POV Spider

After a few days of searching for the Chosen, my new tier 2 stealth squad saw flashes of magic being used toward the mountain, similar to what we saw multiple times when watching the Chosen from far away in the shadows. Talking to the squad leader, I realized we had finally found him and went to see how he was doing. And the timing was great since I evolved recently into a tier 2 monster. I only had two choices to pick from when evolving. One was a Void Trapper specializing in stealth hunting with traps; the other was called Void Weaver. Both keep my appearance close, somewhat close to how it was before.

The Void Trapper would make me the size of a small dog monster while my carapace would turn pitch black, leaving my chelicerae to grow six inches longer and sharper. On the other hand, the Void Weaver was just bigger and more magical based. Void hung around the weaver's body like a light mist making it harder for this one to hide from anyone.

But thinking about this, the weaver is the better option since I need more mana to use skills and spells. However, the trapper is a better choice for my survival.

I can't do that, though. I have to think of things that help the followers survive over my own. I am not alone anymore, and being alone is possibly the worst thing ever now that I know the safety of having a what? What would I call us all? We are a family since Mother gave us life and the freedom to do what we want with it. Even though we haven't been together for long, we are stronger and better together than alone. I feel something I have never felt before. Something warm and fuzzy, I don't know what it is, but I like it and never want this feeling ever to end.

So I chose the Void Weaver and began the evolution. After evolving, I could talk and lead better now that I could explain my thoughts and actions to the other monsters in our family. My leveling speed had almost tripled, leaving me already at lv5/15, and I even gained a healing skill to use on others saving the wounded monsters. I even healed afflictions like poison or rot, but only after hours of healing and cutting off the affected areas for them to regrow. And I brought those I could not heal to the pond to drink and heal. Some of our family were killed, but most were saved. If we find dying monsters, that is the best since they are most likely to join us after saving them since we outnumber them a hundred to one. We still have to be careful of tier 2 in the mountain area since they are stronger than us. But soon, we shall be strong enough to wander the mountains in search of new members to join the family.

"Enough daydreaming. I have to find the Chosen." I chitter to myself. Focusing on the surrounding area where the lights were coming from, we could see more of the lights, but they were more than reported.

We are slowly advancing in the darkness, trying to stay far enough away not to get in the way of the Chosen or appear hostile to him. Nine hundred feet ahead of us, in a clearing near some black box that the Chosen goes into, stood the Chosen in all of his glory. He stood amidst over a hundred different colored magic bolts, but they all seemed pointed at him for some reason. No, that can't be since this was his magic skill; why would he do that? I must be going crazy because, after a couple of seconds, some of them almost randomly shot at him. It was at least five per second that was launched at high speed. And the crazy part was that the Chosen stayed in the same place, only moving to dodge or attack the bolts coming out him. And If he messed up, he took the bolt and continued without stopping or resting. His flesh would slowly nit itself back together over time.

I watched in amazement as he did this for over an hour before stopping to rest. By the time the scouts had found the lights and came back, and us to come back here took over four hours. Was he doing this the whole day without stopping or taking breaks to recover than only to start again? What about food? What did he do when he got hungry and needed to eat and sleep? And how did he carry the black box everywhere without being spotted? Indeed the Chosen was amazing.

I was again lost in amazement as a bolt slammed into a tree beside me, startling me and bringing me back to reality. But the weird thing is I felt something else for just a second before it vanished.

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POV Me

So for the past two hours of training and resting to recover, I noticed that I could increase leveling speed of some skills depending on what I did, even without using them in combat. For example, the Twilight Slash skill can be constantly pumped with mana to keep it from turning off, but it is draining. The cost to use the skill is five mp per cast, but constant use is 75 mp per second, and if something magical comes into contact with my claws while using it, then it may increase in cost to cut through the foreign magic, for the pretty easy magic bolt to level. Of course, all I have to do for that is to cast and hold them for as long as possible before they break down back into mana or shoot off into the distance. And if I want to increase the leveling speed even further, I must keep changing the size, shape, and type of magic coursing through it and holding every bolt together simultaneously. But fuck, that is hard to do right now, so I am only holding them.

