Edward crossed the Vipin Forest, reaching Gobéliard without any incident. He favored speed and discretion, retracting his aura around him. Right now, he had other problems to deal with than random monsters on his way.

The forest wasn’t devoid of monsters, Edward did see monsters roaming around while he was moving but he didn’t stick around to deal with them. He had already warned Cornelius about the situation within Vipin Forest and it had hitherto become a forbidden zone for anyone under the Predator stage. Anyone who entered despite all the warnings would have nobody but themselves to blame if they died.

If the monster population grew too much, some would probably attack Gobéliard, but both the Potentia and Regalis heads of the families were at the Predator stage. It would be more than enough to deal with a band of monsters, although Edward had more confidence in the martial prowess of Acanthio, the Regalis family master, than in Strobilus from the Potentia family.

The first thing Edward did when reaching Gobéliard was to head for Leyla. As usual, she was in her room musing over rune designs. Leyla was under a lot of stress lately due to her responsibilities to both solve Gobéliard’s food shortage and improve the city defenses. Hopefully, the pressure would decrease soon with the help of other rune masters once an official organization was put in place to manage all runes-related problems and innovations.

When Leyla saw him enter her room, she got up, and hugged Edward before looking at him attentively, “What happened? I can feel something is not right.”

It was only now that Edward realized how tense he had been since he had seen the whole forest below Adrien’s tomb turned into a single gigantic spider nest.

“Yes…an issue came up”, was all he managed to utter.

“It’s okay, even if you didn’t manage to bring back the books I asked for, what is important is that you are back in one piece,” Leyla answered with a soft smile on her face.

She had only faced simple monsters such as black wolves before, and it was only through Edward’s stories and her last expedition to harvest mana crystals that she not only realized but also internally felt how dangerous the wilds could become.

Most people tended to avoid thinking about the dangerous monsters roaming outside while they were still in the safety of the city. Once creatures reached a certain threshold of power it was hard to conceptualize it without facing it for yourself. It was easy to understand what threat a bear represented and how one would react facing one, but much harder to do the same for a monster with the strength to raze your city to the ground given enough time.

“What? Oh no, I have the books don’t worry,” Edward answered belatedly.

“The Bloodmaws weren’t a problem, although there was a facility inside the ruins making more of them,” he added almost absentmindedly not realizing how big of a deal that was.

Leyla squeezed his arm and her voice turned harder. “You sit there and explain everything. Slowly.”

Leyla was both anxious for Edward and annoyed by his roundabout answers only revealing that he had put himself in more danger than she had initially thought.

So, Edward explained everything that happened.

Leyla let out a breath she had been holding while Edward was telling his story. What had happened had exceeded her expectations

“Do you really have to go? This sounds incredibly dangerous, and it is happening in the wild. Is it really a problem?” Leyla tried to dissuade Edward now that she understood the scale of the problem and the danger he would inevitably have to expose himself to if he wanted to deal with the situation.

Edward shook his head.

“You don’t understand. If this problem isn’t dealt with, it will only get worse.”

He paused.

“If I don’t do anything I’m afraid those spiders will discover the teleportation platform and invade this region as well. I can’t let that happen, they would take over the Vipin Forest as a whole and probably wouldn’t even stop there. By then Gobéliard wouldn’t be able to stop the process and would soon be turned into nothing more than another huge spider nest.”

Leyla softened, recognizing that something had to be done about it before it was too late. “But do you have to go? Can’t somebody else take care of it for once?” she sighed with resignation.

“If I don’t stop it, who will?” Edward answered his voice tinted by a hint of bitter sarcasm.

“Strobilus doesn’t seem like a good fighter, and while Acanthio is strong, he is also straightforward to the point it becomes dangerous. He would either deal with those spiders or die trying without even thinking of retreating and attempting a different approach.”

Edward shook his head.

“No, I have a teleportation and an acceleration power. I’m the most suited to go. If something goes wrong, I have the most chances to escape.”

“Are you really planning to kill all of those spiders by yourself? From what you are saying the area they have infested is covering the whole forest, how can you deal with that alone?” Leyla asked still trying to reason with Edward.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I can’t. Not if I have to kill every single one of those spiders. However, I can burn down the whole forest.” Edward declared with grim pragmatism.

“Once the forest and the spiders inside are burned to a crisp I will only have to deal with a few survivors.”

“You want to burn the entire forest?” Leyla asked incredulously.

In her world using fire as a weapon in the wilds was taboo. Humanity was not in a dominant position, destroying the habitat of powerful monsters would only lead to a short demise.

“The spiders have already taken over the whole forest, it can’t make the situation worse than it already is.” Edward countered bitterly.

Leyla paused in deep thought.

“All right, then let me help you. If you want to burn the whole forest the little flamethrower artifact that I made won’t be enough. Since the artifact is turning hot with the flames it produces it can’t be used for long period of times. But I don’t know how to counteract this effect without decreasing the power of the flames.”

She bit her fingernails.

“Then don’t,” Edward answered. “Could you make a more powerful version of the flamethrower, one that overheats enough to explode?”

“I can, but this is too dangerous to use,” Leyla replied.

“I will use those as bombs instead. I can drop them inside spider nests and teleport away before it explodes.” Edward explained.

