Chapter 33 - Third Layer
The demonic spider skittered through the shelves, its steely appendages stabbing the brittle stone structures, and its behind spat acid that melted the crumbling graves.
Its shell glimmered like metal. A spear cut through the air, booming as it flew, and smashed into its thickened shell. The tip shattered upon contact. The force of the impact slammed the demon into the wall, whose integrity had already been compromised.
It tried to scuttle away again, stabbing the stone wall. But the moment it took to gather itself was enough for an artificial wall to manifest beneath its underside. The translucent wall yanked the spider away from the shelf. It stayed airborne for a moment before gravity pulled it down, and it too realized that. Its screech sent a painful shiver down their spines. It crashed on the ground with a loud boom, its body completely intact.
As it sprang to its feet, Kurvam Vera's sword came crashing down from above, enchanted with his skill.
Its four pairs of red eyes shrank. It shot a web at him, and that was caught by a blanket-like ward that Yehia had learned. She yanked away the fluid, which exploded into a room of web onto the shelf. Kurvam's sword crashed onto its thickened exterior, shattering the shell.
As its acidic blood splashed outward, Kurvam jumped away, and Verka's ward protected him from the rogue droplets.
The spider's blood dripped onto the ground. Burning the ashdust. The smoke rising from it camouflaged it.
Yehia's spear returned to her hand. She twisted the head, dropping the broken tip, and attached another one. She hurled it again as Sarkot and Markil dashed toward the demon.
The demon once more had taken the shelf as its escape. It was much slower this time and was having a much harder time climbing. Slugged by its own damaged body. By the time Sarkot and Markil reached it, it had given up on running away.
Take as many with you as you can. Serve us.
A voice commanded it. It understood the command in its core, even if it had no capacity to understand the language itself.
Materiality flowed through its Soul Form, which was much more developed than that of the vice captain of the expedition team. Its spear-like legs burned with energy. It waited for the pair of warriors.
Its soul shivered. It felt the chain of binding lunging out of the ground, and it immediately jumped away, and the next moment, those chains leapt out from the ground like leeches. And they followed it. It stopped, letting its forward leg be captured, and as soon as they touched its body, it felt its strength wilt.
Fight!
A voice hissed inside its head. And its Materiality core burned in agony, bleeding energy that it had never possessed. It yanked the chain and heard a cough from a distance.
Fiya spat blood as the binding chains faltered. She fell to her knees. Her heart hammered inside her chest. The rogue materiality inside her body tried to burn her away, but Healer Borran's hand settled on her back, immediately easing her pain.
Sarkot and Markil both stopped a distance away from the spider as they felt the shift in its energy. They looked back at the vice captain, who stayed by the Observer's side still. The nominal leader raised her hand and closed it into a fist.
Stay and Observe. The command was.
So they did, and Kurvam dashed past them. Was this the expectation of the vice captain? The captain's sword burned with energy. He lunged forward, slashing his sword, and again, the demon defended with its pair of front legs. One of them shattered from the power of the blow, but the other slapped the blade away once the momentum died. And then, the broken leg slapped the captain's chest. The Materiality contained within the leg exploded into his chest. He was paralyzed by the outside influence and crashed onto the ground.
The spearhead-like leg came crashing down at his chest.
Verka's ward stopped it, and the next moment, Yehia's spear was coming at its eyes again.
The spider pushed all its legs against the ground, giving itself the height to dodge the spear, and crashed back onto the ground, angling its legs at Kurvam's body.
Another ward manifested by Kurvam's side, and he dragged his body away.
The spider crashed down, snapping the stone floor. The cracks are spreading like a cobweb. It chased forward.
Kill!
As its blood burned the ground and its life started to fade, its core was filled with even more power, burning and melting its own soul. Its mind was dragged into insanity.
It shrieked again, paralyzing everyone for a moment. The spider shot a ball of web into the air. It gained height until it reached the top of the shelves, and then began to arc down toward the expedition team, exploding into hundreds of small balls of explosive web.
