I plummeted through the air.

  A glance above told me how this had happened. I could see one of the royal guards hovering near where my line had been only a moment before. It seemed to be gloating. If ants could gloat. The wind whistled past as I fell, my heart racing. I frantically tried to shoot another web line, but pain lanced through my body, reminding me of the damage to my innards. The pain threw off my balance as my vision wavered, and I couldn't aim properly.

  The ground was rushing up to meet me, the intricate network of tunnels below becoming clearer with each passing second. I needed to think fast or I'd be nothing more than a splatter on the cavern floor. Something deep inside me raged in that moment. A wrath I had never known before coming to this strange place filled my veins with lightning and flame. The animal instinct to live? To survive at all costs? Above me, one of the two guards that was still airborne was following me down, intent on spearing my body into the ground. Snarling through the pain, I fired off a thick clump of webbing despite the screaming of my insides, and this time I hit my target.

  The face of the royal Guard.

  The guard flailed through the air, unable to see past the webbing that covered its eyes and antennae. A moment later, the guard slammed into me. The pair of us careened through the air, spinning rapidly, bleeding off the force of the impact. I took advantage of the guard's inability to see as it flailed its pincers blindly. My heart pounded frantically as I flipped us around, pointing the body of the royal guard at the ground. I hoped like hell this would work; otherwise, we'd both be a splatter on the ground.

  Like bugs on a bumper. The manic edge to my thoughts surprised even me. For a moment, I thought I had been in human form; I might have been grinning.

  The impact was bone-shattering. The royal guard's exoskeleton cracked and splintered beneath me, absorbing most of the force. Still, the shock reverberated through my body, and I felt something give way inside me. A strangled cry escaped me as we hit the ground, bouncing then rolling and tumbling across the cavern floor.

  When we finally came to a stop, I lay there gasping, my vision swimming. The pain was overwhelming, threatening to drag me into unconsciousness. But I couldn't afford to black out, not here, not now. I forced myself to focus, to breathe through the agony. If it weren't for the pain I'd experienced, first in the web of the Spider, and then all the fights up until this moment, I would have succumbed then and there.

  Instead, slowly, I pushed myself up, but one of my rear legs buckled, the chitin shattering under the joint. A hissing scream ripped its way out of my spider mouth. The agony tried to drag me kicking and screaming into unconsciousness once again. The pain itself is what kept me awake. I glanced back to see one of my legs on the ground, completely snapped off. Bile burbled in my guts as a wave of nausea washed over me at the sight of one of my limbs severed from me. I couldn't think about that right now. I could hear the buzzing getting closer again. I felt a screen try to open to announce something, but I flicked it away to look at later. I had neither the time nor the mental bandwidth to deal with it right now. All my focus was on surviving.

  My gaze landed on the remaining royal guard as it approached from the air. It seemed somehow more cautious this time, as if the entrapment and demise of its companions had suffered had caused it to reevaluate the level of threat I posed to it and, by extension, its queen. The thought made me want to grin despite the pain I was in.

  That's right, four levels lower than you, without any direct combat Skills. I squashed one of you, and the other one is hanging in a death trap. You should be worried.

  The bit of bravado helped keep me sane through the agony as I prepared for the coming fight. The guard landed on the ground a few dozen feet away from me. This was not a good situation for me. I was tired and hurt, more hurt than I had ever been before in my life, while my enemy was more or less fresh and uninjured. We stood silent, staring at each other, ant versus spider. In the nature I knew the conclusion would have been forgone in most cases, but that was not the case here.

  The silence was broken. I screeched in anger, charging the ant across from me as instinct took over. The royal guard seemed taken aback by my sudden aggression, hesitating for a split second before it reared up, its mandibles clacking menacingly as I barreled towards it. My charge was clumsy, hindered by my missing leg and the searing pain that shot through my body with every movement. I couldn't afford to show weakness now. As I closed the distance, the guard lunged forward, its pincers snapping at my face. I ducked under the attack, feeling the rush of air as they passed just inches above my head. Using my momentum, I slammed my body into the guard's thorax, my remaining legs scrabbling for purchase on its smooth exoskeleton.

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  The impact sent us both tumbling to the ground in a tangle of limbs. We rolled across the cavern floor, each trying to gain the upper hand. The guard's strength was immense, its armoured body unyielding beneath me. But I had desperation on my side, and I had more limbs even if I was down one. Every single one of the spider limbs I possessed was a deadly weapon on its own, while the ant had to rely on its pincers and mandibles. As we stumbled, I speared the ant's thorax with my other limbs, my legs skittered off the hard chitin that made up the ant's body. Using my forelimbs to defend myself from its pincers and mandibles was all I could do until there was an opening, batting its pincers away so they couldn't get a grip and threatening its vulnerable mouth with a thrust from one of my forelegs. For a time, we battered at each other with our weaponized limbs, struggling for an advantage. Anything to break the stalemate. Away from the queen, as we were, we were damn near even in stats; I might even have had the slightest edge, I couldn't be sure without [Analyze]. There was no time for that in the mad brawl.

