I found the next web and blazed that shit up. Following the trail of rippling fire, I walked straight into the Webspinner. It, in turn, walked straight into my torch. It reared up as its brother had, so I whirled my flail and slammed the skull up into its mouth. Venom and green blood sprayed the ceiling as the fanged maw tore open. The power of my blow knocked the spider onto its back where the legs kicked and the body writhed in an attempt to right itself. I dodged the web that spewed instinctively from its abdomen and hammered the soft underbelly with my glowing flail. The weak carapace crumbled and one more strike drained the last of its health. The legs spasmed, curling inward like a gnarled, eight fingered hand.

I shuddered with disgust, looted the corpse, and moved on to the next. An hour saw the first area cleansed with fire and flail. I’d replenished my waning health potions and built a sizeable collection of venom sacs and spider legs. Another spell had appeared and been ignored while I rampaged, trying to keep the rage fire stoked.

Item – Webslinger (common)

Type – Spell

Description – Casts a web from your wrist that has a chance to incapacitate an enemy. Pretty soon you’ll be swinging between buildings and kissing the girl while hanging upside down!

Requirements – Int 10

Effect – Enshrouds enemy with webbing for 5 minutes

Misc – Will not affect enemies that can create webs

Will not affect ethereal enemies

Will not affect bosses

I disregarded the spell as I lacked the prerequisites. If my character panel was to be believed, I could increase my stats to reach the desired number as I levelled up. What that would look like I had no idea. Classes and all the other categories were still a mystery that would hopefully become clear when, and if, I finished the tutorial.

Doubling back towards the passage to the next area, I gave the rage a quick blow with my bellows and continued. Halfway down, smaller webs started to appear. One had a small growth below the outer layer, a darker sack of thick web. Something shifted in the cyst and I staggered backwards. My torch ignited the cocoon and all hell broke loose as countless babies rained like droplets of fire; scattering in all directions as they perished around my feet.

“To hell with this place!”

I liberally incinerated every pod I found, ignoring the patter of tiny, burning bodies. My next discovery doused the rage with a bucket of ice water. The larger room was covered in thick webbing, but the worst part were the hanging bodies. At least a dozen of them swung lazily from their anchor points on the ceiling. My first reaction was to burn the whole world down and I held my torch to the nearest patch of floating gossamer. All that happened was it singed under the heat. No wild conflagration as the entire white blanket went up.

“Huh?”

I tried again with the same effect. It just blackened and curled inwards, refusing to catch fully.

“Damn.”

Reaching out gingerly with my right foot, I stepped on the web. Expecting to find it lacking adhesion, the bloody stuff pulled my shoe clean off as I drew my leg back. It took more effort than I care to admit to tear my little moccasin free. Wondering if bare skin may be less susceptible to the glue, I dropped my torch and put a fingertip to the web. The spot I’d touched was stuck fast to my finger and rose like a circus tent until finally my strength managed to pull it free.

I stood back, utterly confused. This was the only way forward.

“What the hell am I supposed to do then?”

I cringed as the vibrations from my outburst caused the entire room to flutter slightly. Raising my flail, I prepared to draw whatever emerged into the narrow passage and fight it there. The bodies swung. The web remained empty. Nothing charged at me.

“A little help here!”

The realm-jumping observers remained silent.

“Well, shit,” I huffed.

There was no way the aliens would make an impossible tutorial. Or would they? I only had Bart’s word to go on. There might be fifty of us, all staring at the impassable room with frustration. There might’ve been a hundred. Or a thousand.

“There has to be a way.”

I checked out my sparse clothing options.

Nothing there.

My weapons?

Similarly unhelpful.

I then opened the consumables and scanned through them one by one. All but the last had no discernible use in the circumstances. The ??? on the Spider Leg caught my attention. I summoned one from my pack and immediately dropped it. The outer layer of fur was like the bristles on my shaving brush, and I could feel the carapace below, hard and unyielding.

“Cook well to remove the fur…” I held my face in my hands. “Do I have to?”

Part of adventuring was to uncover secrets, be they an intricate lock or trap, or the effects of certain ingredients. My last effort had been less than stellar, and this was going to suck just as badly.

Creating a campfire with a ring of torches, I quashed my distaste and held the limbs over the flames. I’d been expecting a slow process of turning it like a hog on a spit, but as soon as the heat made contact the leg transformed into a darkened, fully cooked item.

It still looked vile.

I closed my eyes and tried to pretend it was anything other than a snapped off spider’s leg. My teeth made contact with the charred carapace and I tried to bite. It was so hard I damn near broke my incisors on the thing. Opting for a different strategy, I put it across my knee and snapped it in two. The limb broke apart like a lobster claw to reveal the steaming brown meat within. I sniffed at it and gagged. The smell was akin to boiling the beggar’s shoes in a stew with rotten onions.

“No way.”

Holding it at arm’s length, I wondered what to do.

“Think!” I muttered. If I could complete the entire Tomb Raider series, I could fathom the secrets of rank smelling meat.

And so I thought. And like the 3, no 4, wisdom wielding buffoon I was, I gradually remembered the quickslot bar. I didn’t need to physically eat it to consume the rancid food. It vanished into my pack and I activated the icon which appeared on my bar. My stomach felt slightly more full, but nothing else was apparent. I pulled up the consumable information.

