When we exited the room, we found that everywhere is simply swarmed by spiders. The floor is so densely covered by spiders that it is impossible to see the ground. The 4 of us flew up in the air to avoid getting swarmed by the spiders.

“So many disgusting spiders.” Nicki whined.

“Indeed. However, just use any Area of Effect spells will easily dispel them, the larger the better. Time, go North, Charlotte will deal with South, Nicki will deal with East, and I will deal with West and the center region. Once you have cleaned up the region gather back here.”

We then went our separate ways. I took a look at the situation of the Invasion and found the movement of the spiders come from a specific region, the Main Building. We will have to fight our way there later if we wish to stop this invasion.

I took a look at the spiders. “You don’t even pose a single challenge against us. So weak and powerless. Inferno: Brutal End!”

A huge magic circle that covered the entire school building appeared, thousands of fire spears appeared from it and pierced through the spiders. I have specially configured the spell to avoid the buildings so no damage done there. When the spell is over, the entire region is free of spiders. This will probably last no more than 10 minutes before it will be filled up again. We have to quickly address the core of the invasion or else it will not end.

I took a look at the three girls. They are building up mana to cast large Area attacks. I whispered to them that we will be gathering at the Main Building, they all nodded in reply. I flew over there first and waited. Then something reminded me. How did the spiders managed to use the system to speak and claimed to be able to overtake the world if they are so powerless and weak and unable to speak? Something is off.

That is when I see strange human-like Creatures sprouting out from the Main Building. They have a human top, but with a spider body below, they also have a face of a spider’s. Disgusting they are. How strong are they exactly, that is a question that I will like the answer to.

Then some of them spotted me, and they mumbled something, suddenly I see white thick threads emitting from their mouth and aiming towards me. I dodged the first few attempts, but then afterwards so many of them shot at me at once I got trapped by the threads. I was then brought down to the Earth. I tried breaking the threads with magic, but then I discovered they were weaved with anti-magic, so magic does not work against them.

I materialized a Dark Matter sword and cut through the threads. It appears that the spiders are able to counter our magical spells using Anti-magic. So the only way to win this invasion is to destroy every single one of them using physical attacks. I landed onto Earth and begin swinging my sword left and right of the Arachnid soldiers. Chunks of flesh and crimson blood begin to spill everywhere as I drive the sword into their bodies. I slowly advance into the Main Building as I destroy the soldiers. 

That was when the principle whispered to me. “Innight, what are you doing? You are not supposed to approach the source of the invasion! They are all equipped with Anti-Magic spells and you will die!”

I replied back. “I have others way to attack, instead of using Magic, I can use Physical attacks. If I do not stop the source of this invasion, no one will!”

I continued advancing the army through hack and slashing the army. I decided to take a risk.

“Fermion: Devastation!”

A gigantic magical circle appeared under the entire Main Building, The Void appeared and swallowed everything

It was eerily silent. It appears that the Arachnids are attacking us from the frontlines of the school itself, so the back of the building is unguarded. I entered Alzelea state to identify the enemies’ location. I can see a group of 5 of them in the Main Building itself, accessing the Forbidden Region of the Library. That must be their main motive, while attacking us from the Main Building to diverge the attention. Then the rest of the enemy is appearing from a crater in the ground, near the entrance of the Main Building. I will have to deal with that later. First priority is the invaders in the Library, they are most likely finding record about making themselves more powerful.

I rushed up the Building towards the Library. At the entrance of the Library I find 2 of the Soldiers standing there on guard. I sneaked up to them using an invisible spell and blasted them into chunks of flesh using magic. I advanced into the entrance of the Forbidden Region and fried the electric lock with large amount of electricity, then I kicked open the door. The group inside is surprised.

“How did you managed to infiltrate our forces?” One of them asked.

“You do not need to know that. Your operation comes to an end here.”

“No it isn’t.” The Arachnid human replied. He shot a thread towards and bound my four limbs. I used mental power to move the Dark Matter sword and cut the threads.

“What kind of devilish trick is this? Our threads are Anti-Magic, you should not be able to use magic at all!”

“This is not magic. It is a usage of mental willpower to move objects. It requires intense training to be able to do so. Now, if you excuse me.”

