The spider hit the dirt like it had been shot from a cannon.
Eight legs, hair?bristled and long as fence rails, slammed down and pushed all at once. The packed earth of the pit shuddered under it. Its abdomen swung low, heavy as a soaked saddlebag, and its head—if you could call that clustered knot of eyes and fangs a head—tilted toward him.
The crowd above leaned in.
Leaves rustled. Cloaks whispered. A hundred smooth faces with too?bright eyes watched him, hungry for blood and pleased that it wasn’t theirs.
The boy’s boots dug into the dirt.
He reached for the one weapon he still had.
[Beastmaster’s Spear].
The spider sprang again. It was a straight, brutal burst of motion—forward, forward, forward—its legs blurring in a driving rhythm that made the world jump.
He moved sideways.
He didn’t outrun a thing built to run him down. He stepped off the line. He made it miss.
The spider sailed past where his chest had been. Its front legs stabbed at empty air, claws scraping dirt. Its body had too much weight and too much momentum; it could not stop on a dime.
And when it tried to turn—
It was slow.
The whole bulk had to swing around, abdomen dragging like a wagon with a broken axle. Its legs—fast going forward—had to reposition to pivot. It skittered sideways, awkward as a cow in mud.
The boy’s eyes narrowed.
There.
He drove the spear into the nearest leg joint.
The point bit with a wet crunch—not into hard shell, but into the soft place where chitin met meat. The leg jerked. Hair shook. A spray of dark fluid splattered the spearhead and hissed faintly where it hit the dirt.
The crowd made a displeased noise.
Boos, sharp and rising. Curses.
The boy didn’t look up.
He yanked the spear free, hands sliding on the shaft slick with whatever passed for blood in that thing, and moved again before the spider could answer.
It lunged forward.
Fast. Straight. Always straight.
He stepped aside. It missed. It tried to turn.
He stabbed another leg.
This one cracked louder, a splintering snap that made the spider’s body dip. One of its long limbs folded wrong for an instant, then tried to hold weight anyway. It wobbled, legs scrabbling to keep it from tipping.
The boy backed, spear leveled, breath steady.
He could feel the blue dome overhead humming faintly, like an iron pot held too close to a fire. He could feel eyes on him from every direction, and the staff?elf’s cold presence above the pit, watching for the moment the beast finally got to tear him open.
That wasn’t going to happen if he could help it.
The spider rushed again, fangs clicking. It tried to cut him off instead of simply charging—its front legs stabbing down like spears, trying to pin him in place long enough for its mouth to reach him.
The boy ducked under one stabbing leg, felt bristles brush his hair, and jabbed up into the underside.
The spear didn’t bite deep this time. It slid along a hard plate and skittered away in a shower of pale sparks—some faint magic in the spearhead refusing to dull.
He shifted his grip.
He got his feet under him, waited—one breath, two—and when the spider committed to another forward burst he stepped aside hard and struck like a man chopping wood.
The spearhead hooked into the leg’s thick base. He didn’t have an axe, but he had leverage and Strength enough to make the world listen.
He wrenched.
The leg tore.
The sound was sickening—wet fibers ripping, chitin cracking like thin ice. The spider shrieked, a high keening scrape that didn’t sound like any animal he’d ever heard. It staggered, weight shifting wrong. Its body dropped on that side, legs scrambling in frantic correction.
The crowd roared—half delight, half anger. They wanted him afraid. They wanted him bleeding. Instead he was dismantling their monster like a butcher taking apart a hog.
“Accursed!” someone screamed from above. “Filth!”
He ignored it.
The spider tried a different trick then.
It lifted its front half and spat.
A line of pale thread whipped out, glistening, arcing toward his chest. It didn’t look like much—just a cord, thin as fishing line—but it hit the dirt near his boot and stuck like it had been nailed. Another shot followed, then another, crisscrossing.
Web.
He jumped back, boot tearing free of the sticky line with a sharp tug that yanked at his ankle. The thread stretched, refused, then snapped with a dry crackle.
