[Chapter 27. From the Shadows]

  The following tunnels were no different from the last dark, moist, and suffocatingly thick with webs. Spiders of every size clung to the walls and ceilings, waiting motionless until he drew close before leaping at him. Smaller ones scuttled along the ground and tried to climb his legs, snapping uselessly at his boots, only to be kicked away or erased mid lunge by precise red beams from his assault drones.

  At every fork in the tunnels, he sent a drone down each path and waited until one reached a dead end or split again. That was what took the most time of all... waiting.

  There was nothing he could do to speed it up. Charging blindly down a single tunnel might save time or waste even more if it turned out to be another dead end. After nearly ten minutes of this slow advance, he topped up his TP once again. As luck would want it to be that exact same time, that the tunnels widened ahead, opening into what looked like another large chamber.

  The chamber appeared empty, but a crawling sensation tightened at the back of his neck.

  He did not enter. Instead, he waited nearly forty minutes before even approaching the threshold. It turned out to be the right call. The moment he crossed into the chamber… nothing happened. No attacks. No movement. His drones detected nothing. The chamber itself was vast, its walls holding far less webbing than the tunnels behind him. The ceiling was either impossibly high or simply nonexistent, swallowed entirely by darkness. The ground was flat not polished smooth, but even enough to move freely.

  A faint breeze brushed against his skin, eerily similar to the air displacement Iris created when she used her stealth skill. Then came the sound an ear piercing scrape as the defensive barrier flared violently beside him. A black, scythe like blade slammed into the shield, sparks cascading as the edge ground against the hexagonal plates. It was attached to the leg of a massive spider, smaller than the previous one but still taller than Searanox himself, its body half shrouded in shadow.

  Before the spider could retract its leg for another strike, two red beams slammed into its chitinous armor. It shrieked and recoiled, the black surface scorched and cracked. Dark fog clung to its body like a second skin, writhing unnaturally as it moved. Its front legs ended not in claws but in curved, blade-like protrusions shaped like scythes. Instead of pressing the attack, the spider retreated, slipping toward the darkest corner of the chamber.

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  Before Searanox could order his drones to flank it and cut off its escape, the creature vanished the instant it touched the shadows. The assault drones fired anyway, their beams striking bare stone and leaving faint burn marks. Silence filled the chamber for a few seconds, maybe even a minute.

  Without a slightest sound the spider fell silently from the ceiling behind them, not toward Searanox, but onto the two drones that had attempted to flank it. The scythe-like blades flashed once. Both drones were too slow to react. They were cut cleanly in half, blue sparks raining to the floor as their systems failed. The defensive drone repositioned instantly, its barrier flaring as the spider descended again. Metal ground against energy as the scythe scraped along the shield. The remaining assault drone fired, its beam punching into the spider's abdomen and burning straight through. The creature screeched, wounded but still alive, and began retreating once more. Searanox activated Overcharge on the remaining assault drone.

  The spider didn't make it back into the shadows. A charged beam thicker, brighter, and far more violent slammed into its body, hurling it backward toward the darkness it sought. Searanox didn't wait to see if it survived and summoned another defensive drone.

  The new barrier came online just in time.

  Two scythes slashed inward from either side. He spun around and saw the spider crawling out of his own shadow, its body unfolding from darkness as it attacked. Both barriers flared under the impact, grinding metal echoing through the chamber as the spider shrieked, the sound high and guttural at once. Searanox grinned and let himself drop flat to the floor.

  Revealing the Overcharged offensive drone behind him, the offensive drone finished charging. It fired a single, concentrated beam of violet energy. The beam erased the spider's head in a flash of light. The body convulsed violently, scythe like legs thrashing for a few seconds before collapsing in a lifeless heap. One of the defensive barriers flickered and died as the corpse struck the ground, black chitin shattered and scorched. Searanox stood and brushed himself off, a grim smile tugging at his lips.

  `Now that was fun.′

  He looked at the dead spider, its body a mangled mess of scorched chitin and leaking fluids. He walked over to the corpse and kicked it, the body was surprisingly heavy.

  `Fucker almost killed me twice.′

  With his drones dismissed he waited again for his TP to fill back up. The fight was not long but he used quite a bit of TP.

  `That thing was only level ten and caused more trouble than the one before.′

  Searanox thought as he run his hand over the chitin blade, cutting his hand on it.

  `Dame they are sharp.′

  The blood dropped to the floor in a slow trickle, he summoned a healing drone. The pure white sphere appeared in a flash of blue light, its teal lens pulsing softly as warmth enveloped his hand. The wound sealed in seconds, the skin knitting together without a trace. Even the lingering pain in his ankle from earlier vanished completely. That was something he could get used to.