Spider Knight 1.0 (Patreon)

Pyotr let out a muffled groan of pain as he lay half dead in the guts of a cave.

The cold of the dark and damp place slid its way through the holes in his leather armor as he rested over a pile of corpses.

Bandits attacked his caravan, as simple as that. It was a simple escort mission for a traveling group of merchants that didn't have enough money to pay for the teleportation network to move their big and bulky goods.

Petite, small, and weak, he was smart, but without enough money to get the proper lessons and professors to learn magic, it was useless. That was why he was forced to learn how to use his intelligence in other ways; still, there were limits that a simple, talentless human like him had.

The young man's shoulder-length, messy brown ,as his eyes, hair was caked in a thick mixture of grime and gore. Even the scar that crossed the right part of his upper lip, made by a bully while he was practicing with his sword, was nothing compared to the ones that Pyotr would get if he survived this tribulation.

For a second, Pyotr wondered why they left him half dead and, most importantly, why they took the work to drag him and the rest of the corpses into this cave and throw them into the pit at the bottom.

Then the answer walked toward him.

It was a massive black spider the size of a horse; its long legs shone with a red hue while its chitin was this obsidian landscape decorated by strings of crimson and blue.

The monster was less a pet and more a local lord that bandits needed to pay tribute to to stand on its land.

He quickly moved a hand forward, trying to search for something that could be used as a weapon, but it was no use; the spider had already sunk its fangs into his neck.

Pyotr gritted his teeth, and he felt the poison getting drained into his veins. However, as his fingers were grabbing those long and sharp black knives, a voice whispered inside the young man's head.

[A deal will be struck between us. Power will be given in exchange for unseen consequences.]

The weaver said, creating a message in front of Pyotr that he could read and hear at the same time.

He was becoming a puppet, and the idea of that made him want to refuse at first, but then the neutral voice spoke again.

[Refusing will not happen; coincidence has been woven to ensure that.]

The will that was inside that spider was transferred inside him. It was growing inside his soul, like a fly trapped in a silky web and getting encapsulated by strands. Pyotr didn't have any other option but to let this creature melt his spirit with its divine infection.

He couldn't decide if this was luck or a curse as he gritted his teeth. There were stories of people chosen by deities before without their permission, but it always carried some kind of curse or price to pay.

As everything went dark, the young man wondered what weight he would need to carry.

[Please, my totem, pick your first strand.] The weaver asked before reforging his body, giving him a dash of agency.

Spell weaving: The user becomes able to twist and bend the rules of magic, using their totemic power to take patterns of other spells and mix them together to create a new one without going through the long process of experimentation. Basically, if you have a spell that shoots a ball of fire and another that creates an armor of rock, with this, you can easily create a third spell that shoots a stone bullet. The main use is to save a lot of money and time by skipping the learning procedure.

Familiar creation: The user can infuse weapons and items with magic silk strings that turn them into familiars. These familiars can move and act at the will of the user, becoming floating swords, shields, and even armors that they can use in combat. At the current level, you can only have one familiar activate at the same time.

Call of the swarm. The user becomes able to not only talk and tame wild spiders and spider monsters, but he also gets the power to summon a small horde of one thousand black spiders to help in battle. With the help of their paralyzing poison, they are not only good for direct combat but also for ambushes. A totem user can only have one swarm activate at the same time and can summon it again one time per day if killed.

Weaver armor: The user can summon magic strands that not only can be used to be shot from their hands to bind opponents, but also can be used to create a layer of armor around them. This special armor increases your strength and speed by 40% and is as durable as steel, like the rest of your webs.

Healing silk: The user can create white silk from his wrist that works as a special healing substance if used as a bandage or dissolved to be drunk. These strands are perfect for recovering after a fight, allowing the user to heal most of the normal damage in minutes. They are not so great at treating lethal wounds or more strange afflictions.