Chapter 447: Spider’s Lair [III]

An apocalyptic torrent of pure blinding white holy fire erupted from Aurelia’s hand, roaring into the tunnels like a sentient living dragon of incandescent light!

The white flames did not spread like ordinary fire.

They possessed a unique intelligence of their own, violently splitting into dozens of surging serpentine branches that swept through every side tunnel, crawled up the twenty-foot cavern walls, and poured into every single hidden ceiling fissure with terrifying speed.

SKREEEEEEEEEEEEE! HISS! SQUELCH! CRACKLE!

Deafening agonizing shrieks of burning arachnids echoed through the subterranean rock.

WHOOSH!

The superheated holy fire incinerated sticky web traps into vapor in a fraction of a millisecond, melting stone-plated Armorpiders and scouting spiders alike into smoldering ash before the beasts could even unhinge their fangs.

The white flames carved an unbroken path of utter purification through the labyrinthine tunnels, illuminating the dark stone in a blinding daytime glow.

Silas stood at the cavern entrance, his perception tracking the sweeping purge.

One by one, the dozens of scuttling arachnid mana signatures clinging to the tunnel walls violently blinked out of existence.

Within ten seconds, the entire upper and middle sectors of the cavern were rendered completely devoid of life.

Except for one massive pressurized mana signature resting at the bottom of the lowest subterranean cavern.

The Spider Queen...

The white flames gently subsided, retreating back into Aurelia’s palm and dissolving into harmless, glowing embers that danced upon the cool breeze.

Aurelia lowered her hand, turning back toward Silas with a slight breathless flush dusting her porcelain cheekbones.

"The path is cleared, my Lord," Aurelia reported softly, her head bowed in quiet reverence.

Silas stared at her, his blue eyes wide with unreserved admiration.

He let out a low, appreciative whistle, stepping forward and clapping a hand gently on her shoulder armor.

"That was incredible, Aurelia," Silas praised warmly, a wide, radiant smile lighting up his face. "A single spell wiped out the entire upper labyrinth without leaving a single trap intact... You’re a powerhouse on your own huh?"

Aurelia’s breath caught in her throat.

The praise hit her straight in the chest, and a deep brilliant crimson blush rushed across her cheeks.

She quickly looked down at her boots as a small thoroughly flustered smile touching her lips. "I... I merely did what was necessary to serve you, Lord Silas."

"Alright, Squad One!" Silas announced, drawing his golden-runed sword with a smooth metallic ring. "Formation alpha! We’re heading down to finish the job!"

"Move out!" Helen commanded, leading the fifteen recruits as they stepped into the cavern.

Silas walked at the front of the column, his golden sword glowing with a soft steady radiance that illuminated the dark stone.

Valkyrie padded silently at his right flank, her golden eyes sharp and alert, while the Princess walked closely on his left, her hands hovering nervously over her void-iron dagger.

As the squad advanced through the wide tunnels, the recruit maidens looked around in open-mouthed awe.

The cavern walls were scorched clean, free of the suffocating, sticky webbing that had covered them moments prior.

The leather soles of their Blessed Land scout boots effortlessly absorbed the residual heat radiating from the polished granite floorboards, keeping their footing completely cool and steady.

Piles of calcified smoldering gray ash were all that remained of the dozens of Armorpiders that had attempted to set up ceiling ambushes.

As they rounded a wide descending bend in the stone corridor, a wet rustling sound reached Silas’s ears.

SKLICK... SKLICK!

Lying near the base of a jagged stalagmite was a single, lone Armorpider.

The beast was heavily scorched, its stone-like carapace cracked and smoking, with four of its eight legs incinerated by the holy flames.

It dragged its broken, twitching body weakly across the gravel, hissing weakly with its remaining fangs as it tried to crawl toward a dark crevice.

Silas paused, glancing down at the Princess.

He noticed the way the blue-haired royal woman’s azure eyes were locked onto the struggling beast.

Her fingers were trembling slightly against her weapon hilt, but beneath the fear, that same fierce hungry spark of combat ambition was burning bright in her gaze.

Silas leaned down slightly, whispering with a gentle encouraging smirk.

"Hey, Princess. Look right there."

The Princess blinked, looking up at him. "L-Lord Silas?"

"You’ve been wanting your first official kill all morning, haven’t you?" Silas gestured toward the crippled spider with the tip of his blade. "That one’s barely clinging to life. Its armor is completely shattered, and it can’t jump. Go on... Finish it..."

