Wish Upon the Stars chapter 290

Luckily for me, I didn't have to wait long for Mel and Abel. The two  of them were fast, and when told they were looking for a giant ass  cliff, it wasn't exactly tough to find the right spot. Of course, the  two of them didn't come down the waterfall, as we watched, the two of  them slowly descend from the sky, held aloft by Mel's flames as they  blazed up from underneath them like some kind of rocket booster.

"I  didn't know she could do that." I said to Callie. "Did you know she  could do that?" Seeing the two of them slowly descend from the sky on a  cloud of fire was breathtaking...and also extremely aggravating. We'd  had to fall down a fucking waterfall. I wasn't ashamed to admit watching  them leisurely floating to the ground was pissing me off.

Abel  grinned cheekily as he touched the ground, looking us all over  critically. "Wow, you all look like shit. No wonder you decided to wait,  everyone looks like a drowned rat." He paused. "Well, not Lament, she  seems fine. But the rest of you look like something that was clogging my  sink."

"First of all." Said Callie. "Shut up. Second of  all what took you so long? We found a nest of some kind of gem eating  spiders down here that is supposed to have a stockpile of valuable  Ascendant materials." She grinned over at our Beast Lord Garden friends.  "We're just lucky Sloane is a huge animal nerd, or we might have just  decided the creepy spider cave was more trouble than it was worth and  left." I hadn't mentioned the details on call, there were far too many  valuable things in that cave for me to trust bringing it up on a scan  ring.

That got a nod from Mel. "Understandable. Spiders  are gross." She looked around with interest. "Seriously surprised nobody  found this place before. It's pretty out of the way, and flight at our  rank isn't common, but still. You'd think SOMEONE would have ended up  down here like you guys."

Lament laughed lazily. "They  probably did. That spider was sneaky as hell, if I wasn't so well  trained it would have completely blindsided me. Sloane said the venom  turns people to stone too. They've probably killed dozens of G-rankers  down here. I'm guessing other than the bones which apparently they  wanted, the rest of the body gets petrified and destroyed."

My  face paled slightly. "There...there was a lot of gravel in that cave.  Not at the entrance itself but further in. It might have been bodies."  My stomach turned a bit at that. Fuck, every time I forgot how dangerous  it was down here someone reminded me. "Plus there's a potentially  F-rank adult spider down there too. Even before the babies were born, I  have no doubt it would be able to easily kill the few stragglers who  showed up."

Now I was even more glad that I'd waited for  Abel and Mel. Who knew how many G-rankers had died in that shitty cave.  Thinking about it, if we hadn't had Lament with us we might have gotten  bitten, and even if the venom hadn't killed us, there were bound to be  more of those things in there. If we'd been swarmed we would have been  fucked.

I didn't know if Fantasy was the reason we'd found  this place, but if so, I'd need to be way more careful of that sense.  Sure, it would guide you toward things that would grow your renown and  help you ascend, but things that helped you advance could also kill you.  I wasn't afraid of a good fight, but it might be prudent to be a bit  more cautious going into that kind of thing.

After we  discussed what to do next, we settled on having Lament as the advance  guard, with Abel following behind. Mel would bring up the read for wider  view of the field. Her fire abilities made for great crowd control. I  was pleased to see her carrying the orb we'd picked up for her too, I  was glad to know it was actually useful.

Finally we began  our trek inside. I grimaced at the gravel once we got a bit further in  now that I knew what it was, but stayed focused. Apart from having my  cane up and ready to swing, I also kept a close eye on the nearby area  with my Seek Hidden skill. Granted, it worked better on larger things,  but I could still see the spiders if they got close, and was able to  point several of them out for Lament and Abel to kill.

More  than once I had to act directly when one of them dropped from the  ceiling at Callie, or was saved by her quick thinking when they tried  that on me. Not every part of the cave ceiling was close enough for the  skill to work perfectly, and some of the rooms with higher ceilings had  multiple nasty surprises. This pattern went on for about twenty minutes,  until we came to a new room with a fairly low ceiling, and I froze in  place at what my skill was picking up.

The others all came  to a stop when I did, the ones in front turning to look at me in  confusion. I swallowed and set my feet. "Twenty. On the ceiling. They  seem like they might be sleeping, but there's no way they won't notice  us walking below them. Starbreaker, can you fry them?" Avoiding combat  sounded boring, but fighting almost two dozen venomous spiders sounded  like a huge pain.

Sadly, it wasn't to be. Mel shook her  head. "Not in here. I'd fry the rest of you with them. They're G-rank,  and the amount of power I'd need to use would be enough to injure most  of the people here. Your armor might protect you, since you're pretty  much entirely covered, but not the others." I cursed, but wasn't  surprised. That had definitely been too convenient to work.