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After an hour of sitting there while holding the bolts and keeping the slash skill active without letting go, I got bored. And looked at my claws, then back up at the bolts, and had a great idea. What if I combined the two? I sat there and made another bolt appear in front of me. I let go of most of the other bolts, leaving only a few left, and brought them together to fuse with the newly made bolt, making what I would do more straightforward.

I calmed myself as much as I possibly could and began to try and fuse the skills. And it seemed to be going well until the bolt almost became fuel for the slash skill. Then, focusing even more, I stopped the bolt from becoming fuel and tried to merge them again to create something new or see what would happen. I felt the skills give a little and pushed harder, trying to grind them together. That is when it exploded in my face ripping apart my hand and leaving it limp some of the mana cut little bits into my face but not that bad some water and a heal would speed up the healing and fix the destroyed hand right up.

Don't grind the magic skills together; not how that works when creating and developing skills and magic. But I could probably turn that into an exploding bolt later on after more experiments to test some more things to improve the design further and the raw power of the explosions.

I rested and waited until I was fully healed and topped off on mp before changing my training. Then, finally, I stood in the middle of the clearing and summoned 215 bolts around me, each pointed and ready to piece me. I waited a little longer to recover some more mp before getting ready.

About 73 percent of my mp was left to be used, and I activated the slash skill. Then, I set the bolts to fire at me five per second random. It was hard to do that, but I found a way. Hopefully, this will increase my Agi, Vit, and anything else that might increase during this.

As the bolts shot at me, I could feel which direction they were coming from with danger sense.

I would slash at some bolts that were easy to hit and dodge the ones I couldn't hit. I did mess up like I thought I would and was hit over 68 times. I cut down 34 bolts and dodged 113. This was good for my first time doing this. And since they were small and fast, I could also get better at hitting small, fast objects. This training is suitable for now, but I will have to find some way of making it more challenging in the future.

I would continue doing this for the next nine hours. After that, I would rest to recover, then attack myself with bolts until they were all gone and I was out of mp. I was having fun doing this at least instead of sitting on my ass like I was before.

I also tried to keep an eye and ear out for anything trying to sneak up to try and take a bite out of my ass while training. Once I finished my twelve hours of training, and the last bolt was gone, I noticed a dim misty purple glow. I thought it was Colt for a second, but the mist was lighter and darker than its glow. I think Colt already went to the next layer after he became a tier 3. So some monster was sneaking up on me. I tried to listen out to see if there was more and heard something near the mist in a tree. There might be more out there since there were two near each other. Pack monster? Or more insect ones? I doubt it is a monster like Colt since he seemed very territorial and was always alone whenever I saw him. A new mist monster? But what is it?

From how Colt fought, I should stay away and keep out of close quarters with this thing until I know more about it. The mist might rip through me; since I don't have a resistance skill for it, I should keep it far away. It isn't attacking me even though I am making myself appear weak and vulnerable. I have 102 mp left. I can wait a few more minutes to see if it leaves. My danger sense is quiet, so I am safe for now.

I waited for ten minutes, and it was still there, hiding and watching me. Its body blended into the surrounding bushes; I would have never noticed it without the mist. Finally, behind my hand, I summoned a bolt, charged it with 15 mp, and then shot it at the area where the mist center was. I watched as the bolt flew straight at it when it curved right before it touched the mist and hit the tree next to it. Something powerful did this. Danger sense lit up my whole body locked up and I was unable to even move. It was so strong that air around was broken and space looked fucked up. A tier 2 could never do this. I looked at the shed and saw that the door was still open and was getting ready to get there as fast as I could. Before I was even able to do that something popped up in my vision.

That was when I received a quest from Mother. And when I say quest, it wasn't one really. It was just a message saying not to kill her new monster priestess since it was starting a church for it while leading and growing the next group of monsters at the same time.