Chapter 71 Spider Nest : Opening Act

A ball of flames lit up in Merle's hand and in the next second, something flew towards the quartet from every direction.

[Spider webs! Master, burn them!]

Kayla took her attention off Evan's hair and shouted aloud. Following her advice, Evan poured lightning magic power into his gauntlet and fired it out as he pleased.

The lightning collided with the webs flying towards them, burning the webs to a crisp.

'The magic infusion is good.'

Evan took a step back to analyse the performance of the gauntlets before turning his gaze to the section of the forest that had been set ablaze by the fire magician, Merle.

"I'll go to the front!"

Nodin seemed to have discovered the enemy's positions as he charged at a certain direction with his spear in hand.

Evan followed suit as he spread out his magic power to sense the number of spider monsters moving towards them and their positions.

"Those are some huge spiders."

Merle commented as she shot out balls of flames everywhere. It was perfect, except her overly strong flames burned up the trees along with the spiders crawling down from them.

Not even ashes were left of the spiders, making Evan pity them a bit.

'Looking at her face, its obvious she doesn't exactly get along with spiders, huh?'

"Merle, can you freely extinguish your fire?"

"Yeah, I can just withdraw my mana."

"Then let's burn up all the trees as we go. That way, we won't need to worry about ambushes from above!"

Evan spoke as he formed a knife hand and stabbed his gauntlet into the head of a spider that used its thread like a rope to fly from a tree across him.

[Weee!!]

**PZZZTT!

Followed by Kayla's playful voice, was a bolt of lightning that dropped from above and caused the spider's head to explode into chunks of charred flesh.

Its disgusting bodily fluid splashed out in all directions, making Evan regret wearing a whit shirt today.

As Evan was thinking that, Merle stretched out her arms and sent dozens of flaming spears flying.

Any spiders and trees that were hit by them were burnt up in an instant.

There was truly no environmental destruction like it. Even an arsonist would bow down to her skills.

Nodin, who was watching after killing a spider with his shockwave spear attack, gasped.

"Merle! Three 'clock!"

A slightly larger spider charged in from within the flames, ignoring its burnt legs as a single ringed purple magic circle manifested in front of it.

**GLOP!

From the magic circle, blobs of a purple liquid that was very obviously poison, shot out in rapid succession.

Their speed was quite fast and even Evan thought Merle would get hit until a black-haired girl holding a great shield suddenly appeared in front of Merle and slammed her shield into the ground.

"Protection."

She called out in a small voice and her shield was covered in a thin layer of white light that spread out to create two illusory shields on both sides.

**GLOPP!! GLOP!!!

The two illusory shields served to block the extra globs of poison that three new spiders who burst out of Merle's flames launched towards the C rank adventurer.

'They're buffed!'

Evan appraised the spiders and instantly figured out the reason they were able to survive the flames that turned their brethren to ashes.

Nodin was about to move to help but Iolana took action faster than he could.

"Blazing Défense."

The thin layer of white light on her shield became tinged with red. The next moment, the shield burst into flames and Iolana kicked off the ground, sprinting in the direction of the spiders and slammed into them with the flaming shield.

Not wanting to get burnt, the spiders stopped their poison bombardment and scrambled out of the way but they were stopped in their tracks by a certain shadows spirit's restraints, allowing for Iolana's shield to slam into them all at once.

**BAMMMM!!!

The strength behind her slam sent the spiders flying into the air after the flames on her shield had set them ablaze.

*SNAP!

Kayla snapped her small fingers and spears of lightning manifested in the air before shooting towards the airborne spiders.

**BOOMM!!

The mix of flames and lightning resulted in an explosion sent the spiders to the after life instantly.

'This girl, she can activate two skills at once without strain, she's good.'

Evan internally commented on Iolana's skill prowess as her elder sister took a deep breath before activating her Flame summoning skill.

Two ringed magic circles appeared beside her head, from which small flaming lizards with half meter long tails emerged from and rested on her shoulders.

"Go!"

She gave a command to her summons and the flaming lizards spewed even greater flames from their mouths, making Evan remember a certain flame thrower wielding character from an anime about assassins he watched back in his home world.

'That guy died in the end though, I hope she doesn't.'

Merle's summons were truly powerful. She was proving the worth of a C rank adventurer.

No matter where a spider came from, when she stretched her arms out, the flame lizards on her shoulders spewed flames and that would be the end.

There wasn't much left for the rest of the party to do. The few times that they had to take action was when spiders that were lying hidden underground suddenly popped up.

The spiders had tough carapaces that were hard to penetrate with pure strength.

However, Evan had his fists strengthened with magic power, and Nodin had his shockwave-infused spear techniques.

The two both had no problem killing the spiders in one blow. Although Evan was ready for a certain amount of risk, it seemed he didn't need to worry too much.

For the record, Iolana handled defence against the spiders that suddenly came flying from trees while also picking up the magic stones that could be recovered from the charred corpses.

Merle's flame lizards burned the majority of spiders they came across to a crisp so there were a lot less stones than expected.

However, since they were here to clear the Dungeon and not to farm money, Evan stayed quiet.

He recalled the dungeon's pattern in his mind, preparing himself for the net wave of monsters they were going to encounter soon.

'I remember that it started with the web shooting spiders, then the poison shooting spiders. Next came those that fired both webs and poison, then the ones that added physical attacks to the mix.

Following those, were the royal guard spiders that shot out web bullets. The bullets were easy to dodge provided you knew their trajectory.

There were a little above a dozen waves of level 90 royal guard spiders that moved in groups of three to five.

The number changed depending on the time of day. Three in the morning or afternoon, then four and five in the evening and night.

After that, there would be a final trio of royal guards, all which would be level 95. After defeating those, there won't be any more obstacles before meeting the boss monster.

I remember its attack patterns so I should be able to dodge its most basic attacks and skills.

The problem is the mental attack it uses the moment we intrude into its domain. I got potions for this but I'm not sure how effective thy would be.

If I fall under its clutches, the memory of it would haunt me for life!'

An hour passed like this as the group stopped to take a rest, only continuing when a they were suddenly attacked by a dozen poison shooting spiders.

"You are really strong. These monster spiders have hard carapaces that many adventurers your age can only scratch."

"I'm a lot older than you think though."

Evan replied to Iolana as he opened his palm up and channelled his magic power. His destructive energy circuit flared as magic power flowed through it before condensing atop his open palm.

"Merle, hold on a bit, I wanna do something."

Merle rose and eyebrow but nodded and gave the command for the flam lizards on her shoulders to stop their bombardment of flames.

Evan utilized his Magic Control skill to infuse flames and lightning into the condensed orb of magic power on his palm while looking around at the area that suddenly turned misty and decided to use this to clear up some of the mist.

He then pointed it on ground few meters ahead of them and called out in a soft voice.

"Energy Blast."

His destructive energy circuit amplified the effect of the skill as it was grouped under the 'destructive' category.

**WOOONGG!!

***BOOOOOMMM!!!

*KIEEEEKKKK!!

The beam of condensed energy was fired towards the ground, resulting in a large explosion that dispersed some of the mist in the atmosphere. This was followed by a loud shriek as three spiders emerged from the ground.

The party took up battle positions as they studied the trio of four-meter-tall spiders that emerged from the ground.

"Feels like Harry Potter!"