“WHO ARE YOU? AND WHY HAVE YOU INVADE MY HOME AND KILL MY CHILDREN?” the Arachne shouted. She drew closer to the group, revealing more of her face that was hidden from them. Her multiple black eyes glaring at a different target, and her mandibles that are now visibles are covered in her drool, dripping to the ground. Her size was made clearer too. She was bigger than the houses in the village. Astra and Poku step out in front of the group and ready themselves in case of an attack from the monster. Luna can only stare in horror at the Arachne. “Run… We have to run!”

“Where can we run? She’s blocking our path forward, and the way we came in is crawling with spiders.” Astra said, not looking away from the Arachne. “We have a better chance against the spiders” Luna shouted. “She’s an Arachne! She is a Demigod! We have no chance by ourselves. We have to get out of her now!” The group look at the leader in shock. Al looks back towards the way the came in, and at the moment, was clear of any spiders. If they run for it now, they have a chance to get pretty far into the path they came in, and with luck, face only a portion of the spiders they saw on the way in.

The group turn back towards the entrance to the room, with Astra and Poku guarding the rear in case the Arachne attacks. Al led the group on their escape out. “WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU ARE GOING?!” The Arachne shouted. She walked closer while the group headed towards the path. Just as they reached the narrow pathway, they encounter a large web, obstructing their path. “I WILL NOT LET ANY OF YOU LEAVE HERE ALIVE. YOU WILL BECOME FOOD FOR MY HATCHLINGS TO PAY FOR THE KILLING OF MY OTHER CHILDRENS.” Al threw his lantern at the web, hoping it would burn it down and open the path. The lantern lands on the web, merely got stuck on the web. The heat from the lantern only managed to burn a small portion off, and then fell to the ground. Al ran up to the web, and using the flame from the now broken lantern to light a torch, and hacked away at the web. Luna and Teiki reached him shortly after and started to help him. After they broke the web, they came to realised that it was only the first set of web, and there were more of them afterwards.

While the Al, Luna, and Teiki was trying to break through the web, Astra and Poku had already engage the Monster. They both ran in opposite direction of each other around it to try and pincer it. It leaped towards Astra, who was the slower of the two. It sends Astra flying towards the wall with it’s sickle-like hands. While it was focusing on Astra, Poku took this chance to jump on to it’s back, and started stabbing at it. “Flurry Strike!” he started hacking away wildly on the monster’s back. As he continued to stab it, a green goo started to spurt out. Cautious of it, he jumped off the monster, and tried to gain some distance. But as he landed on the ground, it spun around, and hits him hard with her hands, sending him off to the other side of the room. Taking this chance, Astra then leaps towards the torso. “Cross Slash!” But she parries it with her arm, chipping one of Astra’s sword and then shoves him back a few feet away.

Astra lands on his feet, and readies himself to launch another attack. But the Arachne was already facing him. It shoots out a blast of green gas at him from her mouth. It enveloped him, and made him feel nauseous, weak and feel like throwing up. Poison Breath! Before he could react, it had gotten close to him and was about to slam down on him with both hands. Just before it landed the blow, an arrow of energy flew towards it. It dodges the attack by leaping to the side and away from Astra. At this moment, Al runs over to grab him, and takes him away from the Arachne.

Once far enough from the Arachne, Al hands Astra an antidote. “Watch out for it’s Poison Breath.” he mumbled out. “I will.” Al then turns and runs back towards the Arachne. Luna and Teiki continued to shoot at it to distract it so that Astra can have time to recover. The Arachne makes a beeline towards the two. As it got about halfway to them, Poku attacks its blindside by throwing some knives at it. It knocks the knives with a sweep of its arms. It then turns towards Poku and spits out another Poison Breath. Poku dodges by rolling away to the side, but was able to completely avoid the attack, and breath in a little of the poison, slowing him down a little.

While it was distracted by Poku, Al ran up and stab its sides with his dagger. It kicks Al back with one of its leg. It followed up with a sweeping attack with one of its arms at Al. He dodges by leaping back, but before he landed from his leap, the Arachne had sweep again with it’s other arm, knocking Al towards Poku, who tried to catch him, but the force of the impact was too much, knocking them both down to the ground. Before they could get back on their feet, the Arachne was already on top of them thrusting down with its right arm. Just as it was about to hit them something grabs onto its arm and knocks it away from them. It lets out a screech, and started swinging its arm wildly to shake off whatever it was that had taken hold of its arm.

Thanks to Chad, Al and Poku was able to get back on their feet, and tried to blindside the monster. Meanwhile, Astra had recover, and rushing in from its other blindspot. They all jumped onto it, and started stabbing every small opening they could. At the same time, Luna and Teiki take shots at its lower body, but they were mostly ineffective in their attack against its armor. The Arachne finally manages to shake Chad off by slamming him against the wall. It then spun around wildly to shake off the three that was taking stabs at it, successfully knocking them off. It leaps backwards away from them, and spat out more poison gases at them. Al and Astra manages to barely dodge in time, but Poku, already slow from the small intake of the previous poison, wasn’t able to react fast enough, taking a full hit. The poison put him in a daze, and at that moment, the Arachne shoots out a net of webbing at him, completely wrapping him in it and immobilized him.

