Master Of None

While the underground was appearing to be smaller than what the party expected, closing the many storage rooms full of destroyed undead skeletons and what might have even been monsters at one point took a lot more time than what they expected. It was also harder when they began to realize that some of the rooms had been for sleeping once the tower had been sealed from the top.

So far, they had all begun to piece together the puzzle of what had happened.

First, the above ground was destroyed. It was clear that this wasn’t just from changes over time. Mostly because the stone condensed and made in to a unique stone alloy had been spread to further places than would happen if a tower fell. Meaning that something had attacked and destroyed it.

Whatever had done so was long gone at this point so it wasn’t a focus. However, an attack of that strength would have caused there to be a hide in place response from those within the tower. Therefore, everyone had rushed underground where the earth mages could protect everyone better. They had sealed the walls and shifted them as needed to defend everyone and everything.

Yet, as the earth mages had been blocked from the surface, they began to expand underground where they were able to condense their walls and floors to be able to block any underground monsters from bothering them.

Then came the evidence along the walls. Deep gouges along them, some rooms entirely destroyed with evidence that blood had dried in to the stone becoming a grave form of paint. Whatever the earth mages had broken in to, they had given their hideout, their safe haven, the perfect opening for a different ancient monster to break in.

It felt like it was some sort of evil playing with them. Safely protect everyone from a threat above only to be trapped inside a cage of their own making while trying to expand their haven?

Then again, how many other small villages and people has this happened to? In the name of progress everyone took risks to expand and grow. Not everyone survived those attempts leading to lessons of history that would be passed down to the young in the next generation.

Right now, the party was uncovering a lesson that would need to be taught. It just didn’t show them exactly what the biggest danger in learning this lesson would be just yet.

Moving ahead following the threads, the party found a larger room, it seemed more like a hall for meetings than anything. The piles of barely intact wood and dust might have been bookshelves. Some of them even had the remnants of what could have been paper or scrolls made from monster materials. Not that they were readable. Experts would need to take a look.

However, the smell had grown much worse and so did the threads. The spider webbing was everywhere. It was like a horrifying blanket over the entire room, walls, and even the ceiling.

Bundles shook as the dulled sounds of bones clacking together could be heard. The party just walking inside here caused movement from every single undead trapped in webbing waiting for whatever monster captured them to consume them as it desired.

The movement also made the sharp sound of something hard on stone come near. None of them had noticed it before, but at the very far end of this larger hall a mass of webbing was blocking an entrance in to the opened area. Many years ago the mages had begun expecting and now, the spot they had tried to move in to had been made in to a webbed door.

’Undead hunter spider

This is a unique form of undead. It comes from the corpse eating spider after it has perished and consumed too much undead mana from the corpses it scavenges. Due to this, it begins to break down rapidly and the larger amount of bones it consumes from corpses becomes its armor to consume to hold and decay more bones in to thread, undead venom, and even spit at enemies as projectiles.

It is extremely violent toward the undead and the living. It will even inject the living with its venom which contains very large amounts of undead mana and forces the living to become undead. It then wraps them in bone threads to let them rot until they become decayed zombies or skeletons before consuming them.

They are often only found in caverns or deep underground since they prefer the dark, this does not mean that they are weak to light, their eyes are unseeing since they rely on the undead mana they radiate to be their senses. This also makes it nearly impossible to sneak up on them since they can sense changes in the undead mana around them.

They are often considered a massive problem for crypts and other places the dead are buried due to the fact that corpse eating spiders will move in and leave behind these undead hunter spiders which can not easily be dealt with. Often, the areas are sealed off until the spider naturally perishes over time, often, this is done foolishly since the spiders get stronger after consuming the skeletons for years on end and can rest in dormancy for up to seventy or more years…’

The appraisal just made it even clearer that this was a monster none of them wished to deal with.

”This thing died here and probably has been consuming every single skeleton undead and even its fellow spider for years. It’s armor is toughened bone and we need to make sure we beat it quickly.” Walker managed to say this just as the spider opened its bony mouth and started to spit bone shards at them.

The speed that the bone shards shot through the air was greater than what they expected, but it also was clear that they had been from a recent meal since the shards shattered on Su’s twin shields.

Midnight and Remey dashed out from opposite sides to be met with sharp legs piercing toward them. They had expected some resistance, but the movements of the undead hunting spider were more violent and controlled because it sensed the undead mana changing around it. But that didn’t mean its sharpened bony legs survived.

Midnight’s slash of claws shredded the tough bone leg to pieces while Remey spun and kicked the leg, entirely shattering it. This undead hunting spider had instantly dropped to only having six legs. However, those legs had begun to pull on threads and whip the wrapped undead mages at the party.

This prompted Gil to release his arrows at the cocooned undead rather than the spider. He used purifying light arrows since he knew that if he did not, the undead in those cocoons would move to use earth magic and attack the party too. He was covering them as much as he could, but it kept him from attacking the spider at all.

In turn, Alice began singing her song of blades and also supporting Gil to purify the many undead trapped in cocoons. She knew that this was the best use of her skills right now due to the simple fact that it would free Gil up to attack with his arrows. His attacks could do significantly more damage at once than hers.

While Walker understood this, he had Onyx slip in to the shadows and make his own move.

When Onyx’s tail whipped out of the shadows beneath the spider, it tried to resist him, but the cracking of its exoskeleton was enough for Walker to counter it from the air. He had leaped up and used the eternal codex to take a hammer form.

What was a tough defense if he could just use a blunt weapon to smash through it?

The resounding crack followed with silence as the party looked at the broken body of the undead hunting spider. It wasn’t entirely dead but the purification song Alice was singing was finishing it off right now. The many undead she had just purified with purifying light swords were also nothing to worry about.

Walker and Remey began burning away the many threads and nothing else was left behind. They wanted to see the hall for what it was now and try to see what it had been. They also wanted to make sure more undead weren’t hiding in the threads for them to uncover them.

It didn’t prepare them to find some intact bottles of powders and solidified potions though. Things that Remey showed interest in but held back because they could hear the air moving beyond the webbed entrance to whatever caves the undead hunting spider had returned to.

This meant that the caverns were open to the surface somewhere. Who knew where and what dangers were in there and outside of that cave.

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Please say no to piracy! Don’t take part in crime! Don’t patronize thieves!

Drop those golden tickets!