361 Chapter 361: Spiders and Dragon

The outgrowth of wood knocked the Arachne onto its back and it struggled to scramble away, but an astronomical amount of razor leaves poured down upon the poor creature, slicing it up. Incredibly, it survived the onslaught, with ichor leaking out from multiple wounds.

Green Dragon didn't care. Rearing up, his mouth glittered as he gathered energy from the sun. Being Aurora City, the sun wasn't as bright or intense as it would be in tropical countries, but it was more than enough to power his next spell.

Instinctively sensing the danger, the Arachne let out a shrill screech as it tried to retreat. Its subversient Trites hurled themselves suicidically at Green Dragon in a desperate attempt to protech their monarch, but plants and leaves that sprouted from the ground batted them aside almost casually, disintegrating them from the sheer force. Considering that a Trite died to just a single punch from a normal human Marine, or a whack from a torchlight before the BFG Edition made the duct tape mod official and canon was more than enough to slay it, that wasn't surprising. I was more impressed by the tiny creatures' single-minded loyalty to their queen.

Shrieking, the Arachne flung itself at Green Dragon, all of its eight legs flaring up to slice a path through the thick foliage that had blossomed protectively around my Celestial Guardian. However, I intervened, jumping between the Fiend and my Constellation spirit. Striking with my two swords, I forced the Arachne to parry and defend, and though she nearly overwhelmed me with her eight legs that assailed me almost simultaneously, I unleashed the spells that I had been casting so far.

Black and white mana blasted the Arachne back, hurling the fairly huge creature back several meters. The Arachne landed messily, in an undignified heap. Before it could get up, Green Dragon finished casting his Solar Beam attack and unleashed a brilliant beam of blinding golden energy that seared across the air to disintegrate it.

Credit to the Arachne, it was able to throw up a wall of webbing to protect itself. Unfortunately, the web barrier wasn't durable enough. Even though a spider thread was stronger than a steel wire of the same thickness, the devastating firepower of Green Dragon's Solar Beam spell was able to obliterate it all the same. The golden beam smashed through the web before engulfing the screaming Arachne, disintegrating it.

I winced as I heard it die. Its death cries were so tragically…human-like. Turning away from the disintegrating Arachne, I swung my swords and wiped out another horde of Trites. To my surprise, I noticed that the little monsters had become incohesive, their movements sluggish and hesitant, upon the demise of their queen.

"So that's how it is…" I wasn't sure how to describe it, but evidently the Arachnes controlled the Trites like a queen, so they subscribed to the hive mind mentality or something like that. Well, a good analogy would be the synapse creatures of the ravenous Tyranids – the Arachnes were the psychic commanders, the synapse creatures that served as a conduit through which the Hive Mind controlled the lesser beings such as the Trites. With the Arachnes still alive, the Trites would be immune to Morale and essentially Fearless, but once the synapse creatures were taken out, the lesser bugs would revert back to Instinctive Behavior and be vulnerable to casualties caused by Morale. "We need to prioritize eliminating the Arachnes first."

"Great job, kid!" Redfield shouted as he jumped back, defending against another Arachne with his flaming spear. My Green Dragon lumbered forward and swiped at the offending Arachne, breaking its assault and allowing the red-haired mercenary a breather. He withdrew and nodded at me, then took in my Celestial Guardian. "You finally called in one of your big guns."

Then he blinked, and studied my Green Dragon with a frown for a few seconds before snapping his fingers, as if he had just received an epiphany.

"I have an idea! Richard, can you keep these bitches off my back for a minute or two?"

"I'll wipe that Arachne and its attendant Trites out in a minute or two," I replied somewhat confidently. "If that's what you need me to do."

"No, I mean, well, that would be great, but I have a better idea. If all goes well, you'll be able to exterminate the entire horde, not just a single Arachne. That spell of your dragon's from earlier, it seems like it's powered by the sun?"

"That's right," I affirmed. Solar Beam required the caster to gather sunlight for a turn before he can unleash it the next turn. He can skip that first turn of accumulating sunlight if he was fighting in a battlefield with harsh sunlight, but the power of Solar Beam would be halved when it was raining.

