Reid shouted, and every word punctuated a swing of his mace into the corpse of his defeated foes.

"FUCK. YOU. GOD. DAMN. HORROR. SHOW. BULL. SHIT."

He stopped, looked at his notifications and his map again, and panted heavy breaths. The fight was over. It had been over for minutes now.

"That was a LOT of screaming."

Reid's whole body shivered as he looked over the ground.

"Nyx, how do I quit a questline?"

"Oh, come on, they're just arthropods. You eat arthropods all the time."

"Arthropods? ARTHROPODS? No. Nope. I eat crabs and shrimp. THOSE!" He pointed to the completely obliterated corpses, "Are ARACHNIDS. And not just any arachnid, are they!? BECAUSE OF COURSE THERE ARE FLYING SPIDERS, NYX! FLYING. SPIDERS. Fuck, we need Lycra. We need to find him, and then he can make bombs. Teach me how to make a bomb."

"We're not bombing the beasts, Reid. You killed them just fine. More flailing than normal, sure, but it's not like they could've harmed you anyway. You completely froze up when the first one started flying through the air, and its bite didn't even scratch your armor."

"FUCK! I know. Fuck." His body shivered again. "They're just gross."

"Gourds and arachnids. Your list of weaknesses grows, Reid. If someone threw a pumpkin full of spiders at you, we'd be in real trouble."

Reid was about to snap back, but managed to stop himself. She wasn't just trying to rile him up. Or, well, she was trying to rile him, but there was a purpose behind it. It wasn't cruel. She was trying to bring his hang-up to the point of absurdity, to make it into a joke or to help Reid see it was a foolish thing. He also knew she was right. Reid didn't like spiders, but he also wasn't actually afraid of them. It was the shock value of a massive, creepy thing with its spindly legs and eight eyes and that weird-ass mouth suddenly flying straight towards him that had messed with his head. Volitant. Why couldn't the identify have just said flying?

He shook his head, and sighed through his nose. The things were dead, and there were going to be more. He couldn't abandon this domain quest - the spiders that attacked him had all been level 25. That was absurdly low and would never pose a challenge for him - but it could be an issue for anyone living in the settlements that were listed in the questline details. Based on the fact that he hadn't gotten another notification about the quest and the wave, Dayo Wolte might've even still been dealing with their own spider wave.

If it was unusual for normal people to get to F grade in tutorials, it was probably also unusual for anyone else to reach that level. And all of that meant Reid had inadvertently created a situation where a settlement was tasked with wiping out a wave of boss-level enemies. He ground his teeth, and brought up the quest markers again. There was too much distance to travel it in a reasonable amount of time. His only straightforward option was to kill the Domain Lord.

He pulled down the walls he'd built, packed away everything that wasn't a weapon, and set off towards the domain lord.

#

#

It was almost half a day later that Reid received the notification he'd been waiting for.

-

NOTICE: Beast Waves Defeated! Experience Bonus Awarded to residents of Dayo Wolte. No bonus experience awarded to Unnamed Camp due to level disparity.

Next Wave (6 Enemy Beasts) begins in 4d 19h 59m 45s for Unnamed Camp and Dayo Wolte.

-

He wasn't surprised about the lack of experience. The flying spiders were only level 25, and hadn't been strong enough to equate to a single E Grade experience point. What was surprising was the difficulty ramp - or lack thereof. Reid was used to seeing levels and quantities increase by orders of magnitude while timelines tightened, but this time, there was a rational escalation coupled with days to prepare.

The whole thing honestly put Reid's worry at ease for the residents of the local settlements. If they weren't dealing with completely overwhelming odds and jumps in effort, there was a good chance the waves were going to be a multiplier for their abilities. Looking at it that way, Dayo Wolte was getting a pretty decent opportunity here. They had five whole days to rest, recover, and prepare for he next set of enemies, and should have the ability and knowledge from their recent fighting to make a stronger effort against the beasts.

