Lifestealer: Cursed Healer [A LITRPG Isekai Survival]

"You could reanimate the spiderlings and send them against their mother," Entisse suggested.

Symon opened his mouth to protest the incredibly messed-up sounding idea, but gave it some more thought after his initial gut reaction of revulsion wore off. The oversized spider wasn't getting any closer, and seemed against risking any of its remaining legs to continue attacking them, but they needed to do something to get out.

The spider definitely wasn't subtle, so what was to say it wouldn't attract something even more dangerous?

He wasn't a big fan of his necromantic ability in the best of circumstances, but having a cute little bird was far better to him than the freaky hand-sized spiders lying curled up on the ground. Still, he wouldn't let it get in the way of victory.

That being said, he wasn't sure how helpful they would be. They wouldn't have much venom in them, and it would be hard for them to deliver it through the hard shell of the mother spider, although Symon could cut through it for them. That presumed the spider was susceptible to its own venom, which wasn't a guarantee.

He had a mostly full vessel and neither of them were injured, so he might as well spend it. There was still a tiny amount of venom left from one of the stings he'd taken, but it only took a consequentially small supply of vitality to heal the damage.

"Fuck it, might as well," Symon said. "Can you pass one to me? I can barely see anything in here."

"Very well," she answered softly. Moments after, she deposited a hairy, still warm mass onto his cupped hands.

His second thoughts returned with interest, but he powered through the sensation of holding the uncomfortably prickly creature in his hands. In the low light, he'd first thought they were smooth and hairless, more like the centipedes he was all too familiar with, but he was wrong.

Using the Undead Servant evolution of Idealise was something he'd only done once before, and it hadn't been an easy process. It had been educated guesswork based on barely there instincts combined with good old trial and error, but he had succeeded in reanimating and binding Stitch. Now that he'd done it once, it was a lot easier to simply copy what he'd done last time.

Stitch — rest his pure and innocent soul — had been a small bird. The spiderling was oddly light in his hands, but he estimated it was around twice the physical volume of the bird. He didn't know which factors influenced how much vitality was needed to reanimate something, but size was a reasonable guess.

He repeated the same process as last time. He pulled vitality out of his vessel and forced it into the corpse until his intuition told him he'd used enough — virtually the only guidance the Ledger gave him for the ability — before he started coiling his thread around the spider.

Interestingly, he continued to drain the larger spider even while doing this, even though he'd always been unable to manifest two independent threads at once. Clearly, this binding thread wasn't the same as the draining one, though they looked identical to him.

It took much longer to reach the final step in the process, as it was a monotonous task to wrap the thread around the spiderling's many legs. When he glanced back at the main spider, all but a few of its hate-filled eyes had swivelled to lock onto him.

Yeah, I guess I wouldn't be too happy if someone started messing with my dead kid's body in front of me…

When he was confident everything was ready, he put a little extra vitality into the corpse just to be safe — might as well, considering a slow but steady stream still flowed into him from its mother — before placing it behind him, out of its sight.

It renewed its thrashing, but made no further progress, just like all the other times. It didn't seem angry enough to risk its legs again.

The threads wrapping around the spiderling like a cocoon sunk into the corpse with a wordless command from Symon. The thread connecting him with the spiderling seemed to condense, growing thinner and darker. Once it reached a certain level the magic deemed satisfactory, a mote of vitality shot out of his vessel and down the connection.

When it impacted the body, all of its legs twitched in tandem, flexing out and then back in a few times. Then, it flipped upright and swivelled to face him, two eyes looking up at him. They'd been closed before, so he hadn't noticed that it didn't have nearly as many as its mother. It made his newest minion a little less creepy, but not by much.

Right as Symon was about to ask Entisse to hand over the next one, the spider finally tried something new.

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By now, it had wedged its body into the entrance so far that barely any light could reach past it. When it started wriggling and undulating oddly, he assumed it was just trying to leave.

Instead, it projectile vomited all over the floor.

"Ohwhatthefuckgoddamnit," Symon blurted out as he scrambled backwards, Entisse and the spiderling joining him. He didn't have any space to make more distance from the giant spider, but he could press against the side walls at the same time and hold himself off the ground.

Entisse was closer and started coughing first, and it didn't take Symon long to realise it wasn't just because of the foul smell. Light streamed in from the cave entrance as the spider finally pulled back, revealing the outside world and bathing the disgusting fluid in light.

Seeing the chunky concoction in further detail was an attack all on its own, but more important were the thin puffs of greenish gas emanating from it.

