The air in the conference room was thick with tension. The mutated jumping spider remained perched on the edge of the mahogany table, its eight eyes shifting rapidly between Primo and Wyn. It was a standoff between human strategy and predatory instinct.
Primo realized his makeshift spear was too long and clunky for this close-quarters skirmish. If the spider jumped again, the pole would only get in his way. He made a snap decision: the spear was now a projectile.
He drew back his arm, channeling his 13 Strength, and launched the spear with the force of a ballista. The weapon whistled through the air, but the spider was a master of evasion. It leaped sideways in a blur of bristles, the spear slamming into the far wall with a deafening thud. Without skipping a beat, the spider used its landing to spring again, aiming straight for Wyn's throat.
Wyn was ready. He predicted the trajectory and swung his fire-axe in a massive, bone-crushing arc. He was certain he had it—the timing was perfect.
But then, the impossible happened.
Mid-flight, the spider's forward momentum suddenly jerked to a stop. It dangled in the air for a fraction of a second, causing Wyn's axe to whistle harmlessly through empty space. Primo gasped as he saw the thin, glinting thread of silk anchored to the table. The spider had used a safety line to arrest its jump mid-air—a level of tactical intelligence they hadn't seen in the other beasts.
The spider swung back and immediately launched a counter-attack, diving toward the now-unarmed Primo.
Primo reached for the kitchen knife at his waist, but the spider was too fast. It was a dark, fuzzy mass of fangs and legs closing in on his face. With no time to draw his weapon, he threw up his left arm in a desperate block.
Wyn screamed a warning, feeling helpless as the fangs neared Primo's flesh.
Primo braced for the agony of venom, but something inside him clicked. Perhaps it was his high Will stat or the passive influence of Tenacity, but his instincts bypassed his conscious thought. He felt a surge of cold energy.
"Stone Skin!"
His forearm didn't just tingle; the skin grayed and hardened, taking on the dull, impenetrable sheen of granite. The spider's fangs slammed into his arm with the sound of a hammer hitting a rock. The creature's eyes seemed to widen in shock as its primary weapon failed to pierce the "stone."
Capitalizing on the spider's confusion, Primo finally unsheathed his knife with his right hand. He drove the blade upward with a savage thrust, burying the steel deep into the spider's soft, pulsing abdomen.
The spider let out a shrill, vibrating shriek. It kicked off Primo's stony arm, trying to retreat to the safety of the ceiling, but it was too late. The wound was mortal, and its movements were sluggish.
Wyn didn't miss his second chance. He stepped into the spider's path, his axe already in motion. This time, there was no safety line to save it.
SHUCK.
The heavy blade caught the spider mid-body, slicing clean through the chitin and silk glands. The two halves of the beast tumbled onto the conference table, twitching briefly before going still.
Primo let the Stone Skin fade, his arm returning to normal flesh. He was breathing hard, the adrenaline still coursing through him. "That... was way too close," he panted, looking at the marks on his sleeve where the fangs had hit.
"You turned to stone, man," Wyn said, leaning on his axe. "Literally. If you hadn't done that, you'd be a snack right now."
"That was my Stone Skin skill," Primo explained, his voice steadying as the gray, rock-like texture faded from his arm. "It must have triggered instinctively because of the danger. If I didn't have it, that thing would have bitten straight through to the bone."
Wyn looked at the faint marks on Primo's sleeve where the fangs had hit. "Man, you're not kidding. We'd be in a lot of trouble right now if you weren't essentially a human shield."
Primo nodded grimly. He sent Wyn to double-check every window in the conference room while he knelt to collect the loot. The jumping spider's gene core was different from the small ones they'd found earlier; it was as large and bright as the mutated dog's core Primo had taken on his first day. He tucked it safely away and then moved to the partially eaten cockroach corpse the spider had been guarding.
He searched the remains, hoping for a bonus core, but found nothing.
The spider must have already eaten it, Primo realized. It was a sobering thought. The system didn't just apply to humans; the animals were actively hunting each other to consume cores and evolve, just like they were. The monsters weren't just growing—they were competing.
Once they were certain the conference room was sealed, they did a final sweep of the two remaining deans' offices. Finding them empty and secure, they made a strategic decision to move their camp. They hauled their bags up from the first floor and chose the largest dean's office as their new headquarters. Staying on the second floor gave them a better vantage point to watch the campus and more escape routes if the building were ever breached.
Before settling in, they performed one last grim task. They gathered all the garbage bags containing the lizard, cockroach, and spider remains and carried them deep into the campus, throwing them far away from the faculty building to ensure the scent of decay wouldn't attract more predators to their doorstep.
With a few hours of daylight left, they spent their time scavenging the entire building for anything useful. They hit a small jackpot in the teachers' desks and the second-floor pantry. They managed to collect a decent stash of snacks, including several packs of biscuits, chocolate bars, and some dried fruit that had been left behind. Most importantly, they found a water dispenser in the pantry that still held about half a gallon of clean drinking water. It was enough to sustain them for another day and even allowed them to finally wash the sticky insect fluids off their hands and faces somehow.