If Reid was right, it meant he didn't have to rush quite so much. He could go back to growing his stats like he'd intended, and take on the domain lord when he was properly set. And if level 25 was the norm for local beasts, Reid could fully focus on affixation without worrying about what might be in the forest around him.

If he was wrong... he would get clues to that in how long it ended up taking Dayo Wolte to put down the next wave.

Reid donned a lopsided smile, put up a few quick walls, and dove into himself.

#

#

Reid made the most of his days. He tried out local plants and flowers to see if they were edible. He climbed one of the thin trees and ate the fruit that grew at the top. Tried to maximize his active affixation work by keeping a close awareness of his resources and his efforts.

That attempt at maximization led to a... fun discovery. Reid had set himself up with a simple pyramid structure for cover, and ended up only partway through a round of affixation when the wave started. By the time he finished his internal work, there were a small group of spiders scratching at the outside of his shelter. The hissing and the scrape of claw against harder bone were not the kind of relaxing sounds of nature he would prefer - but it wasn't terrible. Especially because the things were too weak to break in. The one arachnid that did manage to get its tarsus through one of his vent holes. Then it got that entire section of its leg stuck, and broke that part of its leg off trying to dislodge itself.

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The spiders couldn't hurt him in his shelter. Reid could stay inside and just... keep working on his stats. They were gross, awful creatures, but they were harmless against his E grade crafted construction. He stayed up and alert for hours to test his theory, and grew thicker anchors down into the ground just in case, but Reid didn't see a way the spiders were going to break in. So he did what anyone else in his position would do. He ignored the oversized flying spiders trying to break in and kill him, and went back to self-affixation.

Another two days passed. Dayo Wolte finished off their wave in about the same amount of time as the last one, which meant they were probably fine without Reid's help, and he could continue his current strategy. He would have been content with just that, too, but problems arose.

The spiders had never stopped attacking his structure. Crazed or forced into absurd levels of aggression, the beasts broke their own bodies trying to get through to Reid. Doing nothing had still resulted in Reid 'winning' the wave against the beasts. He surveyed their snapped legs, crushed faces, and twisted corpses as he read the notification.

-

NOTICE: Beast Waves Defeated! Experience Bonus Awarded to residents of Dayo Wolte. No bonus experience awarded to Unnamed Camp due to level disparity.

Next Wave (7 Enemy Beasts) begins in 7d 19h 53m 12s for Unnamed Camp and Dayo Wolte.

-

Just one more enemy, again, with an extra three days for preparations. Dayo Wolte had this. So Reid continued to use his time to the fullest.

#

#

This time, Reid ensured he was awake for the start of the wave - he needed to be for his test.

In the downtime during the past week of self affixation, Reid had stumbled on an idea that was equally wonderful and terrible. The arachnids didn't seem to have a new wave spawn until the old one was wiped out, and they'd only been wiped out because they injured themselves. So what if they didn't harm themselves? What if, technically, they were just... still attacking?

Reid stood inside a shark-cage like contraption, and waited. He didn't wait long

Seven angry flying spiders hurled themselves clear of forest plants, and sailed at him with their front legs extended and their fangs parted, ready to bite. Each had a central body the width of a couch cushion, and their eight thin long legs were ringed in thick bands of black and yellow. The rear of each beast was a gross, oversized bulging thing that looked like it should have completely unbalanced the creatures. Spikes like hair grew from multiple places on the beasts' legs and body, and the two rows of four eyes were a disturbing deep black.

They smashed themselves into the bars of the cage, and Reid used the opportunity. He grabbed exposed legs as they stabbed at him through the bars, and used the force of his bodyweight to hold two of the spiders down. An elongated tip on top of Requiem quickly stabbed back through the bars at the five spiders that weren't being held down, and Reid gave himself a moment to breathe. The two captured spiders were still trying to stab him with their other limbs, and uselessly clacked their fangs against the spindled bone. Part one done. Now for part two.