Fortunately, it was currently not snowing in Aurora Forest, or I would be screwed. Just because it was subzero temperatures didn't mean the sun wasn't out. That was quite the misconception many people who didn't live in countries with the four seasons had of winter. Just because it was winter didn't mean it snowed everyday. There would still be days with relatively bright sunlight, just that it wouldn't be as bright and intense as during the summer.

"Good. Give me a minute."

"Okay." I stepped in with Green Dragon, warding off the Arachne. This time, I summoned Aquila to help me, the giant eagle soaring through the air before cartwheeling about and unleashing Altair to raze the ground of Trites. It was almost as if he was dropping a cluster of firebombs, incinerating large swathes of the tiny spider monsters. Even the Arachne was forced to back off and weave a wall of web or get obliterated along with its little minions.

As Aquila soared away to do another pass, the Arachne emerged from under its cover to strike at me, but I easily parried its legs with both my swords. The petals that trailed my blades sliced into its sickly flesh, causing it to hiss in pain.

Snarling, the Arachne tried to slash me, but I ducked and rolled under its multiple limbs before thrusting Hei Yue at its black, bloated abdomen. Leaving a thick scar across the bulbous body, I then parried a reflexive retaliation from one of my target's legs with Bai Ri and allowed my momentum to throw me to safety.

Taking a deep breath, I then dropped under a thread of web that was meant for my face – probably to seal my mouth and nose in order to suffocate me – and unleashed twin waves of black and white mana that sent the Arachne staggering. More of the Trites scrambled to protect their queen and attack me, but I blew them off with a storm of vividly colored petals, slicing them into nothingness or bursts of acidic blood.

"Huff…"

Pausing to catch my breath, I watched my formidable foe warily. Despite emerging from the battle with its brethren relatively unscathed, I knew I couldn't afford to underestimate it. The venom dripping from its mandibles was worrying. Even though I was supposedly immune to poison, I still had no intention of allowing myself to get bitten by that thing.

The Arachne lunged at me again. Before it could reach me, Green Dragon swatted it away, almost eviscerating the hideous monster with his claws. The Arachne wailed as it crashed a few meters away, but before it could recover, Green Dragon drowned it in a blizzard of razor-sharp petals. The Arachne rolled to its legs and shot a wall of web, but the petals easily sliced through the thick strands – more from absorbing the mana from the threads rather than because they were sharp enough to cut through the physically strong webbing.

While the Arachne flailed about, I caught sight of another Arachne breaking free from the cordon that the mercenaries had created, lunging straight at one of the other Silver Wolves to behead him. Reaching out to Aquila telepathically, I directed his Altair spell at the screeching monstrosity. The blast caught the woman-spider monster by the side, sending it crashing a few meters away from the stunned mercenary.

"Thanks!" he called out to me, and then proceeded to finish off the Arachne. Not an easy job, as he found out later, when the creature thrust its leg upward to force him back. While he blocked it with his axe, he found himself swarmed by hundreds of Trites. With a roar, he swung his axe down and unleashed a destructive wave that cleaved through the tiny monsters and almost took a leg off the scuttling Arachne that had sought to slay him.

In front of me, the Arachne that was formerly Redfield's opponent managed to break free of Green Dragon's grasp by trying to sink its venomous mandibles into his paw. Instinctively withdrawing to prevent getting hit by a lethal attack, Green Dragon sent another storm of petals at the Arachne, but it sliced through them. The black petals burst apart into more, tinier black petals and cut through flesh, but the Arachne remained standing despite bleeding from multiple places. Vines whipped out to coil around its limbs, but the creature spat out venomous acid to corrode the entire thing before breaking free of its restraints.

"Green Dragon!" I called out, mentally willing him to retreat while I brought out Cetus. The entire place was covered in ice, which froze even the webbing. The Arachne shattered the block of ice that encased most of its body, but Cetus slammed into it, knocking it over, and then soared away before the Arachne could retaliate with a bite. The Trites, on the other hand, were not as lucky. A huge bulk of the swarm had been frozen solid by Cetus's spell.

"All right, kid, I'm done!"

I turned back to Redfield, surprised. I had almost forgotten that I was covering for him. He nodded at me and then raised his spear to point it at the sky.

"Sunny Day!"

"?!"