I  was far from the person I'd been months ago though. Not just in terms  of stats, but my Skills and combat standards were both much higher.  Reaching into my store of attacks I triggered a shadow attack along with  Sucking Mud, forcefully synergizing the two skills and pushing them to  activate as fast as possible. Just like the last time I'd used that  move, tendrils of dark mud lashed out from the ceiling the spiders were  crouched on.

Five of the damn things actually got caught,  the rest squealing with distress and hurling themselves off the rock  before they had a chance to get grabbed. With fifteen spiders in free  fall, their overwhelming advantage of having a bunch of legs and being  skittery fucks was pretty much neutralized.

Wren, Lestri,  and Lament, picked six of them out of the air, two stabs each finishing  them off before they even hit the ground, while Abel smashed three with a  series of massive punches. Mel couldn't carpet bomb the place but she  was free to shoot condensed darts of flame. The blossom shaped attacks  landed on the spiders as closed buds and then consumed three of them in  flames as they opened.

Callie was focused on the ones on  the ceiling, targeting the five I was holding with ease thanks to the  abundant shadow energy already condensed into the area., she shredded  them easily even as Sloane, Beric, and Croll lashed out at the last  three, each taking one and reducing them to ribbons within seconds.

All  in all, the whole fight took about thirty seconds tops, and we were all  left staring at the absolutely decimated cavern in shock. Well, not  all, Abel, Lament, and Mel seemed to be pretty calm. The rest of us  though, were in shock how dangerous our combined assault had been. My  head was a bit sore from the soul weight of launching that attack so  quickly, but still, this had been almost no effort.

Megan,  instead of looking shocked, just looked annoyed. "Damn it!" Yelled the  tall blonde. "I wanted to kill some of them! Did you guys have to hog  all the kills?" Turning to Sloane, she demanded. "Are there going to be  more of these things? That's like thirty counting all the ones we killed  on the way here, if I don't get to fight anything I'm going to be  pissed."

The dark chuckle Sloane let out was anything but  comforting. "Minimum egg laying size for Rockjackers is a hundred. Some  of them can lay twice that many. You don't need to worry about having  targets. Still, this was a good thing. Killing the bastards before they  could bite us was important." She brandished her knife. "Of course, not  as important as scavenging their venom sacks and checking their stomachs  for gems. Anyone care to help a girl out?"

To the  surprise of literally no one, Callie gleefully volunteered to help  disembowel dead spiders looking for magic jewels. She and Sloane made  excellent time tearing into the bodies, and managed to dig up a whole  bunch of half digested gems. Some of them had apparently been swallowed  recently enough that they hadn't degraded much, and even more amazingly  one of the intact ones had a functional lightning rune on it.

Since  this trip was turning out so lucrative we decided to sell off the  proceeds and then split the credits after, so everyone was just passing  their stock to Sydney, who apparently had an honest to gods spatial ring  on her. Even as the heir to powerful sect that was pretty impressive  and it made the whole trip way more convenient.

Once we  finished with that we moved forward again, taking out the odd spider  here or there as we swept through the cave, until finally we came to one  absolutely massive chamber that was much different than the others.

The  inside of this cavern was brightly lit. The other caves hadn't had more  than a few of the crystals on the ground, so the ceiling was cast in  heavy shadow. This room though, the ceiling was festooned with huge  spikes of blue glowing crystal.

More than that though,  between the crystal hung strands of glittering crystalline material,  spun into delicate patterns and traceries that it only took a minute for  me to recognize. "That's web." I said in awe. "The lake water dripped  down the web and crystallized it. I don't know how it isn't breaking,  but it looks like it retains its flexibility. Maybe it's the spider? I  don't see i-" I stopped talking as my Seek Hidden skill finally picked  up the adult spider in its spot off in the back corner.

Calling  looked me with concern. "Solomon? Everything alright?" Despite my  sometimes distractable nature, stopping mid sentence wasn't a habit of  mine. She'd noticed before anyone that I was distressed, but that wasn't  a shock given how attuned we are to each other. I didn't have any words  to respond though, I was too busy pointing up at the monstrous arachnid  crouched back in the darkness.

Well,  where there should be darkness. In reality, the spider was glowing too,  its monstrously huge form coated with a thick chitinous armor shot  through with veins of the same glowing crystal as the web. Eight  abominable eyes blazed blue as they fixed on our group, not advancing or  attacking, but waiting. "Step into my parlor." Murmured Abel, before  grunting at an elbow from Mel. I appreciated that. I'd have done it if I  was close enough. Like this shit wasn't horrifying enough.

Of  course, that wasn't what caught Callie's attention. When I pointed, her  eyes fixed on a much denser weave of web directly under the spider,  which was covered with multicolored gems of varying sizes suspended on  the same crystalling strands. The light from the spider shone down  through the gems, creating dancing auroras on the cave wall behind it. I  recognized the frenzied look in my girlfriend's eyes as she looked at  it and sighed, drawing my cane. "Alright. Who has a battle plan?"