Making a terraria-like melee spear

Im not sure how to make it thrust at the enemy before going back to the player without messing with its moement, since usually i'd use a set position to playre every tick event to keep it attached to the player, but that way i wouldn't be able to make it actualy move to strike the enemy. any solutions?

I had a look at a video as I'm not familiar with the game and it looks like a sprite animation, it spawns on the player and then probably the hit box is on the edge of the spear. So I don't think necessary to make it a moveable object you can create an animation.