A sort of clicking sound echoed in Orion's ears.

He glanced at the half-spider half-human behind him, who was holding a spear. It looked ready to attack Orion, but after looking at the crossbow in his hands and the state of the corpse that tried to strike at his back, he lowered his weapon.

'A spider with human features. No, that's slightly wrong. I think it's more spider than human.'

Observing the arachnee, he began to notice things quickly.

'I have no idea why they have a human part, but that's most likely coming from the Remnant's interest.'

'The bottom half is just like a spider. Eight legs, two segments, and large mandibles. They probably eat from there too. Which is really weird when you see the human part.'

That particular arachnee was brown in color, had hairs covering the spider parts, and there was a motif covering its back, but it was a bit too dark and hidden to see.

The human part was almost like a human. It stopped at the waist, and retained the identical functions. They could eat from their mouth, breathe with their nose, hear from their ears, and see with their eyes.

And talking about eyes, they had quite a bit more compared to Orion. It might depend on the type of arachnee, but this one behind him had four eyes. Two big ones where the human ones were, and two smaller on their forehead.

Orion also understood that the arachnea were not speaking the universal language of this continent, just like the elementals and the dragons, and mostly most of the other factions unrelated to humans. In fact, the fairies were an exception, thanks to Tiohr-nam.

That clicking noise was the arachnee speaking to him, but there would be no way to understand each other, so Orion remained silent.

'We have to show our goal here with our actions.'

With that in mind, his gaze fell behind the arachnee.

'!'

His eyes opened wide when he noticed a sort of golden barrier wrapped around a few other arachnea.

'That one is protecting the other arachnea?'

Orion looked at Amelia and Karteira.

"You two, can you hold them off for a minute?"

They glanced at him with a smile on their faces.

"Of course."

Without waiting, he turned around and walked past the arachnee holding the spear. Just when he was about to continue, the spear blocked his way.

'Well, that was to be expected.'

He grabbed the spear, and dragged the man with him toward the golden barrier. The arachnee was making more clicking sounds while trying to stop Orion, but he remained powerless.

In front of the barrier, Orion looked at few surviving arachnea.

'Twenty survivors at least...'

He released the spear, and touched the barrier. His hand went through without showing any resistance, to the others shock.

The armed arachnee lowered his weapon and looked at Orion with surprise. More clicking sound echoed, coming not only from him, but the others simultaneously.

'I can't understand anything, but it should be related to this barrier. Anyways...'

Orion grabbed the spear and threw the man inside the barrier, joining him with the others.

"Stay in there. We'll deal with this."

As he turned around, he warped back to his companion.

-

Right after Orion told them to hold the enemy.

"We really happen at to find things at the right time."

Amelia walked a few steps backward. She opened both hands, creating two daggers from thin air. This time, it was Leima and Ceres.

"We sure do. I still remember when we arrived at Hocride, just at the last moment."

Karteira also took a few steps back, activating her 'Cerulean Aegis' ability.

At one point, their back touched.

"I'll cover you. Go wild."

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"Sure, I'll entrust my back to you. I'll cover yours too."

They glanced at each other before nodding. One last exchange of smiles, and the fight began.

The corrupted arachnea jumped from the trees, rushed from the bushes, and threw threads at them.

"Rip and Tear."

Switching to her knife-gauntlets, Karteira rushed toward the arachnea approaching. Without hesitation, she sliced the ones trying to attack with their claws.

A loud metallic sound echoed through the forest as Karteira destroyed their claws, before slicing their chest open.

Sure, it wasn't enough to end them, but that's why Amelia was here.

Nails flying at high speed entered the wounds, precisely piercing the now revealed dark cores in their body.

The next wave of enemies jumped at them from the trees.

Amelia turned around and swiped Leima in front of her, sending a bolt of lightning toward them.

The sizzling noise coming from the fried body told her that she managed to hit a few of them, but there was still a few that managed to dodge.

Karteira ran past Amelia, jumped toward a tree, and launched herself toward the remaining enemies.

In the air, she stabbed one arachnee's chest with her stinger, pierced another with her right hand, and wounded another with her left before falling to the ground.

There was two remaining arachnea falling down on Amelia. As she prepared to intercept them, two light arrows pierced the falling spiders.

Amelia smiled toward Orion, who managed to return quickly. Karteira stood up, threw the corpse stuck on her stinger away, and also smiled at him.

Though, he wasn't able to reciprocate, as he was swarmed by a large amount of arachnea.

-

Back to the present.

The situation wasn't improving. They killed arachnea by the hundreds, but the amount of red eyes hiding in the darkness of the woods kept increasing.

