And (N)one Shall Remain

“Nali! Help me out already! This one is tough!” yelled Tiesya as she parried and deflected the spear-like limbs of the [Arachnoid Impaler Lvl 35] with the pair of machetes she held in her hands. The fighting style she earned – one imparted to her upon changing to her second tier class via a passive skill – relied heavily on a tight defense paired with vicious counterattacks, so it was not ideal for use with the rather short machetes she had.

 

It was all they had in hand though, and Tiesya already received the best pair of the longer blades they had.

 

The group had miraculously avoided any loss of life so far, roughly halfway into their long journey through the deeper areas of the forest. Of course, part of it was thanks to Esperanza’s dogs warning her of the territories of beasts far beyond their ability to handle, thus allowing them to avoid the worst. Legisvula helping out with the scouting also helped, as it gave the group another pair of keen eyes, and apparently helped the young Tesh’ka child gain experience for his class too, in the process.

 

Their latest detour – to avoid the territory of a massive beast that almost had Esperanza exclaiming “Dinosaur” on seeing it, though it was rather different after a closer look, almost like someone mixed up parts from various dinosaurs and then doubled it in size – was unfortunately a choice between a rock and a hard place. 

 

The beast Esperanza saw far in the depth of the forest was at least level 70 if not 80, way beyond their ability to handle, but on the other hand, the only detour available to them cut through the outskirts of a natural dungeon full of arachnoid monsters. In the end, the children voted to cut through the dungeon’s outskirts rather than add another week to their travel time by skirting around it.

 

Fortunately for them, while the arachnoid beasts that inhabit the dungeon area ranged from the high 20s to the low 40s in level – at least in the outskirts, as Esperanza thought that given the location of the dungeon, there were likely beasts in their 50s and 60s deeper in the dungeon itself – it was rare to spot them in large groups. Most of the time, the beasts came at them singly, or in twos or threes, which made them easy to handle.

 

As for their current situation, it was due to an encounter with no less than seven of the beasts at once, three of which were in their high 40s. Esperanza and her dogs kept those three occupied, as well as one other level 42 monster, but the other three beasts were left for the children to tackle on their own.

 

Thanks to the “training” they had gone through, though, many of the children who had reached their second tier earlier had already gained quite a few levels in their new classes, which meant more skills and stats for them to use. Those enabled them to hold their ground as they worked together against the three arachnoid beasts that outleveled them.

 

As one of the two highest leveled of the children, Tiesya kept one of the beasts busy by herself. Her skills were heavy on the defensive side, which allowed her to at least keep the beast occupied and focused on her instead of attacking the others. Even so, it was difficult to fight against the higher leveled beast, and she was getting pushed back, little by little.

 

The [Arachnoid Impaler] she faced was an rather insectoid-looking beast, with a hairy, bulbous lower torso suspended from eight similarly hairy legs. The slimmer upper torso that jutted out from the front end of its lower torso was slightly raised as an angle, with four more limbs jutting out from its side. In the case of the beast that Tiesya faced, those limbs tapered down to chitinous spears at their final segment which the beast used as weapons.

 

Despite the creature’s fearsome eight-eyed face and its wicked mandibles dripping with ichor, it was more content to engage from as far as its long spear-tipped limbs could reach, which places Tiesya in her current predicament. Her weapons were far too short to reach the beast’s torso, and when she tried to chop at the spear-limbs, she found them to be ridiculously sturdy, her strike only leaving some white scuff marks on the beast’s carapace.

 

Resitia, Val-Kas’j, and Ilavakide were tackling another of the beasts, hoping for a quick kill so they could help the others, while the rest of the now-matured children, with Eda-Zil and Kvar-Litu helping out, were tackling the last one together. It was still a difficult fight, even with all of them fighting together, due to the disparity in levels.

 

Esperanza’s new skills, which she gained during their journey, helped a bit, as one of the skills increased the stats of some of the children, while the other reduced that of their enemies, but even so, it remained a hard fight.

 

Eventually, around a minute after Tiesya called for help, during which time she took another couple of glancing blows, help came for her. It was not Nalihimatu’s group, but came in the form of Val-Kas’j and Ilavakida arriving to help her instead. They had finished off their beast first, as they had planned. Resitia must have gone to help Nalihiamatu’s group instead.

 

The moment they arrived, Val-Kas’j hurled a spear that pierced into the [Arachnoid Impaler]’s bulbous lower torso, and even as the beast screeched in pain, Ilavakide loosed an arrow that pierced through one of its eight eyes and out from the back of its head. 

 

Unfortunately, it was far from enough to kill the beast. 

 

Even so, their efforts allowed Tiesya a breather and an opportunity, as one of the beast’s four spear-arms missed due to the sudden loss of sight. She daringly used the machete in her left hand to make the beast’s two left-side arms collide against each other, narrowly avoiding the remaining right-side arm as she dived in close to the beast.

 

Then the machete in her right hand flashed towards the joins between the beast’s head and its torso.