I accelerated Time on my side and quickly slashed my sword across their heads. 4 heads rolled on the ground and the body dropped dead on the ground, blood poured from the necks of the dead body. I pointed my sword at the remaining Arachnid human.

“Now, I want you to tell me your plans. If you refuse, then you will end like your friends here. If you lie, and I can detect lies, you will die here as well. If you are honest and truthful, I can spare you a life to live.”

The Arachnid human trembled, and I can read that his mind is filled with fear.

“P-P-Please don’t kill me. I-I-I-I surrender!”

“Then tell me what your intentions of this invasion are!”

“For us, the 5 of us here, we are to retrieve our Great One from one of the hard disks located in this library. The rest of us is to invade this school and cause chaos while the 5 of us retrieve the hard disks.”

“What is this Great One that you mention?”

“He is our Great Ruler, he was banished by humans many years ago and his soul was imprisoned in a hard disk. Humans are unable to destroy his soul, from what we have known, so this happened. We were told that the hard disk is somewhere in this school itself. We are to retrieve him and revive him after we have recovered the hard disk.”

“Alright. Please leave this place now. Tell your higher ups to stop this useless invasion at once or else I will erase every single one of you from The Existence.”

The Arachnid human clambered and ran off.

I begin searching through the Forbidden Region to find the hard disk. I traced to see if there is a foreign object locked within the hard disk.

Then an announcement came.

“THE FOOLISH HUMAN WHO DARED TO SLAUGHTER MY, LIKE,  DEAREST SUBJECTS, MEET ME AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE MAIN BUILDING OF YOUR SCHOOL NOW IF YOU WANT YOUR FRIENDS, LIKE,  ALIVE!” The speakers boomed.

“Innight. We are sorry! We didn’t know that they have Anti-Magic and we are captured!” That was Charlotte.

“YOU HAVE, LIKE, 10 MINUTES! AFTER THAT WE WILL SLAY THEM ONE AFTER ANOTHER!”

Then the speaker got cut off.

So Charlotte, Time and Nicki got captured. I need a negotiation item, and that is to find the hard disk containing their “Great One”. Then a particular hard disk caught my attention. I picked it up from the ground. There is a strange form of magic flowing through the hard dis, it is not something of the norm. The magic is indescribable, it does not follow the flow of magic of any known kind. This must be the hard disk that is containing the “Great One”. I pocketed the hard disk.

I left the Forbidden Region and went down to the entrance of the Main Building. As I have expected, I saw an entire army waiting for me there. The army parted a way as I pass through them. In the very middle, a large Arachnid human, with a spider-like crown on top of his disgusting spider head. I expect that to be their leader.

“You must be the leader of this entire invasion.”

“And you must be, like, the human who killed all my, like, soldiers despite us being Anti-Magic.”

“You will be right in this aspect. Can I ask you to retreat your soldiers and release my friends? You are causing quite some trouble here.”

“We will retreat, like, under one condition. You will have to hand over, like, the hard disk and promise that you will not, like, harm any of our kind again.”

“I have the disk, but I shall not hand it over. You intend to revive something that the world once has treated it as a danger. I will not allow that to happen.”

“Then I guess we have no choice but to fight.”

The leader of the Arachnid wore an Armor of unknown material, so I do not know if the Dark matter sword is able to cut through it. I can try it.

“CHARGE!” He commanded. Every single Arachnid soldier in the field used their threads and bounded me down. I turned myself into the element of The Void and consumed everything. I then create a separate Dimension Pocket and isolate everything from the real world.

“What kind of devilishly trick is this? He should not be able to use Magic!”

“I am not using Magic. It is my ability as the Creator and Destroyer of The Existence, Ashely!”

“Wha– How did you know my human name?”

“You speech pattern showed it. There is no one that I know that has the speech pattern as such. Also, I have been tracking your magic ever since you entered the room, I can identify that you do not have any normal magic. I allowed you to wander off back then is because I wanted to know what your true identity is. Never did I suspect you to be the leader of this Invasion. I will not spare you. Now that all of you are trapped in my Dimensional Pocket, prepare to die.”

I melted in the walls of the Dimensional Pocket and begin to control the Pocket from the outside, the real world.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

“No matter how much Anti-Magic you all have, you will not be able to resist the devouring power of The Void. Say your prayers.”

