Alex sped off at speeds they could not hope to follow. Careful not to damage houses as a Phoenix Leap sent him soaring. He figured if people were dying, the sooner he arrived, the more chances he had at saving their lives.
As he arrived at the town's border, a harrowing sight befell him. Houses were aflame or crushed. Checkpoints and gates alike were shattered.
Everywhere he looked there were spiders. Giant spiders, swarming the area.
Masses of giant spiders, varying from the size of a child to that of several adults, engulfed the area. About 200 I'd guess, maybe 300, he thought, it's not that many and the Arachnae don't seem too high levelled… So why do the guards keep losing?
It made no sense.
Alex was met with a bizarre scene. It was a swarm of Arachnae devouring the town's outskirts stretched across the plains between the town and the forest, with more arriving by the second. Their sizes varied drastically, some as small as children, others as large as multiple men. The scene was frantic, with guards engaging in a desperate battle, their blades clashing against the spiders' carapaces, while civilians, gripped by terror, ran for their lives. The spiders, relentless in their assault, ensnared the townspeople. Alex saw the horror in the eyes of civilians– some were motionless, likely dead, while others screamed, their arms reaching out, trying in vain to escape the spiders' grasp. One by one, guards and civilians alike were being overpowered. A young guard, fighting bravely, lost his footing and was quickly seized by a spider as his comrades fought to save him. He was dragged away, joining the unfortunate fate of the others. Alex watched in horror as the spiders disappeared with their victims into deep crevices, which led further into the dark, dense forest surrounding the town. The ground was chaotic, with guards and civilians alike being overpowered and taken away, their chances of escape diminishing by the second.
"Stay behind me!" he shouted over the roar of the flames, his voice firm, commanding as he stepped between a villager and an advancing spider and swung, then he turned and leapt. His heart skipped in mid-flight as he spotted a child cowering behind a shattered gate, trapped by a monster twice its size.
A swing of his blade caused both metal and carapace shattered, freeing the child to flee back to safety. The sight ignited a fierce urgency within him.
Without time and surrounded by the chaos of death, he moved.
Alex noticed a guard with a hammer yelling orders and crushing large arachnids with a flurry of swings, only to have his weapon snatched from his grip by a smaller Arachnae that latched onto his body. The guard, a captain by the looks of things, was momentarily stunned at the sudden disappearance of his weapon before another larger arachnid clamped on his leg with powerful fangs and mandibles. It dragged his screaming form away as if he weighed nothing.
At the sight of their captain's capture a portion of the guards fled, and the ones who remained fought even more fiercely.
Alex joined the fray. He sliced through the spiders as if they weren't there, trying to save as many as he could. A sharp pain flared in his arm, but he ignored it as
He raced toward the fallen guard captain some distance away, slashing and hacking a path forward with each step. Alex surged forward with swift precision and a downward swing of his blade, severing its pincer. The guard, freed, scrambled to safety through the closing path Alex had made.
Alex searched for more survivors.
He bisected a large Arachnae a head taller than he was as it pounced on an unsuspecting Spearman and moved to save more. The spearman was a civilian, or ‘adventurer’ judging by his intricate gear. The man turned in surprise and yelled “No! I have to save her!”, but could hardly afford to continue, or even continue to spare Alex a glance as they were both suddenly swarmed.
Spiders, Arachnae of all sizes converged on the pair of them, and Alex thought the words ‘Mana Blade’ as the surrounding light dimmed, replaced by thick walls of carapace.
Alex swung his blade in all directions.
Each spider he cut down was quickly replaced by another. He countered, his blade striking an overhead spider's underbelly. The creature recoiled, then collapsed, ichor pooling around it.
He grabbed the guard, yanking his injured form from the spiders' grip, and yelled at him to run back and regroup with the rest, but a thick mass of spiders separated the two, and in the opposite direction more civilians and guards were being dragged away with each second that passed. Alex needed to be there to save people and not stuck here protecting a lone guard.
He picked up a fallen warrior's sword and triggered his skill to hurl its Mana Blade as far as he could, aiming at the ground slightly ahead of the nearest batch of defenders.
The weapon created a path. It sliced through the spiders as if they weren’t there before embedding itself in a screeching creature, its mana disconnected and spent.
“Regroup!” Alex yelled.
The guard nodded sternly and sprinted, hacking at his sides as he ran while Alex searched for more survivors.
Phoenix leap.