Everyone started moving again.
"Stop!" Liesel shouted. "Verka!"
The warder looked at her, and it was clear he was going to protect the leader.
"Sarkot!" Liesel called, and the pair of fighters understood their task. They dashed toward the spider, with Yehia to keep them safe, and Verka created a large ward over the heads of everyone else.
"Garvin, Charbil, join them." The vice captain uttered.
Though Garvin seemed a little more frustrated than Charbil, they both also started moving.
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The explosive orbs burst into sticky goo, and from it shot out enough web to cover the entire landscape.
The warder's ward pushed them to the side, and Jaisel's fire burned them with ease.
Garol Borran removed his hand from Fiya's back. Taking a deep breath, the mage climbed to her feet.
"Are you trying again?" Farki Jan asked, almost in disbelief.
"I need to be faster," Fiya answered. "If I catch more than just its front leg, it will succumb."
The spider's legs clashed with the two swordsmen, and its wild attacks and the spilling blood from its body forced the warriors to be cautious. To keep away, Yehia's ward made sure to protect them from dangers. Her role had been solidified as the primary warder of the team at this point, and she also provided mid-range distractions.
Kurvam's shock finally wore off, and he climbed back to his feet, filled with rage. He charged his blade. "Get out of the way!" he snarled as he swung his blade, and an arc of energy coursed through the air, raging toward the demon.
Sarkot's eyes widened as he realized his back was facing the air blade. He jumped to the side, and the spider acted fast. Its metallic tip crashed into Sarkot's leg.
"Argh!" Sarkot screamed in pain as his body fell onto the floor, and the appendage stabbing him nailed itself to the ground. It dragged him, slicing the stone floor, in front of the air blade. The spider's jaw opened, and its acidic saliva pooled in front of its face.
Sarkot's heart thumped. He tried to channel Materiality, but the sinking realization and the slowing reality of his death took every shred of control he had. He felt like nothing but a powerless man.
Markil's sword knocked the jaw to the side, and that shoved the head away enough that the spit fell onto the ground an inch away from Sarkot's face. Still, he felt his ear burn. His jaw clenched.
You are not going to die crying. Clench your jaws! Sarkot heard in his mind, and he did. He felt the acid slip under his head slowly. His head was pushed to the side by a ward, wrapped around him. It burned still, but the spider's saliva couldn't melt it. For now, he had survived.
Verka's ward defended him from the incoming skill from the team leader.
Fight! Kill! Must Kill!
The voice inside the spider drove it further into insanity. It ripped out its appendage and stabbed at Sarkot's face, spitting acid and web at the same time.
Charbil's spear met the stab, diverting it to the side.
Again, Kurvam came crashing from above, and the spider's mind was gone enough that it didn't even dodge. Instead, it targeted Sarkot. One death, it wanted. It would deliver it. And yet, nothing it did could get past the ward protecting the fighter.
The force of the crash from Kurvam knocked its body onto the ground. Fiya had been waiting for this moment. Before it could recover from the impact, the binding chain shot out from beneath. It felt them coming and wanted to dodge, but its body was too damaged, and even burning its soul for power did nothing to save it from its fatal reality.
It waited for more pain to come, bound and powerless. Yet, everyone withdrew from it, dragging the warrior away.
In its burning insanity, it had a moment of clarity. It felt the approach of another. Weak yet dangerous. It hated her the most. Those were not its own feelings, but that voice that demanded it fight. It had given up now.
Its clouded mind cleared, and it watched the lady stand in front of it, frowning.
The Materiality that flowed through the hideous sword of hers was different than the one that commanded it. It shrank away from that power, or the lack of it. The emptiness that would follow. It was a creature of vengeance, of life. It shall not perish. Hate. A loathsome anger dripped from its core, and it wanted to end that.
"Rest now. You've suffered enough, haven't you?" the lady said.
