Pain was the only teacher Clyde trusted anymore.
For three days following the fiasco with the Violet Weaver and the Armored Behemoth, Clyde did not leave the sanctuary of the Titanwood roots. He didn't even go near the edge. Instead, he turned his small clearing into a torture chamber of self-improvement.
He did push-ups until his arms trembled and gave out, his face planting into the moss. He did sit-ups hanging upside down from a low branch until his vision blurred. He practiced his mana rotation, forcing the sluggish, heavy energy of the Boar Armor to circulate through his meridians until his skin felt like it was chafing from the inside.
"Weak," he grunted, doing a one-armed pull-up. "Stupid."
He pulled himself up. "Careless."
He dropped to the ground, sweat glistening on his bare chest. He wasn't exercising to build muscle—the mana meat had already done that. He was exercising to discipline his mind. He had gotten cocky, and the forest had almost eaten him for it.
He sat in the lotus position, quieting his breathing. He closed his eyes and triggered the headache.
Mana Sense.
The world shifted. The colors of the physical realm—brown bark, green moss—faded into a grayscale wash. Superimposed over them were the heat signatures of magic. The Titanwood behind him was a blinding sun of gold. The air around him was filled with drifting motes of ambient mana.
He looked outward, past the safety barrier.
The forest was a battlefield.
He saw flashes of crimson and violet in the distance—monsters clashing. He saw a massive, serpentine aura coil around a tree and squeeze until the wood shattered. He saw the erratic, flickering lights of the rat-packs moving like a liquid virus through the undergrowth.
He watched for an hour, analyzing. He noticed how the auras interacted. When a predator killed prey, the prey's aura didn't vanish instantly. It lingered, fading slowly like a dying ember.
Suddenly, a disturbance near the northern perimeter caught his eye.
A large, predatory aura was approaching the Titanwood. It was a cool, fluid blue, moving with terrifying grace.
Clyde opened his physical eyes and crept to a vantage point behind a root.
A massive feline emerged from the shadows. It looked like a panther, but it had four eyes and two tails that twitched independently. It was a 'Nether-Stalker,' a creature Clyde had only seen from a distance.
It was dragging something.
Clamped in its jaws was the limp, battered body of a giant spider.
Clyde stiffened. The spider was missing three legs. Its carapace was cracked.
The Nether-Stalker stopped just ten meters from the Titanwood's aura. It dropped the carcass with a wet thud. The cat sniffed the air, eyeing the golden barrier warily. It seemed to know that other scavengers avoided this spot, making it a perfect, quiet dining table.
The cat began to eat. It tore into the spider's legs, crunching through the chitin like it was celery.
Clyde watched, disgusted but fascinated. The cat ate its fill—mostly the legs and the head—but it ignored the abdomen. After twenty minutes, the feline groomed its paws, let out a satisfied chuff, and melted back into the shadows of the deep woods.
It left the remains.
Clyde waited. Ten minutes. Twenty. No other scavengers came. The aura of the cat seemingly lingered, scaring off the rats.
"Opportunity," Clyde whispered.
He moved fast. He sprinted out of the barrier, grabbed the spider's remaining leg, and hauled the carcass back into the safety of the gold zone.
He collapsed on the moss, panting. He looked at his prize.
It was definitely the Violet Weaver. He recognized the punch marks on its thorax where he had cracked the shell days ago.
"Well," Clyde said, looking at the dead eyes of his former sparring partner. "I guess you lost too."
He began to butcher it. There wasn't much meat on a spider, and what little muscle there was looked purple and stringy. But as he cut open the bulbous abdomen, he stopped.
Something inside was pulsing.
Amidst the goo and the silk glands, there was an organ the size of a grapefruit. It was a deep, iridescent purple, throbbing with a weak, rhythmic light.
Clyde switched on his Mana Sense.
The rest of the spider was gray and dead. But this organ? It was a beacon. It was glowing with a dense, complex violet light. It looked unstable, vibrating as if the energy inside was trying to escape.
"The core," Clyde surmised. "Or a mana-heart."
He poked it with his knife. It was rubbery.
He thought back to the Boar meat. By the time he had eaten the boar, it had been dead for hours, and he had cooked it into a crisp. The mana had been there, but it had been dormant.
This... this was fresh. It was active.
"The boar gave me armor," Clyde muttered, rubbing his chin. "The spider made webs."
He looked at the organ. It smelled like ammonia and ozone. It was repulsive.
But Clyde was tired of just being a tank. He needed utility. He needed a way to stop enemies, to trap them, to escape.
"High risk, high reward."
He built a fire.
He skewered the purple organ on a stick and held it over the flames.
It didn't cook like meat. It didn't brown. Instead, it hissed. The violet light intensified, fighting the heat of the fire. The outer layer hardened into a weird, glassy crust, but the pulsing didn't stop. If anything, it got faster.
"It's not dying," Clyde observed. "The mana is reacting to the heat."
