When they got out of the police station, they saw pretty much everyone, from the children to the elderly, running towards the south. Some, armed with cold weapons like baseball bats and makeshift clubs, and others with rifles and handguns.
Most of the children were wearing football pads as their makeshift armor, while the adults wore Kevlar vests which they got from the guards, who were now wearing riot armor.
With a solemn expression on his face, the chief couldn’t help but feel a sense of dread. “This is going to be a bloodbath.” He said as he looked at his people hurriedly heading south. His grip on the axe tightened, feeling the miniscule amount of life force passively draining into it. He looked at Noah and Mark and said. “I have no doubt that you’ll be able to wipe out the spiders with your power. I can only hope, though, that you’ll arrive in time to save us from the orcs.”
Feeling the weight of responsibility on his shoulders, Noah cast [Wind Stride] on them all and said. “We’ll take care of them before you can even blink.”
“I’ll hold you to that!” Alex said before shooting off towards the south, almost stumbling in the process, as he wasn’t used to the increased speed from Noah’s spell.
Noah watched this happen as he almost laughed, but then remembered that time was of the essence. He looked toward the North and inhaled deeply. “Let’s go.”
----------------------------------------
As they arrived at the North gate, they saw that there were eighteen people, divided into two groups, already waiting for them.
The two leaders of the squads stepped out and saluted. “Sirs! We are at your command!”
“How did you get here so fast?” Noah asked.
“We were already stationed here when the orders came that we were to accompany you!”
“Hmmm, Okay. Your task will be to protect Lily here and kill anything that gets past us. We’ll do the heavy lifting of wiping out the bugs. Am I clear?”
“YES SIR!”
“Good. Lily, hang back for the first few minutes. I have a plan that should kill most of the small fries. Focus on killing any stragglers, okay?”
“Okay!”
“Good. The plan is simple since we’re dealing with relatively mindless spiders and not orcs, we funnel them into a ring of fire then I take them all out at once with one of my spells. Mark, you’ll be handling the big ones that manage to survive my spell.”
“No problem.”
With that, they stepped out of the gate and ran until the scouts from squads three and four reported seeing and hearing the chittering of the spiders’ legs. They all immediately got into a defensive position around Lily while Noah started gathering his mana.
He waited and waited until he finally saw them himself, running across the ground, climbing up and around the trees and even on each other. There were so many spiders that they couldn’t fit when placed side by side.
Noah made a decision and said. “Scrap the earlier plan. There’s so many of them that we don’t need to funnel them. Casting my spell now. Mark, tie us down with roots just in case we get sucked in.”
“Got it.”
The air in their surroundings grew warm and suddenly rose up as a sudden updraft formed. They all looked up to the sky where a tornado was forming.
“Holy shit.” Squad leader John Harris said out loud with his mouth agape. He could sense the massive amounts of mana flowing from Noah towards the forming tornado and couldn’t help but thank whatever god was out there that he was on their side. “Rankers really are different.” He thought.
Noah pumped hundreds of mana points into the spell, making it as big as possible, but he wasn’t done.
As the spiders were being pulled into the vortex of air, he cast another spell. This time, it was just a simple spell that gathered the hydrogen in the air and merged it with the tornado.
“Let there be light!”
A simple spark spell and then the tornado lit up into a pillar of fire. Setting every spider that touched it on fire.
You have acquired the spell [Fire Tornado]
“Holy shit!” Squad leader John exclaimed along with his fellow squad mates.
The spiders screeched and panicked as they were picked up off the ground into the spinning vortex of doom. Some thought fast enough and spun their webs onto whatever they could hold on to. But that didn’t matter as whatever they stuck to was sucked into the tornado along with them.
Of course, one spell couldn’t hope to kill all the spiders as even with their numbers, they were still spread out over a large area. But whoever said that Noah had only enough mana for one tornado?
Noah cast the spell once more, but this time, in a different area so as to maximize the AOE of each tornado.
Suddenly, five assassin spiders appeared out of nowhere and, all at the same time, bit into different parts of Noah’s body, pumping copious amounts of venom into his body.
“Noah!” Mark screamed as he willed the roots holding them in place to disappear and rushed to kill the spiders around his cousin. “Are you okay?!”
“I’ll be fine! My regen is faster than the damage from the venom! Focus on killing the big guys while I move the tornadoes away from us and deeper into their army.”
“Fuck! Okay!”
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Mark shot off to the closest cow-sized tank spiders and bisected it with one swing of his sword. He then disappeared and reappeared next to another tank spider and also killed it with one swing, fully taking advantage of the movement spell he gained at level fifty [Root Walk]. The spell boosted his speed when he was moving along a root network and, in a forest, that was basically everywhere.
He moved at unbelievable speeds, cleaning up the remaining spiders that were able to hold on to something that was too heavy to be sucked into the tornado or were too heavy by themselves like the tanks.
