Charles wiped blood from his gauntlet, sighing as he inspected his battered boots.
"All this…" he said, grinning. "And I haven't even gotten to the spiders yet."
[SIGMA: Are we retreating for recovery or advancing into spider territory?]
Charles climbed onto a mossy boulder at the glade's edge and peered ahead, where filaments caught the light like moonbeams and the whispers sharpened into menace.
Still breathing.
Still smiling.
"Timbermaw," he said softly, as a spark of qi pulsed around him like thunder held in a bottle, "I hope you brought bigger friends."
Skitter and Silk
The forest didn't breathe here.
It pulsed.
With every step into Timbermaw, the world felt less like a forest and more like the inside of a sleeping beast made of silk, fangs, and desire.
The trees were draped in threads that sparkled like nightmare wedding veils. Vines hung between the branches like nooses. No leaves remained, just gossamer shining even without the moon.
The shadows even moved.
And they didn't move with the breeze.
They went... hungry.
Charles exhaled, steam unfurling like a challenge.
He muttered "SIGMA" and pulled out Raijin's Emberfang, which was already crackling in protest.
As he advanced, silk whipped around his cloak, moss clinging to him. "Check target range."
[Scanning... Nest Alpha-F3 confirmed. Silk saturation: 96%. Enemy density: very high. There are about 150 drones with heat signatures. A matron of the apex class is present. Warning: the mental interference field is on. Illusion causes imminent.]
"Ah. Charles cracked his knuckles and said, "A full family reunion. The Gauntlet of the Elemental Ascendant flared up in response, and its runes glowed with a red heat."
[Let me remind you that the mission only has two targets.]
"SIGMA, I'm not here to meet quotas." "I'm here to kill spiders on a large scale."
[Logging this under: 'Impulse-Control Failure No. 437 – Spiders Trigger Something Deeply Unresolved.']
Charles pulled two vials from his pouch—one green, one black.
Sporeguard Elixir tasted of rot and deception. Mindroot Tonic burned like icy needles and bristled with shame.
He choked. "Tastes like growing up emotionally."
[But you haven't learned anything.
Mission Started: Thornweb Spider Silk Harvest Guild
Goal: 1 Thornweb Venom Gland and 2 Silk Spools
Reward: 160 gold coins and a small agility tonic
Power Level Range: Foundation Realm From Rank 10 to Core Realm Rank 1
Hallucinogenic silk, psychic venom, and soul-weaving illusions are all dangers.
Charles's goal for himself is to kill 150 people.
Status: Active]
The moment Charles crossed the veil of moss-strung trees, the silk shivered.
Then screamed.
Hundreds of eight-legged horrors dropped from canopy and burrow alike. Some of the sizes of dogs. Others the size of wagons. All bristling with carapace armor, all glistening with venom, all moving like synchronized death.
Charles grinned.
"Titanheart Anvil Fist."
His gauntlet exploded outward as molten qi gathered in his fist and slammed into the first drone's skull. The spider's head imploded, and its body skidded thirty feet through three trees.
"One."
Another leapt from above.
Charles vanished.
Phantom Veil Steps scattered his image into five mirages.
He reappeared in mid-air, eyes glowing and blade humming.
"Raijin Art – Chainflash Bloom."
Seven arcs of lightning danced across the battlefield like a divine conductor lost in madness.
Seven limbs. Seven necks. Seven kills.
"Eight, nine, ten."
He hit the ground and surged ahead. Emberfang in hand was a mandate, not a mere weapon.
No survivors.
His coat spun with each movement, silk sticking and peeling as he danced through it like fire through paper.
Warning: Incoming from rear—four drones.
He didn't turn.
He pivoted, back-kicked a spider, crushed its thorax, slashed another's eye, headbutted a third, then tossed an explosive rune at the fourth.
It squealed.
And then it stopped squealing.
[Kill Count: 63.]
The forest whispered—not as trees when the lonely wind stirs them.
This was closer.
Personal.
He blinked—and the silk shimmered.
A voice.
"Charles…"
He turned.
His mother appeared, smiling with bloody hands. Behind her: his father, Garrick, Seraphina—each pallid, motionless, accusing.
Then—
Himself.
Dressed in a corporate suit. Dead eyes. Blood on the cuffs.
"You failed them."
Charles's hand trembled—only for a second. Then he pulled a glowing flask from his ring and downed it with one brutal swig.
Soulsteel Elixir. Vintage brain bleach.
He coughed violently. "Tastes like shame marinated in lightning."
Then he punched the illusion in the face.
It broke like glass.
"SIGMA?"
[Illusion resistance stays at 94%. It is best to reapply soul shielding every 90 minutes. Optional therapy referral: not accepted.]
"Therapy costs a lot of money. Genocide is less expensive.
He wiped the blood off his nose and kept going.
And murder.
And laughing even when they were seeing things.
