As the spiders quickly surround me, a cold fear creeps up along my spine, not inferior to the one I'd first felt when being chased by the alligator creatures.
While I've been given a second chance at life, these monsters all look to be D rank, and I'd just struggled deeply to deal with a single D rank monster just moments ago.
Understanding the severity of the situation, I hasten my blades as a spider assaults me overhead, forcing me to deflect its thin claws protruding from its legs.
As the impact between its claws and my dagger rings across the abyss, I quickly lower my blade to take advantage of its position mid-air, sending it flying twenty feet in the opposite direction.
Just as I swat it away, my increased field of vision reveals an additional three spiders orchestrating a violent assail on my body.
The first two spiders jump towards me with their mouths hanging open, liquid oozing down to form a trickle on the floor that follows their body's path of movement.
The third was in quiet pursuit behind the other two, its mouth closed as it maintains a calmer facade.
Raising both of my blades to my head, I charge forward to meet the spiders halfway, clashing with their fangs as the third spider suddenly stops moving.
"Pthew!"
As soon as I warded off the attacks of the first two spiders, the third spider spits out a huge ball of web, so condensed with mass that it moves with the sluggish inertia of a bowling ball.
Extending out my blades to send the two spiders flying, I brace my lower extremity as I take a power step forward with my left foot, planting my right as I flip my blade around to send it pointing towards the sky.
Releasing the tension in my forearm, I output a devastating slash to the ball of webbing as the air distorts, a crescent-shaped slash made barely visible.
As a Krrk sound emits from my arm, I wince from the spontaneous pain, flashes of the discoloration formed from my previous fracture against the D rank creature making their way back to my memory.
It seems that even now with the healing passive, I'm not fully recovered.
Crackle, crackle, crackle!
Dancing along my skin were red, grueling boils that shifted between increasing in size and popping, the surrounding skin burning off just barely down to my muscle as a red hue made itself known.
Damn, this hurts.
After cutting through the webbing, a translucent material splashed out, expanding past where I could dodge and leaving me no choice but to take the attack head-on.
With little to no time to react, I managed to protect my face as my arms and torso took the brunt of the attack, a stabbing pain sprawling across my many burns as my skin continues to produce boils.
If this goes on any longer, I risk leaving myself vulnerable to another one of those acid attacks, and I'm not entirely sure my body could handle that.
In that case, I'll have to finish this quickly, but how? The spiders may number in the hundreds, and I can't seem to take them out swiftly.
"kihkihkih." The spider lets out a mocking laugh as its condescension shone through, almost probing me on purpose to come closer and fight it.
Sequentially, the spider returned to closing its mouth as a shifting in its abdomen became apparent, the obvious point of location for its webbing.
Ignoring the pain--mostly due to my pain resistance ability--and taking its bait, I charge forth, insistent on dealing with the spider before it can produce more of its webbing. Whatever plans it may have, I can deal with them.
Splash!
Just barely weaving out of the way, I dodge a huge ball of acid that extended its path just inches in front of where I would've been had I not halted my momentum.
As I stepped back to dodge the first ball of acid, another ball spat towards me, this time encapsulated in the same webbing.
With speed several times greater than the previous ball of acid, I had no choice but to extend my blade outwards to defend.
However, this time around, I tried my hand with parrying instead of slicing.
Using the flat of my dagger, I was able to shift its trajectory just upwards of its target--me.
Watching it bounce back towards the wall, it still maintained its spin even after being lodged in hard cobblestone, grating and churning the stone as the violent whirring continued to create a painstakingly horrid shrill not dissimilar to the sound produced by the scraping of a chalkboard.
Looking back down towards my target, I was instead met with twenty or so spiders who were staying within a medium range while procuring webbing and acid inside their abdomens.
With little to no visual distinctions to differentiate between the balls of acid and webbing when being produced, I have to use my best intuition and be prepared for both, otherwise, a single slip-up will spell my demise.