Arad approached the cave, staring down at the endless darkness among the stones. He could hear water dripping inside, taking a one-way journey to the depths of the earth. Plants and foliage surrounded the cave’s entrance as small animals carefully watched Arad from a

distance away.

He walked into the cave, slowly making his way deeper and deeper. Whenever he faced a dead end, he would dig his way through using earth magic. After half an hour, he finally reached something that looked different from any normal cave. A large ten-meter {32 feet} wide hole made of chiseled stones in the middle of a massive cavern. It was the remnant of an ancient civilization.

Arad walked in the dark, relying on his draconic Darkvision to see, and started inspecting the hole before jumping in. Writing in a strange ancient language was engraved all around the hole.

Even though Arad couldn’t read what was written there, he could at least tell that it looked similar to Elvish. If only Aella was here, she might’ve been able to read it. At that moment, Doma spoke.

^{That’s ancient dark elf language. Spiders’ tongue.}^ She said inside his head, ^{It reads. By ancient decree, this shall be a tribute to the all mother, the crawler of darkness. Praise be the spider queen, praise be the demon web mother.}^

“What is this place?” Arad looked into the hole, not seeing anything.

^{I suspect this is the entrance to an ancient city of the dark elves. One that worshiped the spider goddess. From what was written, It must be from the dark ages of evil before the god’s war.}^

“What was her name?” Arad lifted an eyebrow.

^{Better not to mention it. She’s an evil goddess who enjoys pain and torment. If we did mention her name, her gaze would shift toward us, and that’s something we don’t want to do.}^ For the first time ever, Doma sounded nervous. Evil gods did exist, not by a choice of them, but mostly due to the nature of the concepts they embody.

The goddess of spiders is depicted as a black widow spider, telling of her origin. She was one the wives of the previous elf god, but secretly planned to burn the world tree. The world tree rejected her and all the elves who sided with her, burning them like they tried to burn her, and then banished them into the underground world. That is how the dark elves started. But since the elf god wanted to keep her as his wife, she alone was permitted to live with him under the world tree.

The spider goddess’ evil didn’t stop there, she planned to kill her husband and cheated on him with the orc god, sparking an endless blood war between the elves and orcs. As the two killed each other, she ran away to build her own kingdom of the dark elves that worshipped her.

She embodies deception, betrayal, poison, scheming, and malice. When her power approached its peak, she attempted one fool more, she kidnapped the overgod. But that was the first time she got bitten hard, the overgod had beaten her so badly that she lost most of her divinity. He then gave her to the mother of life who tortured her for months in the cycle of death and rebirth until she became obedient. freewebnσvel.cѳm

^{She won’t attack you directly. She weaponizes betrayal and subterfuge. Your wives would be her primary target if she noticed you. }^

Arad jumped into the hole; his body fell down standing straight as the glowing mushrooms flew past him like flashing stars. A thick wave of magic existed in the dark depth and Arad plunged straight into it, his eyes opening wide as he could sense a dangerous being living in there.

Arad emerged from a large hole in a massive cavern, looking down at a city similar to Rita, but at least ten times larger. Glowing mushrooms shrouded the ancient and ruined city, moss covered the massive stone pillars holding the cavern’s ceiling, and the horrific monsters prowling around crawled into their holes upon sensing Arad appear.

Arad looked straight below him, noticing a large lake at the city’s edge right beneath the hole he fell from. Doma informed him that the ancient dark elves used something called water fountain gates to travel between the surface and their cities. They made massive enclosed ships that could swim straight up the falling water. Those ships were called underground ships.

Arad opened his wings and slowly glided down, finally standing upon the water’s surface with gravity magic, looking at the massive city before him. It didn’t take him a second to notice how powerful the death curse was around here. He looked at the water beneath his feet, it was riddled with the curse. The reason why this city died became clear; they must’ve dug into a cursed metal vein that contaminated their water, causing everyone to die.

Arad walked on the water until he reached the lake’s shore and approached the city, looking around as the roaming monsters hid from his eyesight. The curse was plentiful, but not strong enough to kill the powerful monsters.

