Chapter 98: Potential food source
As the member identified the monster, the rest of the group swiftly assumed a formation ready to counter any attack from her. When they found no attack coming toward them even after 30 seconds they knew the monster had fled the location.
There was no way the monster could have passed them, so the only possible escape route for her was ahead, where the group was preparing to advance. Before advancing forward Thala looked back at his three fellow tribe members and said,
"We are advancing forward. Be as careful as possible. If we don’t come back in ten minutes, notify his majesty."
The three of them understood their task and nodded in confirmation. Upon seeing their confirmation, the rest of the tribe members quickly began their advance.
As the group started moving forward, they encountered a problem—the path ahead was covered with webbing. Zephyr, the group member who is an air magic, spoke up first. "We need to stay agile and avoid those webs. They’re bound to be sticky and difficult to escape from."
Naira, the water mage of the group, nodded in agreement. "I could try to create a shield of water, but I don’t think it would be very effective against the webs. What do you think, Thala?" she asked while turning to Thala for his suggestion.
While advancing, Thala listened to her suggestion. Without looking at her, he replied, "I don’t think that’s a good idea either, and you should conserve your mana for potential times when we need some healing."
Listening to their conversation, Pamu, the one who had cast the fire torch, chimed in, "Why should we avoid it when we can just destroy it? Leave the web extermination to me."
As he spoke, he created a fire pillar and began to destroy the web that was blocking their path.
Lithia and Aelios, the swordsmen of the group, remained silent throughout the conversation. Vesper and Selena, who served as the tanks of the team, followed suit and had chosen to be listeners as well.
They didn’t have to walk much further because just a few seconds later, they quickly encountered the spider. The spider wasn’t retreating anymore instead, It appeared to be standing guard, trying to protect something which was beyond the gate she was guarding.
The group quickly adopted a serious stance the moment they spotted the monster and reacted by swiftly drawing their weapons. As they noticed the monster, she did the same and immediately launched an attack with a blob of venom.
Selena, who is a tank but also knows how to cast basic earth spells, swiftly channeled her magic and created an earth wall in front of the group to shield them from the venomous attack.
While the wall was being created, Aelios quickly began sprinting toward the spider, prepared to strike it down. The monster, noticing Aelios advancing, swiftly turned its rear toward him and launched an attack with its web.
Aelios swiftly used a skill and jumped to dodge the attack while launching a slashing attack of his own. The monster noticed the attack and managed to dodge it as well. While Aelios was engaging the monster, Thala signaled the group to do something, and he himself joined forces with Aelios to attack the monster.
Thala looked at the spider and fired a wooden spear. Since the spider was focused on Aelios’ attack, despite noticing the incoming attack, she couldn’t evade it in time.
The attack connected with the spider but didn’t manage to harm her in the slightest. Thala wasn’t disappointed by this, because this wasn’t his plan wasn’t to harm the monster. He and Aelios continued their assault, keeping the monster’s attention on them while the rest of the group slowly began to surround her.
In less than a minute, the group had successfully cornered the spider. However, the spider was still focused on the duo, or rather, she was forced to concentrate on them, rendering her unable to take any action against the rest of the group.
Finding a gap in her defenses, Pamu quickly unleashed a barrage of fire attacks. The spider was also swift to react and promptly cast a venom wall in front of her to shield herself. However, this defensive move was going to cost the spider dearly.
Selena quickly noticed that her vision was obstructed by the venom wall and began to loosen the earth under her legs, making it extremely soft. Because the spider was preoccupied with maintaining her shield, she couldn’t escape from the loosened pit in time and got trapped in it.
Recognizing this as the perfect opportunity to finish her off, Thala cast the spell "Wood Prison" on the spider, further confining her. When he was finally satisfied that she couldn’t escape from the wooden prison anymore, they began to bombard her with multiple attacks from all sides.
Everyone began to attack with their most powerful attacks on the trapped spider, not holding back. They repeated this process three times, casting their spells and using their skills to their fullest. After their final round, they finally stopped their attacks and patiently waited for the dust to settle so they could assess the outcome.
When the dust finally settled down they looked at her or more like the remains of her and were satisfied with the result. Within thirty seconds the group of seven had turned the spider into a mesh of blood and flesh. The corpse had gotten so mangled that they couldn’t even recognize the monster’s original species.
Pamu had been the fortunate one to get the last hit. He glanced at the group and shared the name of the monster and her tier,
"She was a Tier 3 monster with the name ’Juvenile Arachnida Queen’," Pamu reported.
’So, she was a queen-type monster, which is why she didn’t have that many offensive abilities,’ Thala quickly deduced the reason behind her lack of offensive capabilities despite being at Tier 3. His reasoning was she must have chosen an evolution path that was more focused on egg-laying and colony management.
Connecting the dots, Thala quickly figured out what the spider was protecting.
"Eggs,"