The demon didn't understand those words, but it did feel the anger that its core had served another and not it. Those words were good. It was at ease, and then—
—Liesel ripped her sword out of the demon's head. The sword drank all the blood from the demon, and even the acidic blood wasn't enough to damage her blade's black shade.
Once all the blood was soaked into it, she sheathed the blade and turned to her expedition.
"It should be the last," Liesel said. This was the ninth spider demon they had killed, and this one had been by far the strongest and most dangerous. They were so close to losing Sarkot today.
Because of Kurvam.
Liesel tried not to linger on that part, but that was the reality of it.
She approached Sarkot. Healer Borran looked at her. "No venom, so I can mend it, but it will take overnight to heal fully."
Liesel nodded at him. "We are withdrawing for today, as Sarkot is grievously wounded, and I do not see the point of risking our cohesion for a few hours."
"No," Kurvam argued. He had come a long way, but unfortunately, all his progress seemed to fall a step too short to ever be helpful.
"It's your fault." Yehia's eyes narrowed at the leader.
"Yehia," Liesel glanced at her, and the lady shrugged, but conceded. She leveled her eyes at Kurvam. "I make no decision for you, but I hope the people you take with you return without losing one more limb. The rest can follow me."
She glanced at Verka, and he was already behind the leader. But even Garvin had given up on following Kurvam. Perhaps he could now see who Kurvam was, or perhaps that had never been a factor in his life.
"Everyone's tired, and it was the strongest demon we have fought so far in the expedition," except for the Door Guardian, but Liesel hesitated to consider it a demon. "We can start fresh tomorrow morning. There are still ten days until the deadline, and we are already two-thirds of the way to the Tomb."
She offered him that because she didn't want his ego to lead him and Verka to death. Verka was crucial for their survival, and she'd rather not explain to the Chancellor how his son died.
He huffed. "We observe what's ahead, and then we can plan for tomorrow better."
That was a reasonable demand, and Liesel, though reluctantly, nodded.
"Jaisel, extract the demon core," Liesel said, "And then we will see what awaits us ahead."
In the past week, the shelves had shifted, and they were basically at the end of the shelves, or what Liesel imagined was the actual end of the second layer, and they would be progressing into the third layer now.
It was hard to see it even from the top of the stairs as the storm clouds surrounded everything, hiding even Sirmal's Tomb.
"It's cracked," Jaisel uttered. "And..."
From the cracked core, something dark leaked. Its smell was headache-inducing. And it melted the floor just like the blood.
"Is that its aspect?" Fiya asked, frowning.
"Nope. It's the other aspect," Jaisel said, peering down closer to it. "Yeah. It overwhelmed the Materiality that should've been inside the core itself, as well as the original aspect. I have never heard of such a thing."
"That would explain its frenzied last stand?" Charbil asked.
"But it shouldn't have fought that way," Liesel said. "It would've run until it bled. It shouldn't have made such a last stand, and one that clearly focused on killing us."
"Maybe the Tomb's influence at its highest stage creates this," Jaisel concluded.
Regardless, they decided to keep it and present it to the Seer.
Past the last wall of webs, there was a giant door. Before it, Liesel felt like an ant. The scale was unlike anything she had ever experienced.
It opened as they approached it. The grey dust wind howled beyond it. Even the threshold seemed several hundred meters wide.
Kurvam, of course, took the lead. Verka was confident in his ability to protect the leader from afar, so he stayed with the expedition.
The shelves turned into a boundary wall on the other side, and it was a war-torn wasteland beyond. Only ashen dunes were visible in the distance, and the bright energy was leaking from the Tomb.
"It's so vast..." Fiya whispered in awe.
They heard the gate behind them close. Before they could be concerned about it, a voice greeted them.
"'Been waiting for a long time."
Liesel's head snapped back toward the storm.
In it, she could make out the form of a man.
An Ascendant Demon?