Several weeks passed with Shaun repeating the same process over and over. He would fight the Arachne, usually he would have to find them over them finding him, and then he would recover while meditating on the core. He had long since found the leader of the Arachne in the centre of the forest, but rather fighting it straight away he focused on clearing out the entire area first.

He had also gotten to the point where the system had offered for him to choose a new class, which he had refused. Every time he killed another monster he got the same message and every time he had to say no. It was providing a constant reminder that his skills were holding back his evolution.

He had made good strides with all of his skills as well as the core. He felt he was close to fully connecting with it, but if he was right it would take days if not weeks of just meditating with to finally bond with the core. He didn’t know what that would entail exactly, but it was on the top of his list of things to do after the event.

After weeks of training against the Arachne, he now felt ready to take on the leader. He had cleared out every Arachne he found and now all that was left was the leader and 3 others who rarely left its immediate vicinity.

He had been trying to watch them for a while, but the leader had some skill that allowed it to pinpoint his location the moment he got to close. Every time that happened it had sent Arachne after him, which had been a boon to him as it allowed him to reduce their numbers even further.

The Arachne was in a web that spread out among many trees, but that was no longer an issue for him or his summons, they had practiced coating their feet with their elements which allowed them to bypass being caught in the web.

Now that there was only the four left though it no longer sent any of its remaining Arachne after him, instead it just waited for him to approach. He had fought four against one before with these things, but none of them had been the leader and at the end of those fights he had been left pretty exhausted and banged up.

He had attempted to move in close in his air form but even then, the leader had been able to track him. He didn’t know what skill it had but it was strong and seemed to counter his own movement skills. That was why he had also been spending time working on something new. The leader’s skill didn’t extend quite as far as his own echo skill, there was about 100m difference from what he had worked out, and he wanted to use that to his advantage.

Usually, his elemental shift skill with the lightning only worked when he could physically see a location, but what he had been trying to achieve was using it with his echo instead. He had gotten to a point where he was able to use it with his echo in a smaller radius but not yet at the edges of his awareness with the skill.

Time though was counting down on when he needed to get back to the settlement so that he would have some time to make sure he was up to date with everything before they all entered the event. He also didn’t know if it would be possible to enter the event from a dungeon and he didn’t want to risk missing out.

That was why he was now, ready to fight the leader of the Arachne. He summoned 8 creatures with his skill, it had grown in level over the last few weeks to the point that they could now to take out two Arachne on their own. As the skill level had grown, he wasn’t just able to summon more creatures forth, but they also became much stronger as well. He hadn’t noticed it at first but the more he had used the skill the more he was able to see their strength increase.

He was as prepared as he was going to be, and with his two blades in hand he gave the signal for his summons to move in. Their job was to try and sperate the three other Arachne from the leader, if that wasn’t possible, weaken them as much as possible.

While his summons moved in, he pushed his full mind out through his echo, focusing on the spot directly next to the leader. He needed to fully visualise every detail, of that spot, imagine it as if he could see it with his own eyes. When he thought he was ready he waited until his summons made their own appearance before the Arachne and then, flexing his mind skill to the limit, he used his shifting skill to turn into lightning and strike down, right next to the leader.

Halfway through the skill he nearly lost his orientation on where he wanted to go, but thankfully at the last moment he was able to recentre his mind and continue on to where he wanted to go. As soon as he appeared next to the leader of the Arachne, he swept both of his swords out sending out two powerful ice strikes, both hit the unsuspecting leader who had not been able to track him until the very last moment he appeared.

A split second after he summoned six mirror swords, two of each of his advanced elements and went in for the fight of his life. The ice strikes had done what they needed to do, they froze the leader for a second, which had been all he needed to bring forth his extra blades. He pushed the blades out around the Arachne leader, each of them taking care of a different leg while he used his own blades to attack the main body.

As Shaun had gotten close to the leaders body it used its hands to form a skill that formed a web in front of it that he would need to break through to get in an attack. He had been expecting something different from the leader and mastery of its web skills was something he had already accounted for.

His blades were already powered up with magma strikes, enough mana was in each of them for him to send out several blasts and allow him to reserve some to infuse his blade. He cut through the webbing in moments, and although the leader tried to back away his mirror blades had it trapped.

Using his two swords he started cutting into the monster wherever he could, with each cut he left a gift in the shape of his curse. Shaun had fought a lot of these monsters, they were quick fighters if you gave them the chance to move, he had learnt quickly that if you attacked them from multiple angles, like he was doing now, they were severally limited in what they could do in a fight.

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The Arachne started to send another attack his way and he moved one of his mirror swords to cut through its arm, it hadn’t been expecting the attack and Shaun followed up with another ice strike with one sword and a magma imbued strike with the other.

Even with all of his attacks, the Arachne was not going down easy. It was much more durable than its kin but he knew if this came down to a fight of endurance he would win, he had no plans to let it get to that though.

