Spider facts!

  Category: Anatomy/Physiology

  Subcategory: Sensory Input

  Humans were far from the first creatures to develop extraordinary vision. Long before our ancestral shrew was hiding from dinosaurs, jumping spiders had already developed eyesight comparable to our own. The development of structures analogous to the extra-occular muscles of humans allowed them to shift focus without any detectable motion. This provides an obvious advantage in avoiding discovery by predators or prey. The vision of jumping spiders also yields several significant advantages over human eyes: their field of view is much broader, particularly for objects in motion, and the ability to view polarized light displayed by some spiders allows for ease of navigation wherever the sky is visible.

  The hunger was the worst he could recall. Jon had barely processed the journey out of the mangrove forest and into the trees where he was now.

  He could barely think for the hunger, it was like he had missed every meal for the last year. His whole life came down to a razor-sharp focus on his next meal. His other concerns from minutes earlier: the stats, the paths, even his own family seemed like background noise.

  Jon found himself in a small clearing surrounded by over-sized pine trees. Everything in this world was too damn big. He felt a tremor in the ground ahead, and began climbing the nearest tree to gain a better vantage. He threw his psionic senses ahead, feeling a large number of small beetles and flies flitting through the air. Their mental presence barely registered. It seemed there were some life-forms in this world that stayed the right size.

  “Most of them did, you just haven’t noticed because you’ve been a bit distracted.”

  Jon ignored Louis, focusing on the larger movement he had felt ahead in the trees. He still hadn’t found the source, and he couldn’t spy much ahead even now that he was a few meters up. The vegetation was too dense. Jon kept climbing until the branches grew too thin for his weight, then leapt to a tree closer to his target.

  Absently, Jon recognized he had to be thirty or forty meters in the air as he leapt from branch to branch. The height should have terrified him; he did leave anchor threads with each jump, but that wasn’t why he felt so comfortable. Somehow, he he was just supremely confident in his accuracy.

  Jon paused when he got over the spot where he saw the movement, and surveyed the ground below.

  For a while, nothing happened. Jon wondered if he had been too noisy during his journey. A dash of movement came from the ground, and he honed in on it.

  It was a many legged creature with an armored carapace.

  The insect was between the size of a house cat and a medium-sized dog, and it looked like a cross between a millipede and a pill bug. It had a bright green carapace punctuated by yellow dots along its side.

  As he watched, the millipede darted its head into the trunk of a tree, piercing the bark. When it retracted its body, it was holding a struggling creature in its jaws. Jon thought it might be a vole.

  The millipede slammed the creature down on the ground before ripping into it with its jaws. In a matter of seconds, the smaller creature disappeared down its gullet.

  Jon found himself slowly rappelling down his thread on the trunk. He was drifting down towards the millipede, not even considering whether it was an appropriate target.

  Louis somehow interpreted his thoughts, and filled him in:

  “Likely a level 2 creature, not unlike yourself. It has clearly undergone some changes. It is over-sized, and its coloration is probably not natural. I’m not sure if that creature even had a class, and most level 3s won’t hunt those outside a quest: it isn’t worth the energy expenditure. If you can ambush it, you’ll likely be fine.”

  Jon was not listening. He was now only a few meters above the creature. The millipede was none the wiser, still sniffing about the tree stump for more voles.

  Jon stopped to cling to a nearby branch, leaving an additional anchor point near the trunk. Then he began reaching out with his mind sense for the millipede.

  He formed the psychic needle and proceeded like he had with the bear, piercing the defenses, passing a mental guidewire, and finally dilating the point of attack before establishing a more direct link. The whole process took him less than half as much time as it had with the bear.

  “Good! Much better. Now choose what you want it to do.”

  Jon thought for a moment, before settling on a simple solution. He muted the creature’s sense of its surroundings, imparting a bit of his own hunger onto it. Then he gave it the impression of another vole squeaking away in the tree across from him. The millipede eagerly ran up to the spot, getting ready to pierce the trunk as it had the last time.

  As it rammed its head into the trunk, Jon made his move, pouncing onto its back and piercing it with his fangs. Then he lifted the struggling millipede into the air. He felt the familiar squeeze of his poison glands going to work on the creature. He dropped the mental link.

  It twisted a few moments, but seemed to be slowing in its struggles.