He pivoted as he landed closer to the edge of the forest, spinning on his heel and extending his elbow to slash an arachnid and free its barely conscious captive. His sword sang, shining with the light of his Mana Blade through the mounds of twisted carapace as he freed another. One, two, three spiders fell, their ichor spraying in an arc around him.
Phoenix Leap.
Alex spotted another hammer-wielding guard being dragged to his doom and shot toward him. In two strides, he was there to slice the offending pincer clean off. The spider dug its remaining one into his arm, and heat flushed throughout his limb before he sliced its head off. The guard, now released, collapsed to the ground. He lay there, limp, but his chest rose and fell with shallow breaths. He’s alive, Alex thought, good. He turned and locked eyes with the people fighting around him and pointed, urging one of them to save their comrade. A guard nodded firmly in response and moved to meet him.
There’s no-one else who can save them, Alex, thought, his heart pained as he watched men, women and children dragged into the dark depths of the forests edge, never to be seen again. The towns folk tried their best, struggling to gain ground.
But Alex was the only one who could fight to the edge, he was the only one capable of breaking through the lines of arachnid beast without effort.
He was their only hope.
it was dangerous— stupid even, but he had to try. He couldn’t sit back and watch children being dragged to their doom. The spiders were weak, and low level— barely even a threat. But there was just so many of them; a quantity of beasts that held a quality of danger just through numbers alone. There was a chance he would run out of mana long before the hundreds of low-level arachnids could even truly harm him.
If I run out of mana, I’ll just retreat, or use ‘Mana Burn’ & 'Phoenix Leap' to retreat through the sky, he thought, leaping forward.
But for now, it’s just me—, his eyes never left the unconscious figures being dragged beyond the treeline.
I’m all they have.
***
More spiders were coming. Alex raced forward, and another Phoenix Leap led him to cleave a large spider in two. Saving a woman stuck in its grasp, he threw her unconscious form to land near a batch of guards he’d rescued. They stood back to back, hacking and slashing at the creatures around them. “Protect her!” He yelled. It was the best he could do. The spiders weren’t difficult to deal with, he'd killed scores of them. But saving people was. He was constantly stuck between moving to save more or defending the ones who were defenceless.
He swung his blade in an arc with one hand and tore a lost sword from the earth with the other as he imbued it with Mana Blade and hurled it into the remaining mass of Arachne, freeing a woman from another spider's grasp, and clearing a swathe of the horde.
Doubt gnawed at him as he parried another attack; could he truly save them all?
He a sting near his neck and reflexively reached up. His fingers closed around a small Arachne latched onto him. As he pulled it away, his hand was stained with a mix of his own blood and the creature's ichor, the Arachne writhing violently in his grasp.
Alex killed it.
People fled as Alex fought towards the forest's edge, desperate to save more. He fought, and the world spun and hope dimmed. The guards aiding him fell one by one, and the ones he'd saved were some distance away, forming a phalanx of sorts. He heard screams in the distance as more joined the fray, fighting to reach him.
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But it felt muted.
Unless he did something drastic, they were all going to die. The settlement he had struggled so hard to reach would be reduced to nothing. In that moment, the air shifted. Alex saw hope fade from the eyes of the surviving combatants, the strength leaving thier arms as they witnessed something they had only ever heard of.
The sound came first—a low, reverberating rumble like distant thunder. Then, breaking through the foliage above the treeline, came the monstrous arachnid, its size breaching the tall trees and each of its many legs striking with a rhythmic, terrifying cadence as it barreled toward the town. Perfectly circular, the hulking mass heaved through the trees crushing all in its path, like a giant wrecking ball of dark carapace that bore a sheen identical to steel, a thing born from nightmares. It's a living siege engine, Alex observed, his jaw slightly ajar at the sight before his lips set with determination. We cant let that thing reach the settlement... It'll kill them all. The Siege-Arachnae raced forward, impossibly fast, each step a blink that caused a small earthquake, each machine-like movement radiating the intent to destroy. Its legs, thick as iron bars, stretched and then vanished, folding in and out of its body with relentless, machine-like precision, disappearing into seamless partitions. It was an unrelenting juggernaut that ignored all obstacles, and Alex could feel the shockwaves of its weight impacting the earth as it drew closer.
"Siege-breakers!" he heard a distant yell, it sounded like Kier, or perhaps Finn. "The settlement is lost!" he heard, from another.