Good. It could break.
He rushed forward before the spider could lay down more.
The thing’s mouth opened wide, fangs like knives. It snapped, trying to catch him in those jaws.
He didn’t give it that.
He drove the spear forward and jammed the head into the space between fang and mouth, wedging it. The spider’s jaws clamped down hard on iron. The shaft vibrated in his hands.
He braced.
The spider pushed.
It was strong—stronger than any animal ought to be. The boy’s boots furrowed the dirt as it tried to shove him backward into its web lines. He felt the spear flex just a hair.
His arms held.
He twisted his wrists and ripped the spear sideways, tearing the head free of the jaws. The iron edge scraped across one fang and left a bright notch. The spider recoiled and shrieked, spitting thread in a useless spray that sizzled when it hit the spearhead.
That recoil was slow.
Turning was slow.
He took the gift.
He slid in under the front legs, close enough to smell the thing—wet rot and sour earth and something metallic—and drove the spear up.
Into the belly.
The spearhead punched through the underside plate with a wet, heavy pop. The spider convulsed. Its legs spiked. Its whole body jerked like a puppet yanked by cruel hands.
The boy didn’t stop there.
He ran the spear.
Diagonal. Hard. Like opening a rabbit from breastbone to gut.
The iron edge sliced. The spider’s belly split open.
Dark fluid poured out in a rush, thick and stinking, along with pale glistening sacks that burst as they hit air. The thing’s legs flailed, scraping the dirt into furrows. Its shriek rose, broke, and fell into a low rattling hiss.
Then it went still.
The pit held a strange quiet for half a heartbeat.
Then the crowd hissed.
Boos rolled down from the stands. The staff?elf’s voice rose above it and for a moment the noise bent around him.
The boy didn’t hear what he said.
He was watching the new message from the System.
New beast bound: [Giant Spider]
[Bestiary] updated!
The boy’s eyes flicked inward, quick as a blink.
Bestiary (4)
[Dire Wolf] – Rank I – Level 1
[Reaper Lizard] – Rank II – Level 1
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[Bison latifrons] – Rank II – Level 1
[Giant Spider] – Rank II – Level 1
Traits: Webspinner, Wall?Climber, Venom Bite.
Affinity: Level 1
Status: Resting. Unsummoned.
Despite the new addition, the corpse stayed.
It lay there split open, legs crooked, belly spilling its foul insides into the dirt. Nothing about it disappeared. Nothing about it looked like magic had stolen it away.
Above, the elves booed harder, like their anger could do what their monsters couldn’t.
Good.
They didn’t know that every beast they threw at him was another set of teeth and claws he could tuck away for later, like cartridges in a pocket.
He kept his face blank.
Kept his breathing steady.
Kept his hands on the spear.
Level up!
Level 12 achieved.
All attributes +1
4 free points awarded.
He knew immediately where those four new points were going.
Vitality. Vitality. Vitality. Vitality.
The more of it he had, the less likely he was to die.
Above, someone screamed in Elvish and threw something.
The staff?elf raised his staff.
The crowd quieted again, not because they were done being angry, but because they wanted the next thing. They wanted their satisfaction.
The staff?elf’s eyes looked down at the boy with a disgust that felt practiced.
“You live,” he said, voice carrying. “And you feed the Grove with filth.”
The boy’s fingers tightened on the spear shaft.
He didn’t correct him.
Let them keep thinking that.
The staff?elf turned his staff slightly, pointing toward an arch in the root wall on the far side of the pit.
Roots shifted.
The opening widened like a mouth.
A wet smell rolled out.
The crowd murmured, eager again.
Something huge moved in the dark beyond.
A toad came through.
No—too small a word.
It was the size of a wagon, squat and massive, skin mottled with sick greens and browns like swamp scum. One eye sat in the center of its skull, bulging and lidless, round as a plate. Above that eye, two curved horns swept back like a bull’s, ridged and dark.
