Chapter 38

  A Land of Dust and Bunnies?

  Mountains of dust littered with splintered shards of wood, pennies, sticky black masses, and lint filled his view. Spiders the size of buses lurked in the gloom, striking down unsuspecting dust mites whenever they strayed too near their webbed holes.

  By the light of his glowing skin, Elijah couldn’t see an end to the dirtbag world that existed inside the Great Power Vacuum. The prevalence of dark mana motes that tasted like space made him suspect that there was some dimensional magic at work here, though he couldn’t know for sure.

  If that were the case, he had no shot at making it out of here before his Health dropped to zero. It was already 150—

  A shooting pain impaled him, worse than the last, and his Health lowered to 140, his Stamina to 70, and his Mana to 50. The only saving grace: his Slimy Trait was finally removed.

  For the first time in months, he could feel the air brush against his skin without a viscous layer of goop covering him. He felt glorious, free, and oddly vulnerable all at once.

  There was no time to dwell, however; time was short. Elijah needed to focus on finding a way to survive; that was what this Trial was all about, after all.

  There was no end to the dustscape; it appeared to go on forever. Escape wasn’t an option, or at least, he didn’t think he could cut his way out, like he had assumed when he was tumbling his way in.

  He had to find some way to stay alive. As far as he could tell, there was nothing but litter and rubbish; not a thing stood out to him. There was no fountain of health, healing potions, or shelter from the constant vacuuming breeze that still tugged at his hair and depleted him of his power.

  That was when Elijah remembered something. In survival documentaries, people often followed rivers in search of life; why wouldn’t that work for him?

  True, there were no streams of water to run alongside, but far above, there was the current of wind motes that coloured the sky. The only question was: which way to go?

  If he went against the flow, to the source of the torrent, he would find himself at the opening he had been sucked through. Elijah hadn’t been able to fight against the vacuum when he still had all his Attributes; why would he fare any better now?

  No, the only option was to follow the air mana to wherever the suction force was coming from and hope it led him out of here.

  Elijah worked through all this in less than a second and took off without delay. His feet moved quickly; his stats may have been reduced, but they couldn’t fall below 10, the limit for a normal human, according to the System.

  That meant the teen had the speed of Usain Bolt and the Endurance of Mo Farah. Despite that, progress was frustratingly slow. The mounds of fluff that made up this strange land did not like being walked over, or more accurately, through.

  It was like trying to wade through freshly fallen snow. His feet sank in up to the knee, and it was taxing to move at all.

  Even so, the clock was ticking; he had to get a wriggle on. Sucking it up, he pushed himself, trudging up one dust dune and down another, following the mana river in the sky.

  With each mound he laboriously conquered, the suction force grew stronger, the only sign he was making any progress. There were no landmarks in this domain; everything looked the same.

  Elijah forced himself to the top of another rise with as much haste as was possible. He set his feet and looked out ahead. Still no signs that he was getting anywhere, other than the greater amount of wind mana motes in the void that was the sky.

  He lent on his knee. His foot wasn’t planted firmly, and it slipped on a lower layer of something slick. Before the teen knew what was happening, his vision had turned into a blur of grey dust and green wind mana as he tumbled down the seemingly endless slope.

  The sound of a dusty avalanche was broken by angry chittering. Elijah flopped to a stop. Something sticky caught him, stopping him from falling any further. There was a slight sweet smell to the air that raised the teen’s hackles, though he didn’t know why.

  Elijah looked down. Thick white ropes that glistened in the him-light held him fast. He tried to pull himself loose, but the silky threads only tangled around him and became more of an impediment.

  The angry chit-clattering grew closer and was interspersed by the sound of heavy creaking.

  Elijah looked to his right. Eight dark orbs reflected his light back at him. Eight carapace-covered legs with spear-like tips drove through the dusty ground. A dusty brown and black body moved far too fast for comfort. Pearly white fangs as long as his forearm dripped with purple venom, the droplets sizzling as they struck the ground.

  The teen’s thrashing increased tenfold. He hated spiders at the best of times, and these were not the best of times!

  The panicked response didn’t help matters. In the less than a second it took the spider to draw near, Elijah had bound his own arms and legs together with the spider silk that he had been trapped in.

  The monster rubbed its two front legs together in excitement as it loomed over the seemingly helpless human. It may have lost its nest in the dust slide, but the world had provided it with fresh and warm compensation.

  Elijah took a moment to master his instinctual fear, but that was a moment too long.

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  An icepick-sharp leg attempted to impale him through the gut. He may not have been able to move his body, but his magic still worked.

  A blade of blood ejected itself from him, ripping through his bindings, throwing his body backwards, and slicing into the giant arachnid, causing it to make an alien wail that set the teen’s teeth on edge.

  The fight was plunged into darkness; Elijah was unable to maintain concentration on his internal light spell while using a blood blade.

  Only partially freed, he was just about able to roll around in an attempt to dodge the sound of thrashing legs and chittering fangs.

  He wasn’t entirely successful. Thin, bloodless lines had been cut into his arms and legs, though thankfully, nowhere vital had been hit… yet. Each frantic, enraged strike he failed to dodge didn’t only injure him but also slowly broke away the webbing that constrained his movements.

  His false companion was growing weaker and weaker with each hour that passed, but it still appeared to have enough control over his blood to stop him from bleeding to death. Even if it didn’t have enough control to stop him from casting spells.