“All right, that could work.” Leyla nodded.

“Wait for a few days, I will make a few for you. I will prioritize this subject before resolving the food shortage problem.”

“Is this all right?” Edward asked, embarrassed that his needs were coming before those of Gobéliard.

“Absolutely,” Leyla answered determined.

“Anyway, from what you told me, it is akin to saving the city as well, only in the longer term. People can wait one or two days rationing themselves, but I can’t let you run to your death.”

The matter being settled, Edward spent more time conversing with Leyla before letting her focus on her new project.

Edward didn’t want to wait while twiddling his thumbs, so he went back to his training spot, a rock outcrop surrounded by the sea to improve his mastery over aura and how much denser he could make it.

When Edward had enough, he stopped his training to meditate, slowly increasing his mana pool. He would need as much reserve as he could, dealing with the spiders wouldn’t be a short endeavor.

In the three days it took for Leyla to make ten flame bomb artifacts, Edward had managed to raise his proficiency over aura, slightly increasing the density of his aura blades once more.

He couldn’t increase the aura density of his blades to the same concentration of the blobs of aura he used to make aura blast. But such blobs were unstable and only resulted in small explosions, which would be useless against an opponent with aura armor.

Leyla handed him the bag containing the bombs with a solemn gaze. “Come back to me safely.”

“I will.” Edward smiled warmly, inscribing the sight of Leyla’s concern and love for him in his memory before leaving.

Once more, Edward ran through the Vipin Forest, by now he had made the trip so many time times that he felt as if he was commuting on his way to work.

And yet the area was still unsafe. Edward may have dealt with the Bloodmaws but the succeeding surge had only made things worse.

Edward left his mind drift even as he jumped swiftly from tree to tree.

I wanted to explore the world, and yet until now, I feel as if I’m only staying in the same area.

I know I moved to Gobéliard from Agripin and that I discovered Sheel Nalore as well, but that’s pretty much it.

And I don’t even know where exactly Shele Nalore is, I only accessed it due to the Damkinan teleportation platform.

They knew how to travel. Teleportation platforms to faraway places, portals to other worlds…

In this era, with no means of transportation apart from foot, it’s hard to cover any meaningful distance, especially when the countryside is teeming with monsters.

At least, now I can achieve overwatch meditation, otherwise, I would be even more constrained only able to explore a one-day journey from any safe hideout.

Edward was sometimes passing above bewildered monsters which didn’t have the time to react before he was gone.

I mean apart from ships I have only traveled by foot. I barely even saw a horse.

Well, with how things are, I guess a horse would get eaten before long if you want to travel to unsafe areas. Okay, fair enough.

At least rising in stage with the associated physical boost means I can now move far faster than a normal human. I’m pretty sure I could actually outrun a galloping horse by now.

Edward’s musing stopped when he reached the entrance of the Damkinan’s ruins.

He was still inconvenienced by the occasional Bloodmaw attacking him while crossing the ruins. It wasn’t slowing him down, but it was annoying. Edward couldn’t help but complain aloud, talking to the Bloodmaws even though they couldn’t understand him.

“Seriously, you don’t have any survival instinct. Come on, can’t you see you are just becoming mincemeat by confronting me? Go back to the corner you crawled from.”

Edward grew more serious and tensed when he reached the Damkinan teleportation platform.

He took a deep breath and placed his hand on the wall, getting teleported to Shele Nalore.

With hushed steps, he left the underground ruin to exit on the mountain slope in the middle of a scree. Edward gazed at the expanse of white webs covering the forest.

I seriously hope that I will be able to burn all of this to the ground. The sight is creeping me out.

Edward didn’t head in the web’s direction, he first climbed the mountain to pay his respect to Adrien’s tomb.

How are you mate? Sorry for the view. I will deal with it.

Somehow, I feel as if problems keep piling on top of one another. First, I had to take care of the Bloodmaws, then there were several monsters uprisings and that was even before I learned that it was a global problem due a mana surge all over the planet. And now I have to deal with a literal sea of spiders.

Edward let out a sigh.

“Well, I gotta go. Someone has to deal with it, and it sucks, but it seems I’m the one who has to do it.”

Edward tapped the top of Adrien’s tomb before turning back. He climbed down the mountain, stopping a few meters away from the first spiderwebs.

Thin silk threads were extending from the main part of the webs, acting as anchor points. The closer to the forest one walked, the more numerous they were until they began to merge with the main webs which were covering everything just like various layers of sheets.

Edward didn’t walk closer. He was close enough to use his flamethrower artifact. Besides, he couldn’t really walk closer without disrupting the webs. There was no passage to enter the forest, only more webs everywhere.

Edward took out his artifact, activated it, and watched as a tongue of flame licked the webs.

The webs darkened under the heat, the blackening progressing along the threads. However, Edward was surprised to see that the fire wasn’t progressing to the rest of the webs. It looked like he was burning a faint sheet of paper. The parts exposed to the flames did burn, but they crumbled to ashes before the fire could spread. His flames had only managed to clear a one-meter circle in the web’s entanglements.

“Well shit,” Edward stated aloud, his face whitening as he realized that his arsonist plan wouldn’t work, he would have to deal with the spiders by himself. The fire would only be enough to clear himself a way inside the forest.