I was still eating when Jaha came back. “I left a small layer of webbing at the end.”

I nodded, “thanks.”

“It was a good plan. I am surprised it worked so well.”

“I am, too. It was mostly thanks to you. Being bronze rank makes a difference.”

“It does,” she acknowledged.

“Do you think we are a third of the way there yet?”

She thought about it, “Possibly? We did veer off course, though.”

“Hang on, Kai has found something.”

“Something dangerous?”

“No, valuable, I think. I am going to go explore.”

“Don't leave the webbing, and you should be fine for a while.”

I put my axe away and left the shield. My claws were better as they could cut up a rank.

I came to the trunk of a tree, cleared webs with my claws, and started to climb. The webbing was thicker the higher I climbed until I came to a fork branch. A Kai was there, and I cleared the webbing out. There was an essence cube. I will need it appraised, but I am pretty sure it is a Spider Essence surrounded by a lot of quintessence. I stored it all away.

I hope that in Intro to Magic next semester, they will cover the appraisal ritual. That is something I would be interested in. All I have to do now is live.

I went back down, and we decided we would wait as long as possible as it was the safest place yet. When it was finally time to move out, all out mana pools were full, and we were mostly healed. The essence Kai discovered was a huge boost to morale.

We all put on the ponchos, and I led them out of the webbing, which was breaking down in patches and turning into rainbow smoke. We waited a little too long.

Five minutes out, Kai found something that sent him running back to me. “Incoming,” I warned the others.

Chasing Kai was a veritable swarm of ants. They were only iron-rank, but there seemed to be thousands of them.

“Save your mana if you can!” I said.

The ants were about the size of my foot, but they had a nasty bite to them, and they would climb your legs to get past the armour and cloth.

I started stomping on them with my feet claws, and I cast Hunters Tether to slow them down.

Nassor had changed out his Halberd for a scythe, and he was acting like he was cutting grass.

Jaha was off to the side, doing the minimum to stay ant-free. I suppose she thought it was a good enemy for us to deal with.

Akemi was creating mud with her hydration spell and then dehydrating it and leaving the ants stuck. Then she would go around stomping on as many as she could before they dug themselves out.

Melor had his needle swarm low to the ground and turned them into mince meat.

Saskia was playing with fire and burning them in groups.

I switched out my axe, grabbed a whip in my hand, and started whipping them with Cutting Webs. I was worried that they seemed to keep coming and coming.

Reaper's Blessing was increasing, and so was the Reaping Magic. I put it all to coin for now as I was busy.

I would recast Hunters Tether when we needed it, but I kept Ardisia inside, and they seemed to eat everything. Ardisiar spiked the ones who tried to climb my legs. They had a hard time biting through my fur, but some did.

Even a couple of Kais got into it, biting and clawing their way into the ants. I kept looking around, waiting for the next attack. I am pretty sure that is why Jaha was holding off.

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The number of ants lowered, and slightly larger ones came, and they took more effort to kill.

I also slowed and stayed back a bit, expecting the next disaster to arrive. It didn’t.

Once the ants were killed, we rested for a few minutes.

Jaha said, “There will be a nest with a queen not far that way. Probably a monster core maybe some other stuff.”

“No,” I said. “We are heading that way. We stay on course and survive.”

Nassor and Melor looked interested.

“No,” I reiterated. “Come back and harvest in future years; now, we stay the course and survive.”

I was already walking away as I thought they might argue. I was going to get out of here. I started to wonder why I came in, except I needed to level and get stronger.

The girls followed me fine. The two boys were looking like they would say something, but I hushed them. We were in the wild and vulnerable.

We continued the slow stealth path. Massive wings of something flew over. We waited to make sure they were gone. I had visions of another eagle picking me apart.

I changed course a lot to avoid things that Kai found or smelled. I moved slowly, watching carefully, but I still missed the huge snake that dropped on me and started squeezing the life out of me. The others started attacking it, and Jaha had the most effect. I had one hand free and ripped into it with my claws and Rend. Ardisia turned me into a thistle bush, but the snake was bronze rank, and most of it didn’t penetrate its skin.

