Tilly was not sure if he would have survived the sudden acceleration if he had not prepared the way he did. Even curling his whole form into a tight ball and tensing against the incredible application of force that his body experienced did not completely mitigate the tearing that he experienced along his hip flexors, shoulder sockets, and neck. Each of these points took the majority of the force as they clutched around his torso, fighting the immense application of G’s on his body.

After a few eternal seconds, the acceleration died down, and they leveled out at a speed Tilly couldn’t comprehend. The roaring of the wind had become a scream that strained even Tilly’s tough eardrums, and he was suddenly immensely thankful that Kindle had already curled into such a protected position behind his body.

Sharp pain stabbed into his joints and he growled in pain, opening his eyes briefly to find that he had lost 15% of his health in that maneuver. He had probably just dislocated or even torn something in each of his extremities. Whatever their estimations of Brokenridge’s airspeed had just been proven wrong.

At this pace, there was no way he would be flying for hours if the dragon was truly going to make a play for the Aracnid Supremacy Faction. In fear of a much shorter window of time, Tilly immediately cut off his small expenditure of Mana keeping the bitter cold away and added a stinging numbness to the sensations attempting to rip through his body, as he held on for dear life while being hurled through the air at what might have been supersonic speeds.

‘Kindle! Are you ok girl?’ he sent desperately, gritting his teeth as he felt his health slowly start to tick up as the strain of acceleration died off, and his Constitution started to kick in.

She sent back a serious affirmative, mingled with a small amount of ambition at witnessing the speed of such an elder creature in flight.

‘Ha, well If you ever do figure out how to do this, leave me on the ground.’ Tilly replied as he tentatively tried to lift a few of the fingers holding down his head. The wind resistance instantly snatched at them, attempting to pull his hand away from its position, and he cried out in effort as he forced them back down. His arms burned as he continued to strain against the pressure of the wind. His concern about arriving too early all but vanished and he began to wonder how long it would take to get there at this speed. and he was suddenly concerned that the dragon would not be arriving at their destination fast enough.

Tilly had no idea how long he had to hold the position, his methods of marking the passing of time having been reduced to a fight against the growing pain in his extremities, and a deep ache at the points of initial damage that were having trouble healing under constant use. It might have been minutes, or even as much as an hour, but eventually, the piercing shriek of the wind quieted to a howl, and he slowly attempted to straighten out.

Eyes wincing in pain, he noted that they were still above the clouds and that his Mana had time to completely refill. He was in no mood to do the math, but he figured the Dragon would only be slowing for one reason, and he eyed his Health, which still hovered around 95%. His regen had fought a running battle against the strain of continued use, and it had slowed his healing considerably. But he decided that a little discomfort wasn’t worth the risk of using his potion to get back up to full health while he had the chance, even if it would probably regenerate on the belt in a matter of minutes. a risk he would take if it meant saving his potion.

The purplish glow was still present around the dragon, but it slowly faded as Tilly watched. Feeling time grow short, he began attempting to roll his neck and extremities, working out the painful cramps before he needed to use them. Even with the pace of their flight drastically slowed, he felt a little like a plastic bag rolling through the parking lot, as the wind caught his motions at odd angles and yanked on his arms and legs, attempting to move him off of his magically enforced trajectory.

He looked around briefly during his flailing and found no sign of Erash. After a moment, he focused back on the dragon. Somehow he doubted the creature would give them any warning before arriving and starting the attack, and in a bout of nervous energy, he reviewed what little information they had given him at the meeting last night as they developed the plan.

Aside from the centrality of the Temple in their lands, and the general spider-themed nature of their classes, very little hard information had been collected by the Church. They traded in many venoms and cursed items on the open market, but had almost zero non-faction presence in their lands. In fact, Tilly was pretty sure the church’s knowledge of the temple had more to do with divine revelation than anyone having actually visited this Faction in person, so he was more or less going in blind.

However, with his extreme Endurance, and his [Hostile Environment] title, it was thought that he had a good chance of surviving such a raid, and its potential upside for the Alliance was huge. They would take their nearest enemy off the board in the near term, and for Tilly specifically, it gave him a chance to rebalance his stats and gain back his biggest trump card… He just had to live through the encounter.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Tilly pulled up the title description one more time, more to reassure himself than for lack of any information,

[Hostile Environment]: Due to the unique nature of your build, foreign substances have a hard time persisting within your physical body. Poisons, Viruses, and Physical Curses will be 50% less effective against you. This Title scales with Endurance.

The council, and Shuji especially, had insisted that his build and this title made him a hard counter to many of the Abilities the Arachnid Supremacy was known for. While they had no direct evidence for this due to the Faction’s reclusive nature, it was postulated that Origin’s Flame with its purifying nature would be especially effective against a poison and curse-oriented build. Especially since it seemed that they had decided to augment their power with Corruption.

Brokenridge’s speed had slowed considerably and Tilly thought he was going to start descending soon, giving them a better look at the ground below. The layer of clouds they had been flying above had gotten thicker and to Tilly’s eye, they had gained a slight mustardish hue that made the hair on his neck stand on end.

