Momma spider looked angry. Cormac had just killed a lot of its babies and Luke had turned to see it blocking the entrance to the cave’s room. That shouldn’t have been possible since they had just come from that direction, but momma could obviously walk through walls like the little ones. It was huge, making Luke look up at its grey exoskeleton and yellow glowing eyes.

  Once Luke yelled, the monster burst into action. A pair of legs struck out at Luke and another pair sped towards Cormac. The orc had turned in time to put his hands up and defend from the attack. Then Luke lost track of him, too focused on his own survival to look around.

  The two legs headed his way were the middle two from its left side. They were huge, longer than he was tall. He didn’t wait to get hit, instead leaning forward and swinging with both hands. Flailing might have been a more accurate description. His axe skittered off the exoskeleton of one leg and his mace hit and bounced back from the other leg. Each strike was backed up by a magically enhanced mechanical arm, but that strength was only just enough to knock the spider limbs back a few feet.

  The huge spider raised its legs high and brought them down from above. Luke brought his arms in and leaned out of the way. The Adept Agility runes helped him dodge just enough. The legs slid by his chest and back, impacting the stone below him. The cave floor cracked and tiny shards of stone pinged off the metal of his legs.

  Luke knocked the leg in front of him to the side, cracking the chitin. The spider jerked its legs back and shuffled to the side. It wanted to focus on Cormac and ignore Luke.

  He wasn’t going to let it. Luke jumped forward and aimed his mace at the upper joint of the huge spider’s rear leg. He put the weight of his entire mech into the attack and the joint cracked, spilling out gray blood. It was also too much for the mace, bending the metal haft. He guessed that it would only survive one or two more hits before it broke.

  The queen spider shrieked and turned slightly to glance back at him. Luke wasn’t enough of a threat to turn all the way around. She struck forward with her two rear legs, an echo of her first attack. Luke shifted to the side and swung out with his two weapons.

  The legs phased out of reality for a moment, avoiding his mace and axe entirely. They snapped back an instant later, just in time to impact his chest.

  The hairs on the monster’s legs were as big as uncooked spaghetti. It was the last thought he had before he was flung across the room. He blacked out mid air. He came to a moment later as his power armor came to a rest on the cave floor.

  Luke groaned in pain as he slowly stood back up. He sorely regretted not getting a padded pilot suit. He was going to be bruised all over if he survived this. He was standing atop a pile of corpses, human and spider alike.

  Once he was upright again, he reassessed the situation. The other phase spiders hadn’t been idle and another one of the squad was down. That left only the lightning guy and the fire guy still alive. Cormac had been building his magic bolts since the huge spider arrived and released them all at once. Three waves of attacks shot forward in a quick staccato. Long blades formed in front of the orc and shot forward. The first strike took off three legs from the monster’s right side. The other two blades sailed by harmlessly as the spider phased out of reality and sunk into the floor.

  Cormac and Luke each swore in their native languages. They wouldn’t know where the spider was going to appear next. Cormac moved to the center of the room, joining up with the two survivors. He was shooting out mana spikes one at a time, clearly winded from his earlier attacks. Luke was a few strides away from them, but didn’t join them yet. He needed a better weapon.

  Physical weapons weren’t going to cut it. He needed magic. The only source was the weapons the humans were still holding in death. He reached down and grabbed the closest one, a sword glowing a dim green. Luke mumbled an apology to whoever he was taking this from. He got the gauntlet off with the sword still clenched in its fist. Thankfully, the human limb stayed with the rest of the mech’s arm.

  Luke turned and scrambled towards the others. He wasn’t the only one. All of the phase spiders in the room reacted to an unseen signal and scrambled towards the humans. The obscene sound of hundreds of skittering feet filled the room.

  “Watch out!” Bumblebee yelled as he sent out a wave of lightning magic.

  Luke’s heart beat with relief that Bumblebee had been one of the ones to survive. Then he didn’t have time to think about anything but surviving. He swung the enchanted sword around, cutting and slicing monsters with every swing. It wasn’t due to his skill but because there were so many of them. The phase spiders were climbing over each other to get to the people crowded together in the middle of the room. When one spider fell, two more took its place.

  They were losing. Cormac was bleeding, Bumblebee was crying, and Sandwich’s flame sword had gone out. Luke knew that the monsters would get through a joint in his armor or through the slit in his visor soon. He had to change something. He took a moment and ignored their attacks to focus on the magic sword and gauntlet. The internal magic wasn’t activated yet, he needed to fix that.

  After having repaired these a few times, Luke knew where to press on the gauntlet’s fingers to activate the magic within the sword. As soon as he did, it lit up with a dripping green flame. He immediately swung it in a wide scythe in front of himself. Every spider it touched lit up. Green flame turned into a caustic acid that ate away at the spiders. They seemed particularly vulnerable to the acid magic, and a half dozen died from that single swing.

