Angel kicks the door hard, making the door open with a loud scratching sound, as it goes against the flooring.
Everyone ignores the loud scratching sound and we look through the opening of the door.
As it parts ways, the only thing inside are corpses of dead spiders, about the size of cats. Another giant door, almost the same as the one that Angel pushed open. Along with two people who are unfazed by the green blood oozing off of the bodies of those said spiders.
Sply sits on a rock on the inside, along with another girl, Celestrus, standing beside Sply like a watchdog.
They both stare at the group, Sply ignores them, as Celestrus tenses up heavily.
My eye catches them as they stare at Angel.
Moving forward John stops me using his hand to force me to keep still.
"Don't move. They could attack us."
He says quietly.
"Why?"
Moving his hand he looks to me with confusion, as I move past Rosa, then Angel she looks confused as I run right to the danger.
"Hey Sply!"
As I say that, I can see visible tension release from her face. The same could very well be said for Celestrus, but she still keeps and eye on the group that is behind me, like she's afraid that they are here for something more.
Footsteps from behind me begin to get closer.
"You know these people?"
Rosa says, asking me as she points over to Sply and Celestrus.
"Yeah. That's Sply and Celestrus."
Sply stands up her figure small, as she stand next to Celestrus.
"Better question. Who are you?"
Sply says, in a way that is intimidating to me, but to the other three, it's like being told to be answered by a ten year old.
Rosa tilts her head at Sply.
"This is the Steel Rank? But she's just a child?"
Sply looked at Rosa with a weird look.
"Is that going to determine my strength to you?"
"What?"
Rosa asked again, unclear of what Sply asked.
"Would my age, or the way I look, mean that I'm weaker?"
Rosa adjusted her glasses.
"No, but I want to clear up my understanding of you."
"Are you disappointed that I'm not looking like you? Covered in head to toe in armor? Because from where I'm standing it makes me think that "
Sply gets closer to Rosa, staring up at her face, as Rosa stares down to her.
"Ladies. Ladies."
John walks up from behind Rosa grabbing her shoulder, then softly as he pulls he back he gets between them.
"Yeah stop."
I walk in front of Sply, my voice trying to sound tough, but It comes out a bit scared instead.
I notice my height difference between Sply, growing about an inch or two taller than her.
As Rosa gets pushed back, Angel comes up behind me.
"I've had something to nit pick you you ever since you ignored me at that pub. Granted I was half drunk."
John after pushing back Rosa, giving a sharp look to the back of Angel's head.
"Dear..."
He rolls his eyes and begins a powerful walk to us.
"I'm sorry."
Angel says as she looks down to Sply, making Sply look surprised at Angel.
"What?"
John says from behind Angel. Making his stop his glare and put on a stop confused face instead.
"When I was drunk, I didn't have much manners, when you came to get Lazuli. And now regretting how I've been to you, I'd like to apologize fr my inconsideration of what you were doing for your son."
Sply looks up at the hulking figure, then to me, with a neutral expression on her face, I shrug my shoulders at her, then she turns her face back toward Angel.
"Don't worry, I don't mind any of the things that happened."
Sply says, sounding same as usual.
"Okay, I hope that we can end up doing good fro each other today."
"Yes."
Sply says before tunring back around and walking next to Celestrus.
"Lazuli. Get over here."
I turn and smile at Angel as I hop to get in front of Sply.
Sply turns to look at me, her eyebrows furrow. Anger or disappointment?
"Where did you go?"
"What?"
"A full day. That's how long we looked."
Turning to Celestrus, she nods at me.
"Celestrus was there with me. It made it easy for me to find this place."
"I fell through a hole in the ground."
I say with my head held down.
"And instead of calling for us, you ran into the Cave?"
"No, I was forced deeper into the cave, but I had to fight a weird stretching knight armor thing, finding a weird..."
I pause, nearly exposing what I had found at the hidden tunnel.
"Found a weird, what?"
"The... Chicken thingy. I thought it was going to kill me."
Sply lets out a very quick and stifled laugh, before she returns to normal.
"And what happened to the knight?"
"I killed it?"
"Why did you say it like that?"
"Well, because the knight was just armor."
"Possessed Armor."
Sply said sounding intrigued by what she had said.
"How...?"
Celestrus said quietly behind Sply.
Sply turns to look at her, I just turn my head up to her.
"What do you mean. How?"
Celestrus gulps on her saliva as Sply looks at her and asks her that question.
"Well, whenever. Me and Master came through here..."
Celestrus, visibly shakes a bit, when she says the word Master.
"...we never encountered anything like a knightless armor set just moving on it's own, nor a knight in general... Ma'am."
