It was slowly getting ridiculous. I checked his stats before, and even though my species were higher on the evolution ladder, they were still much bigger than mine. I was a bit jealous of its strength, since it was me who should come on top easily in this situation, and yet, ignoring all the rules I was losing so badly that I had no idea what to do.

It’s not like I couldn’t survive, but all I could do was to face endless fragmentation of my body while needing to be careful not to use my spirit form when he pulls ethereal thread on me. From the side it would probably look like a deadlock, but even the slightest mistake on my side would surely end my life.

The ground became slick with my blood, and there was a thick burning stench from my earlier attack so I had to be even more focused to not slip on it while simultaneously having to endure quite distracting smell. Pretty dire situation I would say I ended up in.

If there was one good thing, my skills were slowly rising. I wasn’t thinking about overpowering him when my skills evolved, but they would certainly make fighting easier. If only I could find a weapon to defeat that spider. Even if I used my thread, the results would be mediocre at most, since from observation only I can tell how much superior skills does this guy have.

Maybe if I went for the huge floor destroying explosion then he would finally die, but I didn’t have the confidence to escape far enough to not die. I could probably limit the range, but then he would just dodge since the casting required time. If I somehow managed to stop him from moving, then that explosion would be the most plausible choice.

But how to stop the movement of something that much stronger than me? Traps won’t do since he’s just attacking from the distance and more importantly, he’s a spider so he will know how to avoid spider made traps. What if I limit his sight and then start casting the explosion?

It was certainly worth a try. I focused on my three creation skills and then with as much mana as I could pour into them I surrounded him with black extremely hot flame. Of course I checked if it was enough to defeat him, but he most likely created something akin to a shockwave barrier around him with his thread.

If I sustained the fire for long enough, maybe he would cook inside, or at least run out of air to breathe? From the short fight we already had I assumed that these factors wouldn’t pose any problem to him because of the pure stats he had. Even if he would eventually die from my fire, just sustaining three skills at the same time with that big output of mana took a strain on my mind.

I wasn’t sure if I could manage to hold it that long, even if my mana would certainly suffice. So, I took a deep breath and started creating the spell. Just from a single look at the mana flow, my head was about to burst, but I had to endure. I started intertwining them, and collecting the resulting strand into a sphere.

It was similar to what I did before blindly if I had to compare the feeling, but this time it would be more controlled. Just when I started, my enemy got restless. His movement became faster, and the shockwaves started pushing my flames out. He knew I was preparing something and tried to escape his confinement. Well, if he could do that, then my strategy of cooking him alive wouldn’t work either, but now I just had to hurry a bit. The sphere in front of me took on a golden hue, even though I couldn’t see it, I certainly felt it.

It was weird how I could feel the color of mana, but there was no reason to complain about it right now. I could tell it was ready when I felt that. Carefully, I aimed the sphere at the flaming cage and with the surgical precision, I poked a small hole in its outer membrane.

There was no sound.

There was no light.

There was just empty space in front of me.

I could clearly see the night sky, different from anything I saw in the dungeon. It was real, I was really looking at the outside. My spell tore right through the side of the giant tree we were right now, and opened a window to the world. I could see the forest from above, and also some sort of huge domes just beyond it.

I was so stunned by the sight I didn’t notice a small detail.

The flaming cage disappeared a millisecond before I managed to attack.

Even before I had a moment to bask in the victory, I ended up wrapped in a hundred layers of thread. That was it, I lost. I let my enemy capture me while I was distracted, I failed to kill him in one blow. I was effectively dead. I saw him, slowly walking in my directions, his eyes somehow distracted and focused at the same time.

He stopped right before my face, and lifted his thread to finish me up.

Scared I tried the only thing I had left.

[Begging lvl. 1]

I got the headache again, but I also used telepathy which I filled with as much mana as I could to command him to stop.

And he really stopped.

When I lifted my eyes, there was a black mist like smoke surrounding his head.

He was still alive and conscious, but something stopped him from movement.

[“Thank you, my princess. I’m sorry.”]

And then he pierced his head with both of his front limbs.