  Just as Jon thought he was home free, he smelled something foul secreting from the sides of the millipede. It was overwhelming holding it so close to his palps, like holding a rotten egg in his mouth: he tossed it to the side, where it curled into a ball before he could grab it again. Louis chose this moment to chime in:

  “So, what did we learn?”

  “That this thing tastes like shit?”

  “No, we learned that you don’t drop your mental link just because you hit something once.”

  Jon grumbled, then attacked the creature once more with his psionic ability. This time, even the initial assault with the needle was quite difficult, and the millipede quickly localized his attack and pushed back.

  “Yeah, when they’re aware of you it gets harder to get back in too.”

  Jon opted to just walk up and slam his claws on the millipede, but with its defensive ball active, its plates were somehow much harder. The claws slammed into the ball over and over again with minimal effect. He wasn’t eager to put his fangs on the creature again, recalling the foul taste from last time he held it.

  Jon had had enough. He unleashed a focused psionic wave at the creature. It depleted over a fifth of his psionic reserves, but to his satisfaction, the ball immediately collapsed and the bug began shaking and twisting. He clawed at its exposed underbelly with abandon, only stopping when the creature ceased moving. Then Jon moved on to feasting, carefully avoiding the hard shell with the nasty tasting coating.

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  “Fresh game: gargantuan millipede.”

  As he ate, Louis began peppering him with questions:

  “Ok, so debrief time. How much energy did it take you to perform the initial attack and distraction?”

  “Not much.”

  “And how much energy did that last attack take?”

  “A lot.”

  “So which one do you think is better?”

  Jon thought for a minute.

  “Honestly, the last one. The first attack was great but didn’t give me much room for error. Once my opponent is seizing on the ground, they can’t do much to defend themselves.”

  “That’s a fair assessment, but it’s incomplete. You would have expended much less energy if you had just unleashed that attack from behind the defenses. Do you understand why?”

  Jon thought about it for a couple minutes, crunching on the millipedes soft insides. The texture was like a chicken curry. Cold though.

  “When I hit these higher leveled guys it feels like there’s a layer of energy between me and them. The same thing happened when I attacked the cherub, the bigger bunnies, or even when Oregano gave himself a mental resistance upgrade.”

  “Again, incomplete. It’s partially about the level, yes. The circulating energy of the beasts increases as their level increases. However it’s also about the mana types; in all cases, when circulating energy increases, mental energy increases proportionately to the intelligence score. Like energies defend against like energies better, so they have more ammo to fight back with. The higher the intelligence score, the higher the share of energy being directed towards the mental energy will be.”

  “So is that why the bear was so much easier to hit? Not much intelligence?”

  “Partially. That bear was pretty damn thick, but I think it’s lack of discernment was as much a problem as the intelligence. You need discernment to detect mental attacks, as it lets you sense the fluctuations in your energy and figure out the foreign influence. Intelligence, dexterity, presence and power all give you more ability to fight off the attack once you see it.”

  “So I’m always going to be in a race with my opponents, to try to breach their defenses and act before they detect me?”

  “In the early days, yes. Later, you’ll learn ways to redirect their attention even if they find you. Let’s not worry about that yet though, because you still haven’t mastered even basic attacks. They come in three flavors: stunners, distractions, and controls. The stuns are crude, but very effective when they work. A disabled opponent is often a dead one, as you’ve discovered.”

  “They also seem like the easiest to shrug off though.”

  “In some ways. They lack subtlety or energy efficiency. If an opponent is immune, you’re just fucked. Compare it to a distraction like you just used, where if they don’t bite you can try something else. There’s a good chance they won’t even notice it was you. Controls are somewhere between, and are best saved for after you’ve gotten a little more facile at evading mental defenses.”

  Jon scraped against the inner carapace with his claws, and began angling along the surface to scoop up more of the tasty goo.

  “What’s the advantage? Isn’t a control just a shittier version of a stunner?”

  “No. If you can make an opponent stumble at the wrong moment, you can accomplish as much as you would have by stunning them at a fraction of the cost. If you can make them think their friend is an enemy, you might be able to get them to kill them for you if they’re trigger happy. Control offers a lot of versatility that stunning lacks, and it’s much more efficient It also requires way more finesse.”

  “So to summarize, stunners good but expensive, stunners behind defenses cheaper and good, distractions ok but limited, and controls are great but too hard for me now.”

