Chapter 29: Lilith’s Power
The space ahead of them rippled.
Emerald and black mana spiraled together, pulling at the air until a narrow crack split open between one moment and the next. It widened slowly, deliberately, like something on the other side was choosing its pace.
Eliza stepped in front of Malrik before she’d consciously decided to. Her hand found the hilt of her sword.
"Young Master." Calm voice. Tense grip. "Please stay behind me."
She couldn’t explain the feeling exactly. The mana coming through the crack wasn’t violent — no killing intent, no pressure bearing down on the chest. It was almost gentle.
But every instinct she had was screaming.
Whatever was about to walk through that opening was nothing she’d encountered before. She was certain of it in the way that only came from years of surviving things that should have killed her.
The crack widened further.
A black heel stepped through.
Tak.
Then another.
Tak.
A woman emerged from the darkness like she had all the time in the world. Long purple hair that reached nearly to her waist. A black dress that belonged at a formal dinner somewhere, not in a cave full of murderous spiders. Her lips were curved in a smile that suggested she found everything around her mildly entertaining.
She stopped. Her crimson eyes found Eliza.
A small tilt of the head. "...How loyal."
Then she was gone.
Eliza’s pupils contracted. She hadn’t seen the movement. Hadn’t felt it. There was no displaced air, no shift in mana, no warning of any kind. One moment the woman was standing in front of her, and the next moment she simply wasn’t.
"Did you call for me, Master?"
Eliza spun around.
Lilith was already standing behind Malrik, hands folded neatly in front of her, posture perfect, smile undisturbed. Like she’d always been there and Eliza had simply failed to notice.
Impossible.
Her heart was doing something it rarely did anymore.
She examined Lilith quickly — the aura, the mana signature, everything her senses could reach. Awakened Rank. She was certain. There was no mistake.
But an Awakened had just moved past an Ascendant without her sensing a thing.
That didn’t make sense. It wasn’t a matter of skill or attention. It simply didn’t make sense.
Lilith wasn’t paying attention to her anymore. Her eyes had moved to the cave — the walls, the ceiling, the endless sea of crimson staring back from every surface.
A quiet laugh escaped her.
"Hehe..."
She raised one hand toward the swarm, almost lazily. "...Master." Her gaze drifted to a spider crawling across the ceiling, then back to Malrik. "You summoned me..."
The smile turned amused.
"...for these insects?"
Genuine disdain, delivered pleasantly. "They’re hardly worth acknowledging. Even at my current strength, they’re..." She glanced at the swarm again. "...nothing."
Thousands of Venom Spiders screeched in response. The sound hammered off the cave walls and came back twice as loud.
Lilith looked at them with the expression of someone whose tea had gone slightly cold.
"...How noisy."
Malrik sighed. "Enough."
Lilith smiled like she’d found something to do on a slow afternoon.
The hissing rolled through the cavern in waves, bouncing off every surface, layering on itself until it was less sound and more pressure.
Thousands of crimson eyes. All of them locked forward.
Lilith stood in front of it all with perfect posture and not a trace of concern.
Malrik looked past her into the swarm. Even with the emerald glow of his summoned souls pushing back the dark, there were eyes beyond the reach of it — more spiders waiting further in, too many to count.
His gaze moved upward.
Thousands of eggs suspended from webs across the ceiling, packed into every section the cave could hold. Decades of colony growth, hanging overhead like pale fruit.
Destroying the nest would solve today’s problem. It would also erase one of the Duchy’s primary training grounds. That wasn’t what he wanted.
He looked at Lilith.
"Can you eliminate every spider in this cave without damaging the eggs?"
She followed his eyes to the ceiling. A quiet laugh, genuine this time. "So that’s your concern."
She turned back and the smile softened slightly — something almost fond in it.
"As you wish Master."
She pressed one hand over her chest and inclined her head.
"Simply give the order."
"You have my permission."
Her crimson eyes curved. "Gladly."
She stepped forward.
One step. Then another. The kind of walk that made a battlefield feel like a corridor she was moving through on the way to something else.
The swarm hissed louder. Several Level 48 spiders dropped their bodies low, coiling to pounce.
Lilith didn’t look at them.
She raised her right hand and a single violet spark appeared above her fingertip — small, almost insignificant, the kind of thing you’d mistake for a trick of the light.
Then it dissolved into mist.
Soft violet mana drifted outward from her palm like smoke off still water. No force behind it. No heat. It simply spread, threading between the webs and across the floor and up the walls, slipping past every spider it touched without a sound.
Malrik didn’t feel any hostility from it at all.
Eliza frowned. "...That’s it?"
No impact. No spell circle igniting beneath the swarm. No pressure building in the air.
Lilith’s smile widened.
"It has already begun."
She closed her fingers.
"Prison of Delusion."
Silence.
One heartbeat. Two.
Then a screech tore out of the depths of the swarm — not at them. Something in the middle of the swarm spun around and lunged at the spider beside it. Fangs sank into chitin. Venom splashed green across the cave floor.
The attacked spider shrieked and bit back.
Another joined in. Then five more. Then twenty.
Within seconds the entire nest had turned on itself.
There was no order to it. Spiders that had been standing side by side thirty seconds ago were locked in fights to the death. Some leaped from the walls. Others launched webs at their own allies. Bodies crashed into pillars, into each other, into the ground. Venom sprayed in every direction. The cave filled with the sound of thousands of creatures in simultaneous frenzy.
Malrik’s souls stepped back instinctively. Even the Wolf King, which had stood motionless through everything tonight, simply watched.
Lilith hadn’t moved. Hadn’t spoken another word. Hadn’t thrown a single attack.
And the colony was tearing itself to pieces.
She lowered her hand and sighed.
"...Disappointing." She watched a group of spiders dismember each other with grim efficiency. "I expected insects to have at least a little resistance to it."
Another group collapsed into chaos nearby.
"They’re making this far too easy."
Malrik watched the massacre in silence.
He’d seen plenty of abilities that killed things. Blunt force, venom, fire, numbers. He’d used most of them himself tonight. But this was different. Lilith hadn’t touched a single spider. Hadn’t aimed at one, targeted one, or directed any of the violence in any way.
She’d just let them do it to themselves.
Beside him, Eliza had stopped pretending she wasn’t surprised. She was staring at the swarm — at the scale of what one ability, deployed with a single gesture, had reduced thousands of Morveth .
An illusion.
That was all it was.
_________
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