Marionette Dance stopped working, and the spiders that Selina controlled fell down, the dead remained down the living struggled to move, their bodies far too damaged to survive. Selina’s hand moved with the staff as she pointed at the ceiling, Magic Missile give arrows of compressed mana flew out of the tip of her toward the ceiling, exploding upon contact.

The spiders started running toward her as the ceiling fell. She was faster than them in firing her spell, but they were able to outrun the ceiling falling.

Selina lifted her staff, about to conjure a barrier to protect herself from the lunging spiders, but it was too late. She can’t construct a strong enough barrier to block the spiders, and she doesn’t even have time to waste, the ceiling would crush them all.

Matilda lunged out of the shadows, snatching Selina away at the last moment before the collapse.

“Are you okay?!” Matilda yelled as she laid Selina down, turning toward the collapsed room. “I don’t smell their innards, they didn’t get crushed.”

“Powerful magic is surging in the room, be careful.” Selina gasped and immediately saw the stones on the ceiling slowly lifting back up while covered with a strange white sticky substance.

“Spider webbing?” Matilda growled, “So it’s that big one.” A black spider far larger than the rest emerged from the ground. As Selina was fighting the small spiders, the big one was crawling behind the walls, reinforcing them with its webbing.

“Be careful! It’s far stronger than the other ones.” Selina warned her.

The small spiders ranged from the size of a dog to that of a sheep, but this new one had a torso the size of a bull and its legs stretched way further.

“It’s big!” Matilda gasped, “Can I bite its legs off?”

“I doubt you can crush them. Try slashing the joins, or target the main body.” Selina stood, pointing her staff at the spider’s torso.

“Got it.” Matilda ran forward as fast as she could, going on all four as she extended her claws out for more traction.

The spider stood on her hind four legs and used the front four to make a net of sticky webbing that she pulled out of her butt, and with a sudden jerk, she flung it forward.

CRACK! Matilda shifted her direction, running toward the wall and then on it using her claws. While still having the same power as a tiger, beast people, and especially women were far lighter, making such complicated movements possible.

As the net missed Matilda, it flew straight toward Selina. “Wait! I’m behind you!” She gasped, pointing at the net instead of the spider. Flame Thrower She unleashed a torrent of flame to burn the net before getting caught.

A rush of normal demon spiders charged at Selina as Matilda started fighting the giant spider in the back, those monsters had one goal, eliminate the intruders.

Each dungeon has its own hierarchy, and this is a newly born dungeon, which means, it’s still under construction. When the dungeon core matures, the first thing that emerges is a large room and the boss monster, the strongest creature in the dungeon. Soon after, it’ll be followed by countless weaker monsters of the same type as the boss, they are the ones that will inhabit the lowest layer of the dungeon later. The creation of that chamber is what caused the ground beneath the forest to rupture.

The dungeon then will take over an area by spreading its magic and pulling all sources of powerful magic into a secure place, that is how it picked Arad and the teachers, as they had vastly more mana than anyone else.

At this stage, the monsters that the dungeon core created will start digging tunnels for themselves to live, and hunt for food. Rapidly they would infest an underground area, and the core would start spawning more monsters until the dungeon reached a stable ecosystem that could support its own monsters.

Dungeons are usually classified as mega-class oozes, like the genius loci, but are far less intelligent. Comparing a dungeon to someone like Loci is like comparing an ape to a humanoid, they aren’t the same even though they might look similar.

Matilda jumped over the spider’s legs and latched to its back. She opened her jaw wide and her cheeks stretched back, revealing a terrifying maw of large gangs and teeth akin to that of a tiger.

Matilda opening her jaw looked like a gorilla opening its mouth. With their lips closed, they look fairly normal, until they open their mouth.

Matilda bites the spider in the head, piercing deep into its skull and dropping it to the ground. A tiger’s bite force was around 75kg per square centimeter1200pound

/square inch, one of the strongest in the wild.

As the normal demon spiders rushed around Selina, she lifted her staff about to blow them away. “Matilda! Help!” She was slowly running out of mana.

PEW! PEW! PEW! It was then that several arrows flew out of the darkness behind her, killing tens of the normal spiders in the blink of an eye. “Are you okay?” Aella rushed in to check on her.

