Chapter 101 Dungeon Core

[You have killed Dark Abyss Spider Queen, Acromantula! You have leveled up!]

[You have leveled up!]

[You have leveled up!]

...

Leon pulled out his spear from the corpse of the spider queen, letting her slightly burned body drop down to the ground below. His gaze followed her body as she dropped down to the battleground below, buried immediately in the mass of moving bodies.

After a moment, he let himself fall down from the rock his was hanging on, smoothly gulping down a vial of mana recovery potion.

Boom!

With gravity magic fueling his descent, Leon's landing was nothing short of meteoric!

A wave of fire split open the cloud of dust that had risen at his descent, turning into a massive tornado of fire that devoured all the spiders that it touched.

"Burn!" Leon laughed as he conjured two more tornadoes to wreak havoc within the spider ranks.

Boom! Boooom!

It was as if the heavens were falling as all sorts of spells decimated the living spiders. Leon looked around and spotted the massive corpses of two house-sized spiders. The remaining three were being taken on by Nedra, Grokus, and Nero, while Kaladin handled the smaller mobs together with the millipede army.

Nedra's size had ballooned to rival that of the spiders, and she was battling one of them alone. Her long, many-legged body battled the eight legged freak, stabbing and prodding at it as she constantly danced circles around it. The spider hissed and shot beams of gray-green light at her, causing parts of her exoskeleton to look dry and pale, but she quickly recovered, peppering the spider with mental attacks and stabbing it all over.

At one point, her head shot forward, and she clamped her mandibles around one of the spider's legs, snapping it in half, and temporarily throwing its large frame off balance. That opening gave her the chance to sink a couple of her front legs into the spider's giant abdomen, causing serious internal damage to it. Screeching, the spider spat out a toxic web from its abdomen that stuck to Nedra's body, burning into it and releasing a sort of toxic gas.

After seeing the various abilities that he had to watch out for, Leon made his move. He had seen the spider queen use a few of those abilities during their fight, but after seeing them being used by these giant spiders, he could easily tell that the strength of the abilities were much weaker than that displayed by their queen, Acromantula.

Thud thud thud!

Leon's firm and heavy footfalls reached Nero's sharp ears a moment before his master appeared above him, flying over his head, and slamming his spear tip-first into the face of the spider.

SCREEEEECH!

The pained wails of the spider grated on Nero's hearing as Leon literally dug into the spider's body. Mere seconds after Leon appeared, the head of the spider fell to the ground, revealing Leon in his full glory, covered in the gore of the dead spider, his aura sharp and threatening.

Without pausing for a second, Leon sprinted away, using the collapsing bulk of the dead spider as a springboard to propel himself in the direction of the spider Grokus was fighting.

Boom!

Surprise washed through Grokus when the spider he was fighting suddenly staggered to the side, losing its balance. A copious amount of blood flowed freely from its side and onto the ground and it screeched to the high heavens, turning its focus from him to whatever it was that had dug into its abdomen. Its spindly legs stabbed into its own body as it tried to free itself from that burning pain that was digging deeper into its body.

Gurgh!

A strange sound burst out of the spider's maw, followed by a dark shadow tearing through its head and landed a foot away from Grokus, eyes glowing brightly with mana, and aura strong and hateful.

Leon turned to the location of the last spider, only to find Nedra biting off its head and flinging it away. Since the big ones had been taken care of, he turned to the weaker spiders instead.

"Kill them all!" He ordered, raising the five giant spiders from the dead. Massive tornadoes of black mana consumed their bodies and the bodies of all the other spiders close to them, raising them up as new, loyal summons. They immediately carried out their new mater's order, turning against their kin and killing them swiftly.

Thick gray-green beams of light scoured the earth of life, inflicting rot onto the living spiders. The bodies of the spiders hit by the beam quickly decayed, leaving only the shiny, gem-like cores on the ground.

The minutes ticked by, and just over ten minutes later, the last spider fell to the ground, sliced in two by Nero's sword.

Leon walked past Nero and made his way to the wall at the far end of the cavern. As they fought, they had pushed their way inwards, and now, Leon could see the wall quite clearly. He could also clearly see the white portal that swirled and pulsed with mana.

He felt a subtle pull on his core that was vaguely familiar, but he was not able to pinpoint where he remembered it from. It was something very subtle, and on a normal day, he would not have felt it. But right now, he was actually feeling quite stuff, a sign of being ready to undergo his next Race Advancement.

As if a light bulb came up in his mind, he realized what that pull was.

'A catalyst?' He wondered. That was the only reasonable answer he could think of at all.

When he realized this, Leon stopped walking and turned around. He took in his large army, happy with the gains he had made from this trip. The only sad part about this was the fact that he would not be able to take away all of the souls he had raised in this battle, as his Spirit Storage did not contain enough space.