It was a twinge at first, like a fly buzzing inside them. He flared his skills and noticed that the creatures that should’ve been disappearing by now had a bundle of swirling energies in the midst.
Then they multiplied. Each one forming their own physical bodies encasing those energies. Then one started to move.
The moment he realized it, he managed to warn the others before a series of pure nightmare fuel burst out of the corpses. Spiders gushed out and spread like a plague.
The spiders, or at least that’s how they appeared, had around eight sharp-like limbs carrying a bulbous mass of green and black. Multiple, unnaturally human-like eyes were across their faces and mandibles displayed their ferocity as they kept clacking and biting at whatever’s nearest to them. It would’ve been just a normal spider if it weren't for the damn eyes, but then Zeke realized that each eye wasn’t exactly human, but utterly blue in nature.
Almost like the magical energy that constantly fueled their bodies now. He identified one of them as they were quickly approaching.
Sharp pain dug deep into the center of his brain, causing him to scream out in pain. It bypassed his resistances and hit him where it hurts. He could hear Mikella crying out as well, trying to do the same thing he did.
He did get a notification, but it wasn’t something he was pleased to see.
ERROR!
ERROR!
Identify failed. The following information is corrupted. Re-initiating process of–
ERROR!
ERROR!
“Guys! What’s wrong?” Saang shouted, clearly in alarm. “I can’t get anything with my Identify! Are you okay?!”
“Ugh, yeah,” Mikella groaned, rubbing her temples with one eye shut as she turned to Zeke. “This is bad. This is just like that time…”
“When we tried to loot the Master of the Tower,” Zeke growled. The unpleasant memories flowing through his pain-raddled mind. “This is the tower’s influence.”
Zeke can’t tell how strong those strange spiders are, but one thing he does know is that if they came out of the Level 72 Scythasaur, then they are just as or even stronger than them.
“Fall back!” Hamil ordered, his wand outstretched and mana flowing through him. “Retreat and regroup!”
The Tempest Winds did so with ease, and the otherworlders followed suit as stones of strange make jutted out of the ground, surrounding them in a half-circle formation and keeping the strange spiders out. Of course that wouldn’t stop them as some of them either went around or crawled above and over the walls.
Of course that became their downfall as Kote unleashed his weapon’s might. His gauntlets were outstretched and flexed his fingers. A trail of five lines exuded from the tips of his fingers and swirled around like waves across their vision. Kote grunted as he swung his arm, the strings that were let loose flying right towards the crawlers on the walls.
The strings cut deep like steel wires, catching five at once with each five strings and cutting their limbs apart, making the main body fall to the ground with missing limbs. Hamil quickly used the mineral-based stone wall, filled with what looked like earth with shimmering specks, and crushed the bodies underneath with stones several times their size.
However, more and more were coming, some in droves while others in single units. At the very least, their bodies are easily crushed. The only advantage they have is the rising numbers flowing out of the many corpses.
Saang roared and charged with her axe swinging in wild abandon. She was just far enough away that her wild swinging was useful against the dozens of spiders crawling along. Each axe swing chopped off a body part or two. During so, she controlled their strangely colored blood, purple mixed with heavy blue, along with her swings.
She was racking up kills left and right, but the spiders noticed the warrior and targeted her first. They all swarmed against her, their skittering limbs creating a buzzing noise that made his skin crawl as they all approached her faster than she could kill.
Mikella also tried to help, but the numbers were becoming too much.
At the very least, Zeke noticed that the bodies those spiders used like a nest all decomposed and disappeared as they should, though it looked like they were deflated rather than disappearing naturally via the system. At his estimate, there were around a thousand spiders, each one small but dangerous in their own right.
One of their strikes, a limb poised to stab, aimed directly at both Saang and Mikella. Mikella managed to evade, but it managed to thrust through Saang’s armor by the hip. She growled in pain before literally stomping on the spider, their bodies popping like an oversized zit and their oozing blood splattered all over. Saang held the wound with her hand, surprising Zeke that it managed to bypass her natural resistances so easily.
He tried to think. The numbers were too much, and even with all four of them working, the fighters weren't able to take them down. Some were skittish and kept moving away, while others kept pushing themselves aside and making it difficult for everyone to fight them head on.
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If they were moving too much, then he needed to stop them in their tracks. He placed his hands on the ground, breathing slowly as he cast Ethereal Manifest. The magical construct spread all across him in a wide diameter of a mile long.
Enough to cover the expanse of his senses and the rest of the spiders, and just barely enough to cover the cost of his mana expenditure. Thankfully, it was easy enough to go under everyone’s feet but still over the grassy ground. The spiders didn’t seem to care about the ground suddenly being covered in his turquoise light, which thankfully meant that they had no reason to break it easily even with their feeble strength.
The party managed to see it, then all turned back to him when he shouted.
“Everyone, on my word–Jump!
Each one nodded to his demand as Zeke made his floating pens fly out and drew several runes in quick succession for the entire construct. His maxed out Inscription Proficiency helped in drawing the runes as fast as light itself, with his new skill Script Improvement aiding in the foundational structure of the complicated rune. With Parallel Thought, he added in as many runes as he could from his massive Runic Library. All of his experience as a Runist this past year have come flying out of him as he shouted.
