Edward slew the few spiders that had survived his assault. The matter was finished in a handful of seconds, it was more appropriate to name the confrontation as an execution rather than a fight. The wolf spiders never had a chance. Edward came closer to the ground to absorb their blood essence, but even then, he stayed alert ready to teleport away at a moment’s notice. He was waiting for the giant tarantula to ambush him. The fact that it could leap from a portal at any time added constant pressure.

After absorbing the spiders’ blood essence, Edward continued on his way, but it seemed the spiders were now alert to his presence. A second group of wolf spiders intercepted him, their fate not different from the first group, the encounter lasting only a couple of seconds. Edward had barely finished dealing with them when two other groups of wolf spiders arrived on the spot.

Fighting sixty spiders at once, with the addition of the numerous mirages they were summoning started to pose a challenge to Edward. The spiders had the time to hide among their mirages before he could kill them. It was then a lot harder to kill the real ones hiding among the crowd. Edward decided to use himself as bait to draw the real spiders out. The mirages weren’t able to harm him and phased through him without damage. However, this allowed the wolf spiders to ambush him among the mirages, Edward was unable to discern if an attack was real or a mirage before it reached him. But the wolf spiders weren’t able to use aura. Numerous scratches and grooves appeared on Edward’s armor, but each time damage was inflicted it revealed a real spider that was killed in the next exchange, decreasing the number of mirages at the same time. Edward was too fast to allow a spider to escape after it landed a hit on him.

Edward was still dealing with those spiders when reinforcements arrived in the form of two more groups of wolf spiders. Edward was deeply focused on the fight when he saw a portal open under him, nightmarish tarantula legs emerging from it. Edward immediately teleported away, he had been waiting for the tarantula to come back, he wouldn’t be caught by the same trap twice. Edward flung an aura blade at the spider, but realizing it had missed, the spider retracted its legs quickly, disappearing inside the portal before Edward’s blade could reach it. The blade missed and cut a wolf spider instead.

“Tche”, Edward grumbled. He continued to cut the wolf spiders apart while waiting for the tarantula spider to reemerge. This time, it came from above, the portal opening on the webbed ceiling, and the tarantula’s whole body coming out, ready to drop on Edward. Edward didn’t teleport away this time, but directly on top of the spider’s body. Spiders were creatures of nightmare, very dangerous if you had to fight them from the front while inside a tunnel. But they had blind spots. Once on top of the spider, Edward was out of reach, he sank his daggers into the tarantula’s thorax immediately attempting to elongate his blades with aura.

Aura armor belatedly flashed on the spider, preventing Edward to amplify the damage. Another portal appeared on the webs covering the ground, and both Edward and the tarantula crossed it. They reappeared in an underground room very similar to the one Edward had been ditched into the previous time. He was alone with the giant spider in an enclosed space, but he was still on top of it. An aura contest began between the spider and him, the spider trying to force Edward’s daggers out of its body while Edward was trying to sink them deeper.

Edward increased the aura density of the daggers as much as he could, even letting them become unstable due to the increased aura output. The spider’s aura armor started to lose ground, and then Edward lost control of the aura blades. The aura blades exploded while still inside the spider’s body. The spider lost its footing, collapsing on the ground due to the impact, and a small crater formed on its back where Edward’s daggers had pierced it. Edward himself was forced back from the explosion, but he recovered faster than the spider, he teleported back on it and once more dug his daggers inside its body. The spider was too weak to resist this time and Edward’s daggers pierced through the reforming aura armor and then all the way through before cutting the spider in half. It trashed chaotically on the ground, blood pouring out from its injuries before stopping still, never to move again.

“Take that, you useless bag of shit!” Edward spat on the ground. He put one foot on the spider’s head and stab it with his daggers for good measure draining it of its blood essence. A powerful stream of energy flew into him, it somehow carried pride and contempt with it, as if this spider considered everyone else to be below its notice. Its pride certainly didn’t help it. If it had activated its aura armor before I injured it, the fight would have lasted a lot longer.

Edward felt his physique, his powers, and his aura be strengthened by the spider’s energy. Without counting the Lusus naturae that had propelled him to the predator rank, it was already the sixth monster able to use aura that he had killed. He wasn’t at a bottleneck yet, but he could feel the progress he was making. He had killed more dangerous monsters in a few months than most adventurers would face in their lifetime.