  The queen spider chose that moment to reappear. She climbed up through the floor and stabbed Cormac through the back. Her long limb erupted through his stomach and Cormac looked at it in shock. He tried to grab the exoskeleton, but the limb was still half insubstantial. His hands passed right through it.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  The monster withdrew her leg and Cormac fell to his knees. There was no blood, but he was clearly injured. He groaned and fell forward onto his face.

  Luke yelled in anguish. He whipped his sword around, his tight grip causing the magic to flare. The enormous spider wasn’t yet out of the rock. It saw his attack coming, but couldn’t move away in time. It interposed a limb, but for once, Luke had his edge alignment correct. He sliced through the forelimb and hit the monster’s head. Gray blood spurted out. The sword pierced a pair of eyes and dug deep, magic acid eating away any resistance.

  A few seconds later, the monster fell limp. It completely solidified, the ends of its legs still encased in stone.

  The five foot phase spiders never let up their assault. Luke felt every strike or bite on his armor, like non stop hail. He pulled the acid sword out of their momma’s corpse and swung it around himself. He wasn’t as elegant this time around, but monsters still fell, one after another. They had knocked Sandwich to the ground and Luke cut the spiders off of him.

  When there were only eight spiders left, they fled. Luke stood there in shock for a moment, he hadn’t thought that was an option. He stood guard for a few moments, expecting them to come back through the floor or ceiling. None did.

  He finally let himself believe the fight was over. The green flames on his sword sputtered out a moment later, its mana exhausted. Luke dropped it and hurried over to Sandwich. Bumblebee was already there and together they helped him sit up.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” Sandwich said as he shook them off. “Well, no, I’m not fine. I think I’m bleeding and I hurt all over. But I’ll live. Is everyone else ok?”

  Bumblebee shook his head. “Probably not. Let’s check.”

  He unlatched and lifted the faceplate of the fallen mech nearby. It was Degenerate. Her eyes were wide open and unseeing. She was dead.

  Luke turned to Cormac. He was bleeding from dozens of shallow wounds, but when Luke turned him over, he groaned in pain.

  “Let go. Leave me be,” Cormac groaned out.

  Luke set him down and took a step back. He seemed whole and none of his injuries seemed life threatening. The hit the queen spider gave him must have messed up his insides. Whatever it was, Luke couldn’t do anything about it.

  He and Bumblebee checked the other two mech suits. Both Cuddles and Rooster were dead. Bumblebee returned to Sandwich to help administer first aid. Luke stepped back and sat down heavily. Metal clanged loudly against the stone floor.

  Three people were dead and two were heavily injured. It was hard to accept. He had only known them for a few days, but he felt tears welling up. He felt guilty for not arriving sooner, he felt glad that he was able to save some of them. His rush of emotions was made more confusing by how good he felt.

  The fight had been a rush. He felt like a badass, killing the boss and saving everyone's lives. He had felt so powerful swinging that acid sword. But people had died, he shouldn’t feel happy. He felt guilty that he wanted to fight monsters again.

  He was distracted from self loathing by a blue flicker in the upper left corner of his vision.

  Three classes? That was good. It must mean that the magic system of this world was impressed with him. Now that he thought about it, that meant that there was some sort of intelligence behind this system. Artificial or not, there was something making choices out there

  Moments later, his vision filled with three blue boxes of information. Just like last time, they were filled with hazy unintelligible script before resolving into English words.

  He got it. The class he had been working towards since he realized it was a choice. It was a gold grade too. That meant this class was even better than Kruro’s. He almost picked it before reading the other two choices. He made himself read the others anyway.

  This choice didn’t make much sense. Sure, he had used acid to kill an impressively strong monster, but he had only used it once. Apparently that was enough for the system to give him a choice. Still, it wasn’t at all what he wanted and he had no intention of picking it.

  Luke frowned. This was a really good class. It would make his power armor into a proper magic mech. If he wanted to chase that combat high, this was the class to do it. It was platinum tier, which was probably a step higher than gold.

  The choice was surprisingly hard. Did he go with the class he had been aiming for, or did he go with the class he hadn’t known existed? He didn’t want to miss out on power, so the platinum class was tempting. On the other hand, did he even want to be a war machine pilot? He had always loved tinkering, building things. The combat highs would fade, but the love of creating things wouldn’t. He bit his lip. The message had said he needed to make his choice quickly. He wished he had more time.

  Today’s chapter title comes from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

  Also, which class would you personally choose? Any of these three classes or Cormac’s Mana Maestro?