Chapter 152: The Broodmother (6)

The Shadow Guardians obeyed. Walls of solid darkness erupted from the ground, forming a prison around the Broodmother.She slammed into the first wall of darkness. With a violent shriek, she tore through it.

But as one wall fell, two more sprang up in its place, and every moment she spent battering against the shadows was another moment the Ember Rift-Sprites had to focus their fire.

"Burn her to ash!"

The result was cataclysmic. Freed from the need to aim a moving target, the remaining thousands of Rift-Sprites unleashed a unified infernal rain. The heat was so intense that the very air inside the shadow prison ignited.

The Broodmother’s shrieks became choked.

Her carapace, already critically weakened, glowed white-hot. Molten, stinking chunks of chitin sloughed away, and the stench of incinerated monster flesh became overwhelming.

Yet, she did not fall. The Broodmother redoubled her efforts against the shadow walls with fury. Reidar understood he had to help the Shadow Guardians, or the bitch would get out of her trap.

But would he be able to keep her contained? Not without help. So, he channeled a lot of mana into Root Grasp, and soon, the thick, thorny vines burst from the ground and wrapped around the Gloom-Web Arachnid Broodmother, pinning her in place.

Yet even this skill was not enough. Reidar didn’t have a lot of mana to begin with, which meant he could not power the skill enough to keep her in place, the second problem was that even if he had that amount of mana, the level difference between him and the giant spider was simply too vast.

In fact, the broodmother got out of his root grasp soon after, forcing him to use the skill again.

Through the inferno, a leg punched through a shadow wall. Then another.

Her multitude of eyes, many now burst and leaking fluid, still burned with a core of undiluted malice, locking onto Reidar flying above.

She was being cooked alive; her body got full of blistered flesh and exposed, smoking muscle.

She took the punishment, absorbing the world-ending barrage through sheer, monstrous vitality.

Reidar turned to check how the situation with the dread-spinners was. It wasn’t good. They were tearing through his Ember Rift-Sprites.

Reidar’s mana was decreasing rapidly, meaning he didn’t have that much time.

The number of his summons decreased to 1,412.

The Shadow Guardians, in the meantime, were straining to keep the Broodmother trapped. Then two more massive crows swooped into formation. Lena and Jake were clinging to their backs.

<Ah... luckily they made it...>

Lena’s knuckles were white on the black feathers, and Jake’s face was a pale mask of awe and terror. It was his first time flying. Not that it was different for Reidar and Lena, at least not in that way.

"Since when can you do this?" Lena asked over the wind and the distant roar of the inferno ravaging the area below.

"I got Primal Pack to 100%, and the skill evolved! It is now called Feral Pack! It gave me a couple more options to summon!"

Lena gazed at the nightmarish scene below. The Broodmother was still tearing at the shadow walls. "Gods... What do we do, Reidar? She’s not dying!"

"I’m going to try one last thing! I don’t know if this will work... but..."

The summon counter was a bleeding wound: 1,312... 1,298... "If this doesn’t work... we run!"

He saw Jake grimace, the boy’s hands tightening on the crow’s plumage. But he gave a reluctant nod. The near-indestructible monster had hammered a truth into him: revenge was something only the strong could afford.

It wasn’t just that, but if Reidar couldn’t do it, then no one could, not even he and his Augmentation trait. He needed power. Hopefully, Reidar would be able to kill the wretched being.

"Then do it!" Lena said.

Reidar activated his trait, Skill Sharing, and pushed a single, complex package of knowledge to all his remaining summoned Ember sprites. He gave them Elemental Storm.

The mana cost for sharing with over a thousand creatures was immense, a final, gut-wrenching drain that left him feeling hollowed out once again. This time, though, he kept some mana in case things went bad.

Below, the remaining Rift-Sprites stopped their constant fireball barrage. For a moment, there was a strange, pregnant silence broken by the Broodmother’s enraged shrieks and the crackle of her own burning body. Then, the air itself began to scream.

A thousand-plus elemental storms erupted at the same time in the middle of the area. They overlapped into a single, cataclysmic maelstrom that engulfed not only the shadow-prison but the entire area.

The Broodmother wasn’t the only target; the Dread-Spinners were crowding the area, so the Rift-Sprites aimed at them too. Fire, water, earth, and air ceased to be separate forces, merging into a chaotic apocalypse.

The Broodmother was lifted from the ground by a blast of air, only to be slammed back down by a fist of solid earth. Her movements, became a pathetic, trapped shudder.

The Dread-Spinners caught in the periphery of the storm were shredded, their chitinous bodies flash-frozen, shattered, and then incinerated.

The notifications came across Reidar’s vision in a blinding, triumphant cascade.

\[Level 127 Dread-Spinner Gloom-Web Arachnid defeated.\]

...

\[Level 131 Dread-Spinner Gloom-Web Arachnid defeated.\]

...

And then, the one he had been waiting for, blazing brighter than all the others:

\[Level 145 Gloom-Web Arachnid Broodmother defeated.\]

\[You have gained 145,000 C.L.A.S.P. Points.\]

\[You have earned 43,500 Survival Points.\]

\[LEVEL UP! You have reached Level 120.\]

\[You have gained 0.5 attribute points to distribute.\]

The elemental storm faded. The air cleared enough to see the devastation below. The buildings surrounding the area were gone, reduced to rubble and ash.

Bodies littered the ground, spider corpses because the rift sprites simply turned to brittle porcelain and fragmented into millions of pieces.

The remaining Dread-Spinners scattered, as their broodmother was dead and there was nothing else to do at that point. There were too few of them anyway.

Reidar watched them flee.

His summon counter sat at 312 at that point, not much for his taste but an overwhelming number for everyone else. Though it was not enough to chase the spiders down.

Jake made a choked sound. Reidar turned and saw the kid staring down at the Broodmother’s corpse; his body was trembling.

The terror had melted away, replaced by a gut-wrenching grief. The sight of his parents’ killer, finally slain, had broken a dam inside him. "Mom," Jake said. "Dad."

The words broke into sobs.

"I’m sorry... I’m so sorry..." Jake had gotten his vengeance, but it was an empty thing that could never bring them back.

Lena’s expression softened. She reached out toward Jake, but the distance between their two crows made it impossible. They were separated by empty air, and the giant birds shifted their wings constantly to maintain altitude.

"Reidar," Lena said. "Get us out of here."

Reidar nodded. But first, he had one more task.

He gave the mental command to his remaining summons. The Rift-Sprites moved among the corpses and looted the spiders.

"Hold on," he told the others.

The crows banked, turning away from the ruined area. No monsters followed.

...

...

...

They reached Jake’s apartment building twenty minutes later. Reidar dismissed the birds once everyone dismounted.

Jake stumbled toward the stairwell. He moved like he was sleepwalking, his face blank except for the tears that kept falling.

Lena and Reidar followed. They reached Jake’s apartment. The kid pushed through the door and went straight to his room. The door closed. Seconds later, muffled sobs came through the wood.

Lena stood in the hallway, staring at the closed door. "Should we... do something? Say something?"

Reidar shook his head. "Let him vent. He needs it."

"But—"

"He just watched us kill the monsters that murdered his parents," Reidar said. "That’s not something you process in minutes. He needs to let it out. There’s nothing we can say that will make it better right now."

Lena’s jaw tightened, but she nodded.

They moved into the living room. Reidar collapsed onto the worn couch, exhaustion hitting him like a weight. His mana was depleted. His body ached. His mind felt sluggish.