted yellow eye in the middle of their forehead. It wasn’t actually paint. It was the pollen of a plant, very similar to a particularly tall Hibiscus flower. It was easy to kill, on its own. You just chopped it down and didn’t let it touch you. The trick, though, was that it released a sweet odor, prompting many to either attempt to smell it or to try to eat it. If a victim got close enough, it would latch on to their head, releasing the pollen.

Then they were a poacher. She had seen a few plants that had small animals and even one that had a deer. She had no idea where the plant controlling these poachers was, or it would already have been burnt to the roots.

She started her run again. She didn’t want to deal with any more poachers. It was getting too easy to kill them, and they seemed to be focusing on gathering new converts, rather than continuing to harass her. I’m going to have to find the plant and kill it, she thought grimly. It’ll just get harder and harder if I wait.

She picked up her pace.

Eight-Legged Ranger Often confused with assassins, trapmasters, or normal rangers, the targets of an Eight-Legged Ranger discover their error as their surroundings grow more perilous, their enemies chitter ever louder, and the shadows become pregnant with fangs. As you follow the natural path of the spider, your senses will begin to expand, you will find that barriers are less able to bar you, and wounds you inflict rot even as they bleed. +1 AGI, +1 AURA, +1 SP per level, in addition to other bonuses. Web Immunity You are not affected by spider webs, mundane or magical, whether or not they are your own. Create Webs You may generate webs from any part of your body at a cost of one mana per three meters (1 Ma/10’). You must be touching at least one point the web is anchored to, but the opposite end may be anchored to any point within one meter per point of AURA. The webs last one hour per level. For three times the mana cost, you may create a permanent web. Webs share the STR of the creator at the time of creation. Web Skate You may move along a web you are touching, maintaining the position of any limb or section of your body that you choose not to move. Movement speed increases with your class level.