[Number of kills: 122.]
Ichor coated his boots. Silk filled every crease of his clothes. One eye swelled from venom. He bit down on a Qi Recovery Pill like candy.
Another spider lunged.
Charles caught the lunging spider in midair with both hands, gripping its body firmly. With a sharp grunt, he swung the spider sideways and slammed it into a tree stump. The impact splintered the bark.
"Stay grounded."
[SIGMA Log: Sarcasm at baseline. Blood loss: moderate. Adrenaline: excessive. Dignity: debatable.]
Charles kicked a twitching corpse off his path, then grabbed a severed leg to carve a path through the thick, layered silk. He re-ignited Emberfang with a flick of his wrist, sparks snapping down its blade.
"Target reached: 150."
Then the air changed.
The forest stopped breathing.
No wind. No whisper. No rustle.
Just the sound of silk retracting.
From the canopy above, the branches peeled back, revealing a cocooned altar—and from it descended a horror made of legs, venom sacs, and nightmares given form.
Silkmother Vraess.
Ten feet tall. Eight blade-legs. Dripping mandibles. Her aura alone made the trees groan. Her voice echoed inside his skull like velvet knives.
"You… little killer. Lightning rat. My children scream in your stomach."
Charles tilted his head.
"That's not your children," he said dryly. "That's indigestion."
She screamed.
He charged.
"Thundercarve Lancer!"
Lightning screamed from Emberfang as it sliced through the air—straight through Vraess's thorax.
Acid exploded from her wounds, burning nearby trees into pulp.
She shrieked again, launching psychic pulses in every direction.
Charles's ears bled.
[Venom saturation: 82%. Paralysis in 18 seconds.]
"Plenty of time," he hissed, vanishing beneath her.
"Heavenpiercer Smash!"
His gauntlet shot upward through her abdomen, sending limbs flying and screams echoing into the mist.
She flailed. Twitched.
Then fell.
She collapsed, as if all the pain and fear had finally left her.
[TRIALMIND SYSTEM – COMBAT REWARDS
Total Kills: 161 Thornweb Drones + 1 Silkmother Vraess
Technique Advancement:
Phantom Veil Steps +6%
Raijin Art +7%
Titanheart Anvil Fist +5%
Trait Gained: Iron-Clad Mind (Rare)
+35% Illusion Resistance
Gold Bonus: 230,000 Coins
Artifact Gained: [Spider Queen's Fang Pendant – Tier B]
+10% Poison Resistance
Webstep Blink: 1x/day teleport to any silk-linked surface within 30m
Loot: 3x Boar-Blood Recovery Elixirs, 1x Soulsteel Flask (Rare), 1x Venomthread Cloak (Rare)
Total Time Elapsed: 7 hours, 11 minutes]
Charles stood in the middle of a battlefield of twitching legs, venom steam, and dismembered royalty.
He spat blood, ran a hand through his tangled silver hair, and took a final gulp of Mindroot Tonic, grimacing as if every life choice but violence was a cosmic prank.
"Seven hours. One sixty-one kills. One very chatty queen."
He looked eastward, where the moss turned yellow.
"Now let's see if the scarabs have better lines."
He snapped his fingers, summoning his Thunderhoof Stallion from his beast pouch. The mount appeared, snorted at the carnage, then lowered itself so Charles could climb up.
"Don't judge me. You didn't have to fight a psychic spider mom."
The Thunderhoof neighed quietly.
Charles moved forward with his sword crackling, his gauntlet beating, and his cape blowing behind him like a stormy wind.
There was still smoke on the battlefield.
Not with heat, but with memory.
Charred silk clung to the branches like mourning veils. Ashes drifted lazily through the canopy like exhausted ghosts. The Silkmother's carcass lay coiled at the ravine's base, twitching once—then finally still—as if even death wasn't sure how to process her end.
Charles stood above it all.
His blade hummed softly at his hip, crackling with residual lightning.
His breath was slow and ragged. Every inhale flayed his lungs. Every muscle throbbed. His gauntleted hand quivered from exhaustion, not fear. Even his shoulders pleaded for respite.
"Seven hours of spider genocide," he rasped.
His voice sounded foreign. Dry. Burned out by too many warcries and far too many one-liners screamed over arachnid death.
Still, he smiled faintly.
Because he was alive.
And survival, in his line of work, was always worth celebrating.
A Ridge Between Realms
He climbed out of the ravine with boots scraping against lichen-covered stone, breath fogging in the cool post-battle air. The stars above had begun their slow crawl across the heavens, casting silver light through a thin break in the canopy.
Charles didn't stop until he found it: a narrow ridge between trees that bent to form a cradle overhead. Moss pooled like velvet under his boots. No spider silk. No webs. Just quiet.
A natural sanctuary.
He exhaled and dropped to one knee.
