Their footsteps echoed like war drums through the winding stone corridors of the monolith.
Noah pushed forward, his breathing steady despite the weight in his arms. Arlo was still unconscious, but stable. Noah’s mind was focused only on the tunnel ahead of him.
Until he glanced back.
Leo and Galahad were falling behind.
They stumbled more with each step, breath coming in painful heaves, the exhaustion they were feeling weighing down their bodies.
Behind them, the skittering was growing louder. Then came the gleam of glossy black carapaces. Legs. Many, many legs.
The adult Bullet Spiders were closing in.
’If I keep going, they’ll die.’
Noah cursed under his breath, spinning on his heels.
He bolted past them, wind rushing against his face as he raced the swarm. Leo looked up in surprise as Noah flew by, then understood.
Noah pivoted as he reached the space between his teammates and the encroaching death.
"Devour!" He roared, slamming his palm to the floor.
The tunnel darkened instantly as he activated the spell formation.
A vortex of abyssal energy unfurled around him, swallowing the walls in a tide of living darkness. Jagged hands rose from the blackened ground, clawing through the air.
Bullets of hardened webbing launched from the shadows ahead, but the devouring hands intercepted them in the air, dragging the projectiles into a yawning mouth that opened beneath Noah’s feet.
Leo and Galahad ducked behind him, wide-eyed and panting, backs to the tunnel wall.
"Holy hell!" Leo gasped, clutching his bleeding side. "How long can you hold that for?"
Noah turned his head slightly, breath fogging in the chill of the spell.
"Long enough," he said, just before a sound tore through the corridor like thunder.
Croooooooooooaaaaaakkk!
The croak wasn’t just sound. It was a sonic weapon they’d experienced before.
It hit them like a shockwave.
Noah’s balance shook, his spell flickering. The hands of Devour wavered. The darkness pulsed erratically.
Leo and Galahad dropped to their knees, covering their ears too late.
Then, faster than thought...
Whip!
A thick, slime-coated tongue shot through the shadows. It wrapped around Leo’s arm and ripped it clean off.
Blood exploded into the air.
Leo screamed, a horrible, broken sound as his body jerked sideways.
He collapsed, twitching, clutching the jagged stump of his shoulder as acid sizzled the open wound. The air filled with the stench of burning flesh.
"LEO!" Galahad bellowed, moving to grab him.
The Acid Toads leapt into view.
They’d followed the scent of blood of their dead member, and that of the spiders the group had harvested.
Noah’s Devour snapped upright again, catching another web-bullet from the approaching spiders, but he was barely holding it together.
Between shielding them from the spiders and staying ahead of the toads, something had to give.
"We need cover!" Noah yelled. "Now!"
He gritted his teeth, pushing more mana into the Devour spell, reinforcing it as the monstrous tongue retracted and the croaking echoed again.
There were too many enemies. Too many variables.
And Leo, still screaming, was bleeding out fast.
Galahad looked at Noah with wild eyes. "Can you carry him too?!"
Noah shook his head. "Not with Arlo. I can slow them, but I can’t protect everyone like this."
They were boxed in. Whatever side they chose, death was waiting for them there. Acid Toads ahead. Bullet Spiders behind.
Noah gritted his teeth and dropped the focused shield of Devour, allowing the darkness to spread in a wide radius around them.
The abyssal hands erupted from the ground in a circle, reaching and swiping at anything that dared to step towards them.
The faint howls of the spell echoed off the stone walls, masking the guttural croaks of the Acid Toads and the incessant skittering of the adult Bullet Spiders.
And then they came. From all sides.
Bullets of web streaked through the air like shrapnel, striking against the shield of darkness. Prehensile tongues whipped across the tunnel, slamming into the barrier of darkness.
Noah’s entire focus tunneled into controlling the spell, directing the devouring hands to intercept each attack. His arms ached, his veins flaring with burning mana. But he held it. He had to.
Just behind him, Leo, still trembling, pale, and one-armed, dug into his pouch with shaky fingers. He pulled out a regeneration potion, the cork slipping from his grip.
The vial hit the ground, nearly shattering, but Galahad snatched it as it rolled.
"Damn it, Leo," he muttered, uncorking it and forcing it to Leo’s lips. "Drink. Drink it now."
Leo gulped reflexively, eyes wide as the potion surged through him.
His flesh writhed and bubbled where his shoulder had been, new muscle and bone sprouting grotesquely from the ragged stump.
A horrible scream tore from his throat before he slumped into unconsciousness, the pain too much to bear.
Noah grunted in exertion, yanking one hand back to redirect a devouring swipe towards a Spider that had managed to slip through the perimeter.
It vanished into the waiting maw, the system silently rewarding him with another attribute increase, but he didn’t notice. His eyes were locked on the swarm, and they were pressing in fast.
There were just too many. Far too many.
Beside him, Galahad growled. "My father would be ashamed if he saw me now."
"I’m not some helpless damsel in distress!" He snarled. "I’d rather die on my feet."
He stood tall and slammed his fist to his chest as he activated his Skill. "Transformation: Flamekin!"
A blast of heat erupted from his body as his form shifted. His skin turned to molten fire, muscles outlined by white-hot flames, and his hair roared upward like a bonfire caught in the wind.
He charged into the ranks of the Acid Toads, flame burning away their acid coating before they could even react.
Toads croaked in fury, tongues lashing out, but they couldn’t penetrate the fire. Galahad became a force of fury, slamming fists into skulls and igniting every creature he touched.
Noah took a step forward, raising his free hand towards the Acid Toads, and began forming Rot.
He layered the spell formation once. Then again. Then again.
Each spell circle hovered over the next, the runes spinning faster and faster as the mana demanded to be used.
He didn’t stop until nearly a hundred formations were stacked, a glowing mass of destructive power above his palm.
"GALAHAD! GET OUT OF THERE!"
Without hesitation, Galahad shot back like a flaming comet, skidding to a stop just behind Noah.
Then, Noah released it.
The air twisted.
A colossal beam of black and violet energy tore through the tunnel, its shriek deafening.
Everything it touched disintegrated instantly, the Acid Toads evaporating into clouds of dust, the stone melting and cracking, and even the walls trembled under the sheer pressure.
Silence followed. The tunnel ahead was clear.
Noah fell to a knee, gasping. Sweat drenched his face, and his vision swam.
’More than half...’ he realized. That one attack had taken over half of his mana pool.
The Spiders sensed the drop in pressure.
They attacked.
The darkness of Devour flickered, then vanished.
In that instant, Noah switched hands and summoned twenty Rot spell formations.
He fired the spell, a narrower beam of decay sweeping forward and blasting the leading Spiders apart. Their frontlines crumbled, but more came.
Noah didn’t wait.
He ran.
He grabbed Arlo under one arm and Leo under the other, hoisting them both onto his shoulders like sacks of wheat.
Galahad, his flames extinguished and body steaming from exhaustion, followed behind without a word.
Together, they sprinted through the tunnel, back the way they’d come, chasing salvation.
And as they chased the exit, death kept chasing them.