"This is insane! How many of them went corrupted?!"

Karteira shouted that, breaking the spine of an arachnee with her tail. The shock was so brutal that it spat the dark core out of its body.

"Like I said, more than ninety percent have fell to corruption. We're not done until they're dispatched. Remember, there's a hole in the barrier now."

While kicking one spider toward another, Orion answered her. The two body collided, and went through a tree before dying, impaled in pieces of wood.

"We can't let a single one walk out, is what your saying?"

Amelia bent backwards to dodge a web thread coming at her. Pointing Leima toward the arachnee that attacked her, a bolt of lightning fell on it. The ground shook for a split second, and the spider showed no sign of having survived.

They were fighting like this for around twenty minutes, under the quiet gaze of the survivors protected by the golden barrier.

Orion looked around him, and noticed that a few spiders were trying to attack him all at once. Six corrupted arachnea ran at him with their claws in plain sight, ready to rip his limbs apart.

Taygeta formed in his other hand, before shooting an arrow at the ground.

*CLING*

The corrupted arachnea looked confused as to why their prey wasn't there anymore, but they weren't able to think much longer, as a light arrow pierced their head, traveling to the dark core before piercing it.

Six bodies crumbled on the spot, as Orion landed on the ground. He immediately dodged a few web threads thrown at him.

"We have to deal with the corruption now. The arachnea aren't the same as the other corrupted beasts, they are way stronger and smarter."

While firing a light arrows at the ones attacking him, he answered the previous question.

A dead arachnee flew past both Amelia and Orion, making them remember a similar situation.

"Karteira, be careful where you throw them."

"My bad!"

*BAM*

She punched one in the chest so hard it crashed into a tree, breaking it in half. The broken tree fell on two other spiders, killing them instantly.

One spider tried to attack Karteira from behind, but Amelia already noticed it, so she ran toward Amelia, jump while adding a little spin, and slashed it with both daggers.

As she spun around, Leima created a blue tail behind it, and when the arachnee got slashed, green blood began to also rotate with the daggers, painting the ground and the trees with blood.

"Gross! Watch out!"

Taking a step back, Karteira avoided having green blood on her shoes. While walking backward, she spun a little too, and punched downward at another spider coming at her, slamming it in the dirt, creating a little impact crater.

'These girls, I swear. When did they become that strong?'

Orion smiled while firing arrows to cover his friends.

An hour passed, and finally, they began to see an end to this endless fight.

~

"The arachnea. The elementals. And the fairies."

"Yes, he found them all."

"But..."

Reon and Orianne both stared at the device's screen showing them fight.

"All three were in a state close to extinction. The fairies were about to lose their Remnant and perish to corruption, the elementals were starving to death, and the arachnea have been turned into corrupted puppets."

The last corrupted arachnee fell to Karteira's hands, or tail, in that situation. The stinger pierced the spider's chest, killing it in one strike.

"They have a very strong mental."

"What do you mean?"

Reon looked at his wife with a confused expression.

"Being able to separate between corrupted and non-corrupted is not something easy. What I mean is that there's no hesitation in their mind that the corrupted, even if they were normal before, are impossible to save."

"The only salvation for them is death itself. I find it admirable, though, it shouldn't be like that."

Orianne stared at the screen absentmindedly.

"I think it was Orion who accepted that first. He was the one hunting the corrupted beasts in his hometown."

"He worked hard to protect, and when he understood what the corruption really was, he worked even harder to stop it from spreading."

"Since Amelia loves our son more than anything, there was no other way but to follow his decision, while Karteira already had matters with the corruption."

"It's no wonder he found marvelous friends. You were like that too."

Placing a hand on Orianne's head, he caressed her red hair.

"The corruption wasn't really our problem at the time, but I really wish we would be able to help him. Not only does he have to deal with a problem from long before us, he also have to deal with Elliott."

She said while clenching her fists.

"Even if he had chosen to live peacefully, that curse Elliott placed on him would have caught up to him."

"We weren't careful enough."

Reon shook his head.

"There was no time, and even though we used a forbidden magic from both of our factions, it wasn't perfect."

"We had suffered too many injuries waiting for it to work. Finding the perfect opportunity to seal him was the best we could do, so noticing a curse was out of the question."

"But-"

Orianne's mouth remained closed when he placed his finger on her lips.

"We can't change the past, not can we affect the future. We can only watch, so let's enjoy while we can."

"..."

"What?"

"I still want to talk to Orion."

As she began to pout, Reon began to laugh.

"I had forgotten about that."

As he began to tease her, Orion was making his way toward the surviving arachnea after checking if any corrupted ones were hiding.