The sunlight immediately became a lot more intense, shining brightly and become exponentially harsher. I felt the dry heat crawl over me, baking the snow and causing it to melt. The Arachnes and Trites all looked up, astonished by the sudden change in weather. Being spiders, though, they didn't seem to care about the heat. In actual fact, they seemed to revel in the increase in temperature. If I didn't know better, I could have sworn they were smiling.

"What are you waiting for, kid?!"

At Redfield's hollering, I suddenly understood what it was that he wanted me to do. Recalling Cetus, I mentally urged Green Dragon onward. With the sun shining so brightly over the clearing, there was only one thing to do.

"Green Dragon, Solar Beam attack!"

This time, Green Dragon didn't need to spend precious moments collecting sunlight for his spell. His maw yawned open and a stream of golden destructive energy blasted out, scorching across the warming clearing and disintegrating hordes of Trites. Even as the golden beam lanced toward the Arachne, the whole swarm of woman-spider queens leaped back as one, and instantly wove a gigantic wall of web to defend themselves.

"Oh no, you don't!"

Bouncing his spear in his hand, Redfield then threw it. The spear combusted into flames as it flew, and I realized that the fire spell that enchanted it had been tremendously boosted by the harsh sunlight that was currently shining upon us.

The blazing spear struck the wall of web before the Solar Beam could reach the white barrier, igniting it and incinerating the defense immediately. Even though the webbing was not very flammable and didn't catch fire so easily, it still melted and disintegrated from the raging inferno that blazed once before extinguishing.

That was more than enough. The wall of durable web that served as their supposedly impenetrable defense was down.

Green Dragon's Solar Beam lanced through the dissolving webbing that shriveled and blackened from the heat and caught one of the Arachnes, disintegrating it utterly. Still drinking in the sunlight from above, the immense Celestial Guardian swept his head from side to side, his serpentine neck twisting as he bathed the entire clearing in devastating golden energies. The Arachnes tried to scramble to safety, but they found themselves herded by the Silver Wolves, who cast spells to force them back into their positions and cut off their retreat.

Consequently, the Solar Beam disintegrated one Arachne after another, sweeping across the entire line of woman-spider monstrosities and annihilating the swarm in less than a minute. By the time Green Dragon closed his jaws and straightened up, visibly taking a breather, the clearing was scoured clean of monsters.

"Good job, kid." Feng Hai placed a hand on my shoulder. I nodded as I dropped to my knees wearily, feeling exhausted from casting such a high-level, advanced spell. Even though most of the energy expenditure relied on sunlight, I still needed to spend a significant amount of mana to cast the spell in the first place. Green Dragon's mana reserves were taken directly from mine, so whenever he exhausted his own individual pool of mana – which was a very quick process – he would begin siphoning mana from me instead. That was true for all of my Celestial Guardianns and Constellation spirits. "You did well."

"Ana," I muttered. "She's still…"

"Don't worry, I have her." Glacia was already proceeding toward the cocoon where Anastasia was held in, but keeping her distance. "This amount of poison…"

"We just barely made it in time," Feng Hai muttered with a shake of his head. "Just barely. A few more minutes and she might erupt. Stay some distance away from her before you cast your stasis spell. I don't want to sacrifice you."

"Roger that."

"I'll get rid of the webbing." Captain Brent strode forward and swung his staff. The entire webbing was broken apart by a violent gust of wind.

As the broken strands of spider silk fell away, Anastasia was revealed, lying on the ground. Her body was glowing a sickly green, the flunctuations of her mana incredibly unstable. It was clear that she was doing her best to suppress the venomous mana that was threatening to burst out of her body, which would render her surroundings into a toxic wasteland if they were released unrestrainedly.

However, Glacia couldn't get too close. The immediate vicinity around Anastasia was saturated with so much toxins that it would be difficult for her to move near her without suffering some awful affliction. Even so, she couldn't abandon a comrade, so she took another step closer.

Feng Hai stopped her by placing a hand on her shoulder. Shaking his head, he gestured for her to begin.

"You can cast the spell from here, and then slowly approach once Ana's condition is stabilized."

"Understood."

Taking a deep breath, Glacia steeled herself and began casting her stasis spell.