Enemies Defeated: 5 Cave Skitterers
XP Gained: +50 (10 each)
Mana Expended: 15
Mana: 85 / 100
The remaining ten Skitterers shrieked.
The coordinated advance shattered.
Some scrambled backward over each other.
Others pressed flat against the walls, legs twitching with conflicting impulses—flee or attack, flee or attack.
ANATHEMA won.
They chose attack.
But their formation was broken.
They came in scattered—three from the left, four from the right, three skittering across the ceiling.
And Ruel—
Ruel was already moving.
DEVOUR screamed in his veins.
The five charred corpses lay before him, still smoking.
Still warm.
Still carrying fragments of what they had been.
He snatched the nearest body in his jaws without slowing.
His teeth crunched through brittle, fire-weakened chitin.
He swallowed.
Something clicked inside him.
DEVOUR ACTIVATED
Target: Cave Skitterer (deceased)
Absorbing…
Fragment Obtained: Venom Spit (Minor) — Secrete a weak paralytic venom.
Can be applied to bite attacks or spat at short range.
The knowledge settled into Ruel’s body like a key fitting a lock.
Glands he didn’t have a moment ago formed along his jaw.
A new taste—chemical, sharp—filled his mouth alongside the charred spider-meat.
He grinned.
More.
He lunged for a second corpse—jaws closing, swallowing, absorbing—
DEVOUR ACTIVATED
Target: Cave Skitterer (deceased)
Ruel tore through the remaining swarm, his claws dripping with their own stolen venom.
They would die and feed him.
Ruel surged forward—a black streak of violence edged in violet light.
His newly-formed venom glands burned with stolen purpose.
He raked his claws through the puddle of ichor left by the charred corpses, coating them in a cocktail of paralytic fluid and his own saliva.
The first Skitterer came from the left.
Skill Used: Melee Combat (Multi-Enemy Engagement)
Ruel attempted to engage the remaining ten Cave Skitterers in close combat using claws, teeth, and stolen venom.
Result: Failure.
Ruel caught the first spider mid-lunge—claws punching through its thorax, venom flooding the wound.
It spasmed and went rigid.
He hurled the paralyzed body into a second one, sending both tumbling across wet stone.
But the ceiling-crawlers dropped.
Three Skitterers landed on his back simultaneously.
Hooked claws found the gaps between scales—the violet-lit cracks where his body was wrong.
Mandibles bit down.
Venom pumped into him.
Cave Skitterer Venom (×3 simultaneous injections) Damage: 18 HP Status Effect: Partial Paralysis — Right hind leg numbing.
Agility temporarily reduced by 5.
HP: 87 / 105 Health: 82%
Agility: 25 → 20 (temporary)
Pain.
Foreign.
Chemical.
His right hind leg seized—muscles locking against his will.
The weight on his back drove him downward.
More legs.
More mandibles.
A fourth Skitterer lunged for his throat—
Ruel snarled.
Not with pain.
With fury.
He rolled—crushing two of the ceiling-crawlers beneath his body weight against the stone floor.
Their chitin cracked.
Legs flailed.
He snapped his jaws sideways and caught the throat-lunger mid-air, clamping down with full force.
Crunch.
Venom—his venom now—flooded from his bite into the dying creature.
It seized instantly.
He swallowed it whole.
DEVOUR ACTIVATED
Target: Cave Skitterer (killed via venomous bite)
Absorbing…
Fragment Obtained: Wall Cling (Minor) — Can adhere to vertical surfaces and ceilings for short periods.
Seven down.
Three crushed beneath him.
One swallowed.
Six remaining.
They hesitated.
The tunnel reeked of their dead.
The violet-eyed thing in front of them had eaten their kin and stolen their weapons.
ANATHEMA screamed at them to attack.
Self-preservation screamed louder.
Three fled.
Three stayed—mandibles clacking with frenzied aggression.
The largest of them—slightly bigger than the others, chitin thicker, legs banded with faint markings—
The coordinator.
It shrieked a command.
The two flanking it charged
Ruel channeled the new power to his claws, pinning the coordinator to the wall.
The coordinator was not a leader.
It was only his next meal.
Ruel’s claws found the wall before his mind fully understood the new ability.
Wall Cling activated instinctively—his foreclaws adhering to the vertical stone surface as he launched himself sideways, bypassing the two charging flankers entirely.
The Skitterers skidded past where he’d been, legs scrambling on wet rock.
Ruel hit the wall, pivoted, and pounced downward.
Gravity and muscle combined.
His venom-slicked claws drove into the coordinator’s carapace and kept going—pinning it against the tunnel wall with a wet, crunching impact.
Skill Used: Targeted Strike (Pin Coordinator)
Ruel attempted to use Wall Cling to reposition and pin the lead Skitterer to the wall with venom-coated claws.
Result: Failure.
His claws pierced chitin—but not deep enough.
The coordinator was tougher.
Thicker armor.
Its legs braced against the wall, pushing back.
One mandible snapped shut inches from Ruel’s face—close enough to feel the wind of it.
But Ruel didn’t need to overpower it.
He needed to poison it.
His venom glands pulsed.
Paralytic fluid flooded from his claws directly into the wound he’d already made.
The coordinator shrieked—a high, warbling sound that made the two flankers freeze mid-charge.
Its legs twitched.
Spasmed.
One by one, they curled inward.
Skill Used: Venom Injection (Paralysis)
Ruel attempted to force paralytic venom through the existing wound into the coordinator’s body.
Result: Partial failure.
Partial effect applied due to direct wound injection.
The coordinator didn’t fully paralyze.
But it slowed.
Its legs stopped pushing.
Its mandibles clicked weakly—open, shut, open—without force.
A thick foam bubbled from its mouthparts.
Enough.
Ruel leaned in close.
His void-point eyes reflected in the coordinator’s dozen dimming lenses.
“You are not a leader.”
His jaws opened wide.
“You are just my next meal.”
He bit down on its head.
The crunch echoed through the tunnel.
ENEMY DEFEATED: Cave Skitterer Coordinator (Level 2)
XP Gained: +25
DEVOUR ACTIVATED
Target: Cave Skitterer Coordinator
Absorbing…
Fragment Obtained: Swarm Command (Minor) — Emit pheromone signals that can influence simple-minded insectoid creatures.
Range: 5 meters.
Effect:
Ruel tasted the metallic pheromones of the coordinator and let out a guttural, commanding click.
The command carried one simple meaning: obey or perish.
The pheromone glands—still forming along Ruel’s jaw where the coordinator’s flesh dissolved into his own biology—pulsed.
A sound emerged from his throat that wasn’t his.
Wasn’t draconic.
A rapid, staccato click-click-click-click that reverberated off the wet tunnel walls.
The frequency carried chemical meaning—dominance, threat, obey.
The two remaining flankers froze.