With a hand on a Magical Compass spider scout was making his way ever deeper into the jungle. He wasn’t alone, behind him were his comrades, also spider scouts. They wore black and silken coats, and the ShadowAgave cloth had a few useful enchantments placed on it.

The spiders blended with the shadows and were invisible to the naked eye. But if they were invisible to other creatures of darkness remained to be seen. Like a dark and misty cloud, they moved without sound.

The Magic Compass measured not only the direction but also the distance. The distance reading was only a rough guide, the stronger the mana source was and the closer they were to it, the brighter the arrow would glow.

“We are close.” The melodic chirp was replaced by a metallic rasp, a side effect of cloaking magic. “Be on your guard. Protect the mage.”

There was a single spider mage in between their ranks. An expert of magic and magical phenomena.

“Wait.” The mage rasped from under the cloaking spell. “Something doesn’t. Seem right.”

The spider scouts stopped and waited for the mage to elaborate. It didn’t have much to say besides that something feels ‘off’.

“Regardless. We must investigate.” The scout rasped. “King’s orders.” It added.

“I know. Just. Be careful.”

Needless to say, they all already were that: careful, cautious and ready for the unexpected. But even then...

“Eh...” The spider chirped involuntarily. It did so because its cloaking spell suddenly broke. “Eh, eh!!!” It was panicking.

Everyone was panicking. At first, they couldn’t see it because of all the jungle, but now when they were close, too close, it was so obvious it was hard to miss.

A hill of flowing and swirling darkness was right in front of them. Their camouflage spells were broken and the mana was sucked out and pulled towards the Darkness.

“It’s draining. My mana pool.” The spider mage chirped in alarm.“ I can’t. Cast spells.” As soon as it tried the spell would just fail to form.

He wasn’t alone. All of the spiders had a Drained debuff placed on them.

“Let’s go back. We’ve seen enough.” The spider scout chirped.

Even if the spiders were immune to mental attacks such as Terror or Illusion they were still quite terrified. There was this instinctual fear and apprehension they felt towards the Darkness, an ancient and almost forgotten feeling.

As they were hurriedly pulling away a tentacle composed of a swirling black shadow sprung from the ground, oddly it made no sound in doing that. Still Inaudible it swung at the spiders.

The spiders scattered away from the shadow. The shadow mage thrusted his arms readying a spell.

“Shadows!” It cursed, it had forgotten that no mana could be cast.

More tentacles appeared from the ground, they came with no warning and from all over.

A tentacle had caught one of the spiders successfully. “Ahh! Hel...” The spider didn’t get to finish its chirp for help.

A dry chitinous husk hit the ground and all of the magical equipment on the body had lost its magical lustre.

The spider mage looked from the corner of his eye. “Phew... Good.” He let out a relieved sigh.

All was not lost. The Soul Crystal took hold of the spider's soul becoming a Soul Crystal. The reason why the darkness ignored the crystal was unknown, but after all, this was the item with a lot of resistances weaved into it.

However, the crystal shattered as it was meant to. And if the spider mage could use magic he would have cast s spell to see souls. He just hopped the spider soul made its way to Soul Well successfully. He didn’t even dare to think about the other option.

The spiders continued to flee away from the encroaching tentacles of darkness.

“Here!” A spider scout threw a crystalline bottle to the spider mage.

“Swiftness Potion.” The spider mage drank it without hesitation, and in high time it came. A tendril brushed past the mage’s back taking a chunk of his robe. Needless to say, whatever enchantments there were, they were all now gone. His robe was now just a fancy cloth.

The spider mage continued running with increased vigour. Even with the potion he was still a mage and was lagging behind the more agile spider scouts. However, the potion had given him an idea. He reached into a pouch and retrieved three standard-issue items. He couldn’t sling spells but maybe... The spider threw the grenades: Frost Grenade, Fire Grenade, BlueDust Grenade.

“Success?” It chirped.

Not quite! The grenades exploded inflicting elemental damage upon the Darkness, but that was short lasted; just like spells the magic from the grenades was drained. The magical fire was extinguished and the magical ice melted all too quickly. However! The one tentacle immersed in a blue cloud of dust seemed to struggle against it. Unlike the other two, the effects of BlueDust Grenade continued to linger. No, not just that, it was super effective! The dust had shrivelled the sprouted tentacle. Even the Darkness which flowed in tow after the tentacles was avoiding that spot.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“No time. For experimentations!” The spider scout scolded grabbing the spider mage by its arm and dragging him.

It might have scolded, but even so, all of the spiders threw their BlueDust Grenades.

The Darkness slowed as if hesitant. This was just enough for the spiders to gain distance and escape.

“I think...” The spider mage chirped. “[Dark Cloak], yes the magic is back.” It rasped taking a shadowy form.

Unlike the spider mage, the scouts had only limited access to the spells, moreover, the Drain debuff had left them with zero mana.

“Then, you go. Make the report. Hurry.” The spider scout chirped.

The mage drank one of its potions, presumably to fight off mana fatigue. “[Shadow Step],” it disappeared leaving only thread-like wisps of shadow.

...

The Trusty Advisor was adamant against the Spider King going to inspect the mana source. At that time it chirped, “This might be a trap!”. It was hard to argue with that point, hence the King remained.

But it was hard just to sit and wait for the report. He had to do something! And well, actually, there were plenty of things to do. So he went deep under the ground and into a very secret chamber.

A certain issue with the Soul Well was bugging him. It’s not that it wasn’t working, rather the opposite, it was working too well. The Spider Archmage called it a bonus feature, but he didn’t quite agree with that assessment.

After the binding ritual, the Soul Well began pulling and storing stray souls on its own. All fine and dandy considering that the radius of the effect wasn’t that long. But the issue was that it was filling with the souls of squirrels. He had thousands of squirrel souls! If the Great Wisp knew it might get angry. Well, he had no intention of making that slip of the tongue.

