The Wolf of Calamity - Book 1 - Chapter 8 - Frost and Spiders (Patreon)

Year 1396 After Chaos
Month 7

Chaotic Plane

Asher

After letting my stomach settle for a couple of hours, I head out to find some prey. Because there has to be something else here besides just the things I’ve seen so far.

And fortunately for me, the skies are actually quite clear outside when I leave the den. Just in case though, I still roll around in the muddy snow around the plant. After all, I wouldn’t want to be caught in the middle of a blizzard with the ice wraiths without the mud.

Not until I can kill them myself that is.

As for the direwolf corpse that is in my den? It doesn’t really matter if something else gets to it and eats it while I’m gone. Sure it’d make good emergency food when I can’t leave the den, but I’d rather still avoid having to eat it. Not when it wastes space in my stomach when I could be eating something stronger.

And if something else eats it, I at least don’t have to worry about the kill going to waste.

I continue walking through the taiga until I get to a spot completely clear of trees and look to the sky to find the three suns high above. One of them is a bright red color, another a deep purplish black, and the other a vivid blue. Each of which are equally distanced from each other up above, with the middle one being just a little bit past directly up. Meaning that – assuming teacher’s books weren’t just for show – it should be a little bit past noon.

From what I understand, no one really knows how the day and night cycle works. Just that there are three suns, and they move across the sky seemingly in the same positions across the entirety of the Chaotic Plane every day. But some days they move slightly slower than others, and other days they come back, starting the next day much slower than others. Making some nights incredibly long, and some days incredibly short.

And that’s considering the fact that no one actually knows just how large the Chaotic Plane is.

A memory of a book teacher had read to me flashes through my mind as I continue walking back into the tree line. It was a story about a very powerful dragon who tried to fly up to reach the sun. But all they ended up doing was finding themselves teleported to the entrance into the abyss. Which is apparently the place that the Lord of Chaos resides.

Only, there isn’t a Lord of Chaos right now. So the Chaotic Plane is leaderless, unlike the Mortal Plane and the Elemental Plane.

Come to think of it, wasn’t my stomach taken from the body of the previous Lord of Chaos?

I can’t help but shiver at the memory of simply seeing the thing.

I’m quickly distracted by the scent of something close by. Something alive and unfamiliar.

Without any hesitation, I slowly make my way through the taiga, getting closer and closer to the smell until I find a cliff. The cliff extends for quite some ways in a large ring encircling some sort of deep drop down. And at the bottom of the… is it a chasm? At the bottom of the chasm is some sort of giant mass of what I can only assume is webbing. The stuff the spiders teacher taught me about make.

I carefully keep myself as low to the ground as possible without wiping off the mud while moving closer to the edge in an attempt to get a better look. And when I do, I manage to find several openings to the enormous mass of webbing. Some of which are on the sides, near the ground, whereas others are closer to the top of the massive… cocoon? Was that the term teacher used?

Either way, from time to time I see various creatures leaving and entering the holes in the webbing. Some of them being rather massive, standing at around two meters in length, and others only being half a meter to a meter long. But all of them look just like the illustrations of spiders that teacher showed me. With some differences.

They have eight legs, eight pale blue eyes, and completely black… skin? I’m actually not sure what to call that. Teacher didn’t spend long covering spiders.

Was it a carapacay? Carape? Carapace?

Either way, it doesn’t matter.

I ID the smallest one currently in sight.

<-| Unnamed | Adolescent Frost Willow | PHYS - 31 | MAGIC - 42 |->

Okay. That’s not too bad. Although their MAGIC stat being higher than their PHYS might not be a good sign.

The only time I’ve seen that happen was with the wraiths, and they’re able to use magic to attack.

Does that mean these things can-

My thoughts are interrupted by one of the larger ones suddenly spitting out a shiny line of ice from some sort of opening at the back of its read body. The part that sticks out of the main body and isn’t the connector for its limbs.

The ice, despite being rather clearly made of, well, ice, seems to be a lot less fragile than I’d expected the moment it hits the wall of the cliff on the opposite side of the chasm from me, it simply sticks there. Then the spider in question begins to climb up the strand of ice connecting it to the cliff wall.

My jaw drops open in shock at the sight of it, but I close it again to instead ID the creature.

<-| Unnamed | Adult Frost Willow | PHYS - 101 | MAGIC - 142 |->

Oh. That’s… that’s not good.

I slowly begin to back away, only to eventually notice that there are more of the frost willows leaving the chasm in different directions. None of which – thankfully – are where I am.

Actually… if I can manage to attack just the adolescent ones then I should be good. But I think it would probably be safer to fight the frost raiders first.

Also, does everything here outside of the direwolves and ice wraiths have frost in its name?

Frost dragon, frost raider, and now frost willow.

I quickly make my exit while mentally questioning whoever decided to name these creatures for their repetitive naming sense.