Chapter 184 - Spider Queen

[You have reached Level 100]

[Possible Evolutions]

-[Greater Ice Blue Collector Imp]

-[Black Ice Collector Imp]

-[Element Collector Imp]

-[Spirit Collector Imp]

[As a Card Owner, you have access to a Unique Evolution. Do you want to commence Evolution into a Unique Subspecies of Ice Blue Collector Imp?]

Eiro smiled as he looked at the notifications in front of him. He was satisfied with the way things were going at the moment. With this new evolution, he would grow far stronger once again.

He quickly opened his status and looked at his leftover 80 Stat points that he didn't assign yet. He figured that it wouldn't make much sense to wait with these now. Without much hesitation, Eiro pushed another fifty into Intelligence to bring it to 300, and then put the other 30 into Wisdom to bring it to 280.

[Your Intelligence has passed the 300 point mark! Ability became !]

With a satisfied expression, Eiro ran his fingers through that notification as well as his status to make them both disappear, and then looked at the evolution message.

For now, he would get rid of it. He didn't know exactly if he would fall unconscious this time around again, but he didn't want to risk it. Eiro would just wait, and then when they were back in town, he would make sure that the manor was actually ready this time, because there were seemingly a few complications with the original plan of getting it within two days, and then he would start his evolution.

With a slight sigh, Eiro ran his fingers through the notifications, and then turned toward Jess, James and Krog. He was able to see the reflections of their statuses in their eyes, so he was able to quickly figure out the changes.

"Good. I think that's enough for today. I'll go get one last thing. You three head back into the direction of the Village again. Nelli, you make sure that you help Leon properly concentrate and keep his flow of mana under control. It's important that he manages to keep his skill focused on only the spiders for the whole trip."

"Yeah, yeah, we get it." Nelli replied a bit annoyedly as she floated up to the young boy, while Gondos looked at Eiro curiously, "And what shall I do?" He inquired, and Eiro simply smiled at him, "You're coming with me. There's something I want to test out."

While Gondos excitedly floated over to Eiro's side, Jess sighed deeply, "Somehow, I can't get excited over leveling up this much after seeing that..." She complained, and Eiro raised his brow in response, "What do you mean?"

"What do I mean? How can I get excited over leveling up when there's someone next to me that managed to befriend spirits?!" Jess asked with her arms crossed and a light pout, before Eiro slowly turned his head over toward the others in confusion, before James grumbled annoyedly and replied.

"Spirit Mages usually don't treat spirits like that. They're more like tools. And vice-versa. So seeing someone actually be this close to a spirit is pretty weird."

"Is that so?" Eiro muttered, slowly turning his head toward Nelli, although she simply shrugged in response. She probably wasn't a good person to ask, since she spent a long time just being contracted by people that treated her like family. She probably didn't have much other experience with contracts.

"Well, it is how it is. I wasn't aware it was something this special." Eiro pointed out as he slowly turned around, "Either way, for now, head off already. I'll be with you before you reach the village again." The Demon started making his way back to the cave entrance that he was in before. It wasn't hard to find, after all, the scent of blood was omnipresent in there now. He split off from the others, and once they left, he properly stretched out and got out his three of swords so that he would be able to really fight properly and without hesitation.

But once everyone was out of range, Gondos seemed to want to inquire about something he was curious about, "So..." He started, "What exactly do you require my assistance for?"

The Demon lightly smirked as he started to run through the forest and dove into a part of the cave that would allow him to gain direct access to what Eiro mentally dubbed the 'throne room' where he could find the thing that birthed all of these spiders.

"I need your help to actually confirm something in a bit." Eiro explained, "I've been getting a slight card-vibe from all of these spiders. It was very, very faint, but it was there. If it is really so that this whole nest was created with the help of a card, we need to fuse for a moment so that I can better figure out what sort of card it is or how it helped create this nest."

With a light frown, Gondos continued following Eiro through the caves as he fought off the few spiders that dared actually fight him at the moment. They became more and more the further Eiro proceeded into the center of the caves, but it was fine.