Splitting his mind, he started gathering the water in the air around the Arachne, when he had gathered enough water he pulled it all together into one large body of water and had it start coating the body of the monster. The Arachne, attempted to dispel the water, but every time it pushed through he pulled even more water around it to keep it at bay.

The Arachne attempted to talk and he took that as an opening to direct the water into its mouth and started to drown it by flooding its internals with water. It attempted to close its mouth but it was too late.

Shaun had not been idle these long weeks, he had practiced with his elements, both the advanced and basic ones. And although it hadn’t gained him any skill levels, it was still practice that he needed to get in to ensure he wasn’t neglecting every tool in his arsenal.

When the Arachne started to flail on the web, he put it out of its misery by having all the water he had forced into its body to freeze. In one moment to the next, the leader of the Arachne went from drowning on its own webbing to shattering into multiple pieces, unable to recover form being frozen from the inside out.

Shaun turned to his summons and saw them fighting all three of the remaining Arachne, they were holding their own but the longer they fought the more mana was being drained from them. Now that the leader was dead he didn’t hesitate to finish off the remaining three.

Pushing himself forward, adding to his momentum with a burst of air, he quickly cut through the several legs of the first, then left it to his summons to finish off. The second he shifted and appeared on its back, he had caught it by surprise and was easily able to cut through its spine with his sword, then follow up with a clean strike through its heart. For the third he simply pushed his mirror blades to all fly through the air and penetrate as deep as they could into its body.

It only took a minute after that for his summons to finish the off, being so close to death he wanted them to have the kills to help his skill level up further. With these last Arachne dead he had managed to clear out an entire third of the monsters of the dungeon, and in the process level his skills up a ridiculous amount in the process.

**You have defeated a (Arachne – Lvl 153). Bonus experience for killing an opponent above your level gained.**

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**You have defeated a (Arachne Queen – Lvl 160). Bonus experience for killing an opponent above your level gained.**

**Class upgrade available on [Advanced] Elemental Blade Slinger. Would you like to upgrade class? Note all experience is forfeit until class is upgraded.**

As always he said no to the upgrade. He was getting closer to getting his skill levels up but until he maxed them out he had no desire to pick a new class. At the rate he was going he wouldn’t need to use the training treasure that he had been given, although he was still debating on whether he should upgrade to a new class while on Earth or to wait until he left and went to The Alliance.

Now that the Arachne had been dealt with, he said goodbye to his summons and then shifted straight up into the air. Having taken out a third of the monster tribes he was confident in being able to kill off the next two. His progress these last weeks in the dungeon had boosted his fighting ability to a new level, and he was more confident in being able to move through the last two tribes much quicker than he had the Arachne, especially after having boosted his skills.

Although he had originally planned on leaving the dungeon and going back to the school before the event started he decided that spending more time in the dungeon was a better use of his time. After having beaten the Arachne Queen, Shaun felt empowered to continue on to the end of the dungeon, at least until he received a notification around the event drawing closer.

He knew the forest was now cleared of monsters, meaning that his next destination was one of the other areas around the mountain. He had already seen the sandy area that was off to one side of the forest but he had yet to see what was on the other.

Already in the air, Shaun made his decision to move towards the unknown, moving around in a circle from the entrance of the dungeon in the hope that if he needed to leave the dungeon he would end up back where he started and be able to leave quickly if need be.

He moved above the forest at a quick pace, one that he was able to consistently maintain for days, as that was how long it would take to not only leave the forest but make his way through to the next area in this dungeon.

The more he moved through the dungeon with nothing to interrupt his thoughts, the more he became aware of a pull in his mind to something hidden deep inside of him. Focussing on this pull he followed it towards the same place he knew the memories of the Nephilim were locked and his heritage was located. The stronger he became the more aware he was of it.

No matter how much he tried to get into that space inside of him though, he felt the barrier around his heritage to be impenetrable. Something in there wanted to come out, to give him something, it could be some power that he was not yet aware of or even a memory that would help him take the next step forward on his path, but something was holding it back, stopping him from accessing it.

The days passed in quiet reflection, he thought over all of the times he had been given something from his heritage and he was able to conclude that the only things that each of these events had in common was when he did something, or met someone, that was connected with the Nephilim that made the legacy.

It wasn’t until he cleared the forest completely and continued moving around the central mountain that he started paying more attention to his surroundings. The trees had given way to a desert like area with sporadic shrubbery and in the distance he was able to pinpoint what looked like large rock platforms that were raised from the ground that spread for hundreds of meters along the top.

Although the platforms of rock were still far out in the distance, his eyesight was still able to pick up monsters flying around them. Shaun couldn’t help but smile at his luck, his ability to move through the air was something that would help him through this next set of monsters, and although many others would have been ground bound in their attacks, he felt just as home in the air as he did with his feet on the ground. Fighting these flying monsters was going to be much more fun than fighting the Arachne, he didn’t slow his pace towards the closest rock platform, he was ready to go straight on the offensive.