"Why would there be possessed armor, in a place, that doesn't have any knights."
The group walks past us, and heads toward the other giant door.
"We're going into the other room."
John says as he's the only one to pause beside me, patting my shoulder as he does so, hitting the same hurt shoulder.
"Dude!"
I say in pain and wincing.
"Oh, crap sorry."
Rosa looks at me and then to John with a glare. John catches Rosa's look and for a quick second there is a good amount of fear and a shiver in his hand.
"Dang..."
John says as he walks to the group.
Rosa immediately hits his arm.
Angel goes before them and pushes the door this time, with her hands and heads into the room followed by Timi, Rosa, then John.
The door, closes behind them with no force touching it.
"What happened?"
Sply says looking at me.
"When I fought the knight, I ended up getting hit with it's sword, it dug into my shoulder blade and also messed up my bag."
I turn and point to it, with my thumbs.
"I mean, it looks cool, but it's not really comforting at the neck."
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, just a bit itchy."
Sply nods at me.
"Did they help you with bandages and such?"
I nod to Sply.
"Good, we'll leave."
"What about the Cave?"
"What about it?"
"Well, I thought we came here to clear it?"
Sply tilts her head to me.
"Why, we get nothing if we claim anything here. And if we want to make it so that we can get anything from what we claim here, it'll take us about three nights worth of sleep if we want to get to the next Hunters association."
With a huff of air right out my nose, I nod.
"Okay, let's go."
I pull at the single strap at the top of my bag, bringing it higher.
"Celestrus, lead the way."
Celestrus nods and begins to walk forward.
A click is heard from her. And she begins to take a step, but stops right as she does so.
"What?"
I ask as she stops in her tracks.
"Well, The Cave kings room feels different."
"What does that mean?"
Sply asks.
"Well, in the room, is a giant slime, about the size of me, blue. But for some reason, it doesn't feel like it's only that and the group in their. It feels more."
"What does that mean?"
I ask her.
"There's something else in the room, besides just them."
I feel a shiver up my spine.
"Sply, can we go in there and just check them?"
Sply shakes her head and continues to look to Celestrus.
"Take us out of here."
Celestrus looks at me, then nods as she turns her head to Sply.
Another click and she begins to walk toward the open door, that Angel kicked open.
"Why not Sply, they helped me, watched me, even fed me. We have to pay the back for that at the very least."
I plead to Sply.
She ignores me, as we both follow after Celestrus.
I give Sply a look of annoyance.
"Why can't you help me?"
"Because that's a group of hunters that most likely came in here for money, and if they find out that YOU a human, helped to take in a slave, they'll sell you out."
Sply says, with emphasis on YOU, but her tone doensn't sound that different.
I pause as I look at her, she doesn't stop moving, going and going to the other door.
Looking between both doors, the closed one, then the one that Celestrus is now walking through, I groan, as I grab my bow in my hands, taking it off of my shoulder and rushing to the door.
A click.
Celestrus turns, Sply turns at the sound of my footsteps.
"Lazuli."
Sply calls for me, calmly, and before, I'd maybe shrivel and die instantly. But not, now.
Running into the door, I push as hard as I can, for the longest seconds. The door doesn't budge at all, but as I put more heart into it, my legs begin to walk slowly forward, making progress step, by step, by step.
"Timi, hit it with fire."
Another click.
Celestrus feels a wave of fear as she feels massive footfalls from the inside of the room, that slowly make loud reverberations as the door opens wider.
The door opens even more.
"SIR! It's dangerous!"
Celestrus screams in fear.
The door opens fully and a flash of red light takes over my full view.
A massive red colored Spider with a crown like temple, and beak as it's mouth as if it has the mouth of an octopus, with hairs at the joints of every part of it's body. Webs spitting all around and trapping a big, slime by its body, but the slime still has a good height to it.
Rosa runs and tries to cut at it's legs, hitting it's hairy joints as it's red eyes move and back away from the flames that Timi threw to it.
Angel, rushes into the spider as well, her massive mace, slams against the legs, the hide just clangs as it she slams against it.
The spider, shakes only a bit by their coordinated attack.
Celestrus screams as she gets the real full view of the creature.
John looks at us.
"What?"
As John says that, the beak opens. A weird yellow, gooey looking liquid sprays out of it's mouth right to John and I, as we both stand beside each other, John is looking away at me.
"John!"
Rosa says, his body grabs mine and in the next moment he closes the distance between us, without even looking like he took a step, and then he grabs me by my wrist.
My body appears at the bum of the spider, and with the high arch from under the spider, I can see what would have happened to me if I was to get hit with that yellow liquid.