He would have liked to test his powers to check how much he had progressed but he was still in enemy territory. Thanks to the tarantula’s portal, he was once more in a different place, and as much lost as before. He walked out of the spider’s lair but since everything was covered in webs, he had no idea where he was situated. So, he made the same decision, watching the threads’ alignment to head in the direction of the nearest nest. I will make sure that those spiders are all burned to a crisp. Only then will I feel at ease.

Edward had killed the tarantula teleporting spider, but he couldn’t be sure if there were any more of them. After his misadventure, he didn’t dare to step directly onto the webs, and he kept his distance using aura steps to move. The spiders were less active in this area than where he was before, he was able to progress for half an hour before encountering the first group of wolf spiders. If an alert has been raised, I should thanks that tarantula monster, it actually helped me to escape to another location.

He quickly dealt with the wolf spiders, not letting them have time to escape nor to hide within their mirages. When too many of them were gathered together, finding the real ones among the illusions became troublesome. He could always act as bait to draw them out, but his armor was getting damaged in the process and he didn’t have Leyla with him to repair it. Already there were two big holes where the tarantula had bitten him, and numerous scratches from the wolf spiders. Even without being able to use aura, their claws, and fangs were sharp enough to damage steal.

Even though no wolf spiders had been spared, his location was still revealed. Wasp spiders were hanging on the webbed ceiling at regular intervals. Edward wasn’t sure if it was them who had transmitted his location, or if it was simply the wolf spiders sending signals through vibrations within the webs, but the consequences were the same.

More wolf spiders went after him. Edward dealt with them as fast as he could to prevent several groups of them from joining forces. The wasp spiders were watching him from above without intervening. He could have killed them as well, they seemed more precious than the wolf spiders to the colony, but it wasn’t his first priority since they didn’t stop his advance and since more of them could be born from the nests anyway.

Taking into account the size of the forest there must have been thousands of them, and Edward couldn’t chase after all of them. Especially, since with each pause, more spiders were converging on his location. He couldn’t pause for too long without risking getting swarmed by wolf spiders. Moreover, the nests would keep producing spiders in the meantime. If he had to kill all the spiders one by one, Edward preferred to have to do the task only once, which meant he would do it only once all the nests were destroyed.

Edward was advancing through the spiders’ blockades, leaving a trail of corpses behind him. He was slaughtering so many spiders that he was getting fed up with them. He was longing for the day their webs would be nothing more than a bed of ashes. He couldn’t complain too much however, each spider corpse was replenishing his blood essence, preventing him from exhausting his aura and marginally increasing his progress to the next rank. Still, the limiting factor was his mana. In this low mana environment, he couldn’t regenerate it. Once his mana ran dried, his acceleration would lose effectiveness, and his battles against the wolf spiders would become increasingly taxing until he got overcome by their numbers.

Edward felt a sense of relief when he saw the nightmarish tower of webs covered in cocoons in the distance. He only had one-third of his mana left and it was about time he reached the nest, he had lost count of many wolf spiders he had slaughtered already. At least he didn’t have to face a second bear-sized tarantula.

His relief was short-lived as he noticed a massive creature on the spider nest. Edward blinked, not sure of what he saw at first. But there was no mistake, a house-sized black spider was crawling vertically on the nest. Its thin long legs appeared too thin to drag its massive abdomen, and yet it was moving, albeit slowly. Seeing the red marks on the otherwise black body, Edward identified the spider as a black widow. The spider was in the process of laying eggs, each time its abdomen touched the nest, a cocoon was left in its wake.

Of course, something had to make those cocoons. Gosh, I wish I never had to see such a disgusting sight. Edward was alone facing this gigantic spider standing on the nest, no more wolf spiders were in the area, having already all been killed by him.

Hope flashed inside Edward’s mind. If this is their queen, killing it may be enough to deal the spiders a crippling blow. No more queen, no more cocoons. Edward approached warily, his fight with the tarantula spider had spooked him, and he knew from experience that each new opponent was dangerous. An unknown ability could reverse the situation within one breath even when a fight seemed already settled.