“Now!”
He poured his mana and caused the entire ethereal floor to glow bright, and at the same time the other fighters got out of the way.
Kote’s back suddenly sprouted long bones similar to limbs and pushed himself up into the air. Hamil lifted both himself and Saang up with the aid of his floating stones, leaving them to hang on to their flight as they did so. Mikella had no issues as she immediately sprouted her wings and took flight.
On the other hand, the spiders that were becoming a serious pain to hit suddenly stopped. Their squirming bodies kept trying to move to no avail, their hissing reaching a crescendo of anger and fear. Zeke, on the other hand, dropped onto his ass and let out an exhale straight from his soul.
Zeke used his runes to create something like an adhesive across the entire ethereal structure. Normally such a thing would be even more difficult, but his new skill managed to take the rune work quite well. That, along with his Journeymen and race change, made forcing the spiders to be glued right on the ground possible. It wasn’t permanent, but it was enough to last for a minute or two before the adhesive wore off.
His mind felt drained from the massive mana cost this entire thing got him. It was easy to trap one Journeyman-rank spider, but trapping several hundreds was quite the hurdle. He just laid there as the others watched with glee in their eyes.
“Incoming!”
Mikella shouted, her wings disappearing as her body fell straight towards the massive array of spiders. Her hammer appeared from her storage and swung wide into the air, lightning coursing through the metal weapon. It wasn’t the hammer that Cru crafted, but the normal one she usually had.
She roared as she slammed her hammer straight at the ground between all the spiders in their midst. With their squirming bodies in the vicinity of a large scale lightning attack, each one within Mikella’s surroundings were electrocuted.
It was a sight to see. A thunderstrike from the heavens, charring and burning all the spiders in her wake before the sound dissipated. Zeke’s ears rang from the echo of the lightning, watching in awe and wonder as Mikella stood upright, her hair blowing from the passing wind with her hammer hanging on top of her shoulder. In her midst were the corpses of all the spiders like a horrible nightmare, their own bodies charred and limp.
Mikella grinned wildly as she turned to Zeke, but before she could, her body practically stopped before realizing something.
Her feet were stuck to the ethereal floor. The effect was still ongoing, it seems.
“Ah, shit…”
The others quickly noticed this and went towards Zeke. Kote managed to hang onto Hamil’s floating stones as they all landed near his side. Hamil then offered a hand, to which Zeke gladly took with a tired grin. He then went ahead and took away the rune’s effects, finally freeing Mikella from his grasp.
“Haha, thanks…” Mikella blushed a bit, unable to hold back an embarrassed grin. “Didn’t think I’d get stuck too.”
“I had to make it really effective,” Zeke said with a tired grin himself. “And that’s why I’m exhausted…”
“How are you mana-wise? Anything wrong?”
“All good, don’t worry,” Zeke raised a hand to her concerns. “No mana loss and it’s actually regenerating really quickly, almost halfway now.”
Zeke was thankful for the Epic glasses he got, but he also knew that his new Journeyman body was easily regenerating mana as he used Meditation during this downtime.
The notifications that came in certainly helped a lot more.
Level Up! You are now Level 62. You gain 2 free points (4 FP total).
You have gained +8 DEX from your class and sub-race.
You have gained +8 INT from your class and sub-race.
You have gained +12 SPI from your class and sub-race.
You have gained +7 END from your sub-race.
On Mikella’s end:
Level Up! You are now Level 62. You gain 2 free points (2 FP total).
You have gained +10 STR from your class and sub-race.
You have gained +10 DEX from your class and sub-race.
You have gained +5 INT from your sub-race.
You have gained +5 SPI from your sub-race.
You have gained +5 END from your class.
Considering that they only just leveled up after defeating the Scythasaur, that meant that these weird spider creatures were worth a lot of XP to level them both up once again.
That didn’t bode well for Zeke, however. Considering the make-up of these creatures, Zeke can’t help but want to ask Zoan if she knew if this kind of XP was even safe to get. But something else caught his attention.
“Hey, Zeke!” Hamil shouted, suddenly alarmed. “Something’s up with Saang!”
Zeke and Mikella turned around to find the two men crowding over the suddenly keeled over Saang. Her face looked pale somehow, her usual fire becoming dampened as she held tightly onto her right side of the hip.
It was the same one Zeke recognized where the spider hit her before. Worry crept across his insides as he ran with Mikella over to her side. Upon closer inspection, her body was shivering intensely, and her teeth were clattering harshly as though she was in a deep cold.
It looked similar to him, and when he noticed how familiarly dreadful it felt, Zeke shouted.
“Is she going through Mana deprivation?” Zeke asked, his brows furrowed. “But why? She hasn’t used that much magic.”
“That’s what we figured too, so we gave her a Mana potion,” Hamil stated, his brows furrowing in the mix of concern and frustration. “But it didn’t work. She said her Mana kept dropping, and now she can’t even speak.”
Zeke looked over to Saang again, noticing that she could barely stand as she was on her knees, nearly keeled over and holding onto her hip tighter and tighter. She wasn’t saying it, but it was clear what she was displaying.
The wound was the cause, and somehow the spiders infected her with something incredibly nasty.