Soulless Soul

Chapter 74: A Crazy Idea

Then its remaining blade-like forelegs flew into the air again. The movement was sickeningly fluid, a twin scything path executed with the raw and terrifying power of a heavy siege engine. It no longer cared about its balanced stance and was throwing its full, immense weight into the attack in hopes of slicing its elusive prey in order to secure the meal that would save its fading vitality from ebbing away.

Straight at his neck.

Sky ducked. He didn’t simply lean over but tossed his entire upper body over in desperation, dropping his center of gravity into a deep crouch that sent his knees scraping furiously through the wet and gritty mire.

The massive limb passed over his head so close that he felt the rush of air against his hair. The displacement of the atmosphere was so sudden and deafening as well, being a sort of localized vacuum that whistled past his ears. The putrid, iron heavy stench of the creature’s leaking azure blood washed over him, so potently that it made his eyes water and his lungs burn as he held his breath.

Too close. The margin of survival was narrowing. If he had been a millisecond slower or if his weight hadn’t been distributed in another way, his head would have been cleanly severed from his shoulder, tossed into the mud like a pelt and his own body dumped into the swamp as well.

He rolled his shoulder and kept moving, finally earning himself a measure of breathing room. He pushed himself off the ground with his palms, scrambling back up to his feet with a zigzagging sprint in order to prevent the creature from easily calculating his next step. He could hear the heavy frustrated clicking of the spider’s mandibles behind him, a wet mechanical snapping that suggested that it was already preparing itself for another lunging assault.

His eyes darted frantically across the labyrinth. The towering walls of solid stone and hardened mud offered no structural escape as well as narrow crevices that a human could slip in but the giant arachnid couldn’t. The gray fog hung low and obscuring the path ahead, turning every corridor into a trap.

I need a weapon.

Anything.

A sword.

A spear.

A piece of metal.

Anything that could give him an advantage. The Blood Blade in his hand was sharp and had a volatile crimson light pulsing, but its reach was limited to the length of his arm. Trying to do a close quarters fight with a three meter tall apex predator with a short blade was nothing but inviting for a direct strike from his massive scythe-like appendages. He needed leverage. He needed distance.

Then he saw it.

Half-buried in the mud several meters away was a long pale bone protruding from the ground. It was wedged tightly between two massive ancient rocks, a remnant of some beast that had perished in this mass grave several centuries ago. The gray light filtered down to reflect off its bleached calcified surface, standing out against the monotonous black sludge like beacon.

Sky immediately changed direction. He buried his boots into the slick mire, turning on a dime with a sharp spraying slide that sent a wave of black mud cascading back. His heart hammered a frantic rhythm against his ribs as he tracked the closing shadow of the Savage Beast.

Without slowing down, he bent down and grabbed it. His fingers wrapped around the cold material, his grip tightening until his knuckles turned a stark bloodless white. The texture was rough and full of deep grooves from some long-dead parasite, but it felt sturdy.

Then he pulled.

CRACK!

The bone tore free of the mud. The abrupt release of tension sent a sharp vibration up his arm, the calcified root snapping away from the underlying stone with a resounding echo that reverberated down the narrow corridor.

Sky glanced at it while continuing to run. He didn’t dare stop to take a closer look at his prize, his legs pumping furiously as he maintained his evasive looping trajectory through the labyrinth.

It was massive, nearly one and a half meters long and had a naturally narrow sharpened tip. The skeletal shard had been sheared at a perfect diagonal angle during whatever violent past had buried it, creating a jagged tapering point that looked rather wicked.

Almost like a spear.

Good enough. It wasn’t balanced, it wasn’t forged from high grade dungeon steel and didn’t possess any magical enchantments, but it was heavy and rigid, and longer than any blade he could currently project from his own spiritual core.

Unfortunately, the weapon came with a major problem. A tactical limitation that he couldn’t afford to ignore if he wanted to live to see the morning.

Even with the added length, Sky’s effective range was still shorter than the Savage Beast’s. The spider’s remaining intact appendages were huge segmented masses that could reach across a room with a single pivot. A meter and a half bone shard was nothing but child’s play compared to the physical reach of a creature that stood nearly three meters tall.

And he seriously doubted that the makeshift spear could pierce its thick carapace. The stone-like overlapping plates covering the spider’s back and flanks was designed to withstand the crushing bites of competing predators and high impact strikes from high ranking Awakened. Driving a brittle piece of calcified bone against that armor would likely result in the spear shattering into a cloud of dust.

Which meant there was only one option. A conclusion that went against every rule of defensive engagement he had ever learned.

He had to get close.

Very close.

His eyes shifted towards the cracks covering the creature’s armor. He analyzed the target with a detached clinical intensity, his gaze tracking the viscous azure fluid that continuously seeped from its ruptured shell.

Those were the weak points. The structural flaws born from its previous disastrous battle down in the trenches. The carapace was fractured and the soft pale under-flesh exposed beneath the broken seams of its armor.

If he could drive the bone through one of them, he might actually be able to damage it. If he could penetrate deep enough to reach the creature’s internal nerve clusters or its secondary fluid reservoirs, he could neutralize its terrifying speed.

But the thought of getting that close made his instincts scream. His [Danger Sense] flared up again, a hot stabbing feeling at the base of his skull that practically begged him to continue running and find a dead end to cower in rather than choosing to fight.

At that distance, the Savage Beast wouldn’t even have to strike him directly. The spatial physics of the confrontation would be turned against him.

Its sheer weight.

Its huge frame.

One mistake was enough for him to be crushed into a bloody mess beneath its body. If it simply collapsed its mass forward, or if its heavy abdominal plates pinned him against the stone floor, his bones would break under the dead weight. There would be no room to roll, no room to dodge.

Sky tightened his grip around the bone, his thumb pressing firmly against the rough edge to stabilize his thrust.

Then I can’t fight it normally. The standard tactical paradigms were for people with shields, armor and a team of dedicated support mages backing them up, not for him. He was alone, starving and outmatched in sheer physical output.

The Savage Beast screeched behind him. The sound was a wet rattling roar of pure frustration, its cluster of dark eyes tracking his small agile form through the gray mist.

Its legs hammered against the muddy ground as it charged once more. The frequency of its strides had increased, the creature burning through the last of its internal mana reserves to execute a final, overwhelming blitz that would end the hunt. The earth trembled furiously under its approach.

Sky’s eyes narrowed. He stopped running. He planted his boots firmly into the elastic mire, his body rotating to face the oncoming storm as the shadow of the towering arachnid loomed directly over him.

He stared at the approaching monster, noting the exact trajectory of its remaining foreleg as it flew up into the air to deliver a definitive downward strike.

Then- A crazy idea entered his mind. It relied entirely on the weightless and invisible nature of his abilities. A high stakes gamble that would either end the fight or leave him a shattered corpse beneath the mud.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!