F-Rank Awakening: My System Turns Trash Skills To SSS-RANK

Chapter 23: Rift Boss Monster

"Fuck..." Rain muttered, his voice cracking on the hard consonant. "Fuck... fuck... fuck!"

His boots were rooted to the slick basalt floor. His eyes were wide, strained open until the corners burned, fixed entirely on the split shape lying twenty yards away.

The upper half of Maren’s body lay sideways in a thickening pool of red, her right arm still pinned under the weight of her crushed chest. Her leather vest was torn through like wet parchment. The dark blue cotton shirt she wore beneath it, the cheap, worn one she had joked about buying in a three-pack from the lower-tier supply market, was soaked black. Her face remained turned toward the archway, her jaw slightly slack, her eyes staring blankly at nothing.

A cold, heavy chill spread down Rain’s neck, settling instantly into his gut. Real goosebumps pulled tight across his forearms, the fine hairs standing straight up under the dried yellow hemolymph from the Stalkers. His stomach churned with a sharp, sickening knot.

She had been talking about her brother less than two hours ago. She had sat on a stone ledge, rubbing her swollen ankles, talking about the monthly cost of the neural stabilization serum. Four hundred credits a bottle. Twelve bottles a year, just to keep the boy’s spine from firing wild signals that locked his lungs. She had worked five years in the high-heat casting foundries before taking a guild contract, burning her skin on slag iron every night just to keep the bills paid after his Resonance Ceremony failed and left him crippled on a clinic cot.

Now her legs were lying ten feet away from her chest, her broken shield split like firewood beside her boots.

’She’s dead just like that,’ Rain thought and it made him feel overwhelming anguish.

The system didn’t care about the clinic bills. The rift didn’t give a shit about five years in a foundry. This was the danger they all had to face just to survive.

And now in front of their very eyes was the worst monster they’d faced collectively and it just cut her in half because her shield was three inches too slow.

"Fuck!" Rain spat out, his knuckles turning white as he clamped his hand around the rough bone spur. "Fuck this place!"

"IT’S THE BOSS!" Toby’s voice exploded across the chamber, high, cracked, and shrill with pure, unadulterated panic. "IT’S THE BOSS! OH GOD, IT’S THE BOSS!"

The screaming snapped Rain’s head around.

Standing in the shadow of the archway, the creature finally shifted its weight. It was a massive, eight-foot-tall, spider-like monstrosity. Six long, segmented legs arched up toward the ceiling, each one covered in a thick, dull black chitin that didn’t reflect the red light of the wall crystals; it seemed to drink the light, casting a strange, void-like blur around its own outline.

Its main torso hung low, heavy and bloated, while its head was crowned by a thick plate of pale, bone-colored hide. Protruding from its upper chest were two long, scythe-like foreclaws, razor-thin along the inner edges, dripping with fresh blood.

[Target Identified: Bone Widow]

[Rank: C-Rank (High Boss)]

[Type: Arachnid / Apex Predator]

[Threat Level: Extreme]

Rain didn’t care about the window. He didn’t need a status box to tell him what he was looking at. He had just watched three inches of reinforced iron plate get sliced in half without a sound.

The Bone Widow took a single step forward, its six chitinous tips clicking against the stone with a sound like iron nails hitting ice.

"WHERE ARE YOU GOING?!" Dane screamed, his face spattered with Maren’s blood as he scrambled backward on his hands and knees.

Rain turned his head to see just what Dane was yelling at.

To no surprise, Warrick was already ten paces behind them, his heavy boots moving fast, back away from the archway toward the dark passage they had just cleared.

"Just keep at it," Warrick called back over his shoulder, his tone flat, unhurried, and completely devoid of urgency. "I’m coming back."

He didn’t wait for a reply. He disappeared around the turn of the basalt pillar, leaving the four of them alone in the wide, open gallery.

"He’s leaving!" Toby shrieked, his hands shaking so violently he dropped an arrow onto the stone. "HE’S LEAVING US!"

The Bone Widow didn’t make a sound. It blurred.

It didn’t seem to leap or run. Its body simply appeared to have vanished from the archway and reappeared fifteen feet closer, its right scythe claw whipping through the air in a flat, horizontal arc.

"Move!" Nyra yelled, diving sideways behind a massive basalt pillar.

The claw hit the pillar three feet off the ground. A chunk of solid rock four feet wide blew out in a cloud of grey dust and sharp shrapnel, the impact ringing through the cavern like an explosion.

Dane scrambled up, his red-hilted sword shaking in his grip as he sprinted toward a cluster of broken boulders on the left. His shoulder was still heavily bandaged from the Stalker claw, his movements awkward and heavy with sheer physical exhaustion. He was gimping on his right leg, his strength visibly drained.

"Help me!" Dane yelled, turning around with his back pressed against a stone block. "TOBY! SHOOT IT!"

Toby pulled his bowstring back, his breath coming in ragged, sobbing gasps, but the Bone Widow moved before he could loose the arrow. It scuttled up the side of the stone pillar, its long black legs driving into the solid rock with wet, crunching impacts.

It dropped from the ceiling straight down behind Dane.

Dane tried to turn. His right leg buckled under his weight, a fraction of a second too slow on the pivot. He tried to raise his sword to guard his neck.