  “..Sure. Mostly, I just want you to take away that you need to work on getting behind enemy defenses. There are a million other mental attacks, whether it’s by blending in as a friend and extracting intelligence, simply being ignored as you walk through enemy territory, getting a better deal in a trade, or any number of other applications. But they all start by getting past the defenses, and they all become cost prohibitive if you can’t. Especially if you ever want to fight multiple opponents.”

  “Fair enough I guess.”

  “One last thing. Next time you find something to eat, get behind the defenses and then show yourself. I want you to see something.”

  Jon wiped his face a bit with his palps, clearing a little bug goo from beneath his eyes. He felt for the energy to make an upgrade, and was surprised to see there was none.

  “Hey Louis, what the hell, I barely gained anything!”

  “Welcome to level 2, and why you need to breach the defenses. You came out behind on that fight.”

  Jon checked, and realized Louis was right. He had less mental energy than at the start of the day, and his overall energy stores were only slightly up from the end of the fight. It was a net negative.

  He grumbled to himself as he climbed up a tree, once again on the lookout for prey.

  Now that he knew what to look for, it didn’t take too long before he found another millipede. He had passed a frog-like creature clinging to a nearby tree, but Louis had said it was at least a level 3 and suggested avoiding the fight.

  The hunger was difficult to ignore, but Jon did so with some effort. Soon after, he had found this prospective victim.

  This millipede was also a bright green, and at least half again the size of the last one. Jon did as Louis asked, bypassing the defenses gradually and then just pausing a moment.

  “Now, watch the creature for a few minutes, get familiar with the feedback and the feeling of its movements.”

  Jon did as he was bid, waiting and watching for several minutes. This millipede seemed less hurried than its predecessor. It moved slowly from tree to tree, knocking about at the bases of the trunks.

  When it heard nothing, it paused a few seconds before moving on to the next one, where it repeated the process. Jon finally saw why when it was rewarded by a yelp; a large opposum-looking creature tried to leap out of the tree and over the millipede.

  The millipede speared up and through the unfortunate creature faster than Jon could blink. The millipede twisted, hitting the opossum into the tree, then began eviscerating the struggling animal.

  Jon had seen enough, and was ready to come to the defense of his fellow mammal. He dropped down, preparing to attack the millipede. Louis interrupted him,

  “No, don’t ambush it. Just walk right up to it. Do what comes naturally.”

  Jon felt a little trepidation as he lowered to the ground, but so far Louis hadn’t lead him to harm. As he silently approached the millipede, he felt it sense him. Through its thoughts, he knew exactly how the next second was going to go. He lifted a claw into position.

  This millipede repeated its lightning quick spearing motion, a retractable jaw shooting out toward Jon as it lunged for him. Jon hopped slightly to one side and stabbed the creatures left eye with a foreclaw. He bit its face with his pincers and bowled it over onto its back.

  The millipede tried to curl into the protective ball formation that thwarted him earlier, but it was too late. Jon landed on its thorax and dug into the soft underbelly. Its thrashing quickly came to an end.

  The entire exchange took about eight seconds, with most of that time taken up by Jon digging his way into the creature’s vitals. Nearby, the opossum was still clinging to life and clawing its way away. Jon’s claws came down on its head a second later, ending its suffering.

  “So much for the mammalian solidarity. How did that feel?” Louis said.

  “It was going to die anyway. This was less cruel.”

  “And it will be tasty! But how did it feel?”

  “Good. It felt way easier than the last fight, and a lot less dangerous despite failing to ambush it at all.”

  “If you can get your psionics advanced enough, and you can get a little sneakier, you’ll never have to walk into a fair fight again.”

  “Sounds good to me!”

  Jon found himself munching down on the much more pleasant opossum meat. He didn’t get a system prompt. There wasn’t much energy, but it had a nice texture. He would go back and finish the centipede, but for now, he found himself back at his memory of Tommy with his donut at the kitchen table.

  “Happy, happy, happy,” he thought to himself.

  He focused on the memory. He tried to ignore his body, which was in telling him that this meal was his highest calling. He wouldn’t let his fate be moving from one feeding trough to the next. That was a path that ended in Jon’s stagnation and eventual slaughter. Jon needed to go home, and to do that, he would need to grow, and he would need to focus on what mattered to him.

  “Happy, happy, happy,” he thought, losing himself in thoughts of home.