The rumbling noise from 6's rear sent warning bells off in his head, forcing him to worry about what he may have neglected.
Combined with the smug-looking demeanor of his buddy lil spikey, he knew that something was about to happen, and whatever it was, it wouldn't be in his favor.
Looking over his shoulder, 6 saw that the rumbling was coming from the large jock face spider as he had suspected, but it still had its head buried within its body.
Aside from the rumbling, no other change had occurred, leaving 6 unsure about how to proceed currently. He couldn't run away, couldn't kill the large spider without it sticking his head out, couldn't kill the lil spikey because of his own weakness, and couldn't utilize his stealth in this small room.
His only option was to continue dodging and avoiding any attacks directed toward him until an opportunity arose to turn the tides in his favor.
And god dammit the loot from these two had better be worth the trouble.
The spiked spider finally moved again, lifting one of its front legs slowly as it pointed the tip of it toward 6.
A web shot past 6's shoulder, landing on the floor just behind him as 6 remained perfectly still.
In fact, despite noticing the spiked spiders movement out of the corner of his eye, he remained looking at the large spider as he was too focused on what it would do.
6 only reacted as the web landed on the ground, as if he had only just noticed it.
Just as he suspected, the spider was using the web as a grapple hook to shoot toward 6 even faster than it usually jumped.
Right when 6 saw the spider use the grapple web the first time, he suspected that this move would be one that it would try.
His knife had remained firmly in his hand the entire time, and he was already prepared to strike from the moment the spider began lifting its leg.
When the spider got close, just as it entered within his arm reach, his knife struck like lightning, pushing upwards to the belly of the spider as it came down to him.
Using the upward force of his knife, combined with the absurd power and speed of the spiked spider's jumping attack, he tried to pierce thought the belly of the spider, which was a common weak spot in creatures, especially ones that had a tough outer skin or shell.
The books he read before coming to this world had especially mentioned that the belly of spider-like creatures were typically much weaker, as their bodies usually stayed low to the ground and they usually had their underside near the ground or web they stood on, thus making it a difficult target to attack to begin with, and thus requiring less protection.
Ordinarily, a spider as small as the spiked spider would be difficult to strike from beneath, but the unique manner by which it attack left an opening which 6 could exploit, namely that it was hard to dodge blows while in midair.
The knife made contact with the spider unceremoniously, but instead of penetrating the spider, it lifted it, throwing the spider up and over 6 as he followed through on his strike, giving it his all.
Unfortunately, it seemed that the force needed to penetrate the spider's tough shell was much heavier than the force required to lift and throw it, at least with 6's knife. Though his knife was sharp, one of the sharpest he had ever seen, that was only by the standards of his own homeworld, which clearly didn't hold up to the standards required here.
He would have to stab it downward, with more force than he could possibly hope to have, pinning the spider between his knife and the floor, if he hoped to make any progress without a better weapon.
Right about now, 6 regretted not having the [Light Mace] which Trivrium offered to him. At least a blunt force weapon would still knock the spider's brain around in its head if it couldn't directly crush it.
Though his attack failed, 6 had already expected that. He just wanted to take advantage of the spider's relatively straight forward attack pattern to throw it off of its game.
The spider would either have to adopt a new attack pattern or find a way to catch 6 off guard. By now, it should've realized that 6 was already used to its manner of attacking, which would make it much more useless to keep attempting the same thing over and over.
If your opponent could react to your attack, this kind of attack pattern was too dangerous and risky. The opponent could use it to direct you wherever they wanted, giving them total control of the battle.
That was why the spider was so fast.
It had to be.
If it wasn't, it would probably die the first time it attacked someone like this.
6 also understood why this particular spider stayed within the nest. The environment on the outside of the nest was much less friendly to the way it attacked. If it didn't have plenty of surfaces to launch itself off of, land on, and attach its webs to, the ways it could attack would be severely limited.
Now that the spider couldn't force him to move around the room, whatever the large spider was doing shouldn't be a huge deal for him anymore.
With the urgency by which the spiked spider was trying to keep him near it, having gained some distance and putting the spiked spider at a disadvantage should make the large spider give up.