When it finally died, my bones cracked, and they unwound me. Akemi handed me a potion. It was the strongest health potion we had. Even then, I needed somewhere to rest. In the end, we climbed the tree it came from and stopped for a while. We figured there wouldn’t be another monster up there while the snake was there.

I took the bronze rank snakeskin that time, along with some snake meat. I was going to try to heal with the snake meat, but it is bronze, and I am only Iron. I got out the cooker I purchased and cooked it up with just a few herbs. Then I ate some. It was stronger than the iron rank, but I felt I had to limit how much I could eat, or I might get mana poisoning.

Darkness was falling. The astral space didn't have a night or day as there was no sun. It had a lighter and a darker time about eight and a half hours apart. We decided to stop for a major rest, and I set up the nets to protect us. I promptly fell asleep.

I woke in the darkness with movement and talking. I felt an instance of the reaper's blessing come in. What was happening? There wasn't much room under the net, but I looked and a white moth tried to get through the net, but the wings were cut off. Akemi reached over and squashed it with something.

“What is going on?” I whispered.

“Moonlight moths. They will get on you and syphon mana out of you. The nets are only just keeping them out. Some smaller ones get through. We are letting the nets handle it for now. Some of the netting is getting a bit thin.”

“OK, give me some space.” She moved back, and I went to pull some sticky web out of my pendant, but the snake had broken it. I created a small shield and attached it to my belt. I pulled out a length of sticky web and stuck it to the inside of the netting, where it looked like it would break. The web was bronze rank, but my claws cut it fine. We would be leaving the nets here, though. This was even more effective, and the moths stuck to the web, which was all they could do. They were iron rank. It would have been difficult if they had come on us while we were walking.

As it was, we waited it out and killed the moths that didn’t just die in the webs. My Reaping Magic was giving me the option to create Moonlight Moth wings. I had no idea what they were used for, but if the moths syphon mana, maybe they are used in mana potions or something. I figured I would get them, but I saved the blessings of the reaper. I think we were barely halfway to the next portal.

I stayed up on watch while the other caught a bit of sleep. Jaha didn’t seem to need sleep. Bronze rank recovery, huh? I started to run things over in my mind, and the ants stood out, especially Jaha’s comment about the queen. Something seemed a little off. She was certainly pulling her weight, and there was no way we would have succeeded against the spider without her or the snake. Was the ant queen some sort of test? If so, did I pass or fail? Who cares. Survive and getting stronger is what I need, not some unknown test. I would watch her, though.

My enhanced eyes caught the edge of a black shape flying through the trees.

“Time to wake up something is out there,” I whispered. Those resting stirred and grabbed weapons.

Suddenly, my body was hit with a high pitcher sound that struck like a physical force, and a shape with wings hit the nets and flew off. Then it came again, or was it another one, and I felt a liquid dribble down the side of my head. I reached up, and it was blood. I couldn’t hear anything, but the sound still affected my body, and a shape hit the nest in front of me and then flapped off, leaving some wing parts attached to the bronze sticky netting. It was a bat, and there were a lot of them, and they were bronze rank. Some sort of sonic attack was hitting us, and if they could have reached us, we would have been overpowered already.

I fumbled with my shield and got more bronze-level web to reinforce the netting. I was shaking with the constant attacks, but I got some up and then some more. I used Resin to extra reinforce the ties of the net to the tree. They kept coming and coming. I managed to get a javelin, shorten it some more, and handed them out. We poked the bats through the netting. Their wings were the weak area.

None of us could hear anymore. Akemi’s aura and Mist elemental were healing us over time, but because the bats couldn’t reach us, they couldn’t finish us. I know we killed one or two of them. Only Melor's needles were really effective, and he was iron rank to their bronze. If he shredded their wings, they fell to the ground but often didn’t die.

All we could do was endure and keep adding webbing to the nets. It was hours. When it got light, they flew off.

Most of the others drank a health potion, but I had used mine, and while I had a spare, we had a long way to go. I ate snake meat. I was the last to recover, and we were all exhausted. I chose not to get the bat blood; I just got coins with Reaping Magic.