It took her a whole day of continuous fighting to vanquish the Poison Spiders, and free that side of the tunnel system from the vicious beasts. The battle had continued uninterrupted since she set foot on the tunnel entrance, which apparently connected the spider's hub to the Poison Spider's nest.
The thing which prevented her and her minion's swift victory was the size of the tunnels. They were narrow and incredibly long, so only one of Elena's could walk in at a time, and that brought her and the spiders at a stalemate in different occasions. Luckily, the spiders came at her in small groups, not taking full advantage of their numerical superiority.
In the end, she only had to get trough three main rooms in a row, all connected by a single tunnel, so she didn't have to worry about getting stabbed in the back. In her efforts to conquer the Poison Spiders nest, she, unfortunately, lost all of her four centipedes but managed to raise nine Poison Spiders undead, two skeletons, and seven zombies.
She paused for a second to consider the power of her minions. While in the tunnels, the boar skeleton, 'Rao' showed pretty good skills at fighting individuals or small groups of enemies, thanks to his strength and resistance, all the while punching the heck out of the spiders that stood in its way. 'Ro' seemed to be more effective used on large numbers of enemies, thanks to its Acid Spring skill, big frame, and high vitality. The Queen was quite versatile but was weaker than the previous two because of her 'Jack of all trades' style.
The centipedes stood their ground to the Poison Spiders zombies on a one vs three matches, but were on par in power with the skeleton variant, while it took four of the Ant Guardians to stand a chance against the zombie variant of the Poison Zombies.
Satisfied with her considerations, she considered the room she was in now. It was the farthest away from the King's room, where she had killed the last of the Poison Spiders. There was nothing in other than cobwebs (which her ants had mostly removed), some stalagmites and stalactites common in every cave, and a single pedestal.
On top of it was a silver colored bracelet, glowing in a light-green color. Elena had one of her minions go fetch it for her, not because she felt lazy, but in fear of there being some kind of trap ready to spring into action if she took the object. As soon as it came back to her, she took it and put it on, eager to see if it had any kind of effect.
Which it did, in fact. As soon as she wore it excruciating pain passed trough her whole body, almost making her faint. Which would have been bad, seeing how the ground had started to tremble and the cave was undergoing a cave-in.
In the midst of her own personal hell, she managed to scream to her minions, who were busy inspecting the ceiling up to that point, to carry her the fuck out. As soon as one of them took her up, she fainted.
[Uncommon Skill obtained! Poison Resistance]
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Elia ran, as fast as his legs could carry him. He ran, barely dodging the dense trees which made up the fucking forest. But why was he running? Well, let's start from the beginning.
Elia grew up in an orphanage, as many did in the Krul empire, thanks to the various war being fought all over the continent. As so many kids became orphans, there weren't many resources for kids like Elia, who was the son of a common Soldier, and so her grew up in a rough world.
To add insult to injury, Elia was born thinner than most boys, with lower strength and constitution than most, so he was often bullied by his peers. Until he turned twelve and he was given a class.
As most kids do when they grow up in an orphanage, Elia decided to go for the Priest path and with some luck learn some Healing skills to help the ones who were injured in the war.
Never would he have thought that the Cleric class would have appeared in his list of choices.
Clerics were a rare variant of normal Priests, with heightened healing powers and able to cast powerful blessings and barriers. They were prized by the various religions, as only a Priest every five thousand could become a Cleric. The same was true for the religion order who managed Elia's orphanage, the order of the goddess of Nature, Melia.
So, when the High Priest of the order heard that Elia's first class was that of a Cleric, it was decided he would be trained by some big shots Paladins, something unheard of.
Elia was really excited at first by this new opportunity that was being presented to him. He saw it as a blessing of the goddess herself, something to be proud of. Or so he thought. After some months passed, with him being pulled around in various noble's courts and such, he began to realize he was simply being used as a tool to increase the order fame.
Though, the training was the real deal. In just a few months he managed to get to level seven, which while it wasn't the fastest possible as he didn't have real life-threatening injuries to deal with or monsters to fight, it was still average.
All in all, if he ignored the plots to use him and the looks of envy he received every time he crossed eyes with another member of the order, life was good.
So, why was he currently running like a mad man in the middle of nowhere? Going back a couple of days, the Paladins that were part of his escort decided it was time for him to confront with real monsters, so they brought him near the edge of the Forest of Remains. The forest was deemed as one of the most dangerous parts of the country, but that was only true if you got into its depths, the outskirts it were a well-known training zone.
Unfortunately, that day there was nothing for them to catch on the edge of the forest, so one of the paladins insisted they tried to go just slightly deeper, as to not let the time they spent searching go wasted. In hindsight, that was a really bad choice.
Soon after they entered the dark side of the canopy, they were surrounded by a trio of land wyverns, vicious agile monsters which were as big as a full grown bull. While the Paladins were indeed some of the strongest members of the Order of Melia, they couldn't hope to be a match for Wyverns, so they quickly got slaughtered. As for Elia, he managed to snatch an enchanted dagger from them and then scrambled away, hoping the beasts were too busy devouring the Paladins to care for scrawny him.
Fortunately for him, they didn't try to catch him, so he managed to run away. And now he was lost. He ran for hours, in fear of there being something else other than the Wyverns trying to catch him, and finally, he managed to get out of the forest. Or so he thought at first before he realized it was only a clearing with a small mountain in the center. He tried to get around it, but he was too tired to continue walking and decided to crawl in the first hole he found.