I allowed The Void to flow from my body and fill in the Dimensional Pocket, it swallowed everything that it touches. The Arachnids tried to stop the advancement of The Void with their threads but to no avail as the threads were consumed by The Void itself. In less than a minute, every single Arachnid is devoured by The Void. I allowed The Void to flow to myself again and disabled the Dimensional Pocket.

I freed Nicki, Charlotte and Time from the thread wrap using the Dark Matter sword.

“Is this The End of the Invasion?” Time questioned me.

“Not yet. There is still the presence of their ‘Great One’ in this hard disk – “ I hold up the hard disk to them. “And as long as this hard disk is present, there will be more of this invasion happening. For now, at least, there will be peace. However it will not last if this hard disk continues to exist. It has to be destroyed. The only thing is, I don’t know how. I am not used to technology as I have always lead simple life. We will need someone who knows technology very well to do this.”

“Can’t we just destroy it physically?”

“We cannot. This is bound to the soul through an ancient form of magic. The magic is preventing any attacks from breaking the disk, magic or physical. If you don’t believe it, see – “

I took up my Dark Matter sword and lashed it on the hard disk. The hard disk formed a barrier and held out the attack. I used an explosion spell and the same thing happened.

“See? We need to use an alternative way to destroy the soul bounded to the disk. That is, to enter the disk in the digital world. I have no experience in doing so, nor have I entered the digital world, which is otherwise known as the DIgiverse. Goodness know what is awaiting us inside.”

“But there will be no more spiders here right? Right?” Nicki pestered me. She is most likely afraid of the spiders.

“No, there wouldn’t be any. At least for now.”

Then the principle start whispering again.

“Good job all of you. Innight, you went against our orders but since you managed to stop the Invasion, we will forgive your actions.”

“Mdm. Lillie, we have retrieved something oddly interesting in the Library during the Invasion. It is a special hard disk that contains the soul of what the Arachnids called ‘The Great One’. From what I can infer, it appears to their Grand Master, and its’ soul is sealed into a hard disk, which I am holding onto right now. I need someone with great technology skills to access the hard disk and destroy it.”

“No matter about that. Give it to me, I will be able to deal with it. No matter how strong it is it cannot be stronger than me.”

“That will be a risk, Mdm. Lillie. I suspect the Grand Master have magic level that peaks Lord level, perhaps even reaching Infinity Level magic.”

“No worries, this old woman needs to practice her magic every now and then.”

“We do not even know what will happen to you if you die in the Digiverse. We might want to prevent that. Anyway, I will call upon someone to do this job later.”

“You must not! It is too dangerous to let a student – “

“I must. I uphold the peace of The Existence, and if this disk is not destroyed soon, another wave of Arachnids will invade us again. We do not want the world to be conquered by the Arachnids, do we?”

I can hear her tapping on an object. Perhaps weighting the decision.

“Very well. I will provide the system for you all to access the hard disk. Come up to my office right now.”

The four of us went up to the principle’s office. We knocked on the door and it opened up. Inside the room there is a large metallic table with a computer on top of it, together with the computer there were many others miscellaneous objects as well. The principle looked up at us from her computer.

“Hello to Innight and your friends. This is the machine that will help you.” The principle passed us a machine that resembles a Virtual Reality headset.

“Thank you so much. I suspect it functions the same as a VR headset?”

“Yes.”

We then left the principle office and went back to classroom. I told the rest of the members of the Occult Research Club about what happened to Ashley, and he wouldn’t be coming back with us. Oddly, none of them looked surprised. Perhaps they themselves are Creatures of other kinds who can’t cast magic but pretending to be human. Whatever they truly are, it does not matter.

I explained to them about the hard disk.

“So the entire Invasion begin just because of a single hard disk?”

“Apparently so. Also, this hard disk may contain something much more powerful than just a Creature itself. It may be as powerful as someone of Lord level magic. To make it better or worse, it is in the Digiverse, which we have no idea how magic works within… Oh yes, come to think about it, who is our teacher in charge?”

“It is Mr. Leo and Ms. Cindy. They usually are too busy to stay throughout the entire CCA session but from time to time they stay for the entire session. Oh here they are!”

