On their side of the cavern, the battle was less a strategic duel and more a chaotic purge. Alice was a drill sergeant of the void, herding panicked clusters of smaller spiders with precise Void Bolts and terrifying leaps, driving them towards the raging wall of fire Ignis had created.

«Faster! Burn them! Stop playing around and incinerate them!» Alice snarled, vaporizing a spider that tried to flank them.

Ignis, hovering above the fray, let out a slightly weary puff of smoke. «But it's boring! Just breathing fire over and over! I want to use my other skills! Watch this!»

Before Alice could stop her, Ignis took a deep breath and unleashed a wide-fanning Solar Wind. The scalding gale washed over a group of spiders, but instead of concentrating the heat, it mostly scattered them, some even being blown out of the fire zones.

«HAH?? Are you an idiot?!» Alice shrieked, darting to catch one of the scattered spiders with a claw. «We need them dead and ash, not wind-blown! Just burn them so we can help Adam!»

«No, this will work better! It's faster!» Ignis insisted, her draconic pride stung. She saw a particularly dense cluster of spiders gathering in a depression, many of them injured and dripping their toxic, web-fluid onto the ground.

An idea—a very simple, very Ignis idea—formed. She wanted to hit them all at once, really hard.

She ignored Alice's continued shouts. She angled herself, drew in power not for a wide blast, but for a concentrated one. «SOLAR LANCE!»

The piercing beam of condensed sunlight lanced down, not directly at the spiders, but at the large, growing puddle of mixed spider-venom and web-fluid they were standing in.

The effect was instant and catastrophic.

The volatile biochemical cocktail, superheated by a beam of pure solar energy, did not just burn. It detonated.

KABOOM!

A violent, greenish-purple fireball erupted, swallowing the entire spider cluster and sending a shockwave through the cavern. The explosion was followed by a chain reaction as smaller venom-sacks on incinerated spiders popped like fireworks, clearing a huge swath of the battlefield in an instant.

Alice, who had been leaping towards another target, was thrown off her feet by the blast wave. She landed in a crouch, ears ringing, her starry eyes wide as she stared at the smoldering crater where dozens of spiders had just been.

She slowly turned to look at Ignis, who was looking at her own handiwork with a mix of surprise and immense satisfaction. A startling thought occurred to Alice. 'Did… did the idiot lizard actually plan that?'

«What… what was that attack?» Alice asked, her voice uncharacteristically hesitant. «Did you… think of that, Ignis?»

Ignis landed beside her, puffing her chest out. She looked at the crater, then at Alice, her head tilting in genuine confusion. «Hmm? Think of what?»

Alice stared at her for a long moment. The sheer, unadulterated simplicity of it… the absolute lack of any higher strategy… It was so perfectly, infuriatingly Ignis.

She let out a long, slow sigh, the tension draining from her shoulders. «No… it's nothing. Must have been my imagination. Just… don't blow us up. Let's finish clearing this area and get back to Adam.» She couldn't believe she'd even for a second attributed cunning to the fiery lizard. Some battles, it seemed, were won by sheer, explosive luck.

Back to the fight between Adam and Lilith against the Arachnowyrm.

Adam pressed the attack, a relentless storm of fang and fury. He used Phantom Onslaught to dance around the spider's desperate counterattacks, followed by a devastating Monarch's Pierce that sank deep into its wounded flank. Before the regenerative ichor could even begin to flow, he seared the wound shut with a sustained blast of Fire Breath, the magical flames cauterizing the flesh and halting the regrowth.

When the Arachnowyrm tried to retaliate with a crushing leg strike, Lilith was there. Her Crimson Gaze lanced out, striking the spider's mind not with pain, but with a terrifying, disorienting burst of perception, making its own limbs seem like hostile entities for a crucial second. Adam dodged easily.

"This," Adam roared, slamming his tail into another of its leg joints, "is for hunting me! For thinking I was just prey!"

The Arachnowyrm's response was a shrill, world-shaking "HREEEEEEKKKK!" that was different from all its previous cries. This wasn't just rage or pain. It was a sound of shattering pride, of desperate, final resolve. The cavern trembled, and dust rained from the ceiling.

Then, it turned and fled. Not with grace, but with a wounded, scrambling panic, dragging its injured body back towards the deeper parts of its burning nest.

"Hey! Hey! You think you can just run?!" Adam shouted, giving chase and firing an Ember Shard Shot that chipped more armor off its back.

«Adam!» Lilith's voice, usually so composed, was sharp with sudden alarm. «She is not fleeing randomly. She is heading for the central brood-nursery! Where Alice and Ignis are!»

"What is she planning?!" Adam snarled, speeding after her.

They burst into a vast chamber where Alice and Ignis had just finished clearing the last of the smaller spiders. The Arachnowyrm ignored them completely. With a horrific, single-minded focus, it began to do something unthinkable. It tore through its own burning webs and descended upon the clusters of its own surviving children—the eggs, the hatchlings, the injured—and began to devour them. Its mandibles tore them apart with brutal, ravenous efficiency, swallowing them whole in a grotesque, rapid feast.

Alice and Ignis stared, momentarily frozen in disgust and confusion. "Get away from there!" Adam bellowed, a cold, familiar dread coiling in his gut. 'This feeling… this is it. My bad luck turning. Right at the worst possible moment.'

"Stop her! Now! Don't let her finish!" He unleashed every ranged attack he had—Ember Shard Shots, Pressurized Spines. Lilith joined with Mind Spikes. Their attacks scored hits, drew blood, but the Arachnowyrm seemed to barely notice. It was consuming its own brood, and with each one, a sickening, visible change overcame it.

A hard, white, chitinous shell began to rapidly form over its body, starting from the wounds and spreading outwards, covering it like a grotesque cocoon. Its form seemed to swell and contort within.

"What… what is that…? Is she… molting?" Adam asked, horror dawning.

«Worse,» Lilith whispered, her psychic voice trembling with a fear Adam had never heard from her. «She is forcing an evolution. Sacrificing her entire brood for a massive influx of raw energy and biomass to catalyze a transformation. We must leave. Now.»

But it was too late. With a sound like mountains cracking, the white shell shattered.

What emerged was not just a larger spider. It was a different creature altogether. Its carapace was a stark, bone-white, streaked with violent, arterial red patterns. Jet-black spots dotted its body like holes into nothingness. Its form was slightly leaner, more predatory, its legs ended in sharper, spear-like points. But the most terrifying change was its aura—a palpable, hungry pressure that seemed to suck the heat and sound from the room, focused with laser intensity on Adam. The system provided a new, grim title.

<< Ophiarachna, The Devourer-Queen >>

It let out a low, chittering hiss that promised not just death, but extinction.

Adam stared at the reborn horror, then let out a short, breathless, and utterly humorless laugh.

"Haha… I knew it…" he muttered, his star-lit eyes wide with a mixture of resignation and fury. "I'm always… so unbelievably unlucky."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.