With practiced ease, he took four glowing talismans from his ring, each etched with runes of silence and concealment, and placed them at the four corners. A low hum spread outward.
"Isolation Array: Silent Veil."
A ripple shimmered.
"Protective Array: Void Shell."
A dome of pale silver snapped into place, soundproof and qi-suppressive, completely hidden from spiritual scanning.
The world outside blinked away. The stink of spider ichor dulled. The heaviness in his bones lifted just slightly.
"Privacy. Glorious, overpriced privacy," Charles muttered, reaching for a compact structure rod from his spatial ring. He flicked his wrist twice.
A foldable field tent deployed, complete with heat runes, a comfort-stitched qi-insulated bedroll, and—of course—a reinforced bone-lattice cooking stand.
Because survival didn't have to mean discomfort.
The Hunt: Venomhorn Stag
Of course, no camp was complete without dinner.
He moved like a wraith through the forest's edge, qi tucked behind his ribs like a held breath.
Within ten minutes, he found it.
A Venomhorn Stag, grazing beneath a flowering crystal tree whose blossoms shimmered faintly with frost qi. Its antlers curled like obsidian blades, and its pelt gleamed silver in the moonlight.
Magnificent. Elegant.
Delicious.
Charles drew a dagger from his boot, its edge wrapped in elemental wire, and with a sharp breath, sent it flying silently across the glade.
The blade struck true. Right below the antler base. Clean. Silent. Painless.
"I'm a killer," he murmured, stepping from the underbrush, "but not a monster."
He carried the beast back across his shoulders like a prize won in a duel. Once at camp, he skinned the stag with Emberfang's dormant edge, the blade's natural heat cauterizing as it sliced. Thick haunches were skewered over the fire, which he kindled with a flick and a fire rune-stamped pebble.
From his pack, he retrieved a leather pouch marked in golden ink: "Zerinthian Char Rub – For Champions Only."
He opened it.
The scent hit hard: spiced thunderroot, ghost cumin, and powdered storm-pepper.
He whistled.
"Spicy, smoky, and guaranteed to burn the memory of spiders off my tongue."
He sprinkled it across the sizzling meat. The fat sizzled. The smoke coiled. The clearing filled with the scent of smoky, high-grade venison perfection.
He reached into his ring and summoned Nimbus, now in his compact rest form as a sleek, cat-sized draconic creature with scales that shimmered with lightning.
The little beast emerged with a static crackle and a soft, grumpy chirp, blinking drowsy blue eyes at the scent of food.
"Oh, please, you're not starving. You had two sky-lobsters this morning."
Nimbus yawned wide enough to show his tiny fangs—then proceeded to snatch a roasted flank out of mid-air when Charles tossed it over.
The Azure Tempest Dragon devoured it with ruthless efficiency, belched a spark, and flopped sideways against Charles's legs like a spoiled wyvern kitten.
"I see battle trauma hasn't affected your appetite," Charles muttered, cracking open a small black bottle.
Aether-Fire Reserve.
A post-battle brew infused with minor qi-restorative herbs and just enough spiritual fire to bring back warmth to aching bones.
"To a day well murdered," he said, clinking the bottle against Nimbus's stubby antler.
Nimbus chirped, sparked, and buried his snout in Charles's cloak.
For a moment, as if time paused, everything slowed down.
Charles leaned back against the curve of a moss-padded tree. The arrays shimmered softly around them, filtering out even the sound of rustling branches. The air was warm from the fire. The stars looked less distant. And the tension that had carved itself into his spine since entering Timbermaw finally began to ease.
He pulled his boots off. Let his feet breathe. Stretched until his joints cracked like firewood. Then grabbed a second roast skewer for himself.
"Remind me to order six crates of Zerinthian Char Rub when we get to Velmora," he mumbled between bites.
[Understood. Putting it on the list of things to buy right away. With a note that says, Food bribery to keep Charles's short-lived happiness.]
He laughed. A real one.
"Don't make fun of how deep my feelings are. I have layers."
Like a monster?
"Like a philosopher who is being sarcastic."
Violence all around. Then there was sarcasm. Then, more violence happened.
He didn't fight.
Because SIGMA was correct.
The fire made a crackling sound.
Nimbus made a low rumble, curled up tighter, and twitched its tail like a cat dreaming of flying fish.
Charles drank the rest of the Aether-Fire Reserve, put the empty bottle in his waste pouch, and lay back under the stars.
No alarms. No illusions. No twitching legs.
The low hum of warding arrays, the warmth of roasted meat, and the quiet company of a dragon who had killed things with him all day.
He sighed.
And closed his eyes.
"Wake me in five hours," he murmured.
Understood. I will dream of paperwork and burnt spider guts in your absence.
"Lovely."
Sleep came quickly.
And in the quiet shelter of his isolation dome, on a ridge kissed by frost and starlight, Charles rested.
Because even storms must sleep.
Before they rise again.