“Alderick! Go help Poku out of that and give him an antidote!” Astra shouted as he ran towards the Arachne to distract it. Al runs over to Poku, and tried to cut the webbing with his dagger, but to no avail, as the web was as tough as steel. Poku started to choke and spasm around. Seeing that the poison would kill Poku before he could cut the web, Al tried to give the antidote to drink, but he was moving to much and couldn’t take the antidote. “Chad! Help me hold him still!” Al shouted out. Chad runs over and then sits on top of Poku to keep him from moving. Al shoves the antidote through the web and into Poku’s mouth to force him to drink it. Seeing that Poku was starting to recover and had stopped choking, Al turns his attention back to the Arachne. “Stay with him Chad!”

The Arachne lets out a loud screech as it was fighting Astra, as it was starting to get annoy by the arrows from the two archers in the back that it has not yet been able to reach to kill. It was summoning its children to deal with them. Soon the cave was willed with screeching from all over. “Al! Help Astra! Teiki and I will deal with the smaller ones!” Luna shouted. As a few started showing up, Teiki and Luna started shooting them to keep them from reaching the others. Some tried to finish Poku, but was stopped by Chad.

“Teiki, cover me for a bit!” Luna shouted. Teiki started to focus on the spiders that were heading towards them to protect Luna. Luna then started focusing her energy into one shot. She then aims towards the ceiling. “Silver Rain!” She shot a large energy towards the ceiling, which disbursed into many smaller energy arrows and fell down onto the many spiders that was starting to flood the room. She started to focus for another wave when a spider jumped down on her. “Get off of her!” Teiki shouted, drawing her short sword and cutting the spider. “Are you alright?” “Yes. Hurry we have to help the others.” The two started to slowly make their way to where Chad and Poku were.

Luna and Teiki made it to Chad and Poku. “Check up on Poku! Me and Chad will cover you.” Luna told Teiki. “How is he?” “He’s alive, but unconscious. We can’t waste time in trying to get him out of the web at the moment, so it's best if we just leave him as is, but we will have to protect him from the spiders.”Ok. We will stay here to cover Poku, but will also have to provide support for the other two!” “You focus on the spiders going towards them. Since I’m out of arrows, me and Chad will protect you two here.” Luna shifted her attention to the spiders closing in on Al and Astra, while Teiki and Chad focus on the spiders closing in on their position.

Al could only use his Auras as using Boost would leave him open to attack. Since they have entered the cave, he had been maintaining Aura of Agility, but it was starting to wear him down, and it did not increase their speed as much as Boost: Agility would have. He was running low on mana too, as this fight was unexpected and drained too much of his focus. “Astra! I will have to cancel my Aura so I can recover some mana!” “Alright! I will do what I can to buy you some time!” With the cancelation of the Aura, Astra’s speed had dropped, making it harder for him to dodge attacks from the Arachne. He was forced to rely on blocking majority of its attacks.

While waiting for his mana to recover, and without the speed boost from his aura, the most Al can do was to keep some of the smaller spiders from reaching Astra. But some of the variants spiders were too fast for him and slipped by. “Astra! Watch out!” Astra notice the approaching variants and had to take his eyes off the Arachne to quickly kill them. But while he was distracted, it struck him hard from the side, knocking him down. It prepare to thrust down on him to finish him off. “Aura of Sacrifice!”

The thrust from the arm of the Arachne penetrates through Astra, but he didn’t feel anything even though he had started bleeding from the wound. Al fell to his knees, and spat out blood. The Arachne removes its arms from Astra to attack again, but Astra rolled away. He leaped at the torso to attack, but gets blocked. A spider attacks him from the side, and he swiftly cut it down. The Arachne attacks with a sweep and Astra tried to block with his swords. The impact from the attack pushed Astra back, and shattered his sword.

The Arachne then grabs Astra by his legs and slams him on the ground repeatedly. And then throws him to the side. “Aura of Sacrifice… Cancel” Al whole body is numb. Several broken bones as well. He looks over to where Astra was thrown, and sees that he wasn’t moving. He slowly turn towards the others. They were slowly getting over run. The Arachne was slowly walking over to him. “STILL ALIVE? GOOD. I WILL MAKE YOU SUFFER FOR WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO MY CHILDREN. YOU ALL WILL BE FOOD FOR MY NEWLY BORN HATCHLINGS.” Al reached for his short sword that was hung around his waist. I really didn’t want to use this. But I can’t die here. He unsheathed his short sword.