 

Despite Tiesya’s best effort to make the strike with as much power as she could, she lacked the strength to decapitate the beast, and her blade was stuck around a third of the way into the joint. Fortunately, before the beast could twist around and sink its wide open mandibles into her flesh, another blow came from the other side.

 

Ilavakide shot another arrow that went through the center of the beast’s mouth and made it pause its movements for a brief moment, before Val-Kas’j leapt in and chopped the rest of the way through the joint with an axe, decapitating the [Arachnoid Impaler] and finally ending the beast’s life. Like Tiesya, he had several cuts and injuries on his body, but none that prevented him from fighting more, it seemed.

 

Both of the youths – they had been young children just weeks before, forced to mature before their time – nodded silently at each other as they left the beast’s corpse and headed for the last of the creatures, an [Arachnoid Scyther Lvl33], which fought the rest of their group. That variant of the beast had only two limbs extending from its upper torso, but they were longer, more flexible, and ended on wicked-looking serrated scythe blades.

 

Fortunately, between Nalihimatu actively covering the rest of the group with his shield and Mel-Ivas healing the injured, they managed to contain the beast for the most part. From time to time, shards of ice would fly out towards the creature’s eyes, courtesy of Dai’vasy, the child who woke up to the arcane powers on her class change. 

 

When the three joined in the fight, it was soon over, as Tiesya kept one of the beast’s scythe-arms trapped while Val-Kas’j severed another, which created an opening Resitia immediately plunged into, driving her spear straight through the center of the creature’s upper torso. The blow itself had not killed the beast yet, but it damaged the main nerve cluster which controlled its movements, which rendered it easy pickings for the children.

 

Meanwhile, as the children finished off the beasts they fought, Esperanza, Dali, and Gordy were entangled with another four some distance away. She had already made use of her new skills, [A Lending of Power], which allowed her to boost the strongest stats of up to five individuals for a decent while – she had boosted herself, Tiesya, Val-Kas’j, Dali, and Gordy, the last two specifically because the skill’s effects were doubled when used on her companions – as well as [Deprive the Wicked], which allowed her to lower the highest stat of enemies within a certain area. 

 

She had been fortunate enough to catch six of the seven beasts in its effects, which helped with the fight.

 

As for her opponents, the [Arachnoid Pulverizer Lvl48] that Dali fought against was clearly on its last legs, with all but one of its bludgeon-arms already torn off, as well as half of its legs gone. On the other side, Gordy had just barreled over and started to tear the [Arachnoid Trapper Lvl46] into pieces. Esperanza had been most worried of that one, as it was capable of slinging sticky webs that could easily entrap them, but Gordy had enough brute force to simply tear through its webs and take it down without too much difficulty.

 

On her own side, she had already taken down the [Arachnoid Ranger Lvl 43], its upper torso torn apart once she caught up to it. Still, the beast had distracted her quite a bit and managed to land several of the spiny projectiles it somehow shot out of its “arms” by spasming its muscles. Fortunately Esperanza had no such thing as a vital organ and could care less about such injuries.

 

The highest level of the beasts, an [Arachnoid Fledgling Queen Lvl49], was the last one that still struggled, its six insectile wings fluttering as it moved swiftly – especially for a creature its size – around the canopy while blasting magic attacks at her. Esperanza had singled out those two beasts for herself partly because of their mobility. The two beasts were ranged fighters and very agile, with the queen being a flier, so she was the best one to take them on given how she could make use of her shapeshifting to catch up with them in the canopies.

 

Unlike the [Arachnoid Fledgling Queen]’s true flight, Esperanza used a much less elegant approach to mobility, as she simply elongated and hurled one of her limbs towards a branch in the right direction and pulled herself that way. Even so, that allowed her to move at a faster pace than her opponent, if not with anywhere near as much agility. 

 

Still, in the end, all it took was for the [Arachnoid Fledgling Queen] to make a mistake, its blades of wind mostly a non-threat against Esperanza’s hardened body, and the fight was as good as over. In its haste to keep the distance open from her, the [Arachnoid Fledgling Queen] took a wrong turn and almost collided against a tree, which caused it to halt for a brief moment in mid-air.

 

Before it could gather enough speed to move away, however, Esperanza has spread her form into a net-like shape and hurled herself right at the [Arachnoid Fledgling Queen], wrapping around the hapless creature much like a constrictor snake around its prey. At that distance, rather than try to form bladed limbs and maneuver for a strike, Esperanza chose a simpler solution as she simply changed her form into something resembling an octopus crossed with a large snake, wrapped around her hapless opponent even as they tumbled down towards the forest floor.

The fall had not done much damage to either of them, but what Esperanza did next sealed the fate of the [Arachnoid Fledgling Queen]. She simply tightened her grip all around her opponent and squeezed with all the strength she could muster, until the insectile monster’s carapace broke apart and its innards were mashed and squeezed out of its body like toothpaste.