Alex walked past stunned and hopeless guards, towards the speeding monstrocity, collecting the blades of the fallen with each step. Alex launched them all at the creature, hurling a volley of Mana Blades, one after another, streaking arcs of energy that searing toward the creature’s rolling form, leaving after-images and trails of light.
The Siege Arachnae whirled, thick mechanical legs shooting from its side like bullets, again and again, weaving between the streaks of Alex's deadly application of skill. Shockwaves caused all to stagger from the elegance to its dodges, and for a moment, Alex stared, thrown by the sheer impenetrability of its armor.
Phoenix Leap. Phoenix Leap. Boundless Dodge.
Alex raced ahead, deep into the forest beyond the treeline, reaching the creature in an instant. He witnessed spiders pouring out of expertly concealed holes in the ground around them and felt his empowered and high levelled steps land in hollow spots as he surged forward. He turned, bracing himself against the constantly rumbling ground that felt like an earthquake, his grip steadied on his hilt and his gaze locked on the creature he now raced beside. Perfectly circular, it was a monstrous ball, smooth as polished steel, high as a city wall, its body retracting to conceal spiked limbs. As it rotated, he saw no joints or crevices, nothing his blade might catch. The polished armor-like exterior glistened, unyielding.
He unleashed a whirl of attacks, his reinforced stats and the full breadth of his martial technique impacting the creature, the sound of thuds and cracks merging with the sound of cut wind.
Each strike landed, but the blade glanced off the creature’s armor, merely biting in centimetres where there should have dealt far deeper damage. The scratched carapace reflected Alex's features as if taunting him with its apparent indestructibility as he effortlessly raced beside it. Its dark sheening lustre as solid and unyielding as the hardest metal ore.
Mana Blade, Alex thought.
He struck this time with a blade of pure blue light, one that lit his surroundings and turned all black carapace a reflective blue, as he felt the pulse of energy run through his arm as he struck again, the blade carving deep into the edge of the creature’s carapace. A crack appeared appeared, and Alex struck harder, a whole section of the creature falling to the ground, the size of a man, though the creature was many times larger. Finally, some progress, he thought, before he saw a compartment holding several gold potions open within the creature, a thin insectoid limb retrieving one as it sped to pour the gold concoction over the gaping wound. Alex's eyes widened with shock as he witnessed the deep injury he had dealt after much effort completely recover, the sheen of new flesh and carapace reflecting the blue light of his blade. It has regeneration potions!? Shouldn't they be extremely rare!? He wondered with immense frustration and utter shock. He had seen at least 5 in the compartment, and a few red potions too... That meant that the damage he would be able to deal... would simply not enough. But he swung anyway, witnessing the evasive and durable creature vanish as the its endless motion and shooting legs spun it out of reach. A realization struck him cold—Mana Blade could not be used for extensive battles of attrition, it required far too much mana for each use. Through that armor-like exterior and its potions, his mana would be drained long before he could cause enough damage to force the creature to exhaust its survivability. It was clear that the creature was designed for sieges, a monster meant to endure.
Another identical siege creature fell from the sky, interrupting his thoughts and causing an impact that sent them skyward.
Phoenix Leap. Phoenix Leap. Alex landed on his feet with grace, seamlessly transitioning to a sprint, a siege creature now on each side of him, other smaller creatures scuttling at thier heels. The settlement was doomed. He guessed the potions came from the surplus of nations they had sacked over the centuries, though the regeneration potions was likely only given to the siege creatures due to their destructive capabilities. As he raced to stop them, Alex recalled witnessing how some lower level guards had faltered without so much as a scratch, falling from a single bite from the smaller ones. And theses things have venom, too, he surmised. He could see how such a species could raze a world without a system or levels.
But now these creatures have levels too, don't they? The thought filled him with concern. He had to end this, now.
He began collecting the blades of the fallen as he ran, weapons dropped by those who had been dragged into the hidden burrows that littered the path to the settlement. A single touch sent the weapons swiftly to his inventory. If he did not have the mana pool needed to permanently harm the siege creatures he raced to stop... Then I just needed to deal one decisive strike, he thought, something devastating. A blow that would give them no time to utilise any of their rare or stolen potions.
A new idea formed, his gaze falling to the weakened ground beneath them.
Mana Blade.