He had no clue how the dragon was navigating with so little information and worried that the glance it had taken of their map had not nearly been enough to give the Brokenridge the information he needed to locate these other factions. Tilly was jerked away from that line of thought as his momentum was suddenly arrested. He whipped his head off from the clouds below to see that Brokenridge had fanned out his wings harshly, eating up all his momentum with powerful backbeats..

After only a few physics-defying motions, the dragon had completely arrested his forward progress to hover in place, breathing deeply through his nostrils, and releasing a fiery sneeze into the air.

“Disgusting bugs!” He growled. Tilly looked around to see what he was missing, as Brokenridge reared back his head, breathing in even deeper than before, and released a huge gout of smoke.

The substance was expelled from his nostrils, billowing out before the dragon in an immense cone that covered an area far greater than should have been possible. As the smoke roiled out over the open air, a network of almost invisible strands, glowing a sickly green flashed into being. They reached up from the cloud cover, high into the stratosphere, and covered almost every foot of available air space before him.

Tilly was about to ask the dragon what they were looking at, but he beat him to the punch, “Two legs, gird your loins. My wrath has long smoldered, and it is time for the world to remember my fury.” The dragon declared loudly as if he was addressing a crowd, his eyes however stayed focused on the construct before him.

“Are we ther-AAHHHGGG” Tilly shouted back, his question interrupted as the dragon tucked his wings and dropped from the sky like a stone. Tilly’s stomach tried to climb out of his throat and he swallowed down his scream, and he once again had to fight to pull his arms and legs in, attempting to mirror the dragon’s dive.

They plunged into the clouds, and Tilly almost immediately started to feel tingling on his lips and in his eyes. He did his best to ignore it, and hoped his natural resistance would be enough. He lost sight of the dragon through the impressively thick clouds, but he felt the pace of their fall increase past terminal velocity.

Then, the clouds were gone and Tilly found himself following in the wake of Brokenridge, who was eagerly pumping his wings through the dive, adding speed to their terrifying approach. Looking past the dragon, Tilly saw that the landscape was grayish-brown in color. The angle of their dive became slightly less acute with each beat of the dragon's wings, without losing any of its speed. Ahead of them, rising through the canopy of what Tilly could now make out was a sea of dead trees, choked with webbing, was a huge ziggurat, rivaling the size of the temple mountain back in the Alliance.

Just as Tilly realized their angle of approach would bring them somewhere near the top of the structure, Brokenridge roared in challenge. They had passed well into whatever magic that invisible webbing had represented, and the canopy below them began to shudder with movement. Tilly hoped that they were still too high to be attacked physically, but even as he formed that thought, as one, the trees below lit up with green and yellow lights, like sickly beacons, and a barrage of magic reminiscent of anti-aircraft artillery was launched in the air.

Huge constructs of poisonous-looking Mana rose up into the air. They did not move nearly fast enough to catch the dragon by surprise, but they choked the air ahead of them, and Tilly doubted Brokenridge had enough maneuverability to dodge through the thick screen of magic at this speed. But the dragon had already committed to his dive and was going to have to break it off or endure whatever sort of attack these spells represented.

Tilly tensed his body for another jerking stop, but it never came. Instead, the Dragon reared back his head without slowing and thrust his open jaws forward, releasing a gout of flame that barely had enough strength to move ahead of him. Instead, the fire rolled back over his body and trailed behind him like a comet, reaching so far as to wash Tilly in its thankfully harmless flame.

Brokenridge continued to slowly release his breath attack, becoming a flaming projectile, and crashing into the anti-air barrage. The fire incinerated the techniques before they could have any effect, effectively neutralizing the defense altogether. Tilly couldn’t tell if the move was born of pure battle lust or unbelievable instincts, but in a matter of moments, they had cleared the vast majority of the aerial defenses around the central structure of the Faction’s lands and were almost to the structure.

Once through, Brokenridge’s flame died out, and he took another huge inhale, this time blanketing the area in his aura, “You have been marked, insects. Time to burn.” He roared, his words falling like a physical weight, pressing down on Tilly’s chest and stirring a deeply instinctual fear. Till had to fight not to look away from the Dragon in his fury, as his bodily urge demanded he somehow flee the apex predator.

Then in a completely unexpected move, his wings shot out right before they arrived at the ziggurat, and he took another immense inhalation, beginning to glow a silvery white.

“How dare you, Snake.” A raspy voice exploded from the top of the pyramid even as countless many-legged creatures fled before the dragon’s wrath. The voice however was coming from the top of the ancient building, and a tarantula the size of a city block exploded from its roof in a shower of shattered sandstone. Before landing above the newly made hole.

Level 134 Teranchulic Broodmother

“I will feed you to my kin, impudent one, and you will strengthen our kind!” She spat.

Tilly could almost feel the smile on the dragon’s face as he replied with an exhalation unlike any Tilly had seen. The silvery glow concentrated around his slowly opening jaws, and the air around them warped with concentrated heat.

“Die!” She shouted, planting her legs and jumping at their position in an almost instantaneous movement Ability.