The Princess’s heart hammered against her ribs like a war drum.

She looked at the twitching monster, then looked back at Silas’s calm supportive smile.

"I... I can do this," she whispered to herself, setting her jaw with fierce determination.

She reached down, firmly gripping the leather hilt of her six-inch void-iron utility dagger, and drew the blade from her thigh sheath with a crisp shik.

Setting her boots firmly against the gravel, the Princess stepped forward.

"Yield before the judgment of Blessed Land, foul arachnid!" she proclaimed, her voice wavering slightly with adrenaline before steadying.

The crippled Armorpider turned its remaining two multi-faceted red eyes toward her, opening its venomous mandibles to release a weak, sputtering hiss.

"Chaaa!"

The Princess flinched slightly as a droplet of green bile splashed onto the stone near her boot, but she did not fall backward this time.

She lowered her center of gravity, planting her left foot firmly on the gravel just as Silas had instructed earlier.

’I WANT...’

She lunged forward with both hands on the dagger hilt, driving the void-iron point straight into the deep, glowing fracture that Aurelia’s holy fire had blasted across the center of the beast’s carapace.

’MY FIRST KILL DAMMIT!’

CRUNCH!

The blade pierced through the cracked stone plate, sinking deep into the monster’s vital core!

The Armorpider shrieked, thrashing its remaining legs violently against the ground with the impact jarring the Princess’s wrists.

"DIE!" the Princess grunted, gritting her teeth and putting her entire body weight into the hilt, twisting the blade forty-five degrees to shred the internal hemolymph vessels.

SPLAT-SQUELCH!

With a final shuddering gasp, the Armorpider’s remaining legs went completely limp, collapsing flat against the gravel as its red eyes dimmed into lifeless black.

PANT... PANT... PANT!

The Princess stood over the slain beast, her hands still clutching the embedded dagger as her chest heaved in rapid shallow breaths.

She slowly pulled the blade free, wiping a speck of black monster fluid from the metal before looking down at her hands in pure, disbelieving shock.

"I... I did it..." the Princess breathed, a wide ecstatic smile breaking across her face. "I killed it! Lord Silas! I secured my first official monster kill!"

"Outstanding work, Princess," Silas laughed warmly, giving her an approving thumbs-up. "Clean strike, great balance, and you didn’t tumble onto your rear. You’re officially a warrior now."

The Princess beamed, standing tall with her chest puffed out in immense royal pride as she sheathed her dagger with a triumphant flourish.

"Let’s keep moving," Silas commanded, leading the squad further down the descending corridor.

A few minutes later, the tunnel opened up into a massive cavernous drop-off.

Directly in the center of the rock floor was a wide circular chasm stretching nearly forty feet across, descending twenty feet into a brightly illuminated lower subterranean chamber.

The walls of the chasm were smooth, completely stripped of webs... and right at the lip of the drop-off, the scorched marks of Aurelia’s Argent Flames came to a clean sudden halt.

Silas stopped at the edge of the pit, looking down, then turned his gaze toward Aurelia.

Aurelia noticed his gaze and immediately stiffened, her golden-amber eyes flickering with sudden nervous apprehension.

’Did I overstep...?’ Aurelia worried internally, her fingers tightening slightly against her scabbard. ’Did I halt the flames too early? Is he displeased that I did not scorch the entire cavern down to bedrock...?’

On the contrary, Silas’s face broke into a wide delighted grin.

’She stopped the inferno right at the threshold of the lower nesting chamber,’ Silas thought with glowing satisfaction. ’Which means the concentrated heat didn’t reach the nursery! The eggs are completely intact!’

"Brilliant restraint, Aurelia," Silas praised, turning to the squad. "Everyone down into the lower chamber! Mind your landing!"

Without waiting for a rope or ladder, Silas took a single step forward and leaped straight down into the twenty-foot pit!

"Lord Silas?!" Helen and several recruits gasped in shock, rushing to the edge.

THUD!

Silas landed effortlessly on his boots, his Gold Core mana cushioning the impact into a harmless puff of dust.

Aurelia didn’t hesitate.

With a graceful, athletic vault, she leaped onto the back of Valkyrie’s saddle, reaching down and easily scooping the Princess up by her waist to sit before her.

"Hold tightly, Princess," Aurelia instructed calmly.

Valkyrie let out a fierce eager bark, leaping over the edge of the chasm with power.

The Blessed wolf descended through the air like a silver comet, landing firmly on all four paws beside Silas with a low rumbling thud that barely shook the saddle.