Ms. Cindy is an old woman, perhaps over 40, and has grey hair. She and Mr. Leo sat down on one of the chairs.

“So what are you people planning to do today after that Invasion?”

“Innight just brought something very interesting. He just got a hard disk from the Forbidden Region of the Library and from what he investigated, there seems to be a soul of a Creature of what the Arachnids called ‘The Great One’ stored inside the hard disk. This equipment that Innight has here is a machine that allows us to connect with the hard disk through transporting us into the Digiverse. Now, Innight wants us to operate the machine and transport him into the Digiverse to destroy ‘The Great One’ inside the hard disk. He says that once this Creature is destroyed, the Invasion will be stopped.”

“Are you sure this is safe, Innight?” Mr. Leo asked.

“Positive. I have done tracing the machine and there is no abnormality. Please start up the machine now, insert the hard disk into the machine. Only Time is allowed to come with me as she is strong enough to prevent any damage on her and she will not die that easily. The rest of you keep the machine is optimal condition to ensure we have the exit open at all times.”

Mr. Leo start up the machine and slot in the hard disk. I put on the VR headset and immediately my consciousness is transported to the Digiverse.

When I opened my eyes, all I can see is a world surrounded in green and black walls. I and Time are placed in a city made of up nothing but green materials. I wonder what kind of material that the city is made up of wince we are in the digital world. Then I found a sign sticking out from the walls of a building. I took a peak at it. It says:

Welcome to the Digiverse! This region you are in now is a part of the Information Superhighway. A land of beauty! A land of science! Philosophy! Architecture! Fan Fiction! Everything you see, from the water to the leaves are made from sweet free flowing information. See if you can catch some information on your tongue! Of course… the whole place was abandoned years ago. This must be all that’s left.

-The Sign Painter

The Sign Painter? I remember this character. If my memory recalls, this character belonged to a game called World of Goo. So we are in a hard drive that contains the game called World of Goo. This must be Chapter 4 of the game itself, named “Information Superhighway”. If my memory is correct, then there should be the “MOM’s Computer” somewhere in this Information Superhighway. It should be able to answer where “The Great One” is. According to my memory of the game itself, the MOM’s Computer should be overhanging the entire Information Superhighway. This means we have to fly upwards to find her.

“Time, I recognize this place. This is the Information Superhighway, in a game called World of Goo. We need to find the overarching person that overlooks the entire region, which is a program called MOM’s Computer. It should be able to tell us where ‘The Great One’ is.”

“Ok. So where do we go to look for it?”

“If my memory did not fail me. According to the game itself, it is located above the Information Superhighway. We will have to fly upwards to find it.”

“Alright then, let’s move!”

We flew upwards into the endless Darkness that surrounds the Information Superhighway. Then we found a green icon labelled “MOM”s Computer”. Time clicked it.

A white window appeared, in it there is a textbox and two eyes, under the two eyes there is a line that says “Search Engine”. I materialized a keyboard and connected it to the window, then I begin to type: “The Great One”, and then I pressed “Enter”.

The textbox disappeared ad a paragraph of words appeared where the textbox should be. I begin to read it.

The Great One, the Grand Master of the Arachnids. He used to be a human of unknown origin. One day, due to him wandering in the forest of Amazon, he contacted a strange type of disease, he nearly died because of it, but due to the advancement of technology he survived. However, the disease has caused him to lose his human feature and turned him into more like a spider-like creature. He was rejected by humanity and is left to live on his own.

Later, it is known that he performed a strange ritual that allowed him to gain Lord level magic, which allowed him to assimilate humans to Arachnid humans like himself. After he realised this ability, the tried to conquer the world and erase all humanity, replacing them with Arachnid humans, the reason behind the attack, as he mentioned, was “I will never be rejected again”. It took the power of the 6 Grand Rulers of the Elemental Planes to destroy him and his soul was trapped in a hard disk. His soul is trapped in the Storage Room of this very hard disk itself.

Good. I thought. We now have the information we need. We just need to destroy his soul before someone finds this hard disk and give The Great One a physical form.

After thinking through, I talked to Time about our next move.

“Time, you should have finished reading about everything here. You know that we have to find his soul and destroy it, if we have a map of this place the job will be simpler, but we don’t, so we have to do this the long way.”

