The Tyrant Arachnea, enveloped in flames, would've been very easily visible, perhaps even more so than the group of soldiers advancing. I willed it to advance, its speed outstripping that of the raiding party.

But, that was within calculations. It's role was to act as the hammer, with the raiding party being the anvil. They only needed to get into position and have the Tyrant Arachnea circle around - meaning it had to take a longer path to get to where it needed to be anyway.

"A magnificent- though terrifying creature," Kyle said. "I would shudder to think, though, of what might happen if one were to attack our kingdom - it gets stronger, does it not, when attacked with fire? In that case even the royal family's [Magma Pillar] would be of little help to us, let alone the more commonly-available [Grand Fireball]."

"Indeed it does," I said. "But I don't know where it's from, honestly speaking - it might even be extinct if it was dangerous enough to humans… or other intelligent creatures like lizardmen." I added on the last part as quickly as I could.

"Extinct? Teacher, would you still be able to summon it then?" Sun Jiao asked me.

"Yes," I said. "I've been looking for a summon that can fly for the longest time - and one of them is called a wyvern. They were hunted to extinction soon after the dragons, but there are still grimoires that will let you summon one. That is to say, the only time you'll see a wyvern now in modern times is if it's a summoned creature."

Magical beasts that were actively harmful towards people were usually the targets of large-scale eradication campaigns like the kind undertaken by the Ruler of the Astral Winds.

Given that, it was possible that there were no other Tyrant Arachnea in all of Libraria.

In addition to dangerous magical beasts, some were simply prized enough that they were wiped out instead. An example was the silver-horned antelope, whose horns were used in traditional medicine and it had been hunted till extinction in Hitutsa for the same. Now, the only time you would see one was as a Rank Two summon. Summons could not breed or have children, so these summons could in no way replace the actual fauna in the area.

"And even if there is one," I added, "it is weak to ice magic - so Master Jiah Pei would have no problem dealing with one."

"Weak to ice you say - ah, if fire makes it stronger, I guess that makes sense," Kyle said. "Unfortunately, I do not have any ice spells."

"It's weak to other things too, even a few Rank Three spells that it doesn't resist would do it in," I explained. Summons could, as a general rule, be defeated by spells of the same Rank used to summon them. "Also, this is the Tyrant Arachnea, there is apparently a weaker version called the Arachnea which doesn't have its fire-absorbing abilities, this creature is equivalent to how some magical beasts have lords or princes among them."

"Thank you for the lesson. Oh look, it appears to be working magnificently," Kyle said.

The dryads seemed to have seen the raiding party, and the Tyrant Arachnea as well. The raiding party was no doubt more dangerous than the spider, but the mere sight of it was terrifying in a way that the horde of soldiers was not.

They scattered almost immediately at the sight of the spider. It wasn't an orderly retreat, but a mass panic with scampering in all directions like rabbits - then again, that was within expectations as the raiding party slowly began to loosen its own formation to hunt them down.

This was a bit of a departure from the original plan of claiming and sticking to the higher ground, but was still within expectations and they had reacted appropriately to the changing situation.

The Tyrant Arachnea ran into the fleeing dryads with basically no resistance whatsoever.

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If they had decided to stand their ground and meet the Tyrant Arachnea head-on, they would've fared far better as its movement would be limited, and they would ultimately be able to strike it at its weak underside.

But much like a spear line before a cavalry charge, it only worked so long as the spear line was confident enough to stay put and that the cavalry would halt their approach.

These dryads were likely the leftovers from the recent siege, and had already imbibed a copious amount of fear of the Tyrant Arachnea.

That, and the Tyrant Arachnea would charge forward regardless - whether it would result in its death or not.

I couldn't see much of the battlefield from now, and let it basically run on autopilot right now, just giving it a few general commands like 'target the largest groups of dryads' and 'herd them towards the raiders.'

I wasn't sure how much it could understand regarding each of the orders, but it seemed to be behaving in a way that was still in line with what I wanted.

Although summons shared a mental link with their summoners, many of them just did not have brains that were advanced enough to grasp very complex ideas - the Elephant Frog being an example of them. It was sort of like having a rather low-end PC; if your hardware wasn't up to date, there was a limit on how advanced the software you could run would be.

The Tyrant Arachnea seemed to be quite intelligent from the thoughts I could share with it, but it couldn't talk, which is why I wasn't sure where on the intelligence spectrum it fell.

If I wanted, I could 'feel' images from it, though they were disjointed and mainly showed the faces of some of the dryads as they either caught on fire or were trampled into twigs by the Tyrant Arachnea.

I had no desire to see those images - I had seen what the dryads would do to people if given the chance, and I didn't want to develop any kind of sympathy for them.

"It looks like things are going well," Kyle said.

"Hopefully none of the surrounding villages are harmed," I said. I was sure that some of them must have come in contact with this new dryad horde, and there had already been quite some damage done by the prior waves of attacks. Although the bulk of the dryad horde had not headed towards the capital, a small number of them had branched off at many places. This was not going to be conducive to rebuilding. "It was hard enough for them to start rebuilding anyway."

"Hmm…" Kyle said. "His Majesty was mulling over your recent proposal, you know. On how to potentially help out those whose villages had been destroyed."

What was he talking about - oh! That! Right, I had almost forgotten about what I had said a few weeks ago.

It actually made me a little nervous knowing that Kyle had not only remembered it, but that apparently it was being seriously discussed.

"Ah, so… how did the other nobles find it?" I asked.

"It's still coming under consideration, but there are a few projects that might actually fit what you had mentioned," Kyle said. "One idea is to build a fortress near the path that the dryads had used to come into Chipker in the first place, so that we would not be caught so unprepared the next time if they should try to invade."

"That… sounds like a good idea," I said. Chipker had basically been caught with its pants down when it came to the dryad invasion which is why it had fared so much worse than Hitutsa. "But also very expensive." I guessed that they didn't have the budget to build a full-blown wall at the border with Hitutsa, let alone have the manpower to man the wall once it was built, but a fortress in a strategic location was more cost-effective I guessed. They likely had one already, but not at the size or scale needed to deal with tens of thousands of drayds.

Kyle nodded. "The lowest estimates say that it could take up to ten years for it to be finished, while some say that it might end up taking fifteen years."

"Sounds like a big project, you might want to start with something smaller," I said. The thought of thousands of people working for fifteen years on something kind of reminded me of how I was told the pyramids had been built back in ancient Egypt - they were large-scale projects that required a good portion of the nation's resources as well as logistical planning. But in the same vein, they could greatly stimulate Chipker's economy.

Kyle shook his head, however. "I want to ask you something - Master Stefan. I guess that you are still young, so the shock of the incoming dryad invasion might've not have come as such an issue to you - but it was especially shocking to people such as us who had lived for decades without seeing a single dryad." I mean, I had found it to be pretty shocking at the time - though that had been more so because my travel plans had been put on hold because of it. "But an invasion of this size - I still can't wrap my head around it, but the worst part of it all is that we had the advantage. We have a huge swathe of fire elementalists, and the dryads are weak to fire! We would have fared even worse had it been a different enemy. And yet, looking out at the rest of the kingdom, they were able to run roughshod over us simply because we weren't able to rally our forces enough in time to deal with them. And because we hadn't expected it…" There was a tinge of despair mixed with disbelief in his voice.

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