  The attack had already cut his dwindling mana supply in half, but even so, he desperately manipulated what mana remained in his bloodstream, making it zip about and reflect off the vessel walls, imparting his will upon it, all while flopping about like a fish in an attempt to not be skewered like one.

  The spell clicked into place, and he became a human glowstick once more.

  The predator, which had been dancing about, trying to finish its prey with the sharp spikes it called feet, jumped back, hissing and covering its two largest eyes with its two front legs.

  Elijah didn’t waste the opportunity. Summoning the swordfish sword from his inventory into his mostly freed left hand, he finished the job the monster had started and cut himself the rest of the way loose.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for the arachnid to overcome its sudden blindness and rush towards the troublesome snack once more.

  The teen bounced to his feet, sword in hand, ready. One spear-like leg speared towards his right arm, another towards his left, and two fangs aimed straight for his neck as the monster leapt towards him.

  Using what Master Toad had taught him, Elijah channelled his anger into his movements but tempered it with the hard-won control he had fought to obtain.

  He lunged forwards explosively, moving under the beast. The creature’s natural weapons passed bare inches above him as he thrust his weapon upwards into the monster’s abdomen.

  Even with the momentum, the sword failed to penetrate more than a hand's length into the arachnid before it had passed over him, leaving the monster with a small wound that was elongated by its movements.

  The tear in the spider’s carapace leaked a dark fluid, and its legs wobbled as it landed with a howling cry of pain and anger, but it was still very much alive.

  Elijah wasn’t waiting around for the monster to recover. As soon as his sword was tugged out of the wound it had created, he was moving. By the time the spider struck the ground, he was already swinging his weapon round in a wide arc.

  Although the swordfish sword was best at stabbing, its edge had been sharpened, so it was just about able to chop through the knee joint of the arachanid’s back left leg.

  The appendage wasn’t severed, as the teen had hoped. Even so, the cut was deep, and the leg collapsed, falling limp.

  Unfortunately, the monster had seven more. It spun around, and, even as focused as Elijah was, with his reduced stats, he was unable to avoid the spinning wallop of the spider’s front leg.

  It struck him upside the head, causing his teeth to rattle and stars to float before his eyes… or was that dust?

  Elijah reeled back as the world spun. The spider, unaffected by the motion of the world, bit down, aiming to stab through his head, no doubt trying to explode it like a watermelon under an anvil.

  Dazed as he was, the teen surprised himself by reacting in time. He threw his body aside at the last moment. The envenomed fang scored a bloodless wound as it scraped around his cranium.

  The purple liquid caused skin to bubble as it dripped down his face, lowering his already diminished Health by a quarter. Elijah used the pain, channelling it into anger and allowing it to fuel his focused attacks.

  He felt sick as he pushed through the disorientation of two back-to-back head wounds and rapidly thrust his weapon at the spider’s eyes. Before the monster knew what was happening, three of its smaller and one of its larger eyes had been popped like gloopy, water-filled balloons.

  It screeched and began to thrash about wildly, giving in to its baser instincts. The wild, unguided attacks were far more effective than anything the spider had tried before. The only way to avoid getting hit would have been to get the hell outta Dodge City, Kansas, but it was too late for that.

  Before Elijah knew what was happening, a leg as big around as his own had struck into his chest. Instinctively, he grabbed onto the appendage and was flailed about like a dog’s chew toy.

  His nausea reached a new peak, and he vomited, causing foul liquid to be sent flying in all directions.

  Just as he opened his mouth to dispel whatever it was he had last eaten, the next minute passed, and a fresh wave of pain shot through him as his maximum Health was reduced to 130.

  Reflexively, the teen bit down, shutting off the spray of bile and chewing into the only thing in front of him, the arachnid's leg.

  His sword may have struggled to penetrate the creature’s carapace, but – as the masseter is the strongest muscle in the human body (pound for pound) – his teeth did not.

  Black, oddly sweet, ichor pumped out from the wound, further ruining the teen’s already ruined clothes and creating a foul concoction in his mouth that he struggled to spit out as it stuck to his palate.

  His revulsion was revoked, however, when a second later, a notification appeared.

  Status Effect Update: You Suck!

  You have sucked the power out of another in the domain of the Great Power Vacuum. The Vacuum approves. You receive a temporary bonus: +100 to Health, Mana, and Stamina. All other effects remain the same.

  A light alighted in Elijah’s eyes as his maximum Health rose and his current Health was dragged up along with it. His wounds closed, his ruined face was made whole once more, and that unsettling churning in his stomach that may have come from a concussion ceased.

  This, this was how he would survive! He bit down again. The teen hated the thought of drinking spider blood, but he would suffer through it if it gave him more time.

  It did not. The benefits he could reap appeared limited. Still, this was huge!

  The arachnid’s manic motions became more erratic as it realised it was no longer the predator; it had become prey.

  It flopped, spun, kicked, and thrashed, but nothing it could do would loosen the tick that was Elijah. He hung off the underside of the leg and pulled himself along the hairy appendage towards the spider’s abdomen.

  When he was right up against it, he pulled back his sword and shoved it into the hole he had created. A haunting, spidery scream stung the teen's ears, but he wasn’t deterred.

  Again and again he thrust his weapon into the hole, each time at a different angle, each time drawing forth more and more ichor.

  The monster’s movements slowed as its life force drained away until, finally, it stopped. Dropping suddenly with a puffy thud that sent dust billowing up around them, it crushed Elijah, falling directly on top of him as a final act of defiance.

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