Its mouth sagged wide.
And from that mouth, a massive tongue uncoiled.
Long as a man was tall and thicker than a rope, barbed along the edges, dripping green slime that hung in strings and fell in slow drops to the dirt. Where the slime hit, the earth smoked faintly and went dark.
Venom, the boy thought immediately.
Or worse.
The toad’s one eye fixed on him. Its throat pulsed. Its body squatted—coiled like a spring.
The staff?elf smiled thinly.
“Begin,” he said.
The toad struck.
Not with teeth.
With the tongue.
It snapped out with a whip?crack hiss, barbs gleaming, slime flying. The boy threw himself aside and felt the tip of it brush his sleeve.
His shirt smoked where it touched.
Pain flared on his skin, quick and sharp, like someone had pressed a hot nail to him.
He gritted his teeth and rolled to his feet, spear up.
The toad’s tongue recoiled, slapping wetly back into its mouth.
Then it struck again.
Straight. Direct. Predictable.
Fast, but not clever.
The boy’s eyes narrowed.
He could work with that.
He danced just out of reach, forcing the toad to commit, forcing it to show him the path of that tongue again and again. Each strike came with the same twitch of its throat, the same forward lurch of its heavy head.
The crowd hissed at him for not being caught.
They wanted him dragged in. They wanted him pinned. They wanted him dead for being a Hollow.
The tongue snapped again.
He stepped inside its line.
For half a heartbeat the barbed cord was stretched taut between the toad’s mouth and empty air.
That was his moment.
He struck.
A clean, hard cut with the spearhead’s edge, like cutting a rope.
The iron bit.
The tongue came off.
For an instant it hung in the air, severed end spraying green slime like a burst bladder. Then it slapped to the ground with a wet thump, still twitching.
The toad shrieked and bellowed at once, a raw wail that vibrated the pit walls. Its one eye bulged wider. Its horns shook.
Green liquid erupted from its mouth in a panicked geyser.
It sprayed in an arc, splattering the dirt. Where it hit, the earth hissed and smoked, bubbling like lye poured on flesh. A splash caught the boy’s boot and ate into the leather, sizzling.
He jerked back, heart kicking.
“Son of a bitch,” he hissed under his breath, and moved fast.
The toad thrashed.
Without its tongue—without its one clean weapon—it lost whatever control it had. It began to jump, heavy and random, slamming its bulk into the ground with impacts that rattled his teeth. Each landing sent more green liquid sloshing out of its mouth and the torn stump of its tongue.
The pattern was gone now.
All that was left was a panicking, wagon-sized animal.
That was worse in a different way.
The boy circled, keeping distance, looking for an opening that wouldn’t get him splashed.
One jump.
Another.
The toad’s body slammed down near the spider corpse and crushed it under one heavy flank with a wet crunch. Chitin snapped. Dark fluid smeared.
The boy’s eyes flicked up to the blue dome for half a heartbeat.
No way out.
Not yet.
He brought his gaze back down and watched the toad.
Its mouth gaped and gushed again, green spray fanning wide.
He took three quick steps back, boots slipping in damp earth, and felt a sting on his forearm—one tiny drop of that bile had kissed his skin.
Pain hit like fire.
His flesh whitened at the spot, then reddened, blistering fast.
The boy ignored the pain as it dulled quickly, his high Vitality stat hard at work at healing him.
The toad jumped again, but this time it landed wrong—one heavy leg slipping in the bubbling patch it had made. Its body listed. Its horns dug into dirt. For a heartbeat its eye was low, its mouth open, throat pulsing with another panicked gush.
That was enough.
The boy didn’t hesitate.
He ran in.
Two steps, three—
And then he threw the spear. He put his whole body into it, toes to shoulder, like he’d done with the dire wolf in the snow, like he’d done with the Tyrant Lizard King before it killed him in the Hunt. The motion was clean.
It punched into the toad’s face just below the horn ridge, driving through soft meat and into whatever passed for a skull. The impact snapped the head back. The toad’s one eye bulged, then went glassy.
