Chapter 65: First Journey [3]

The Venom Spider came at him the instant it decided he was finished.

Eight legs drove against the earth with enough force to tear shallow trenches in the dirt. The heavy body launched forward in a straight, killing line, front claws already angled to pin and puncture. In its clustered eyes the human was unarmed, cornered, and out of options—prey that had exhausted its only visible weapon and now stood waiting to be ended. The distance closed in less than a heartbeat.

Rael raised his right hand.

"Inferno Bolt."

Fire collapsed into existence above his palm. It began as ordinary orange flame, then compressed so tightly the color bleached toward white at the core. Heat rolled off the forming projectile in visible waves. The bolt left his hand with a sound like air being torn down the middle. The spider threw itself sideways at the last possible fraction of a second. Even so the projectile clipped the edge of its carapace and detonated. The explosion lit the entire clearing in a hard, flat flash. Chitin cracked and blackened across one full flank. Smoking fragments of shell spun away into the undergrowth and landed with small, angry hisses. The monster’s voice rose from a low hiss into a higher, furious register that scraped against the trees.

It did not retreat.

Multiple spinnerets flexed at once along its abdomen. Thick strands of web shot outward in a spreading fan, timed and angled to cut off every clean line of escape. The strands were heavier than the earlier ones, designed to wrap limbs and drag a target down. Rael’s answer was already moving through his hands.

Flame Manipulation.

He swept both arms in a short, controlled arc. Fire answered the motion, rising from the ground in a curved wall that followed the path of his hands. The barrier climbed to chest height and held. The webs struck it at full speed and flashed into ash before they could reach him. Embers drifted down through the heated air like red snow. The wall of flame continued to radiate outward, forcing the spider to check its next step and turn its face away from the worst of the heat.

Rael felt the change in the creature’s posture as clearly as if it had spoken. Direct rushes had already cost it a section of armor. Web ambushes were being burned out of the air before they could land. The spider began to circle instead of charge, body low, legs testing the edges of the fire, looking for a gap or a moment when the human’s control might slip. It was measuring how long he could keep the flames alive.

He decided not to give it the time to finish that calculation.

Hellfire.

He drove the skill into the soil in a rough ring around the spider’s current position. Dark-red flames erupted in a continuous band—low at first, almost modest, then climbing as they fed on their own intensity and on everything they touched. The fire did not flare and vanish. It stayed. It clung to dirt, to roots, to fallen leaves, spreading in slow, stubborn tongues that refused to be stamped out. The spider’s legs jerked back from the heat each time they drew too close. Every direction it turned, the burning line waited. Its circle of free movement shrank with every second the skill remained active. The air inside the ring grew hotter and thinner.

The monster broke for the trees.

It needed height. It needed the canopy and the pre-laid strands it still understood. The leap toward the nearest trunk was powerful even with the damaged flank. Rael watched the trajectory and felt the second class stir under his skin—the cold, precise weight of Frostheart that he had copied and had not yet tested in a real fight.

Frost Manipulation.

He closed his left hand and pulled. Moisture latent in the air and the soil answered at once. A barrier of clear, thick ice climbed out of the ground directly in the spider’s path, jagged plates forming and locking together with audible cracks. The structure rose faster than the spider could adjust. The creature hit it at full speed. The ice shattered under the impact in a spray of sharp fragments, but the collision robbed the spider of nearly all its forward momentum. Legs slipped on the sudden debris. The heavy body staggered, abdomen dipping, balance broken for a critical moment.

Rael was already moving.

Frost Bolt.

A spear of pale-blue ice formed above his open palm and flew without pause. It struck the joint of a foreleg with a sharp, crystalline crack that carried through the clearing. Frost raced outward from the point of impact, coating chitin, racing along the limb, locking the joint in a spreading sheath of opaque white. The leg dragged when the spider tried to plant it. The next step became a pronounced limp. The creature’s entire left side dipped.

It understood the danger now. Staying at range meant being carved apart by alternating waves of fire and ice. Closing the distance was the only option that still offered a chance to end the human before more limbs were taken. The spider gathered its remaining strength, rear legs coiling, and leapt—straight at him, front legs extended, venom glistening on the tips, the full weight of its body committed to a final crushing attack.

Rael met it with the last defensive skill he had ready.

Ice Armor.

A shell of hardened frost slammed into place across his torso, shoulders, and arms a fraction of a second before impact. The spider’s claws smashed into the ice with a sound like stone striking stone. The force drove Rael backward. His boots tore deep furrows through the dirt. The armor cracked and flaked under the concentrated pressure, absorbing the worst of the penetration and distributing the rest. Pain still flared along his left arm where one tip found a seam and opened a shallow cut. Blood welled, bright against the fading white of the breaking frost.

He caught his balance, glanced once at the wound to confirm it was not deep, then lifted his eyes again.

The Venom Spider stood a few body-lengths away. Chest plates were scorched black and still smoking. One leg remained sheathed in stubborn ice that refused to crack. Its movements had become visibly heavier, each step a negotiation with injuries that were stacking faster than it could ignore. Steam rose where residual Hellfire still licked at the ground around its feet. The creature’s breath came in wet, uneven pulls. It was no longer the patient hunter that had built a careful web cage around him at the start. It was wounded, slowed, and cornered in its own turn. 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

Rael settled his stance. Heat waited under the skin of one hand. Cold waited under the other. Both were ready for the next command. The shape of the fight had bent fully in his direction. He could feel the end approaching—close enough to taste, not yet finished.

The spider raised its front legs once more. The motion was less fluid than before, the injured limbs trembling with the effort, but the intent was unmistakable. One last, desperate attack. Everything it had left.

Rael’s hands came up.

The clearing held its breath.

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