"A pride? Do what you like." Arad walked toward the hole where the spider was and extended his hand between the bushes, and the spider latched onto his forearm, trying to bite him. Its fangs deflected off his skin as if they were nothing.
The poor thing looked visibly confused as Arad lifted it up. It tried to bite him again and again but failed each time.
Selina stared at Arad from behind Matilda. "He's hard." She could feel a powerful surge of magic crackling beneath Arad's skin.
Matilda remembered how even her claws cracked on his face. "He isn't just big. He's as tough as stone."
"Stop ogling my husband." Aella walked between him and them. "Focus on what we came here for."
Selina waved her wand and a large bucket appeared out of her storage magic. "I'll collect it." She immediately cast a thin barrier over the bucket's mouth and reached toward the spider's fangs as Arad held it still.
It only took a few seconds for Selina to fill half the bucket with the spider's toxin. "Got it." She smiled, walking back as Matilda approached with a tube of paint to mark the spider. That paint was specially made by the teachers to fade after half a day, the time demon spiders need to regenerate their poison.
"Are you done?" Aella stared at the bucket of poison. Selina nodded. "We'll use this to make antidotes." She smiled. "It makes the stings hurt less."
"Wait. I still have something to do." Arad waved his left hand and a large wooden wheel appeared out of nowhere. "What is this!" Matilda gasped, seeing the strange contraption.
It looked like a strangely made waterwheel with several wooden frames around the edge of the wheel.
"Silk wheel. A friend said it's used to extract silk from spiders." Arad flipped the spider on its back and pinned it down with several branches from the legs. He then pulled a bit of silk from it, stretching it to the wheel, and started turning it.
After collecting the silk from the spider, he released it into the forest and the group kept moving. They caught several more spiders as time passed by, but suddenly, they saw a red flare explode in the sky.
"What's that?" Matilda and Selina stared at the sky, confused.
"We need to run back to the teachers, something happened." Aella looked at them, that was a signal sent by her teacher. Herbalists aren't fighters, so they usually carry a flare signal to call for help. There are multiple colors, but red means the current area is too dangerous to stay in.
"Did something happen?"
"That means we can't stay in the forest." Aella looked at Arad, "Let's head back."
The moment they turned, the ground beneath them cracked and a massive ravine appeared out of nowhere and they started falling.
Aella and Arad started flying with wind and gravity magic, but the other two fell straight down. Matilda couldn't fly and Selina was panicking so she couldn't construct a spell.
Arad extended his hands as he was about to catch them with gravity magic, but the scenery immediately changed into a stone cave, and he stood there alone. ^What's happening?^
^[Spiders lived here for a long time and the area was being constantly fed by the mana of countless teachers and students, add the fact it's on a black dragon territory, and it's becoming quite unstable.]^ Doma started explaining, and Aisha finished it as she stood on Arad's shoulder.
"Add your existence as a powerful void dragon and a dungeon is born. That is what I would love to say, but there has to be a catalyst, someone or something must've triggered this." Aisha looked around.
"Someone created the dungeon?"
"Planting a massive mana crystal is the best they could do. It's like plants, but different." Aisha briefly explained how dungeons are born.
Usually when a powerful mana crystal forms in the ground, it takes years to soak in the natural mana emitted by the earth and the monsters living there. This is why dungeons can have certain types of monsters since the core feeds from their mana to grow. If the mana crystal is a seek, mana is its water.
But unlike plants, they don't sprout slowly, they gather energy to burst into suddenly burst into existence. This is why humans can't destroy a dungeon before it's formed, they don't know when or where it'll show up.
There is a whole field of study that studies and experiments on them, they are like natural disasters that need to be accounted for.
Arad started walking, pulling the adamantine sword from his stomach. "We'll, this is annoying." The dungeon's dense mana prevented him from using most of his senses, when activating his [Void Eyes] everything seemed to be covered in thick fog.
"ARON! Is that you?!" A voice boomed behind him as Lucia rushed in with Sylvany.
"It's you two?" Arad turned back. "So this place gathered us three here."
Sylvany stared around, approaching the wall and touching it. "The mana here is too dense. This dungeon must've been incubating for decades." He turned toward Lucia.
"You're better than me with earth magic. How deep are we?" He asked.
Lucia put her hands together, pulling a thick wooden staff as she parted them. Thud! Tapping the staff on the ground, she closed her eyes focusing on her magic.
Arad could sense a wave of mana rushing out of her body into the ground and spreading everywhere.
She started looking worried. "I can't believe it. We're outside my range." She gasped.
"Outside it? That means we're at least ten kilometers underground. Probably even more." Sylvany growled, "This is bad."
"Can't you send a message to the headmaster?" Lucia looked at Sylvany.
"I would've already done it if I could." He pulled a wand and started conjuring a spell.
Arad stood there. ^[Doma, what do you think?]^
^[This dungeon is using you three as a power source. You must be locked far deeper than everyone else, and it'll try to keep you here. If you want to know why, it's because you three are the strongest around.]^
^[Both Sylvany and Lucia are stronger than her, or should I say have more mana to be more exact. If Zephyr was still around, she would've been here with you.]^
Arad looked up and started thinking. ^I could dig my way out if I transformed, it'll be easy to save everyone, but that would expose me.^ He looked back at the two teachers. ^I can kill them and save Aella…^
The two flinched, sensing a faint bloodlust in the air but they thought it was coming from the dungeon itself.
^No, they won't like it. I need to find a way to get up without transforming, at least, they better not realize I'm Arad Orion.^
He started taking his shirt off and stored it in his stomach. It was time to work.
"What are you doing?" Lucia gasped.
"Stop fooling around. It's cold down here, wear your clothes or you'll get sick." Sylvany approached Arad.
"Move away." Arad said as he took a stance beside the wall, "I'll try to dig out."
Arad suddenly started swinging his fists at the wall like a monster, each punch digging a massive hole the size of a sheep. A blast of dust and debris started rushing out, forcing Sylvany to back away covering his face.
"The hell is this guy?!" He cried, suddenly feeling that Arad stopped punching.
Sylvany gasped, the wall was unscathed.
"It regenerates." Lucia said as she walked toward Arad. "It's useless to dig with your bare hands."
Arad turned toward her. "Is that so?" He started taking his shoes off.