I was going to sit down, as I was beginning to feel the fatigue of rapid casting, but Akai stopped me.

“Don’t let your guard down, you only killed the human half.”

“Wha-” Before I could even express my confusion and disappointment, a screech signaled an oncoming attack. Again, however, my body dodged out of the way on its own. The spider missed, and flew straight into the wall behind me.

“Is it less intelligent since I destroyed the human half?” I wondered to myself.

“Yeah, it is. Most of the strategy used the human brain.”

“Can you read my thoughts?”

“...”

While I was thinking, I checked my mana pool. There was a half circle that appeared in my mind, it looked like it was a fire, slowly getting smaller.

I turned to the spider, who was no longer disoriented, and was looking straight at me.

“Woah, that's one heck of a glare.” Akai mused. All seven of the spider's eyes were glaring at me.

“You attacked me first.”

I saw its legs begin to bend, they were building up energy to dash towards me. This time I stood my ground. I was going to wait until it got close enough for my water ball spell to do a lot of damage, but as soon as the spider moved an inch, so did my body.

“Tch, WaterBall.” While I was falling out of the way, I shot a water ball at the spider's abdomen, hoping to fatally wound it. Instead of hitting the abdomen, like I had hoped, it hit the neck, it went half way into the skin and muscle before it stopped.

The spider slid to the ground, signaling my victory. Just like when I had helped the women, I felt an energy enter my body once the spider died. It was warm, but also sticky? It’s hard to describe.

“Hey, check your mana’s color.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

Doing as Akai asked, I looked inwards. The half circle was now almost a pebble, but the color had changed. The once teal hue was now a deeper blueish color one would describe cobalt. I could understand the deeper blue being my magic becoming more dense, but the one thing that confused me was a small blob of purple inside the blue.

“It’s blue, and there is a little purple.”

“Purple?”

“What?” I noticed that Akai was staring at me, with a confused face.

“Nothing. I’ve just never heard of purple mana before.”

Before leaving, I decided to look behind the spider.

“Oh no.”

“Fuck.”

In one of the tunnels, there were dozens of spiders, and they had all noticed me. Web after web shot at me. Luckily for me, I could auto dodge, so none of the attacks bothered me all that much. However, as one of the webs approached me, instead of dodging, I just felt a burning sensation in my eyes. The web hit my shoulder, dislocating it.

“@(#!” I was going to scream, but the shock kept my mouth closed. The web that stuck itself to my shoulder began to tug on me. I was pulled onto my face and dragged towards the spiders, one of which had already begun walking towards me.

It shot a green liquid onto me, it stung. I looked over at Akai, who was talking, but I couldn’t understand anything she was saying. It was as if I had just woken up. My eyes began to pull themselves closed.

I fell asleep.

I finally woke up.

He’s going to die at this rate. I’ll have to help him.

I grabbed the web around his shoulder, ripping it off with some skin. I stood up and jumped back before wiping the poison off his face.

“Come at me you dipshits!”

“Huh.” I didn’t expect to wake up again.

“That was weird.” Akai was laying on the ground next to me.

“What?”

“I fell asleep with you this time. I usually watch you sleep.”

“Kinda creepy.”

I sat up and looked around. The floor was littered with black blood and limbs.

“What the hell?”

I stood up and looked at the arm closest to me, there were several bite marks all over the arm. “Gross.” I was going to take a closer look, but the torch went out before I could.

“Sigh~ Let's just leave.” I decided to go back to the lava area, That was the only way forward. I didn’t light my last torch because there was light ahead.

“Now how am I going to get across this?” I asked myself while looking over the lava lake. I didn’t notice before, but there was a staircase leading up.

“How convenient.”

“Hmm.” I thought back to the spiders. They had to have been using magic to make the webs, so why couldn’t I? I held my arm out and remembered the sticky feeling I felt earlier. I could feel the mana leave my core and flow down to my fingertips. Then It left. When I opened my eyes, there was a line of web connecting me to the roof of the cave. I imagined the webs being sucked back into my fingers and used mana to pull on the web. I ended up being pulled to the ceiling.

Using the momentum, I flew to the staircase. I felt like Tarzan.