10: Chapter 10 First Battle Against the Spider Swarm

The rope was tied to the thickest branch of the old elm tree, with the other end dangling into the well.

Val went down first; she barely even used the rope, bracing herself against the well walls with her hands and feet and reaching the bottom in a few movements, moving as quickly as a gecko.

Cecilia held her shield in front of her, carefully observing the cobwebs and cracks on the well walls with every few feet she descended, ensuring nothing was hiding there.

Liam was lowered down by the rope, reciting prayers with his eyes closed the entire time.

When he landed, his legs went weak, and Val grabbed him by the back of his collar just in time to keep him from face-planting.

Richard slid down last; his leather boots crunched through the dried spider silk upon landing, and he carefully surveyed his surroundings.

Only then did the group realize that the bottom of the well actually led into a natural cavern extending horizontally.

The cave walls were damp, with viscous water droplets seeping out from the crevices in the rock layers.

The air felt chilling against their skin, and the stench of decay was several times stronger than it had been above, making it hard to breathe.

Liam raised his staff, and a soft white orb of light ignited at the tip, illuminating the appearance of the cavern ahead.

The rock walls were plastered with layers upon layers of cobwebs; in some places, they were as thick as tattered quilts, wrapped around unrecognizable lumps, with an occasional withered finger dangling down.

"These people are beyond saving. Don't touch the cocoons, keep moving," Cecilia whispered in a low voice.

The cavern extended for less than thirty paces before branching off into two directions, and Cecilia chose the wider main passage on the left.

The passage grew narrower the further they went, shrinking from a width that allowed three or four people to walk abreast into a narrow slit where they could only pass in single file, and the rock ceiling overhead grew lower and lower.

Liam's Light spell illuminated the area, revealing dense clusters of small spiders hanging upside down from the rock walls.

Each spider was the size of a fist, their fuzzy, grey-black bodies packed tightly together; when the light hit them, they would writhe in unison, making it look as if the entire wall were convulsing.

"Don't stop, keep going," Richard urged in a low voice.

Just as the passage widened slightly, the cobwebs suddenly became dense.

A web stretched from the floor to the ceiling, with every strand as thick as a finger, shimmering with a translucent, silvery-white hue in the light, woven haphazardly into a three-dimensional trap.

Val was walking in the lead; the moment she took a step, her ankle was ensnared by a strand of web lying against the ground.

She gave it a hard tug, causing the entire web to vibrate, and then a rustling sound came from overhead as some creature rapidly approached.

The first giant spider dropped down, hanging upside down from its nest in the ceiling.

Its body was even sturdier than a large dog, its eight long, barbed, jointed legs curled against its sides, unfolding simultaneously the moment it landed to support its flat, oval-shaped, grey-brown torso.

Eight shiny black eyes were crowded onto its head, staring fixedly at the prey directly in front of it.

The chelicerae on either side of its mouthparts kept opening and closing, and drool dripped onto the cobwebs on the ground, making a hissing, corrosive sound.

Then a second one crawled out from a depression in the side wall, moving even faster than the first, scuttling horizontally along the wall to flank the back of the party.

Val cursed and punched the spider in front of her; her fist struck its hard cranial carapace with a dull thud.

The spider was knocked back half a meter, but its eight legs gripped the ground tightly, and it didn't topple over at all.

Taking advantage of the moment Val retracted her fist, the one on the side sprayed a stream of viscous, milky-white liquid from its abdomen, which splattered with a wet slap onto Liam's left leg.

The priest apprentice shrieked, the impact of the webbing knocking him to the ground, his left leg firmly glued to the floor.

"Don't panic! Hold the formation!"

Cecilia raised her shield and moved in front of Liam, slashing her longsword diagonally to sever a strand of web dangling from the ceiling that was trying to ensnare Liam's wrist.

Her shield rose immediately after, blocking the second glob of webbing sprayed by the spider in front, the viscous liquid slamming against the metal face of her kite shield.

Richard noticed movement in the webs overhead; both giant spiders were on the ground, but the rustling sound from earlier clearly hadn't come from just two.

He looked up, and in the shadows beyond the reach of the Light spell, he could vaguely make out a silhouette larger than the first two, huddled in a depression on the ceiling with its eight legs pulled in tight, as if coiling to strike.

"There's another one above!" he roared, thrusting his halberd out violently, the spear tip piercing precisely into the mouthparts of the spider in front.

The axe blade of the halberd followed up with a downward chop, severing one of the spider's chelicerae at the root, spraying dark green body fluids everywhere.

The spider let out a sharp hiss, its remaining seven legs kicking frantically backward, trying to pull itself off the halberd.

"Die, you beast!"

Richard roared, stepping forward with his left foot and twisting his waist to generate force, driving the halberd deeper with the momentum of the rotation!

The spear tip pierced through the soft flesh inside the mouthparts, driving into the gap in the spider's cranial carapace and skewering its brain.

The spider's seven legs went stiff all at once, then it collapsed limply to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, its abdomen still twitching slightly.

The spider on the side lunged at Richard while his halberd was stuck in the corpse, its mouthparts gaping wide, its fangs dripping with viscous digestive fluids.

Richard didn't have time to retrieve his halberd, so he simply let go.

He drew the battle axe from his waist with his right hand, shielded his chest with his left arm, and sidestepped, dodging into the direction of the spider's pounce.

The fangs grazed his left shoulder and bit into empty air, leaving a shallow scratch on his leather armor.

The moment the spider landed, Richard had already turned, his battle axe hacking down into its abdomen.

The blade sliced through the soft, segmented abdomen, and internal organs and fluids spilled out with a wet splash, splattering half of his pant leg.

Just then, the third spider on the ceiling finally moved.

It aimed its abdomen at Liam below and sprayed a glob of webbing that was even larger and thicker than the previous ones.

Cecilia reacted instantly, thrusting her shield upward to catch the entire mass of webbing.

However, the impact of the webbing still forced her to one knee, and the viscous liquid dripped down the edges of her shield, sizzling against the metal surface.

Val finally charged in from the side, punching the third spider on the side of its head and knocking it down from the ceiling.

Her fist was wreathed in a pale white aura, a unique technique of a martial artist.

Val then mounted its back, grabbing the junction between its head and thorax with both hands, her muscles tensed like a drawn bowstring.

Then, with a violent twist—crack!

The spider's head was forcibly twisted one hundred and eighty degrees, and its eight legs twitched toward the sky a few times before going still.

The battle lasted less than three minutes, leaving three spider corpses and a large pool of dark green body fluids on the ground.

Val climbed off the spider's back, covered in slime and broken shell fragments, gasping for breath.

Liam finally managed to pull his leg, which had been stuck to the ground, out of the webbing; his priest's robe was soaked from the knees down.

His face was deathly pale, but he still raised his holy symbol and shakily finished the prayer for the Detoxification Spell.

A soft, pale golden light enveloped the four of them in turn, and the red rashes on everyone's skin, caused by the corrosive spider web fluid, slowly faded away in the radiance.

"I can still use the Detoxification Spell three more times. We need to finish this quickly," Liam said, his voice still trembling.