If Reid needed to stop the spiders from killing themselves, he needed to stop them from moving. More than that, he needed to do it in a way where they weren't going to have enough motion or reach to cause problems, and that was easier said than done.

He ended up with two designs for capture cages that he wanted to try. The first was an obelisk-looking contraption meant to force one of the spiders to coil in their legs and get stuck when he closed the end. The shape would make it so they didn't get crushed, but also couldn't move. It reminded him of a have-a-heart trap. The second design was entirely different. It looked more like two dinner plates put together, with a small notch cut out of one side. This one would be harder to use - it was going to require Reid to hold the spider in place long enough to seal the top and bottom of the device together. Then, he had to coax the thing to stick its head out of the notch, which would then fold in slightly to prevent the spider from going back inside.

Reid started with the obelisk. He carefully opened the smaller door to his shark-cage contraption, and put the obelisk in front of the now open space. Then he let one of the spiders free. It didn't disappoint, and immediately flew itself straight into the obelisk - hard enough to send the contraption rattling. Reid barely managed to close the door to the trap while keeping the second spider still.

His reward for a successful capture was a pissed off flying spider that was doing its best to lift the obelisk cage off the ground so it could move forward and bite Reid. It did manage a series of odd hops that brought it closer to him. Reid sped up the rest of the process. He pulled the dinner plate pieces to himself, then let the second spider go.

What followed was not pretty, smooth, easy, nor flattering. Reid would not speak of it again.

But, he did end up with the second spider (missing a few legs) secured inside of his other trap.

Now, he had two pissed off arachnids doing their best to make the bone cages they found themselves in fly. They were failing, of course, but they tried. Reid made a pair of heavy bone chests to house the two cages, and ensure the spiders didn't get mobile, then secured both inside. They were at enough of an angle for Reid to feed and water the things - assuming his plan worked.

#

Dayo Wolte finished their wave of spiders nearly 20 hours after it began. That gave Reid a bit of pause. It either meant they were doing something similar to him, or they were actually struggling. In either case, he was hoping to make it so they didn't have to deal with another wave at all. His goal was to keep the gross, awful beasts alive and mostly unharmed as long as he possibly could. It was a terrible, brilliant idea. Reid poured some water into the mouths of each spider, re-checked that their cages and the chests were securely locked, then sat down and restarted his self-affixation work.

#

He worked on himself continuously, only really stopping to not wear himself out or to feed the deliriously angry spiders - yes, they ate meat, and yes, it was gross. The things bit down on the meat cubes with their fangs, then waited for the once-wonderful cuts to liquify into a smelly mess before slurping up the whole disgusting thing. He wasn't sure if they actually needed the water, but he gave them both plenty of the liquid, too. They struggled, but couldn't move their bodies far enough to do anything that could injure themselves. Plus, Reid remembered three days into the whole ordeal that spiders still needed to poop, and added 'outlets' to allow their droppings to safely fall out and away from their bodies.

The plan - his plan - worked. Reid successfully cheesed the defense quest, and one week turned into two, then a month as he just kept working on himself. Six and a half weeks in - six and a half weeks of pouring water into those gross mouths and dealing with the smell of liquifying meat - Reid finally got to his goal.

Constitution: 710 -> 1260 Dexterity: 702 -> 1260 Intelligence: 699 -> 1260 Perception: 721 -> 1260 Power: 835 -> 1260 Control: 1260

Reid looked over at the pair of captured beasts that allowed him to speed through the rest of his stat acquisition. They were still completely, unbelievably gross - but they had allowed him to tick one of the goals off his list.

Resources - done. Shelter - handled. Info on wildlife - unfortunately known, or at least the domain-lord related ones were. Stat Increases - now complete. Still to go - info on Belar, better handle on the questline, locations of friends, skill practice, and equipment.

Overhead, plate-sized pointed leaves rustled against each other with a soft swishing breeze. Reid cracked his knuckles and sat on a low, oversized bone chair.

It was time for a new set of armor.

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