As the spiked spider skidded along the floor after being launched past 6, it scuttled behind the large spider as fast as it could, with a sense of urgency.
When 6 saw the almost panicked spider running behind the larger spider, he realized something was wrong.
Looking at the large spider who hadn't moved, it dawned on him that perhaps it wasn't that the spider couldn't move while doing whatever it was doing, but that it didn't do so to direct his attention toward getting away from the area in front of it, rather than attacking it as fast as possible to stop whatever its actions were.
Now behind the large spider, the spike spider jumped upward, onto the ceiling.
Once it did so, the large spider turned surprisingly quickly, faster than 6's own reaction time, aiming the place where it's head was toward him.
He judged that he had no time to properly dodge what was coming, whatever it was, else the spiked spider wouldn't have moved out of the way so quickly when it already knew what was coming, so he did the best he could do to protect himself.
The first thing 6 did was jump, as high as possible, in case whatever the large spider was about to do affected the ground. he couldn't stick to the ceiling at the spiked spider did, but at least he could get his feet off of the ground.
Additionally, if it was something that would smack into him, getting knocked into the wall sounded better than being pulverized against the floor.
As he jumped, he curled into a ball in the air, using his arms to cover all of his vitals.
The rumbling became massively loud just as he did so, shaking his eardrums.
Silence filled the room for the briefest moment, as if the threatening rumbling hadn't existed to begin with, but then the head of the large spider emerged from its body with a terrifying speed, shooting out of its body like a cannon.
A blast of air flew through the room as the head of the spider extended, a long web colored neck attached behind it as it flew.
In the blink of an eye, it slammed into 6, crashing into his chest, which was protected by his arms.
Like a blast from a shotgun, he was launched away from the spider, slamming him directly into the wall. The head of the spider followed him all the way, crushing him against the wall before it lost al of the force behind it, rapidly retracting back into the large spider.
6 dropped onto the floor like a ragdoll, the air completely knocked out of him as he took a few short gasps. He noticed a slightly strange smell in the air as he breathed in, but he didn't have the time to think about it.
The spiked spider had no intention of letting him rest, however, and dove directly at him when he landed on the ground.
6 rolled to the side, dodging the horns of the spider by a hair, and grabbed one of the spiked spider's legs with his free hand, swinging it with all of his force against the wall behind him, before throwing it across the room as far away from him as he could.
The large spider, on the other hand, didn't move after its successful blow. Goo was dripping from its face, dropping onto the now stained webs below.
Glancing at his knife, 6 smiled through the pain filling his body, happy to see that it was coated in the spider's goo.
He had still had his knife in his hand when he balled up, pointing outward, away from his body so that it wouldn't stab him if he was hit.
Clearly, the spider had the misfortune of slamming into 6 directly where he was holding his knife, effectively stabbing itself.
'I guess getting hit by a fucking spider battering ram has its benefits.' 6 thought, cheering himself up after having been tricked by spiders, which was definitely not a story he would be sharing in his museum's.
The wound was on the lower part of its square face, to the right of its mouth.
It wasn't a fatal blow by any means, but it was his first successful blow on either spider since the start of the fight.
Seemingly stunned by the unexpected pain in its face, the spider let out a low rumble, as if it didn't understand what had happened.
6 wouldn't make the mistake of thinking it was a simple, dumb spider however. The cunning that the two spiders demonstrated by misleading him, leading to him taking the blow of the long charged up attack of the large spider, was enough to look at them differently.
Rather than two spiders that might have some interesting abilities, these were two capable fighters, familiar with each other's abilities and the best way to utilize them.
The spiked spider definitely knew what it was doing. By trying to force him to remain near the spider, forcing him to remain in the same spot, it reinforced 6's perception that the large spider's attack required him to be in front of it, and that it couldn't move.
It made 6 focus on moving, getting away from the large spider, gaining control over the tempo of battle, when that really just made 6 play right into their hands, leaving entirely open to an attack that should've been easy to avoid by getting right up and close with the large spider, giving it no chance to face him and use its attack.
Rather than get up, use the initiative he had gained by injuring the large spider and throwing the spiked spider, 6 made a decisive decision.
Running the fuck away.