The cavern erupted into chaos. Ignis's Solar Wind had turned the upper webs into a crackling inferno, and Alice was a blur of void energy, picking off any spider that tried to form a coordinated counterattack. But the true battle was just beginning.

As Adam closed in, the Arachnowyrm's multiple eyes glowed with a sickly purple light. Then, without warning, thin, precise beams of condensed violet energy—Ocular Lasers—lanced out from several eyes at once, sizzling through the air towards Adam.

Adam twisted mid-air, his Aerial Dominance allowing him to evade the majority, but one beam grazed his flank. It didn't burn; it seared, a cold, numbing pain that ate at his scales.

'What the hell?! Lasers?! Since when could she do that?!' he thought, more shocked by the method than the injury.

«It seems there is much about the Big Mother's capabilities we did not know,» Lilith observed calmly from his back, though a thread of tension ran through her psychic voice. «Her time consolidating power has not been idle.»

«Of course this wouldn't be easy,» Adam growled, banking hard. He wanted to use Phantom Onslaught to close the distance instantly, but he felt the drain on his Mana Core (Lvl 3). High-cost skills like that and Stormrend had to be saved for critical moments. He had to be smart.

"Lilith, now! Distract her!"

«With pleasure.» Lilith's crimson eyes glowed fiercely. A beam of her own—Crimson Gaze—shot out, not at the spider's body, but directly into the cluster of eyes that had just fired. The psychic assault didn't cause physical damage, but the Arachnowyrm flinched, its head jerking back as a wave of disorienting agony and intrusive thoughts flooded its mind.

Seizing the opening, Adam slammed his tail into the ground. "Earthshaker!" The shockwave rippled through the cavern floor, not aimed at the spider's body, but at the ground beneath its eight massive legs. The stone fractured and buckled. The Arachnowyrm, already mentally assaulted, stumbled, its legs scrambling for purchase.

Now! Adam inhaled, mana condensing. "Ember Shard Shot!" The enhanced obsidian projectile screamed forth, aimed not at the heavily armored carapace, but at the joint of one of its forward legs. It struck with a crack, weakening the chitin. Without pause, Adam channeled a different energy. He became a blur of focused motion. "Monarch's Pierce!"

He shot forward like a living spear, his entire body aimed at the damaged joint. The skill's surgical precision and armor-ignoring properties did their work. With a horrific tearing sound, his momentum and power sheared through the leg entirely. The severed limb, as thick as a tree trunk, crashed to the ground.

A surge of triumph filled Adam. 'It worked!'

«Adam, do not let your guard down!» Lilith's warning came a heartbeat too late.

The Arachnowyrm, shrieking in a new octave of pain and fury, didn't collapse. Instead, it used its remaining seven legs to pivot with terrifying speed. One of its other forelegs, tipped with a barb like a blacksmith's spear, lashed out in a backhanded swing that Adam couldn't fully dodge.

The impact was monumental. It caught Adam across his side and sent him crashing towards the cavern wall. Thinking instantly of his passenger, Adam flared his wings, twisting in mid-air to take the brunt of the impact on his own back, shielding Lilith between his body and his star-lit wings.

BOOM.

Dust and shattered crystal rained down.

Adam grunted, pain flaring across his spine.

«Are you alright?!» Lilith's voice, for the first time, held clear alarm as she scrambled from his back.

"I'm fine," Adam coughed, shaking off the debris. "Blooming Vitality." A warm, greenish-gold light enveloped him, the deep ache in his back immediately easing, the scales knitting. He rose, his eyes locked on the Arachnowyrm. "I've got regeneration on my side."

But his triumph faded as he watched the spider's wound. Around the stump of the severed leg, a thick, transparent ichor had solidified, forming a hardened, crystalline seal. Beneath it, the flesh and chitin were visibly… pulsing. With a disgusting, wet sound, a new, smaller but rapidly growing limb began to push its way out, elongating by the second.

"You've got to be kidding me," Adam hissed. "She regenerates too?"