After getting rid of the spiders in their immediate surroundings, Mark went back to the group where he saw some stragglers being run over by Emeri and the piglets. The militia men and women were also fighting off some spiders, pretty effectively protecting Lily.
“Great job, guys! Now finish up, then we’ll head deeper into their territory.” He said.
With sweat dripping from his forehead, Noah finally deactivated his spells and collapsed on the ground. “Phew! That was one hell of a workout!” He checked his notifications while he wiped a drop of sweat that threatened to get into his eyes and exclaimed. “I actually got five levels in my class for that!”
“Why so surprised? You definitely took out at least a thousand spiders with those two spells.” Mark said.
“Yeah, but they were all fairly low level, so I thought I wouldn’t get much. But hey, I’m not complaining! Let me just distribute my stat points and we can get going.”
With five levels in each of his classes, Noah had one hundred and twenty points to work with. So, he put fifty points into regeneration and seventy points into intelligence, finally bringing it over the one thousand mark and got a notification.
You have earned the title [First to One Thousand]
-Grants +20% to a stat of your choice-
“Finally!” Noah shouted in glee as he did a fist pump and immediately applied the title to his intelligence stat. He then looked at his stats and couldn’t help but whistle.
Name
Noah Blake
Class
Elementalist(EPIC)
Level
80
Subclass
Child of Mana
Guild
N/A
Mana
2042(+816.8)
Stamina
14(+1.4)
Strength
8(+0.8)
Dexterity
11(+1.1)
Constitution
7(+0.7)
Intelligence
1021(+408.4)
Regeneration
250(+50)
Cultivation
Body
Soul
1st stage-Copper
2nd stage-Quartz
He did a little a dance despite knowing that there were others around. It was worthy of celebration, after all. An added twenty percent to his intelligence stat and by proxy, his mana meant that he could last longer in fights and potentially make more complex spells or just pump more mana into his existing spells to make them more powerful.
Mark cleared his throat to catch Noah’s attention and asked. “Are you done?”
Noah stopped his dancing and smiled. “Yup! Let’s go!”
With Mark leading the way, they started running deeper into spider territory. He took care of any and all spiders that they came across when a couple minutes later; they encountered a spider that didn’t go down in one swing.
Noah activated his [Analyze] skill on it and raised an eyebrow.
Goliath Tank spider – lvl 90(Elite)
“They’re getting pretty high level. We must be getting close to the queen.” Noah remarked.
Mark didn’t say anything and just swung his sword two more times with minimal effort. “Makes you wonder what level that queen is to be able to spawn such high-level spiders and thousands of lower-level ones.”
“Yeah, kinda gives me a bad feeling.”
“Let’s just take care of this quickly so we can help Alex with the or…”
Before Mark could finish what he was saying, they felt the earth shake. They immediately went into a defensive position and waited. The shaking intensified as whatever was heading towards them was getting closer.
Noah sensed mana gathering under them and immediately conjured a powerful gust of wind that pushed everyone out of the way. He asked if everyone was okay before several massive earth spikes materialized under their previous position.
“It has earth magic!”
Then, as if on cue, massive earthen walls formed around them, complete with a roof. Noah fought to bring the surrounding earth under his control, but he felt he was fighting against several powerful minds at once. He switched tactics and focused on one section of the wall and successfully opened a small door.
“Everyone head for the door. NOW!”
They ran for the small opening as fast as they could, but just as they reached it, earth rose up and closed the door in front of them. Then they felt a suffocating presence descend upon them that forced most of them to kneel. Noah and Mark looked in the direction of the only opening left in the enclosure and saw a massive spider the size of a minivan.
The broodmother peeked inside the opening and opened its mouth, blowing what they could only assume was poison gas inside.
Noah hurriedly put up a wall between them and the poison gas, effectively dividing the enclosure in two, but he had to constantly fight for control over the earth as multiple minds sought to bring the wall down.
“Wait, can’t I just blow the poison gas away?” He thought as he opened up a hole in the wall and sent a gust of wind through. Unfortunately, the opening on the other side was already closed, so all it did was spew out poison gas into their side. “Shit.”
“Mark! You’re gonna have to cut a door into the wall while I hold the poison gas off!”
Mark rushed to the wall and cut into the earth with his sword, but every cut he made was mended by whatever was controlling the earth.
“Shit!” He cursed.
So he tried something else. He willed the roots under the ground to tunnel through the wall, then make an opening. That seemed to work as a small hole made up of roots slowly enlarged. They all hurriedly went through the opening and got out.
Mark went to his cousin’s side and said. “Everyone’s outside! Let’s go!”
They slowly backed away from the wall and inched closer to the opening. When they got out though and Noah finally let go of his control on the earth, they found that they were surrounded.
“Crap.”
“Crap.”