While the radiation was powerful enough to kill a human in a day or two, most monsters could survive for months here, especially those that evolved close by after the city’s doom.

As Arad explored the city, he could feel one thing. Amazement at this place’s size and beauty, if he didn’t already have a lair, he would’ve settled down here. “Mom, what do you think?”

{It’s a decent place to hide sleep, hibernate and store your horde. But it won’t work for you. You have wives, and they can’t live here. Only you could survive this amount of the death curse.} As Mom pointed out, this is a safe hiding place for him, but not a place suitable for life.

Arad stopped by one of the abandoned houses and reached the wooden door made from the large mushroom’s stem wood. He tried to turn the rusty iron knob, but it was stuck. After one push, he ripped the door from its hinges and walked inside.

“Excuse me…” Arad looked inside. It looked like a normal house, with an entrance that led into a small living room with what looked like a kitchen attached to it. At the stove’s base, he could see a skeleton in tattered cloth lying on the ground. From one look at the bones and the clothes, Arad identified her as a dark elf woman, who probably died in this kitchen when the curse started spreading. He turned around and walked up the stone stairs leading to the second floor. Right at a wooden door, he found a small skeleton, a kid.

^Everyone died quickly as the curse set in. They probably didn’t even notice what was going on.^ Arad walked past the skeleton and jumped out of the window, landing in the back alleys of the city. At his side stood a four-meter-tall large monster akin to a crab with four claws and a bright red carapace.

The monster looked at Arad for a fraction of a second and slowly backed away. Even if Arad looked like a normal human, all the monsters here could see his true draconic nature and they feared him.

Arad glanced at the monster and it started shaking, shivering, and whimpering like a dog as it slowly crawled back. That was an A-rank monster, strong enough to send a human city to its demise. Seeing such a monster crawl away from him in terror, Arad became even more aware of what kind of monster he had become.

Arad ignored the monster and kept walking around the city, slowly making his way toward the source of the curse. If what Mora said is true, a large cursed metal mine would be close by. With each step Arad took forward, the monsters hiding in the ruined city avoided him, some even left their young as bait and ran away. Not a single one dared to face Arad until he reached the other end of the city.

Arad halted, sensing that the curse had grown stronger. The cursed metal mine should be close by, all he needed to do was walk a bit further outside the city, but it wasn’t that simple. Unlike all other monsters, the one before him didn’t budge.

A massive twisting mass of flesh and blood, grunting in pain. The monster slowly turned back and glared at Arad with its countless bloodshot eyes. With a pulse of magic, its body started shrinking. Arad looked at it with a passive face, wondering what this ooze-like being was about to do. It was then that a strange voice boomed in his head, a voice that he hadn’t heard

in a long while.

Save her…the bloodied killer… Arad immediately recognized that voice, the dark elf goddess Elis that he heard at the shrine before.

From the writhing mass of flesh, a bloodied dark elf woman walked out naked, her eyes stared at Arad, bleeding with strange magic. From her mouth, she pulled a long-rushed sword, and Arad immediately pulled a sword out, sensing the dreadful threat. He tried to read her mind but immediately concluded. That woman had long since lost her mind.

She lunged forth, and Arad swung his sword at her, slashing her arms off with ease.

The woman wasn’t even phased, her emotionless face never shifted, and she disappeared from Arad’s vision. In the next moment, she had already stomped his head to the ground beneath her foot, creating a massive fifty-meter-wide crater.

Arad was wrong, this woman wasn’t a dark elf with a strange power or a curse. Now that she’s stepping on his face, he smells it, the strange blood coursing through her veins. Her arms immediately healed and he smiled, “Well, well, what do we have here.” He grabbed her ankle. “A mad Shadow Drakaina with a dark elf decent.” Just like how he’s a void dragon of human decent, that is why his humanoid form is that of a human male. This woman is a shadow drakaina with dark elf descent, making her humanoid form that of a dark elf woman. Arad immediately shifted into his draconic form and so did she. In the blink of an eye, two massive black dragons were staring at each other.