  One of my lower limbs found a chink in the chitin armour that covered the ant's thorax. I rammed it in with all my might, spearing its guts. The ant let out a horrid screech, rearing back in utter agony. I seized the opportunity, pushing my advantage. With a burst of strength I didn't know I had left, I rammed two other legs into the same weak spot, widening the gap in its armour. The guard thrashed violently, its pincers snapping wildly in the air as it tried to dislodge me. But I held on, driving my legs deeper into its body.

  The guard's movements became more frantic, more desperate. I could feel its life ebbing away with each passing second. But I couldn't let up, not now. I had to make sure it was dead. I could see hatred in its black eyes. It knew it was dying, knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt; the damage to its innards was too much. Even if it killed me, it would follow me to the grave. The ant twisted in my grasp, and its mandibles managed to lock around one of my forelegs. I struggled desperately to avoid losing another leg, screeching at the ant in my grip, but it was unwilling to go to whatever afterlife bugs went to without making me pay for it.

  As the mandibles clamped down on my leg, I could feel the sharp edges digging into my exoskeleton. It was a searing pain, as if my entire leg was being crushed in a vice. The pressure of the ant's mandibles was intense, crushing and grinding against my leg as it attempted to sever it. I could feel the sharp points of its teeth puncturing my exoskeleton and scraping against my tender flesh.

  The mandibles felt like jagged knives, piercing through the hard outer shell of the leg and digging into the softer tissue underneath.

  The sound was a sickening symphony, a chorus of crushing and cracking that echoed through the air as the mandibles tore through the sturdy armour of my leg. Lost in a mixture of rage and agony, I returned the favour, snatching a flailing pincer with my own mandibles. My mandibles didn't have the strength to sever the thick appendage, but my fangs could pierce its armour and deliver a deadly payload of venom.

  Suddenly, the guard stiffened, then jerked again before it went limp beneath me. Its legs twitched a few times, then fell still. I waited a moment longer, my heart pounding in my ears, before I finally released my grip and stumbled back. Apparently, the venom had been the last straw for its heavily taxed internal systems. I stood there, panting heavily, my body trembling from exhaustion and pain. I had come closer to death here than ever before, and the wounds and missing limbs of my spider body were a reflection of that. I had become too confident in my spider form after all the time I'd spent hunting the first floor. Not consciously but perhaps subconsciously, I'd let myself forget too much of the idea of loss and death. Right up until it had stared me in the face.

  Running on an instinctual autopilot, I tagged the bodies of both royal guards and accepted the prompts for loot without examining them. I'd look it over later. Right now, I was hurting, exhausted, wounded. Weak. I needed to crawl into a dark hole somewhere so I could lick my wounds and recover. I let instinct take over, and it carried me to the wall of the cavern and up into the air.

  My vision was fuzzy and dark at the edges as I made my way ever higher, until I reached the ceiling of the cavern and could go no higher. Unfortunately, I couldn't sleep just yet; instinct demanded a safe place to rest, or as safe as I could get. I squeezed out several web lines, my insides screaming in agony the entire time. I stretched them out across a corner of the cavern, running on autopilot. There was no thinking at this point, only doing. One action, then the next, one after the other. Eventually, I had a well-secured web, a little hideaway nest.

  I slumped down onto the web, utterly exhausted as the last dregs of adrenaline fled my body. Everything felt brittle, even my mind, like panic raged just underneath the surface. Only a thin layer between my fragile psyche and unfettered madness. This fight had nearly been the end of me. I'd lost limbs. I had no idea if they would grow back or not. Would I be a cripple when I returned to my human form?

  Missing an arm and a leg?

  I laid there on my web far above the cavern, looking down at the beautiful vista it presented. My mind skittered away from those thoughts, not truly willing to examine that dark pit in more detail right now. Unwilling to disturb whatever monster might lie beneath that darkness. That way lay only madness. Instead, I focused on the view; it really was fantastical, straight out of a fantasy novel. Those were my last delirious thoughts as the blackness of unconsciousness took me. Underneath it all, however, the strange part of me that reveled in conflict was purring, content.

  One more time, I had escaped death and snatched victory.