Facing the dark-grey figure, insignificant as an insect yet strong enough to snap one of its limbs with a single arm, the colossal Giant Spider's many compound eyes lost their savage gleam, replaced by almost absurd disbelief and an ensuing eruption of volcanic rage.
Agonizing pain and fury at its wounded pride merged into an earth-shaking shriek. This was no longer a predator's roar, but the viciousness and will to destroy of an affronted monarch.
Almost the instant its shriek rang out, its other intact, dark-red forelimb, as thick as a siege tower, came crashing down at Hercules, faster and more viciously than before!
The compressed air rippled, and the rock below groaned before the wind pressure even reached it.
Yet in the instant before that shadow of destruction engulfed the ground.
Hercules neither retreated nor dodged. His figure seemed to merge with the sudden burst of dust, becoming a dark-grey streak almost too fast for the naked eye to follow.
The Giant Spider's forelimb slammed into the ground, smashing the spot where Hercules had stood and dozens of metres of surrounding rock into a deep crater riddled with radiating cracks!
Fragments of stone shot outward, and dust billowed into the sky.
But it had missed.
Just as the dust grew thickest and the Giant Spider's limb sank slightly into the ground from the force of its strike.
Hercules appeared beside the equally massive walking leg on the Giant Spider's front right, which supported part of its weight.
He was so close that he could smell the pungent mixture of rank flesh and old corrosive fluid seeping from the gaps in its shell, and see every scratch and knobby growth that years and battles had left upon it.
Hercules took one simple, steady step forward, drawing his right fist to