The floor that was hit with it, sparks and as it sparks, it melts away, only when the liquid is under the ground from our point of view is when we think the liquid truly disappears.
"What the hell is that?"
"A Red-Crowned Spider Queen."
John says breathing heavily.
"What?"
"A dangerous fudging Spider!"
Angel and Rosa, give a quick glance to the two of us, right before going back to hitting the legs of the creature again and again.
"Anyway, right now that doesn't matter. Go to your mom and leave."
"What? NO! I can help!"
John gives me a sad smile, as The Spider begins to stomp around, trying to stomp on the two below it.
"It's nice that you think you can, but right now kid. You need to leave."
John says once, more.
"We need help!"
Rosa says as She tries to strike at the legs of the spider once more.
John disappears from my side and jumps to the top of the spider, standing on its thick exoskeleton.
John out of range of the claws that the spiders are able to reach onto it's spider like body.
It starts to jump around, as it stomps, John tries to stay on the top of the spider, but is shaking nonstop, making it near impossible to even move, he reappears on the ground a bit of distance away from the spider.
'Freak leaving!'
With a tap of my sigil and a the slightest feeling of numbness on my arms, with me slowly empowering my bow, I pull the string, showing a bright blue arrow on the arrow hold.
Angel hits it once, the spider shrieks. A crack is formed from the leg that was hit.
My aim immediately goes to that spot.
Timi has an ice shard growing around her, not many but a good amount, but with the time she's still taking to speak in that unknown language it'll take to long.
I take a breath, the spider is a big distance away from me.
'Hit the weak spot.'
My arrow goes flying as soon as my body relaxes and has my mind set on a target, making me send it with no problem.
The spider moves it's leg, trying to hit Angel. The arrows flies right past it and zooms right past Rosa, who stops just in time before getting hit with the arrow.
"KID!?"
Rosa says, before immediately going into attack the same spot she's been trying to crack.
John sees the same crack I do, and tries to hit the spot, but the sword he has isn't built for that type of interactions between exoskeleton.
The spider, move forward quickly and hits him in the middle of his body.
Sending him flying right into a wall, leaving a crater in it.
He slowly falls and lands in a pile of webbings left behind by the Spider.
As he gets stuck the spider has it's body, shiver slightly, and the beak opens.
A sparky effect starts to appear around the outside of the beak, making it become scary.
Rosa freaks out, running to save John before he ends up dead, from liquid acid.
Angel on the other hand, with a massive roar, slams her mace into the same leg it made cracks into making the spider shriek again.
Timi who has been on the sidelines the entire time working endlessly on a huge amount of icey shards, gets them all sent to the Spider, so fast that it could be like a bullet.
Every single strike across the exoskeleton is damaging. hitting it again and again and again, covering it in a large mass of ice, and corroding exoskeleton.
The beak that was soon to spit out acid instead turns into a screech, loud, so loud that the room shook.
The spider turned it's butt up as it screeched and a single web shot out of it's butt, sending it straight up, and clinging to the high ceiling, that is covered in webbings.
'No one saw that?'
It begins to ascend the webbing and stop it's screeching, but the walls still shake.
From behind me, more webbing, this time in a weird sphere like shape, and looking at the room, every place that has a web is covered in a good amount of ball like webbings.
The spider covers itself in a webbing, spitting a nonstop amount out of its body.
"Timi, send another wave of Soul magic at the spider!"
Angel says as she points her mace at the spider, not seeing the drained Timi on the ground.
"An...gel..."
Timi says in a weak tone.
Angel drops her mace and tries to help out Timi.
A chittering sound comes from behind me, from inside of the ball like web.
"What the...?"
My mind tells me initiatively to move away.
My body tenses.
A few feet away from the webbings, I tap the sigil and send an arrow right through the webbings.
Rosa frees John, with a good amount of swinging from her sword.
The arrow disappears and from the hole it left is a small amount of ooze, at first white, like gel, then green begins to mix into it.
"What the hell?"
"Get it off!"
John yells as a spider, about the same size as a young baby gets on top of his, trying to bite at him with it's beak.
Rosa sends the Claymore right through it.
Spraying the green blood on John, then making him spit it out as he pushes it off of his body.
He stands up and looks back at the place he was, and right next to where he was stuck is an opened, webbing.
More chittering comes from the webbings, that are all around the room.
Some even coming from behind me.
The chittering get's louder as the webbings from a random point of the ball webbing begins to pull open, a beak, that is very sadly familiar peeks through the hole that is made. Soon to follow that beak is a head.
"Their all spider eggs..."