Chapter 364: A Tough Battle (1)
Chapter 362
"Huuuuu—!"
Both Chloe and Felix drew in a sharp, raspy breath as their eyes snapped wide open simultaneously.
Their heads and parts of their bodies were soaking wet as Ray kept pouring water on them in an attempt to wake them up.
And finally, they were wide awake.
"Ugh.... my head’s pounding. Did—did I drink something like alcohol?" Felix groaned loudly, rubbing his temples.
Ray stretched his hand toward the werewolf.
"Oi! What are you doing?" Kai called out in a worried tone, stepping closer.
Ray only smiled. "Don’t worry. They are both okay. I was only able to free them both from her clutches."
"Huh?" Felix uttered with a blink of his eyes.
But not wanting to keep Ray hanging, he took the boy’s hand and, with a small tug, the werewolf was back on his feet.
And only then did his eyes meet the hundreds of spiders in the background.
A loud gulp of saliva was heard.
"Uh... that’s a lot of spiders. The hell is going on here?"
"Don’t you recall?" Kai questioned with a lifted brow.
Felix frowned.
"Of course I don’t recall how the hell I’m here in front of hundreds if not a thousand spiders. Damn... why the fuck is my head pounding?"
Trisha cast a quick glance in Chloe’s direction, watching as her friend held her own head in silent pain.
Seeing that the duo weren’t immediately hostile, she rushed toward the girl and gently helped her up.
"Ray, what did you do?" Trisha asked.
The Tribrid smirked, then cast a swift glance at Van and Caster, who were still tied up and unconscious.
Then he shrugged and turned to face the mass of beasts.
"I just found some amazing plants that were able to cut off the link to Nebula, but due to how high her ability tier was, I realized it would take a day or two for it to fully take effect." Ray paused as the sound of bones shifting grew louder and more disturbing from the center of the nest.
At the same time, the surrounding spiders didn’t budge an inch.
Lifting the Infinite Spring bottle in front of his face, Ray sent it away back into his inventory.
".... So I spiked the water and had the group drink it. Unfortunately, only Felix and Chloe were able to take the concentrated spiked drink. Before it could get to Van and Caster, the bottle had refilled itself with pure water, diluting the mixture."
"...."
«So that was why you grabbed those specific plants. Damn,» Elyon commented from within his mind.
Ray smirked.
"The last plant I got was what allowed them to fall unconscious. Due to how strong their metabolism could be and how weak the plant’s raw form was, I knew it would take a few hours to work, hence I spiked our drink right before we left the cavern."
Kai cast one more glance toward Felix and Chloe, who were finally regaining their composure.
He then looked in the direction of the tied individuals.
"And the other two?"
Ray’s gaze hardened immediately.
"We have to defeat Nebula so we can free them."
Felix groaned once and then pointed a finger forward.
"Not to point out the obvious, but how are we supposed to do that with so many powerful spiders staring at us?"
"...."
Ray didn’t immediately reply as his mind churned.
’... I figured that Nebula was a traitor, but I never knew she would not even be a normal human. I got some rewards from completing the musical trial earlier. I haven’t had the time to read them properly, but I glanced at them. But will it be enough?’
Still thinking, Ray swiftly scanned his rewards tab one more time.
’Two new bloodline skills... A new system skill..... A pair of new weapons from the shop..... A mass of experience points....Bonus stats’
’Sigh... this is gonna be tough.’
"So.... uh... what now?" Chloe asked with a raised brow.
After fully regaining her composure, she had pulled out her bow and nocked two arrows, unsure of how much she could truly help against this tier of enemy.
Ray opened his mouth, about to say something, when—
"Now? You all die."
A chilling, haunting voice echoed directly inside their minds like an inescapable telepathic announcement.
"...."
A wave of an insidious aura instantly washed out like a tidal wave—crashing into the teens with such force that their bodies all involuntarily shuddered.
Even Ray and Felix shivered in tandem.
Cold sweat began rolling down their faces as they stared at the mass of the spiders—unable to see beyond them.
But Ray and Felix could feel... more like sense it.
A beastly aura that resonated with the spiders before them, stronger than anything they had ever faced before.
"No. Don’t tell me—" Ray swallowed hard as his instincts flared and he immediately summoned one of the bone shields still stored in his inventory.
Slowly but steadily, something could be seen rising higher and higher into the air.
The teens followed the creature with their heads craning upwards.
And upon laying eyes on the entity, their hearts all skipped half a dozen beats in a second, simultaneously at that.
"....."
A deafening silence descended over the chamber as the colossal creature revealed itself.
Nebula’s true form was nothing short of a living nightmare.
Towering over twenty feet in height, her gargantuan body was encased in layers of dark violet chitin that shimmered like polished obsidian.
The armor plating overlapped seamlessly across her body, each segment appearing thick enough to withstand even the mightiest of attacks.
Eight colossal legs supported her immense frame, their segmented joints bending with unnatural grace despite their monstrous size.
Thick enough to crush a carriage beneath a single step, each limb ended in spear-like tips that pierced effortlessly into the stone floor, leaving deep fractures with every measured movement.
Jagged spines protruded from the joints, giving the impression that every part of her body had been forged solely for slaughter.
Her swollen abdomen loomed high above the battlefield like a grotesque fortress.
Embedded across its surface were countless crimson eyes of varying sizes, each glowing with an eerie brilliance.
They shifted independently, scanning every corner of the chamber until it seemed impossible for anything to escape her notice.
The front of her body narrowed into an armored cephalothorax crowned with another cluster of blood-red eyes.
Larger than those on her abdomen, they remained fixed upon her prey with unnerving intensity, radiating an intelligence no ordinary beast should possess.
Beneath them rested a pair of enormous venomous fangs, curved like obsidian scythes.
Smaller mandibles twitched constantly between them, producing a slow, rhythmic clicking that echoed throughout the silent hall.
Thick strands of venom dripped from their tips, hissing violently wherever they landed and melting the rock.
Trailing behind her, silken threads seeped continuously from hidden spinnerets beneath her abdomen.
The delicate strands shimmered for only an instant before hardening into metallic webs, their razor-thin surfaces gleaming like sharpened steel beneath the dim light.
Despite her colossal size, Nebula moved with terrifying elegance.
There was no lumbering or clumsy motion.
Every step was deliberate.
Every shift of her legs carried the silent precision of a predator that had hunted for centuries.
She wasn’t simply a giant spider.
She was a queen born to rule nightmares, and every instinct screamed the same horrifying truth.
This was a creature humanity was never meant to face.
Saliva was swallowed so hard that, for a moment, their throats didn’t want to allow the passage of spit.
Then,
Screeeeeeech—!
The chilling scream tore out of Nebula’s mandibles in a nauseating command.
A wave of aura washed over the whole chamber—rattling the Aspirants’ bones.
As if the spiders had been slumbering before, on hearing the scream from their queen, they all stirred with a deafening cacophony of clicking limbs.
"Uh.... I think they want to attack," Felix called out as he quickly shifted into a combat stance, his hands transforming into deadly sharp claws.
"Of course they are, dufus!" Kai barked back, a long crystal club materializing in his hand.
Without hesitation, the horde of spiders bolted forward with deadly speed—a frenzied rush far beyond what they should have been capable of for their ranks, completely buffed by the queen’s presence.
"Brace for impact!" Ray shouted aloud.
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