"More poison," Entisse hissed out. It was already a raspy, painful-sounding thing, not at all like its usual softness.

A glance at the seemingly clear cave entrance made it clear what the spider's plan was.

"Shit, it's trying to smoke us out, then it'll —" a wracking cough interrupted him, forewarned only by a burning feeling in his throat moments before.

He'd been trying to say that it would ambush them as soon as they tried to climb out of the cave, but she didn't need that to be explained to her. Hunting and ambushing monsters was kind of her thing, after all.

Their problem with the trap was that, even knowing exactly what would happen, they had no good way to counter it. Weakened as it may be, the spider was still a Second Step monster, and that difference in power would only be exacerbated by the poor battlefield.

Climbing the sheer cliff face was dangerous enough without being attacked by a giant spider. Even Entisse, who was far more fluid with her movements than he was, stood no chance in competing with the spider like that.

But staying inside was even more of a death sentence, and if he had to pick between a quick death by falling and a slow one by choking on toxic spider bile, he knew which one he would choose.

"Any other ideas before I do something stupid?" Symon asked.

Entisse shook her head. "It is below us and to the left," she added. "I feel its blood."

<Yeah, what she said, and no, we're screwed,> Keelgrave confirmed.

His vessel was almost full, but the spider was no longer in range. Already, it was steadily ticking downward to fix his damaged lungs and throat.

He had to act, and fast.

With a final nod, more to himself than anyone else, he gave Entisse a few units of the lifegiving resource to keep her going a little longer. Chances were, he wouldn't have a good opportunity to keep healing her. She nodded back, and they both marched for the entrance.

There wasn't much of a breeze, but it was at least less confined at the front, meaning the horrible smell and lethal toxins were just a little less bad.

Entisse yanked him back right as they reached the exit, and, in the moment after, another spray of disgusting green vomit splashed against the ceiling and showered down on them.

She sheltered behind him, using him as a shield to absorb most of the droplets, but he couldn't blame her after she pulled him out of the direct hit. Even still, they both hissed in pain and anger as the acid spray sizzled onto their clothes and skin. Considering Symon didn't have much of the former, the latter also quickly began to disappear. At least he'd gotten his arms up in time to block it from reaching his face.

They both slapped away at the spots where it had hit them. The pain wasn't so bad that Symon couldn't continue to plan, though.

Presumably, there was some type of recharging limitation to the acid vomit, as otherwise the spider would have just filled the cave with it. He wasn't sure why it didn't use the attack immediately, but perhaps it could sense Symon and Entisse were on the First Step and didn't deem it necessary, or it could have been worried about harming the baby spiders.

Regardless, Symon was confident enough to quickly poke his head out of the cave.

It was exactly where the others had said it would be, below them and a little to the left. It had twitchily skittered from side to side, its movements thrown off by the damaged limbs.

Of the four that they had injured before it retreated, two were hanging limply, one was curled up against its body, and the final was still being used, albeit slowly and less often than the others.

Far below them, at least two hundred metres, was the forest floor.

To say it glared angrily would be an understatement. Every single one of its dozens of eyes was locked onto Symon, its baleful focus so intense that it felt as if it was trying to pin him in place with its gaze. He still took the time to take a few quick breaths of fresh air, relatively confident it wouldn't be able to attack again so soon.

His logic was sound, as he managed to observe the spider for a couple of seconds longer before it repeated that undulating motion it made when preparing to launch its horrific projectile. He pulled himself back in early and took a few extra steps back, being careful to avoid the vomit already on the floor, and dodged the attack by a wide margin.

"Yeah, this is bad," Symon admitted.

"Retreat to the entrance cave?" Entisse suggested after also taking a deep breath of the cleaner air, though her words were half-hearted.

It wasn't a horrible idea, as it was only two dozen metres of climbing to get back to the cave they had arrived in when entering the dungeon. But even injured as it was, the spider could still easily catch them both over such a distance.

"Maybe," Symon said, "but we'd be turning our backs to it."

"We must not do that; it is an ambush predator."

"Agreed. I guess that means—"

"The only way out is through," she intoned, as if quoting something.

"Sure, but our plan boils down to 'just run out and wing it.'"

She stared at him as if waiting for him to continue.

"Uh, and that's a bad thing?

She shrugged back at him. "We will die staying here. We must force our own growth, or die to this monster or another in the future. I suspect we will not escape this dungeon any time soon."

Symon had no good option here, but at least he could die on his feet. Well, on a wall, but the idea was there.

With a final muttered grumble, he pulled himself out of the cave before the spider could launch another projectile.