Burning hot energy blasted away from my core as Quintessence Empowerment triggered, sending a searing sensation to the tips of my fingers, the bottom of my feet, and the top of my skull. Every muscle in my body constricted as a byproduct, simulating what I imagined it felt like being struck by a bolt of lightning. Thankfully, there was no hint of pain. It was quite the opposite actually. Unending power, the strength to topple mountains, such was the feeling as every fiber of my being was tempered.
The least of the many benefits Quintessence Empowerment brought, a seemingly simple ten-percent surge in all of my characteristics, dialed my senses to a whole new level. My thoughts quickened, my awareness of everything nearby solidified, and my vision grew keener than I ever thought possible. Every cell in my body responded as if this latent energy had always been waiting for the triggered wave to call forth a veiled power. Along with the many physical sensations the ability brought, I was suddenly acutely aware that each of my cast damage over time spells had been likewise strengthened.
Two Arachne cried out simultaneously as an invisible wave exploded away from me, quickly finding a resonance with the many detrimental spells coursing through their spindly legs and bulbous abdomens. However, unlike the delightful sensation flowing in my veins, the spider spasmed in pain as every muscle in the long bodies locked ridged for a moment. With only two of the three spiders suffering from my most potent spells, two staggered as if struck by a one hundred and fifty-thousand-volt stun gun. For the next two minutes, while under the effects of my Quintessence Empowerment, every DoT would not only have their harmful effects and duration increased significantly, but each would also have a far higher chance of inflicting a critical hit.
Wasting no time to contemplate the painful predicaments my ability wrought against two-thirds of our enemy forces, both spiders no doubt regretting the decision to ambush such powerful foes, I set my sights on the last of the marauding spiders. Up until this point, Ripley’s skeletal form darted around her opponent, weathering multiple bladed leg strikes at her with untamed ferocity. Peering at her body intently, Ripley showed signs not every attack against her had been successfully evaded or defended. This was not unexpected as her opponent had upwards of six-bladed legs capable of striking at her nearly simultaneously.
Long rents and tears were visible across her magically infused muscle tendons, at least those not robustly protected by dwarven silvern steel. Even with all her incredible strength and dexterous agility, she was showing how difficult it was to defend against so many attacks, all aimed at skewering the life out of her magically reinforced body. Nonetheless, Ripley continued to move gracefully as if none of the many accumulating wounds bothered her as she continued sending devastating counterattacks at the giant arachnid without pause.
Unlike a living being, Ripley would never flinch from the agonizing sensation of a sharpened edge slicing through magically reinforced tendons. Even when nearly entirely severed, her void-black muscles would continue functioning with only slightly decreased efficiency. Only the complete loss of limb had any hope of holding back her twisting sword arm.
With each jab of a sword leg, Ripley did her best to trade blow for blow on the massive spider, even though it seemed like such an uneven trade would become a losing proposition. Ripley, only able to swing her enchanted blade once for every two or three sent by her much larger opponent, was overall dealing more damage than her lone opponent. Ripley’s armored frame nullified most attacks, whereas her sword often cracked the armored chitin wherever it struck. The humanoid-spider abominations were not stupid creatures, however, and the high arachnid realized it was losing the battle of attrition. It decided a change of tactics was in order. Up to this point, the lone warden attempting to assist Ripley had made little headway in slaying the monstrous fiend. He was so ineffective that the spider outright ignored him in favor of defending against the far more powerful skeletal minion.
Retreating slightly up a nearby set of redwood trees, the Arachne slammed half of its bladed legs into the thick bark, securely anchoring itself six feet off the ground while the rest of its legs prodded Ripley’s impressive defenses. The display was a ruse, however, hiding the true threat not yet seen in the battle. While four legs battered at my towering minion, the marauder curled the lower half of its body underneath itself to bring the tip of its gargantuan abdomen forward. It took aim at the tireless skeleton before sticky strands of webbing, invisible in the dark of night, shot away from the spider and crashed against Ripley’s upper body. The spider timed the attack perfectly, simultaneously sending bladed attacks to either side of her body, causing Ripley to send her great sword back and forth. The motion left her torso mostly unguarded, exactly as the spider had hoped.
At first, Ripley’s strength was more than sufficient to ignore the tacky spider silk outright as it piled up on her chest, but the stream was relentless. With each passing moment, more of the silken strands layered atop itself and soon threatened to slow her coordinated movements as it entangled her. Though the spider continued its edging attacks, the skeletal minion adjusted her strategy to counter this new development. No longer sending forth unending swings against the long legs of the spider, Ripley switched to carefully measured strikes while doing her best to avoid the unyielding stream of webbing. Ripley, also no mindless beast, quickly concluded that while she was evading a goodly portion of the sticky webs, her side-to-side dashes would not bring her victory in her confrontation.
Modifying her tactics once more, Ripley stepped back suddenly to give herself some space against the relentless barrage raining down on her. One moment, she was holding a magnificent greatsword, and the next, she was bearing her enchanted curved blade and dwarven-made shield. Out of reach from the spider’s bladed legs, the monster didn’t cease sending a stream of sticky webbing at the tall minion. The moment Ripley’s shield appeared, upon which was a visage of a gleefully drinking dwarf, the silvern barrier began taking the brunt of the spider’s special attack.