SLASH.

The razor-thin scythe arm drove straight through Dane’s lower back, punching out through the front of his leather vest with a wet, heavy tear. Dane’s mouth opened in a wide, silent circle, his red-hilted sword dropping from his limp hand and clattering against the rock.

The Widow lifted him three feet off the floor, gave a single, violent twist of its leg, and tossed his body sideways into the darkness.

"NO! NO! NO!" Toby screamed, firing an arrow completely wild into the ceiling. "WE’RE DEAD! WE’RE ALL DEAD!"

"Shut up and move!" Nyra hissed, crouched behind a low stone ridge twenty feet away. She was clutching her arm, blood seeping through her fingers from a shrapnel cut. "Get behind the stone! It can’t sweep its claws if the space is too narrow!"

Rain lunged behind a thick basalt column, his back slamming hard against the cold, rough stone. His lungs burned, his chest heaving as he pulled in hot, iron-tasting air.

The Widow dropped back to the floor with a heavy, chitinous thud. It didn’t rush. It began to circle the central gallery, its six segmented legs moving in a rhythmic, terrifying creeping pattern as its pale bone-head swept slowly from left to right.

"Where the hell is Warrick?" Nyra whispered from across the gap, her voice tight, dry, and trembling.

"He probably has a plan," Toby sobbed from behind a separate boulder ten feet to her left. "He’s... he’s coming back with something. He has to."

"He’s not coming back," Rain said, his voice hard, low, and stripped of all hesitation. "He left us to draw the aggro while he does whatever he came here to do. It’s been obvious from the get go!"

"What?!" Toby wept, his head pressed against his knees. "No, he wouldn’t! He’s a C-rank! He’s the leader. Okay...okay...what do we do? How do we get out of here without being slashed in half?!"

"Look at the monster, Toby!" Rain snapped, his voice rising into a sharp, commanding rasp. "WE DON’T NEED TO RUN!"

Nyra stared at him through the gloom, her eyes wild with fear. "Are you out of your mind?! It sliced Maren in half! It killed Dane in two seconds!"

"Because they stayed in the open!" Rain shouted back, his hand tightening around his bone spur. "Listen to me! Watch its foreclaws! It can’t strike sideways when it’s tucked between these pillars! The scythes are too long! They hit the stone before they reach the ground!"

He leaned around the edge of the pillar for a split second, watching the creature’s low, creeping movement.

"It has a half-second reset after a heavy thrust!" Rain called out, his voice cutting through Toby’s panicked breathing. "Every time it drives a claw into the floor, it has to pull its torso back to lift the joint! That’s the window!"

Nyra swallowed hard, her jaw working as she looked down at her short daggers. "It’s shell looks too thick. My blades will probably just slip off."

"Not the shell!" Rain yelled. "The joints on the underside! The soft skin behind the main leg hinges! Toby, you take the high ledge! You don’t try to kill it, you just shoot its eyes when it turns toward the pillars! Nyra, you hit the back left leg when it commits to a swing! I’ll take the front!"

Toby wiped his nose on his bloody sleeve, his eyes darting between Rain and the shadow of the giant spider. "I can’t! My hands won’t stop shaking!"

"DO IT, TOBY!" Rain roared, stepping out from behind his pillar into the light of the red crystals. "DRAW ITS HEAD!"

The Bone Widow’s head snapped toward Rain, its pale bone plate tilting downward.

Toby let out a high, ragged scream, stepped out from his cover, and pulled his bowstring to his ear. THWIP. The arrow flew straight and true this time, slamming into the soft, exposed eye-cluster on the left side of the creature’s bone mask.

The Widow let out a sharp, vibrating hiss, a sound like steam escaping a broken pipe. It whipped around toward Toby’s ledge with terrifying speed.

"Now!" Rain screamed, sprinting forward.

Nyra darted out from the side, her small frame moving like a shadow across the uneven floor. She slid under the Widow’s rear flank, driving both of her short daggers straight into the soft, white membrane behind its back right leg joint.

A thick, dark fluid gushed over her hands as the creature bucked violently.

"Toby, duck!" Rain shouted.

Toby didn’t duck. He was trying to notch a second arrow, his fingers fumbling with the nock, his eyes were locked in frozen terror on the massive black shadow rising over his ledge.

The Widow didn’t use its foreclaws. It swept its heavy, spike-tipped middle leg across the top of the boulder.

CRACK.

The chitinous spike punched straight through Toby’s throat, pinning him backward against the cave wall. Before he could make a sound, the Widow’s second middle leg stabbed down into his chest, punching two gaping holes through his leather vest.

"NO!" Nyra shrieked, backing away fast, her daggers slipping from her sticky, blood-soaked gloves.

The Widow turned its pale bone mask toward her, its wounded leg dragging slightly on the stone floor.

Rain didn’t wait for it to recover.

’Flash step...’

***

**A/N:**

If you’re enjoying the ride so far, I’d really appreciate a GOLDEN TICKET vote or a POWER STONE if you’ve got one to spare. And if you’ve ever considered sending a gift, big or small, just know it genuinely helps and is never taken for granted.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for sticking around. There’s a lot more coming.

— RetardedCulture