Item – Spider Leg (common)

Type – Consumable

Description – One of the many legs that propel the monsters towards you. Cook well to remove the fur. You don’t want that in your teeth

Requirements – Str 3 Dex 3 Int 3

Effect – Provides the Web Walk ability. Webs no longer adhere to skin or clothing for a period of 1 hour.

Misc – Eating Spider Leg has a chance to provide immunity to poison for 1 hour.

I checked my status, but lacked the buff. Knowing what I faced, I sucked it up and created another five meals on my campfire. After consuming another two legs, my gut was bloated and I had my immunity.

It was time to see what the penultimate area had in store for me.

My foot ever so slowly lowered to the web as I tried my new buff. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust our new rulers. I just really didn’t trust them. The layer was springy, but no longer sticky. Thank the lord for experimentation.

“Waaaaait a minute.”

The effect made no mention of weapons. I backed out of the room and lowered my flail towards the webbing. This too remained free and I breathed a sigh of relief that their item writers had just made a mistake. Then I thought about it and the knowledge that the species putting us to the ultimate test weren’t infallible was a tad unsettling to say the least. Yes, it might’ve been a middling issue, but these things were space travelling realm hoppers. Advanced to the point of being godlike.

“Worry about it later.”

I skirted the room, ignoring the next passage. Where was the enemy? Apart from a few pods which went up as easily as the ones I’d already passed in the corridor, the room looked deserted.

“Fine by me.”

A series of twangs caused me to whirl round. The thick, silken threads holding the food aloft snapped in quick succession, causing the bodies to land in crumpled heaps on the web.

“No.”

The first began to move.

“Hell no!”

The rest joined in, quivering on the ground. Portions of their weaved, silken prisons crumbled, allowing the monstrosities which had once been human to stand up. The temptation to curl into a ball and suck my thumb until the bad things went away was overwhelming. My entire psyche vehemently denied their existence, they were that disgusting. Imagine if you will what it looks like to see the barely living remains of the spider’s meals. Portions of their bodies had been eaten away by acidic digestive juices. Muscles, organs, everything was in a state of partial devourment. The extracted life essence left their remaining skin sunken and brittle. As they moved towards me, the crackle of it splitting nearly finished me off.

“Kill… me…” one gurgled from a ravaged throat.

“Stay away from me!” I yelled, throwing my torch at the thing in panic.

The flame didn’t catch. Whatever had imprisoned these poor bastards used the same retardant webbing as the nest itself. I was five again, running from the fevered creations of my child’s nightmare. My feet felt like they were running on a trampoline’s mat, each laboured step sinking into the web.

“Help… ussss…”

Even though the chamber was relatively warm, I could feel icicles radiating through my nervous system. Facing the spiders themselves had been one thing. The rotting monstrosities following me were something else entirely. I knew that to kill them would be a mercy, but that would mean getting close enough to fight them. And that would entail seeing the horrific fate that awaited me if they should initiate me into their ranks.

Driven by my revulsion, I summoned my rat minions. I assumed correctly that they would become trapped as they had no way of consuming the specialised meat I’d cooked. Instead, I kited the gathered monsters through the rodent’s scrabbling ranks. Though ensnared, they gamely tore at the lower limbs of several of the passing human husks. Three of the things collapsed amidst the swarm from the sustained damage and were swiftly dealt with. Their death rattles were a joyous gurgle as my summons released them from their living hell. I hesitated at the awful sound. They were victims, not enemies in the traditional sense. Fighting with my shrieking flight response, I cautiously approached one of the figures. One of her eyes was missing, and her jaundiced yellow skin tore at the cheeks as she tried to speak. Her arms snaked out and began to claw at me in desperation. I pushed her away when one of her fingers raked down my face, cutting me deeply from the exposed bone.

Though pitiable, they were still dangerous.

A second man tore at my shirt, his gaping mouth alive with movement. Unable to scream or beg, he coughed up balls of baby spiders which hit the ground and flooded towards me. I swept my torch back and forth, burning them as I retreated. My instinctive horror was slowly being replaced by an overwhelming sorrow at their indescribable existence. Swinging my flail, I cracked the man in the head, triggering the familiar crit to flash. His health had dropped by half. Another whirling blow and he dropped to the webbing, his hive body splitting open to reveal thousands of eggs and recent hatchlings. I darted out of the way and pushed my inventory to the limits, spamming torches as fast as I could. Forming a ten foot wide circle of flame, I had my protection from the vile little creatures.

Across the room, my spell vanished into blue smoke. I waited within my protective ring, crushing the skulls of the meandering foe as they approached. Only one more of the bodies proved to be an incubator to the spiderlings, and they burned themselves up trying to get to me.

I stood in the cleared room, looked at the corpses, and sat down heavily. I could tell myself that they weren’t real until the cows came home, but my brain wasn’t playing ball. I could feel the woman’s skeletal finger as it had opened up my cheek. I could feel the jarring impact through the magical links of my mace as skull met skull. No matter how often I repeated the mantra of they’re not real, I was a prisoner of my mind’s refusal to concede the point. That being the case, I would need to adapt my approach and harden my heart. The question occurred to me as I sat there. What was I going to be like at the end of this journey? Would I even recognise myself? The psychological assault, regardless of its validity, was already leaving me wrung out.

“I need a drink,” I sighed, leaving the loot behind as I headed back to the safe room.