After twenty minutes, he decided it was done—or at least, as done as it was going to get. He had collected the drippings in his bark bowl; a neon-purple soup that looked radioactive.
He sat cross-legged in his hut. He had a bowl of Titanwood sap ready next to him.
"Bottoms up."
He bit into the organ.
It was vile. It tasted like bitter metal and spoiled milk. The texture was rubbery and popped in his teeth, releasing hot, stinging fluid. Clyde gagged, his eyes watering, but he forced himself to chew. He swallowed the chunks, fighting the urge to vomit.
Then, he drank the soup.
It burned all the way down.
He sat back and waited.
For a minute, nothing happened.
Then, the spider bit him. From the inside.
"GAAAAH!"
Clyde doubled over, clutching his stomach. It wasn't the heavy, expanding heat of the Boar. This was sharp. It felt like he had swallowed a bag of razor blades.
The violet mana exploded in his gut. It didn't want to merge; it wanted to pierce. It shot through his bloodstream like needles, seeking every nerve ending, every capillary.
His veins turned purple. He could see them tracking up his arms, pulsing violently.
POISON, his brain screamed. DISSOLVE.
He grabbed the Titanwood sap. He downed the entire bowl in one go.
The golden, heavy cold of the tree sap hit his stomach.
Round two.
The sap met the needles.
Clyde fell onto his back, thrashing. He felt the two energies collide. The sap tried to weigh down the violet energy, to compress it. The violet energy tried to slice through the sap.
It was agony. It felt like his nervous system was being pulled out of his body through his pores. His fingers locked into claws. His back arched until he was resting only on his heels and his head.
He screamed, but no sound came out—his throat was paralyzed.
Adapt, the voice of the forest seemed to whisper again, colder this time. Spin or break.
He passed out.
He woke up to the sound of birds.
Clyde lay still for a long time, afraid to move. He checked his body. No pain.
He sat up. He felt... different.
The heavy, solid feeling of the Boar Armor was still there, deep in his core. But layered over it, or perhaps woven through it, was something else. A buzzing, electric sensation. It felt like his nerves were vibrating at a higher frequency.
He looked at his hands. They looked normal, perhaps a bit paler.
"Did it work?"
He focused on the new energy. It felt slippery, thin, and sharp.
He tried to summon the armor. The gray plating appeared, covering his arm. But now, it had a faint purple sheen to it.
"Okay. Armor still works."
He dismissed the armor. He focused on the spider mana. He remembered how the Violet Weaver had shot the web. From its mouth.
Clyde opened his mouth. "Hhhck."
Nothing. Just a bit of drool.
"Okay, not the mouth. Thank God."
He focused on his fingertips. He visualized the energy flowing out, extending, becoming a line.
Thwip.
A thin, translucent purple thread shot out of his index finger. It hit the wall of the hut and stuck.
Clyde stared at it. He wiggled his finger. The thread was taut.
He pulled. The thread held. He pulled harder. It held.
He channeled more mana into it. The thread glowed brighter and thickened.
He pulled his hand back, and the thread detached from his finger, leaving a sticky line hanging from the wall.
"Mana silk," Clyde whispered, a grin spreading across his face. "I'm a Spider-Man."
He spent the next hour experimenting.
He found he could produce the threads from his palms, his wrists, and even the soles of his feet (which allowed him to walk up the vertical trunk of the Titanwood for about ten steps before he lost concentration and fell).
The silk wasn't physical matter; it was solidified mana. If he stopped feeding energy into it, it dissolved after about a minute. But while it was active, it was as strong as steel cable.
Then, a darker, more immature curiosity took hold.
"It comes out of my pores," Clyde reasoned. "Any pores."
He looked down at his loincloth.
"No. That's ridiculous."
He paused.
"But... in a combat situation... if my hands are bound..."
He looked around. The forest was empty. Only the birds were watching.
"For science," he muttered.
He stood up and untied his loincloth. He focused his mind. He channeled the violet energy to his... center of gravity. He visualized a thread.
Thwip.
A perfectly formed strand of violet silk shot from the tip of his manhood, striking a pebble on the ground three feet away.
Clyde stared at it. He twitched his hips. The pebble dragged across the moss.
"I can't believe that worked," he said, his voice a mix of horror and impressiveness. "I am a biological weapon."
He quickly cut the mana flow and retied his loincloth, his face burning with a shame that had nothing to do with survival.
"Never do that again," he promised the empty air. "Never."
But as he walked out of the hut, shooting a web-line from his wrist to snag a falling leaf out of the air, Clyde felt a new confidence.
He had armor. He had utility. He had range.
He looked toward the East, toward the ruins he had seen weeks ago.
"I'm not just a tank anymore," he said, clenching his fist and feeling the latent power of the Weaver hum beneath his skin. "I'm a trapper."
He walked to the edge of the safe zone. The blue flowers hissed at him.
Clyde shot a web, snagging the head of the nearest flower and clamping its jaws shut.
"Shut up," he said.
He was ready for the next step.