«Of course,» Lilith said, her voice returning to its composed, analytical tone, though her crimson eyes were wide. «The Big Mother did not earn her title and hold this domain for centuries by being easily crippled. She is a true Dungeon Lord. This will be a battle of attrition, and her reserves are deep.»

The Arachnowyrm finished its pivot, its body now fully facing them. The regenerating leg twitched. The monster looked at Adam with a sharp gaze.

Adam's star-lit eyes narrowed, not with fear, but with a grim, savage satisfaction. "Of course," he rumbled, the sound vibrating through the smoky air. "It should be like this. It wouldn't be satisfying if my vengeance was too easy. A quick kill would be an insult to all the times she almost ended me."

«Indeed,» Lilith affirmed, her crimson gaze fixed on her former captor. «We will savor the unraveling of her terror, thread by thread.»

Enraged by their defiance and the continuous loss of her brood, the Arachnowyrm reared back. Its massive fangs dripped with venom that shimmered with a malevolent purple glow. Instead of a single stream, it unleashed a Venomous Deluge—a wide, high-arcing spray of corrosive poison that fell like toxic rain across a huge swath of the cavern.

Adam didn't try to outpace it on the ground. He beat his wings, shooting vertically. His Agility in the air, enhanced by Aerial Dominance, was his greatest asset. He wove through the downpour, but the area of effect was immense. Several droplets struck his wings and back, sizzling violently against his Monarch's Aegis. The defensive composite skill held, neutralizing the worst of the corrosion, but Adam felt the strain—a draining, acidic pressure against his protections.

From his vantage point, he locked eyes with the Arachnowyrm. Its multitude of eyes held a terrifying, intelligent hatred. It remembered him. The little viper that got away, now returned as a serpent of stars and shadow.

"You remember me, don't you?" Adam called down, his voice cutting through the din of battle. "I'm going to wipe that look right out of every single one of your eyes."

He didn't give it time to retort with another attack. "Phantom Onslaught!" He vanished from the sky, reappearing in three rapid, disorienting flashes that brought him to the cavern ceiling directly above the Arachnowyrm. He focused on the crystalline growths along his spine. "Starlight Veil - Blinding Pulse!"

The star-like points on his back flared from a soft glow to an unbearable, focused burst of brilliant white light, aimed directly downward. It was like a miniature sun erupting in the cavern. The Arachnowyrm, with its many light-sensitive eyes, recoiled with a pained shriek, its vision overwhelmed by searing afterimages.

'Now!' While it was disoriented, Adam dropped like a meteor. He channeled a tremendous amount of mana, the air around him crackling with energy. "STORM-REND!"

A vortex of howling wind and concentrated lightning erupted from his form, slamming into the Arachnowyrm's back. The cutting forces ignored chunks of its chitinous armor, and the paralyzing lightning danced across its body, causing its limbs to spasm. The smell of ozone and burnt hair filled the air.

The spider-god, even blinded and in agony, fought with primal instinct. It sensed the attack and one of its remaining legs, moving on reflex, scythed towards Adam's position. But Adam's Hunter's Tri-Sense had already mapped the attack. He aborted his descent, twisting violently to the side. The leg whistled past, missing him by inches.

Seeing the fresh, smoking wounds left by Stormrend, Adam saw his chance. He inhaled, drawing in the heated air of the cavern, and unleashed a continuous, roaring torrent of Fire Breath (Lvl 2) directly into the torn, vulnerable flesh.

The Arachnowyrm's regenerative ichor, designed to seal and rebuild, met the intense, magical flames. Instead of hardening, it boiled and vaporized. The regenerative process at the wound sites visibly stalled, the nascent limb-growth blackening and curling.

The spider's shrieks reached a new peak of fury and pain, the regeneration that was its greatest asset was now being actively countered.

«The fire inhibits her healing!» Lilith confirmed, already moving to capitalize. She scuttled along the walls, Crimson Gaze lancing out to strike at the joints of other legs, not to sever, but to cause debilitating spasms at critical moments.

Adam stared at the injured spider with a predatory gaze, "Now you won't be able to recover anymore damn spider."

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