Back at the cave mouth, Arthas stood over the harvest of his first battle. The five goblin corpses lay in a tangled heap of green limbs and grey skin.
He squatted beside the bodies, the copper scent of their blood thick in the stagnant cave air. With methodical, cold efficiency, he began stripping the ragged tunics from their frames. The fabric was coarse and smelled of damp earth, but it was surprisingly durable. Next, he gathered two long, sturdy branches from the cave entrance, testing their flex against his knee.
Using the rope-like vines the goblins had fashioned into belts, he lashed the sticks together in a narrow V-shape. He then proceeded to stretch the goblin rags across the frame, tying them off with tight knots.
"I hope this holds," he muttered, testing the tension of the crude net.
He stacked the five goblins onto the makeshift travois sled. the weight felt negligible, but the bulk was awkward. He hoisted his red backpack, cinched his ruined white hoodie around his waist like a belt, and checked the black combat dagger at his hip.
"Hope this doesn't cut me," he grunted, adjusting the blade's position. One last sweep of his crimson eyes took in the blood-stained cavern, then he stepped into the gap between the sticks. He gripped the wood, the rough bark biting into his palms, and began the trek into the unknown.
The sled slid across the mossy stone with a rhythmic hiss. 'Barely any strain,' he noted. He glanced upward. The glowing tally in the violet sky had shifted again: [7,680].
Over two thousand people were gone. "I will survive this," he whispered, his jaw set in a hard line. "And I will find Xavier."
The transition from the cave to the forest was jarring. The trees of Strixen weren't like those on Earth; their trunks were a deep, bruised charcoal, and the leaves were translucent shards of obsidian that rattled like glass in the wind.
Arthas had been walking for only a few minutes when the hair on the back of his neck stood up. a sharp, cold needle of intuition pressing against his temples.
"Something is wrong," he breathed.
He let go of the sled, the wood clattering softly against the mulch. In one fluid motion, he drew his dagger. He didn't look around wildly; he centered his weight, his red eyes narrowing as he focused on the shifting shadows. The bushes behind him shook with a violent, unnatural jerk.
"Who's there?"
The air behind him shifted. Arthas didn't wait to see what it was. He leapt forward, He turned mid-air, and landed five meters away in a crouch.
Where he had been standing a second ago was a massive, sapphire-blue spider, its bulbous abdomen reaching his torso. Its eight eyes reflected his own crimson gaze with a cold, multifaceted hunger.
"The blood and the Corpses," Arthas realized. "They attracted it."
The spider didn't hiss. It simply launched. It moved with a terrifying, blurred velocity that defied its size.
"The hell—!"
Arthas barely had time to cross his arms over his chest before the spider's armored cephalothorax slammed into him. The force was like being hit by a compact car. He flew backward, the wind rushing out of his lungs as his spine collided with a charcoal tree trunk.
"Argh!" He grunted, the world spinning for a split second.
He didn't stay still. He rolled to the left, a jagged spider leg piercing the ground exactly where his head had been a heartbeat prior. The sound of the leg stabbing the earth was like a spear hitting wet clay.
The spider pivoted, its mandibles clicking in anticipation of another strike. It launched again, a blue streak against the violet woods. But this time, Arthas was in sync with the rhythm. As the monster neared, he dropped flat, sliding along the slick forest floor directly beneath the spider's underbelly.
He gripped the dagger with both hands and thrust upward, the black blade tearing through the soft, pale silk-glands and internal organs of the monster's lower body. A fountain of translucent blue ichor sprayed over him.
The spider screeched, a high-pitched, vibrating sound that rattled Arthas's teeth. He emerged from behind the creature, a dark smirk crossing his face. "I guess that's—"
He never finished. A thick, white glob of fluid shot from the spider's spinnerets at point-blank range. There was no room to dodge. The web slammed into his chest, the impact sending him skidding back across the dirt.
The webbing was incredibly sticky and anchored firmly to his torso, but more importantly, it was still connected to the spider. With a sharp, jerky turn, the monster yanked the line.
"Argh!" Arthas groaned as he was hauled across the ground toward the spider's waiting, needle-sharp legs. He twisted his body violently, the serrated edge of a leg scraping across his abdomen, shredding his black T-shirt and leaving a stinging, bloody welt.
He landed heavily on his back, the breath hitching in his throat. Before he could bring his dagger up to sever the line, the spider turned and ran in the opposite direction, using a tree as a pulley. Arthas was jerked into the air, his body slamming into a trunk with a bone-jarring thud.
Gravity took hold, but the spider gave him no rest. It yanked again, reeling him in like a hooked fish toward its impaling limbs.
"Damn it!" Arthas growled.
As he swung toward the spider's front legs, he didn't try to pull away. Instead, he leaned into the momentum. He shifted his weight mid-air, reaching out and grabbing one of the spider's thick, hairy legs. He used it like a gymnast's pole, pivoting his entire body around the limb.
With a loud, guttural grunt, he landed squarely on the spider's back.
"My turn," he hissed.
Hezw drove the dagger into the junction where the head met the body. The spider went into a frenzied buck, its legs flailing wildly, but Arthas held on with a grim tenacity. He stabbed again. And again. And again.
The screeching faded into a wet gurgle. The spider's legs twitched one last time, then folded beneath its weight. It collapsed into the dirt, silent and still.
[Ding! You have slain a Level 3 Mutated Spider. +75 EXP gained.]
Arthas lay atop the blue carcass, his chest heaving. He reached up, finally cutting the sticky webbing from his torso.