And there even were a few kobold souls there. The radius didn’t reach past the border of MegaFarm not to mention the Oberon Mountains. So how? He had a suspect, a particular race of meat gourmands, but this accusation was a heavy one.

“Huh?” The amount of souls in the well ticked up. “A spider?”

It was very unlikely it died on the farm, this was still daytime.

“Oh!” He realised. “Oh...” He realised.

Well, at least a part of the well worked as intended. He looked at the count with bated breath. It ticked up, but there were only squirrels.

Incidentally, the shadow monsters provided no souls, it was either they were immune to the effect of the Soul Well or they had no soul. Both options were equally mysterious.

The wait was painful but eventually, the spider signalled to inform him that the scouting expedition was back. He rushed to the throne room straight away.

There was only a single spider there, it looked exhausted and haggard. Seeing no other scouts the King worried for the worst.

“The other? Did they?”

“No, only one. I rushed ahead to ...” The spider mage gave its report.

“So this Darkness has a body now...” The description of it sounded scary, unlike the shadow monsters it was functionally immune to most magic attacks. “But we have a way to fight it. You did very well to find its weakness.” After all, it had both physical and magical resistance. “We are very lucky...” If not for DustyBlue flowers the unpleasant end would be certain.

The rest of the spider scouts rushed into the throne room.

“Everyone is back! Good! I recon a small reward is in order. This isn’t much but please.” He reached into his inventory space to pull out jugs of Slug Jelly; this was his personal stock.

The spiders took the rewards with gratitude. “We shall help. To prepare.”

“No, we have plenty of spiders for that. You take rest.” He commanded.

Incidentally, the Trusty Advisor was already making notes in his book. The Drow Assistant was no different. After all, he wasn’t left alone to deal with this menace.

Unfortunately, it looked like a huge patch of DustyBlue would have to be cut. Obviously, Johny, the humongous slug, won’t be too happy about it. He will visit him later and break the bad news.

But before that, some other members had to receive their rewards. And the reward handed out in person and not a proxy, and by the King himself, was so much more precious; he knew that very well.

He turned to the Trusty Advisor. “Can I leave this to you for a moment?” He handed the compass to the spider.

“Of course, King.” The spider bowed.

The compass arrow was dim, showing that the Darkness was still far away. And maybe it wasn’t moving towards the farm at all. But anyways...

...

The Spider Advisor was standing just outside the King’s study, it had a report. The study doors were closed and the King sounded busy. The report wasn’t particularly urgent, so the spider decided to wait patiently until the King finished.

However, the sounds coming from the study were rather loud.

“Harder, do it harder!” A feminine voice squealed demandingly.

“But it's too hard. It might hurt you.”

“No, it’s just right. Now do as I said.”

“Like this?”

“Oh-hhh!” She nickered pleasantly. “Yes, that’s the spot.”

Grunts of satisfaction accompanied by the sound of rhythmic motion kept piercing the doors.

“Your strokes need to be longer.”

“Is that better?”

“Mhm...” She only made a short whiny sound. “More.”

A wild lamia appeared. She slithered through the corridor her eyes darting around as if looking for something. Her eyes met with the four yellow orbs. She gave him that wide grin full of sharp teeth.

“Trusty Advisor, sss, my husband is missing. He missed his tea time with me! Have you seen him?” She looked at the closed study door. “Is he inside?”

The Trusty Advisor didn’t need to reply.

“I think I got the technique just right.” A regal voice penetrated the door.

“The King is busy.” The spider said the obvious.

A feminine voice penetrated the door. “Yes, now do my rear end.”

Lamia Queen listened in with her eyes wide. “What’s that rhythmical sss-sound? And who’s in with him? SSS!” She sounded rather panicked.

The Trusty Advisor didn’t know the answer to the former but for the latter, “I think it’s one of the Centauri.”

As if to affirm that statement, "Go in deeper," a rather sultry-sounding voice nickered.

“SSS! I’m going in!” Lamia slammed at the shut door with her tail.

She broke it off the hinges, an overkill really, it wasn’t even locked.

“What do you think, sss, you’re doing!?”

The King stood there with a brush in his hand.

“Brushing her coat?” He blinked twice gathering his thoughts. "Did something happen? Is it about the Darkness?"

Well, this wasn’t exactly what she had expected. The King wasn’t exactly forbidden to care for his pets, but even so... “NO!” she hissed at his attempt to distract her. “Why is her tail raised like that?” She hissed questioningly.

“I never had horses, only dogs, but maybe because she’s happy?”

“Horses-sss! Dogs-sss?” She hissed confused.

“I’m just brushing her coat. Want to give me a hand? It’s therapeutic.” He offered a spare brush.

“Hmm.” Her facial expression softened at the invitation. “I’ll give it a try.” She said it with a mischievous grin and grabbed the brush.

A realisation flashed across his face. “Oh! I forgot the tea time. Sorry about it.”

“Don’t worry about it. It happens.” She began brushing.

“Ouch. Not so hard. You’re too rough.” The Centauri Assistant grunted.

“Oh? You don’t like that?” She brushed even harder.

“No.” The centaur snorted again. “The King does it way, way better. He knows how to please a woman.”

She shouldn’t have said that. She definitely should not have said that.

To save the centaur’s coat, or maybe even her life, the King had to confiscate the brush from his wife.

The Trusty Advisor just stood there at the gap and next to the broken door, still patiently waiting for his time to give a report. It wasn’t that important anyway...

A strange idea formed in its spidery mind. ‘As my reward. Maybe I could get the King to clean my chitin in a similar fashion.’ The spider shook its head as if to get rid of such fantasies.