Moments later, the fifteen recruit maidens used their spear shafts and ledge grips to drop down into the chamber in crisp rapid succession, immediately fanning out into a wide defensive semi-circle.

The sight that greeted them in the lower cavern took their breath away.

The subterranean chamber was vast and vaulted, stretching nearly a hundred yards in every direction.

The walls were formed from glowing, translucent amethyst crystals that cast a soft ethereal purple light across the cavern floor.

Resting right in the center of the chamber was a colossal and intricately woven nest constructed from thousands of shimmering silver alchemical silk threads that pulsed with rich concentrated cosmic mana.

And inside that nest rested six massive, two-foot-wide, crystalline royal spider eggs that glowed with a mesmerizing, iridescent rainbow luminescence.

SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

A deafening ground-shaking screech tore through the chamber, shattering several protruding crystal clusters from the ceiling!

Standing directly in front of the silk nest, shielding her royal clutch with her colossal frame, was the mother.

[Target Analyzed: Broodmother Spider Queen (Tier 3 - Boss)]

The Spider Queen was a towering, nightmarish leviathan of war.

Her colossal obsidian-plated carapace stood over eighteen feet tall and forty feet wide, covered in thick, razor-sharp bone spikes that jutted from every joint.

Her eight massive, trunk-like legs ended in jagged scythe-like claws of solid abyssal iron that gouged deep furrows into the granite floor with every twitch.

Her eight multi-faceted crimson eyes blazed with berserk fury, and her massive dripping mandibles snapped together with the deafening sound of a hydraulic industrial guillotine.

CLACK! CLACK! CLACK!

A suffocating bone-crushing aura of Tier-3 Boss pressure washed over the room, violently blowing the recruit maidens’ hair back and forcing them to brace their boots against the stone.

"B-Boss monster...!" Helen stammered, raising her spear with trembling arms. "It’s massive!"

Silas stepped forward, entirely alone, stopping twenty paces before the eighteen-foot arachnid titan.

A slow satisfied smile spread across his handsome face.

"A chance for retribution," Silas whispered, his blue eyes igniting with incandescent gold.

"SKREEEEE-CHAAAAAA!"

Enraged by the man’s insolence, the Broodmother Spider Queen launched herself forward with apocalyptic speed.

Her multi-ton frame blurred into a terrifying streak of black and crimson, all eight scythe-legs driving downward like a falling forest of iron spears aimed straight at Silas’s head.

"LORD SILAS! MOVE!" several recruit maidens screamed in desperate terror, lunging forward to try and reach him.

Silas did not move a single millimeter.

He simply stood his ground, holding his golden-runed longsword loosely in his right hand.

VUUUUUUM... BOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

In less than a fraction of a second, a catastrophic burst of superheated red-gold flame erupted from Silas’s core.

The overwhelming thermal radiation detonated outward in a violent blinding gale that blew the recruits’ hair wildly across their faces, forcing every single woman... including the Princess to shield their eyes with their forearms as the entire chamber turned into a blinding scorching whiteout of heat.

For one breathless heartbeat, the world was consumed by fire then, the gale abruptly ceased.

FWHUUUUUSH.

The superheated air cleared, and the recruit maidens slowly lowered their arms, blinking away the bright spots in their vision.

Every single maiden in the room let out a loud and completely stunned gasp.

"Huh...?"

Lying flat across the scorched cavern floor, barely three inches before Silas’s motionless boots, was the Broodmother Spider Queen.

The eighteen-foot Boss monster was completely dead.

Its eight massive, iron-scythe legs had been sheared off at the joints with precision, lying scattered across the stone like severed timber.

Its colossal bone-plated cranium had been split cleanly in two from the center of its mandibles straight through its cerebral core, black hemolymph sizzling against the scorched rock.

Silas stood tall above the carcass with his sword already resting casually at his side and his breath completely even and calm.

The recruit maidens stood frozen, their jaws hanging slack in pure disbelief.

"W-What just happened...?" Helen whispered, clutching her spear with trembling fingers. "Did... did anyone see him swing?!"

"I didn’t see anything..." Sarah muttered in dazed awe. "There was just a flash of red fire... and then the Boss was dead on the ground!"

Standing beside Valkyrie, Aurelia’s golden-amber eyes trembled with overwhelming shock.

’I saw it...’ Aurelia thought, her breath catching in her throat as a shiver of reverence ran down her spine.