Eiro continued through the tunnels, until the one he was currently in became too steep for someone to walk on, so he made use of the three of swords to help him dig his hands into the walls for better grip. He slipped down the tunnel, until he reached the place he was looking for. It was the 'throne room', with the spider queen right in the center of the room, continuosly birthing numerous spiders.

Without hesitation, Eiro pulled out his spark snapper and created a flame in front of him that he used to draw a magic circle in front of him, with the flames as the actual lines. And when he was done and activated, flames spread out through this large underground space and spiralled around, leaving nothing completely unharmed.

Obviously Eiro wasn't able to kill everything just like this, but at the very least, he could damage them a fair bit.

There were a couple spiders in here that actually seemed a bit bothersome. They weren't roughly half as strong as Eiro was, he would say. Stat-wise, at least. Eiro's skills gave him complete superiority over them.

Eiro climbed around inside of this large open space and flung around flames, rocks, spells, really anything that could damage and kill the spiders from afar. He couldn't attack them in close combat all at once, after all, even if it may seem like he was trying to.

The biggest issue were the eggs that were particularly close to the spider queen's body. They were seemingly fire-resistant like this, so they somewhat protected the queen from damage. Then again, it didn't matter much in the face of boulders flying around toward them, but in the end, it still made it a bit harder to bring the queen's health down.

At some point, Eiro reached the point where there were barely any spiders left here, and the only ones that were were freshly-laid eggs that would take a fair while to hatch. Obviously Eiro tried his best not to damage the eggs, since they were worth a lot of money and were also a popular item to be requested at the adventurer's guild. He did break some of them if they annoyed him too much, but for the most part, there were more left than he could carry anyway. Eiro's satchel was already filled nearly to the brim with other spider-parts, so he would have to come up with a good storage space for these.

"Hmm, there's a lot of thick, durable cobwebs here... Maybe..." The Demon muttered as he started approaching the spider queen, although there was something else he wanted to do first. He stopped for a few moments and let Gondos dive into his body. The moment he fused with Gondos, Eiro's senses expanded.

Eiro took a deep breath and tasted traces of magic in the air, which is just what he was looking for. He looked at the spider queen, and started sensing a trace of a card when looking at it. Obviously it itself didn't have a card, but it was influenced by one. It was like it was carrying a shard of it with it.

The vibe that he got from this spider was quite weird, really. It was like it had a card, but at the same time it wasn't. It was an extremely artificial feeling that Eiro had felt once before. During his fight with Enka.

"So that's it, I see?" The Demon said with a light grin on his face, "You're a bit too big to take with me anyway, so..." The Demon said, and with the help of the increased strength he got by fusing with Gondos, he easily jumped on top of the spider queen's body. He pushed the three of swords' blades directly into the connective part between the abdomen and the head, simply ripping through it without hesitation.

Eiro looked down at the spider queen's body as it dropped onto the ground after Eiro continued pumping fire magic into her to damage her internally enough to kill her.

Soon, luckily, he reached that goal, and he just looked down at the spider queen's smoking dead body. It was a bit of a waste that he didn't get any experience for this, but it didn't matter for now. First things first, he had to take this thing apart for its materials.

He already had a rough idea of where the 'Mock Card' item was inside of the spider queen's body, so he had Gondos leave his body again. Eiro moved around the large spider and cut off whatever parts of the carapace that he could. He pulled out its large eyes and tried his best to save some of the venom. And then, Eiro cut open its abdomen to get out the spider's heart. Inside of it, he found a small metal orb with carvings on its outside, which was obviously the source of the 'Mock Card' vibe.

Eiro would take a closer look at it later to see what it did, but that came later. For now, he placed it into his treasury. The only thing that was left was to gather some of the webs that didn't completely burn up and turn them into something like a proper net that he could use to carry the egg and the other materials.

It wasn't that complicated, he saw someone weaving things like this together before. Just like that, Eiro managed to gather more than enough items up to give a proper impression at the guild.

Surely, he would be able to take the advacement test to reach C-Rank after this.