Its body shuddered.
Green liquid dribbled, then stopped.
The crowd made a noise of pure displeasure.
The toad toppled sideways with a heavy, wet thud that shook dust up like smoke.
The boy stood there, chest heaving, hands empty for a heartbeat.
He stepped forward cautiously, boot skirting a patch of bubbling green.
The toad lay still.
The spear jutted from its skull like a black flag.
New beast bound: [Giant One?Eyed Plague Toad]
[Bestiary] updated!
His mind flicked inward.
Bestiary (5)
[Dire Wolf] – Rank I – Level 1
[Reaper Lizard] – Rank II – Level 1
[Bison latifrons] – Rank II – Level 1
[Giant Spider] – Rank II – Level 1
[Giant One?Eyed Plague Toad] – Rank III – Level 1
Traits: Barbed Tongue, Caustic Bile, Horned Charge.
Affinity: Level 1
Status: Resting. Unsummoned.
A good beast to have behind him when it came time to break something.
The corpse of the toad lay there bleeding green and gold in places, spear still in its head, belly heaving once and then not at all.
The Elves booed him again. They shouted and cursed again. The boy didn’t really care. Send in all the beasts they could muster and he’d walk out of here with an army.
Their voices rose together, chanting, “kill, kill, kill!”
And then.
“Executioner!”
Another took it up.
“Executioner!”
The chant spread like wildfire.
The staff?elf’s eyes narrowed. He lifted his staff higher, and the air over the pit hummed. The crowd quieted just enough to hear him, though their mouths still twitched with wanting.
“We do not waste our blades on filth,” he said, voice tight. “Executioners are not summoned for every low creature that crawls into the light. They are—”
A new sound cut through him.
A sharp, furious inhale.
The boy recognized the voice. He’d heard it before–spoken to it.
“Summon it.”
The crowd went still in some form of reverence.
The stands shifted. Elves leaned back to make room. A little gap opened in the front tier like reeds parting for a boat.
Princess Imrahil stepped into view.
She did not glide now.
She limped.
One leg moved stiffly, wrapped in pale cloth and what looked like living bark braced into a crude splint. The other… was unnatural. Gone from mid?thigh down, the place where the Colt’s ball had taken it. Something had been fitted there—wood grown into a shape that tried to mimic a limb, strapped with vine and cloth, but it didn’t move like flesh.
Her face was tight with pain and rage both. Her green eyes shone brighter than they had by the fire, burning with hatred.
If he had the Colt he would’ve shot off her other leg.
She stared down into the pit.
At him.
He saw her gaze flick to the spear. To the corpses. To the fact that he was still standing.
Something in her mouth curled like a blade.
The staff?elf lowered his head a fraction, the motion small but unmistakable.
“Princess,” he said.
“Summon the Executioner,” Imrahil hissed.
The staff?elf’s jaw worked. For half a heartbeat it looked like he might argue again, like he might try to protect whatever rules he had left.
Then he inclined his head.
“As you command,” he said.
He lifted the staff and struck it against the grown platform once.
A booming sound rang down into the pit like a church bell.
Roots along the far wall shivered. The archway there—where the spider and the toad had come through—widened again.
But this time, the dark behind it was cold.
And something heavy moved inside it.
A foot stepped out.
Then another.
The ground trembled under the weight.
A figure emerged—massively tall, shoulders brushing the upper curve of the arch, covered head to toe in thick metal plates. Riveted. Layered like a walking fortress.
It carried axes.
One in each hand, enormous, double?bladed things, their heads as wide as wagon wheels, edges catching the daylight in cold, murderous flashes.
The crowd sucked in a collective breath.
The boy’s fingers flexed.
His Beastmaster’s Spear was back in his hands.
He looked up at Imrahil.
She leaned forward on her ruined leg, face twisted with venom, and screamed down into the arena with all the spite of a dying world.
“Kill that lowly insect!”