“I’m fine.” Selina replied that she was only running low on mana, drinking a potion should help.

Aella shifted her gaze toward Matilda. “Ganta, help her deal with the big ones.” She said.

“Big ones?!” Matilda gasped…

“Who’s Ganta?” Selina looked into the darkness, seeing a tall woman standing almost 1.9 meters in height with two massive golden horns extending from her temples and walking toward them. She was thick and muscular but not too much, and her eyes were blood red, and her skin resembled oak in color. Her long, thick, and spiky blond hair seemed to emit a faint light, exposing her even in the darkest of places.

Ganta scratched her head, staring at Matilda with a disappointed look. “Why do I need to work with tigers?” She grunted, a deep sight escaping her mouth and revealing a pair of massive fangs behind her lips.

“Ganta, this is not the time to play around.” Aella growled at her.

It was then that Matilda could hear more massive spiders running around them. This whole cave was surrounded by them as they were the ones responsible for reinforcing the tunnels with their webs. “More are coming, and a lot!” Matilda growled.

Ganta took a step forward, “If only your husband was close, I would’ve loved to see him up close. I’ve only followed here to see him.” She ripped her shirt off, staying only in what looked like a tight bra made of hardened leather.

“He’s my husband, stay away from him.” Aella growled at her.

“That’s what you think.” Ganta replied with a smile, licking her lips. “For me, he smelled sweet.” She bent down and picked one of the dead spiders, biting it from the torso.

Ganta’s blond hair changed to black and her eyes flashed green as a strange magic started swelling inside her body. She roared at the top of her lungs, loudly pounding her chest.

A bunch of massive spiders burst through the ceiling and walls, rushing toward Matilda.

Ganta extended her hand forward and a thread of sticky webbing flew forward, sticking to the ceiling. With that thread, she pulled herself toward the spiders, swinging across the tunnel like a gorilla swinging from one branch to another.

Matilda dodged one of the spiders, spun around, and jumped up with a fist, shattering the spider’s head in a single blow. “I don’t need help from a gorilla!”

Ganta landed on one of the spiders, ripped two of its legs off, and stabbed it with them, killing the poor monster on the spot. “Out of the way, tigress. You’re slowing me down.” She lunged toward another giant spider.

“You’re the one slowing me down!” Matilda started swinging left and right, and the two of them began massacring the spiders one after another.

“Who is she?” Selina asked with a worried face.

“My classmate, her name is Ganta.” Aella replied.

“I know that, I meant what is she? She ate that spider and absorbed her magic, no, Ganta’s magic shifted to resemble that of the spider. I’ve never heard of a race that can do that.” Selina shook her head.

“All I know is that she’s a gorilla beast woman.” Aella replied with a passive face as she started thinking. ^Those horns are similar to those of Sebas. She might be one of his kind, no, the fact she can’t hide the horns means she might be a half instead.^

Matilda and Ganta never tried to work together, and instead, each of them started fighting alone, going out of their way to make it harder for each other. Ganta would try to swing around, only for Matilda to kick one of the spiders her way. When Matilda was about to bite a spider’s head, Ganta tripped the spider, causing Matilda to miss.

Aella stood with Selina in front of her and pulled her bow. “You focus on protecting us with barriers, I’ll support them with arrows.”

“Got it.” Selica waved her staff, Crystal dome She created a large transparent dome around them that allows things to move out, and not in. A common type of barrier magic used for protection against heavy attacks, as its curved shape helps divert the blows.

As Aella started sniping the spiders, she lamented the fact she couldn’t fully control her flames. A single fire arrow would’ve burned all the spiders, but would also kill Matilda and Ganta, which isn’t an option. She could try protecting them with her wind, but that failed nine times out of ten.

She had trained before with Arad, Eris and Amber, the three that she knew were extremely resistant to heat, and she ended up blasting Eris twice, Amber once, and Arad eight times. As he always tries to release his mana and reabsorb it to train, it’s extremely hard to maintain a spell around him, his aura is too much to handle.

****

Deep underground, Lucia was trying her best to explain the basics of earth magic to Arad as Sylvany naged on their heads trying to explain how it’s stupid to expect AronArad to learn earth magic and use it better than Lucia, who mastered it for decades.

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