“Alright then. Which direction do you want me to look?”

“There is no need. There should be various signs located everywhere with the Sign Painter around in this game. Just look around for signs, there should be some that points to us where the Storage is.”

We begin wandering around looking for signs that points us to Storage. Then Time found one. It directed us to the North of the City, inside the Clock Tower.

We flew inside the Clock Tower. Inside we found it to be a storage of numerous amount of files. Inside there we find a black Arachnid human sorting through the files. He seems surprised when he saw us.

“Are you human? How did you access my hard disk?”

“We are. We used a little of advanced technology to do so. Are you The Great One?”

The Arachnid human let out a long sigh.

“Ah yes. But I am no longer great. I wanted to die for so long but I couldn’t.”

“You wish has come to a point where it will come true. Our mission here is to destroy you.”

Happiness sprung into him.

“Really? I have been wishing for my own death for many years, goodness know how many.”

Never have I seen someone so looking forward to die. Well, granted the situation here, I can understand. Being trapped in a world of information for so many years without anything else to do but to look over the limited information in this world, anyone will want to die to be freed of this monotonous and repetitive life.

“Since you didn’t resist, I am going to administer you a swift and painless death. Time, step back.” I said.

I begin to use The Void to consume him and devour him.

“Ah… to be freed from this world. I thank you, Zealus.”

“How did you know my name?”

“I am connected to The Gathering and Styx Cult. They have combined together under one leader now, she is of an important person in your current school, Zealus. They now aimed to extract your power, awaken The Ancient Beasts and revive The Unknown.”

“Who is that?”

“…” He is completely devoured by The Void, never to be seen again. I will have to figure out who is the leader of The Gathering and the Styx Cult before they take action.

“Time, we need to leave now. He is the core of this world. If he is destroyed, this world will collapse.”

“Where is the exit?”

“From the game, it is in the Recycle Bin, it should be labelled as Deliverance.”

“I don’t think there is a Recycle Bin here, Innight. Look, at the very top of the Information Superhighway, there is a huge sign labelling ‘Exit’ there. Let’ fly there.”

 I followed Time’s suggestion and flew upwards.  A blinding light emitted from the darkness of the world itself and enveloped everything.

When the Light ceased, I lost sight of everything, everything is covered in darkness. I raised my hands, touched my head and felt the VR headset. So we are back to reality. I took off the VR headset.

“So did you successfully did what you are supposed to do?” Everyone asked.

“Indeed. We can now destroy this disk. All the data and information inside has been deleted. It is useless now.”

No one did anything, so I used my Dark Matter sword and slashed it across the disk. It instantly was sliced into half and withered into dust.

“Ah yes, something I have forgotten to ask you seniors and teachers. What is this ‘Transcendence’ that everyone is talking about?”

Ms. Cindy spoke.

“It is essentially a music competition between students of the school itself, it is conducted every year at the end of July. Are you intending to attend it?”

“If it is about music, definitely yes! The four of us can form a band and perform!” I looked at Time, Nicki and Charlotte. They all nodded.

“It’s so good to be young.” Ms. Cindy said.

We begin to decide on our performance as we cycled our way home.

“We have to decide which song to perform. Any ideas Innight?” Time begin.

“It’s not I don’t have. It’s that I have too much that I don’t know which one to choose.”

“Just choose from your favourites. That shouldn’t be too hard.” Charlotte continued.

“It is still very hard. I have those that comes from a band, those that come from Deemo, and those that comes from Vocaloids.”

“What is Deemo?”

“It’s a very old game. It is a music rhythm based game that involved you tapping the notes as they reach the bottom line, the more accurate you are on tapping the notes, the higher your score. It has been forgotten by many others but I know it. It is still regularly updated with new songs.”

“Don’t choose from Vocaloids. Those songs have way too high pitches that is very difficult to reach unless you have a very squeaky voice, which all of us lack.” Nicki finished.

“I’ve got it!” I cried.

“I will assign all of you your roles now. Tonight we will start practicing. Time, you will be the singer, Charlotte, you will be the guitarist, Nicki will be the drummer, and I will be the pianist.”

“Yeah!” Everyone shouted.