He drew his arm far back, and his blade, flung with the power of someone far beyond his level, sunk deep into the earth, meeting no resistance. The first impact sent a shockwave out from beneath him, an arc of force spreading through the soil, cracking it open. He struck again, a summoned sword carving a trench with each swing, his focus on breaking the ground beneath the beast rather than its impervious body. The Arachnae advanced, oblivious to the shifting ground underfoot.
Mana Blade.
Alex felt the tremor beneath him, as the blade carved through the tunnels the creatures had dug beneath them with the resistance of a blade through air. The rumble of earth gave way as his summoned blade struck again, channelling the dredges of his Mana into the ground, carving through the soil in a desperate attempt to bring the creatures down. Another strike. The world flashed blue from the light of his skill and he felt the ground weaken, the surface beneath him shaking as the force of his attacks carved deeper, splitting the terrain. fissures followed their mad race.
In a move of sheer desperation, serrated limbs erupted from both seige creatures, moving with the speed and momentum of their endless rotations, the targeted Alex upraised arm, aiming to sever it and end his assault. To Alex's perception the moment coalesced, frozen with the weight of decision. At the speed the blows descended, he could either dodge the blow and fall back, or he could test his durability against theirs and strike the final blow.
"Boundless Dodge, Mana Blade!"
With a shout, Alex released another summoned Mana Blade, hurling it downward with every ounce of strength, splitting rock and soil in its wake.
He braced himself, feeling the earth shift, the ground caving in beneath him. The rumble grew, the soil beneath their feet loosening, giving way. A crack opened in the earth, a widening chasm that spread beneath them, pulling at the ground with a relentless force. The ground trembled, the cracks widening into a massive rupture as earth gave way, opening up a yawning chasm beneath them.He glanced down, his eyes catching the sight of the collapsing soil, the chasm widening.
Phoenix Leap. Phoenix Leap. Alex took to the sky, evading the cataclysm.
The Arachnae’s endless rotation faltered, its limbs clawing for purchase, but the ground crumbled beneath it, dragging it into the abyss below.
The creatures, the others scuttling to impede him—none could hold their footing. The earth caved beneath them, swallowing them whole.
***
Alex stood before the chasm, staring deep into its depths in thought. It was wide and deep, far deeper than he could have possibly imagined. His attacks had fractured the foundations of whatever network of tunnels the creatures had dug beneath them. The ground had opened into a vast, gaping maw, the edges jagged and raw, freshly split by the force of his strikes. Ribbons of dust drifted down from the walls, coating exposed roots and fractured stones clinging to the chasm's crumbling walls. Earth and rubble trickled into the void, whispering their descent before vanishing into the blackness below. As wide as a football field, the earth caving like splintered bone beneath a crushing weight, swallowing all beneath it. All he could see was darkness.
His arm was missing, severed up to the shoulder. His final blow had been a sacrificial one; the siege creatures hadn’t stopped it, but their deaths—and the deaths of the surrounding creatures—had come with a toll. His high endurance stat, coupled with hastily applied pressure and tourniquets had managed stemmed the bleeding, curiously. He would survive, and curiously, he could already see the wound scabbing over, repairing at a much faster rate than a baseline human could ever achieve. But that was all it was doing, repairing. It wasn't healing him, he would never get his arm back. He was deep into the forest, their mad dash to escape the spreading fissures leading him and the creatures far from the settlement. The distant sounds of battle faded in the winds, and Alex had no clue how long it would take them to find him, if they even came at all, that is. He did not want to live his life without an arm.
The regeneration potions, he thought, eyes wide with remembrance of the compartment of golden potions he'd witnessed the siege creatures utilize. He stared into the depths of the chasm a final time, his gaze fixed on the seemingly bottomless pit before him. It felt as though he was staring into the mouth of some ancient beast or into the very depths of hell itself.
Alex leapt into the darkness.
As he fell, notifications rose to meet him.
[You have defeated level 12 Arachnae Spiderling x7]
[You have defeated level 23 Arachnae Spiderling x6]
[You have defeated level 17 Arachnae Spiderling x14]
[You have defeated level 7 Arachnae Spiderling x9]
[You have defeated level 4 Arachnae Spiderling x 24]
[You have defeated…]
[You have defeated…]
[Level difference penalty applied]
[Level 32 > 36]
[Strength +16, Dexterity+16, intelligence+24, unassigned stats +16]
[Class milestone reached. Class milestone skill available. Please choose skill]
A final notification appeared among the rest, one that caught his attention even in his fatigued state.
[Dynamic Quest - The Queen’s Lair: Arachnae Queen...]