In seconds, the silken threads layer on the impressive shield, growing out like some unnatural, translucent cocoon. Not wavering in the slightest, Ripley planted her bony feet and held her ground. Though it would cause other warriors to become off balance with so much additional weight carried in the hands, the skeletal minion had more than enough strength to keep her gleaming shield between her and the massive spider.
Finally realizing his shots were doing nothing against the spider's bladed legs nor the hardened carapace of its abdomen, Ripley’s warden ally adjusted his sights and attempted to strike at the humanoid portion of the spider’s body. It was quite a bit more effective, but with the positioning, not many of his arrows found their mark.
During this entire exchange, I was not standing idly by. No, from the first moment I oriented on the last of the formidable spiders, my fingers moved in non-stop patterns as a sonnet of arcane syllables and phrases blended with the sound of combat all around us. By the time Ripley’s shield appeared, now looking like a piece of metal with a massive cocoon affixed to its face, six of my empowered DoT spells started ravaging the spider’s insides. So intent was the spider on its attempt to break through Ripley’s impressive defenses, it ignored me entirely as spell after spell of devastating magic lanced into its body. Though its hardened carapace was an excellent deterrent against physical attacks, my spells found no such impediment.
Desiring to dispatch all three spiders near the same moment, I put extra oomph into my latest spells by twisting in dual casting, causing the already soaring additional damage to skyrocket. Blood boil, ignite bones, synaptic toxin, gnawing blizzard, pyroclastic funeral pyre, and stinging swarm combined to create a torrent of destructive energy within the Arachne’s body. Unmatched to nearly anything I had been able to do before, the devastation to the spider’s health pool was enormous. By the time the spider realized its folly in ignoring my spell-casting, it was too late. The suddenly terrified creature attempted to retreat up one of the trees it had been using, but then, as if every muscle liquefied at the same moment, it lost control and toppled to the forest floor. The inescapable darkness of death stole the final vestiges of life remaining in its body and it lay still a crumpled mess.
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Wanting to punctuate my discontent with our attacker’s ambush, I ended the creature’s life with a quickly cast chained lightning. The blazing bolt of electricity slew the fiend instantly, sending it rocketing backward into one of the thick trees previously being used as an anchor. The spell's power caused another bolt to leap away, this one heading towards the spider, facing off with Stedious before slicing through the air once more to the last remaining spider on the other edge of the clearing. Like that, the battle was brought to an abrupt halt with only the sound of heavy breathing spanning the short distance between the redwood trees. Not so much as a single bug or insect chirped or uttered the slightest peep.
The battle was over, and the forest held its breath as if expecting another predator to descend. None did.
With a savage swing of his longsword, Stedious decapitated his unmoving foe’s head ensuring the beast was truly dead. “Wardens, remove their heads. These creatures are unknown to us, so we need to ensure none are able to return to the land of the living,” the powerful elf ordered his fellow wardens, who swiftly moved to comply with his order.
Perhaps Stedious had experience with such frightening events happening after destroying other similar abominations; at least, I believed these elf spiders to have been created through Cicero’s sorcery. I also wasn’t about to countermand his order, even though I had several minimized System messages hovering in my view attempting to grab my attention with how much experience we received from the kills. Beyond even that, I would have thought their reanimation impossible considering the incredible amount of damage each spider received through the combination of my most powerful DoTs and my Quintessence Empowerment.
Ignoring the grisly sounds of blades slashing through unprotected necks, I rushed over to Kali’s side as Stedious knelt beside her. He worked a short dagger along the sides of her body and cut at the binding webs encasing her. Kali’s body was entirely motionless and made no reaction as her cocoon was destroyed. Unsure if we were already too late and she was lost to the world, I touched her shoulder before intoning the arcane words to my recently upgraded lesser regeneration spell. As my spell attempted to send revitalizing energy through her limp form, the power radiating through my body from Quintessence Empowerment stilled as the two-minute duration ended.
Stedious spoke from the side of his mouth as he removed the last silken strands still clinging to his friend’s lithe body. “She lives,” he said, the words striking my chest like a cooling balm. Seeing subtle signs of breathing, the prone elf remained still, and her eyes remained closed. Stedious placed a hand on the side of her face before closing his eyes in concentration. “Kali remains unconscious solely due to the spider’s venom. She will survive but I suspect she will not wake for many hours. Apparently, these horrors are akin to their smaller brethren and enjoy draining the blood from their victims. I cannot remove the toxin from her, so we’ll need to secure her atop her horse if we intend to continue.”
Stedious looked at me expectantly. At first, I believed he was inquiring me if we should continue heading south, but something in his eyes hinted at another question. Was there more I could do other than my apparent ineffectual regeneration spell? I was a specialist, after all, when it came to determinantal effects, so was there more I could do?
My thoughts whirled through my spell repertoire, yet nothing came to mind at first. Then my eyes widened in realization as I did know a spell that might do the trick. Whirling to Stella, I shot her a questioning look to see if the spell in mind would work.
“Yeah, I think it could work,” Stella replied positively with a nod of her small forehead. “Though the toxin appears to be primarily a sedative and paralytic without a hint of damaging any of her internal organs, I believe the spell would decrease how long she’ll be out. I’d say to give it a whirl.”
Stedious looked at the two of us questioningly, but I ignored him for now. “Thanks, Stell. That’s what I was hoping for.” Placing a hand on both of Kali’s shoulders, I closed my eyes and brought the necessary incantations to cast the spell to mind. Taking a deep breath, I straightened my back and began speaking the mystical words to my Lesser Cure Poison, Corruption, and Disease. God, could the spell have a longer or more arduous name? Considering the spell would only remove around forty-eight seconds of duration, I opted to channel the spell since Stedious indicated the elf would be out for several hours while under the toxin’s effects. With the necessary gestures completed, I placed both hands once more on the slumbering warden’s shoulders.
A cool energy swept away from my core, sending a tingling sensation down my arms before reaching into Kali’s body. Closing my eyes against the flow of mana rushing out of me, I focused on the simple task of holding the channel open. With how long the venom was expected to last, counted in hours instead of minutes like every other determinantal effect, I knew this was going to take a while. I may not even have enough mana to remove the spider venom in one go, but I was willing to try.
Under normal situations, the cure poison spell cost a minuscule thirty-five mana per cast, a tiny drop in the bucket compared to my entire mana pool of over twenty-one thousand. Yet, when stretched continuously via channeling, the spell’s cost rocketed to almost double that per second. Cure poison greedily drank sixty-two mana each passing second and, considering my mana regenerated was slightly higher than one thousand mana per minute, it was only a matter of time before I ran out. By the four-minute mark, I was nearly tapped out with my mana reaching a low level not seen in a long time. Yet, it was enough.
Kali’s eyes opened slowly, awareness returning to her blue irises as the final remnants of the toxin were magically eradicated from her body. Doing some quick mental math, with four minutes of channeling, a whopping fifteen thousand mana points required, the spider venom would have taken over three hours to dissolve on its own. Though I was nearly completely drained, it was worth it.
While Stedious checked in with his warden, I flopped down on my butt as an intense headache flared to life. The liberal use of mana had apparently drained me mentally, leaving an aching void in its place. The pain was receding, albeit slowly, as my natural regeneration slowly refilled my pool of mana. Stella floated near my face with something held firmly in her small hands.
“Drink these,” she offered, first handing me a blue potion bottle swiftly followed by a steaming coffee cup. Not questioning her aid, I downed the small bottle before bringing the cup close to my lips. It smelled of cinnamon and caramel.
Though I could not recall where we purchased the heavenly drink, I was immensely grateful we did as the warm liquid ran down my throat. Combined with the immediate effects of the large mana potion and the doubling of my mana’s natural regeneration afforded by the blissful coffee, my piercing headache soon soothed to a slightly uncomfortable simmer. Taking a peek at my character screen, my mana regeneration jumped to over three thousand points per minute. I would be fully restored in a matter of minutes.
“You’ll fully regenerate your mana pool in about seven minutes,” Stella offered helpfully after noticing my glance at the metric.
Stedious, who had been helping Kali remove the last of the webbing, stubbornly clinging to her armor, turned his head towards Stella at her words.
Already knowing his forthcoming question, I spoke up first. “Can we rest that long, or do we need to head out right away to avoid more of these spiders showing up?” I inquired of the lead warden.
Stedious contemplated my question a moment before answering, his gaze turning up toward the canopy overhead. “The risk of additional arachnids will be a constant threat as long as we are near their nest,” he stated before helping Kali reach her feet. Assisting her towards her horse, the female warden soon nodded her head at the elf having recovered fully from the debilitating effects. While we had been tending to her earlier, two other wardens had long since retrieved her frightened animal, calming the distressed horse with gentle words before cutting it free.
“I recommend we move out immediately,” Stedious commented as we all began returning to our saddles. “We’ll send word to the city to send a large enough force to rout these vile beasts before they can do more damage to the forest.” Looking at the warden previously watching our rear flank, Stedious barked an order towards his companion. “Uulee, you are tasked to return to the city with all haste and report this discovery. When the council musters a response, return with them and ensure the eradication of this nest.”
Without another word, Uulee clipped the side of his horse with his heels before tearing off back the way we had come. The lead warden reoriented on me, “Ready to go?”
Affirming we were and knowing my regeneration would continue even while riding, there was no reason to delay and risk more giant spiders showing up. Still, I pondered what other dangers may lay ahead of us as we pressed on in darkness.
As if reading my thoughts, Stedious barked out several additional orders, adjusting how our group would proceed—this time with far more vigilance. “We won’t continue at our breakneck pace while in twilight. The risk of the ambush is greater than we suspected. Mulviel, please move to our rear flank to cover there in Uulee’s absence. We’ll also tighten our formation to respond better should anything else happen. Any questions?”
None did, and we soon departed the small clearing, leaving behind several broken bodies of a category of spider I hoped I would never encounter again.