Chapter 16: Chapter 16: The Spider’s Lair

"Gwen, if I say the word I need you to be ready to hide in my soulcore," I telepathically communicated to the panther as we approached the cathedral's steps.

I'd received the perk [Conjurer's Mantle] from the System awhile ago. It's main feature was that it made all of my familiar's stronger than they would normally be. However, it also had a secondary use case.

My eyes were scanning over the text of the perk, along with splitting my attention between it and pulling up the Spell-Forging menu, as we walked.

Conjurer’s Mantle [R]: All familiars under your control are more powerful than their stage of evolution would suggest. Your familiars can rest within your soul core.

I didn't know just how far the Webspinner's powers could reach inside my being, but she had definitely been capable of assaulting my mind--and from a distance too.

I didn't want Gwen to get hurt if she proved incapable of protecting her own mind. Though I suspected her rather more focused way of thinking might give her an advantage over me in that department.

This new enemy was dangerous and in a way we hadn't yet faced.

I would've told Gwen to be ready to run as well, but I already knew she would never do that, not if it meant leaving me to fight a superior enemy alone.

I needed a weapon against the mess that we might be walking into, but I was hesitant to spend my rather limited resources.

If I made the wrong choice in the kind of spell I'd create to fight against the Webspinner's particular brand of magic then I'd most definitely pay for it.

Still, the first telepathic assault had brought me to my knees and brought with it numerous questions on the true nature of the dungeon I found myself within--and I was pretty sure the boss monster had ended it on purpose.

Now that I knew to be expecting attacks of a mental variety, I figured I might be able to hold up better against them.

But still, I might not be able to access the System menus if my looming enemy chose to really try to fry my brain.

Trying to prepare for this before it became an issue, I very deliberately did not give the System verbal commands as I scrolled through the options for creating a spell.

The Webspinner's knowledge of our presence meant that she probably had at least some nominal ability to observe us. I didn't want to tip my hand by declaring out loud that I was trying to prepare a defense against her.

I instead made my selections with my finger as I went about inputting my desired parameters.

When I was done the System presented me with my envisioned spell:

[Envisioned Spell]

Heal Mind [2nd]: Suffuse your mind with healing, radiant energy. This spell will actively return your mind to its natural state whenever it is altered by outside influences. Mana cost dependent on the level of mental damage to be reversed.

Selected Shard: Greater Mana Shard.

Add Secondary Shard: y/n?

Create Spell: y/n?

I would've made the spell be one of a Psychic variety, but I had exactly zero points in that type of magic use.

The main issue was that I wasn't sure just how powerful of a spell I would need to resist the Webspinner.

My [Radiance Manipulation] was at sixty, which meant I could create second tier spells in the radiant category , and that they would cost less to use.

I was taking a chance, but my first instinct was to rely on my strengths. Still, it was only one of multiple options.

I paused on my new ability to add a secondary shard, though.

I was hesitant to truly commit to just walking in with the [Heal Mind] spell alone. I could still feasibly create a Psychic spell with my remaining mana shard if I didn't use both of them up in one go.

I selected yes on the option, however, if only to better explore what it might mean.

Another pop-up appeared when I did so:

[Select Secondary Shard: Greater Mana Shard, x3 Lesser Poison Shard, x3 Lesser Frost Shard.]

It seemed that I could also use shards of a lesser level than the primary shard when selecting a secondary option. Which probably opened up a lot of future customization.

While poison and frost shards didn't seem like they would add too much to a mental resilience spell, I still selected each option to further explore them.

For my efforts, I was given a pair of spell variants when I selected the two shards:

Frigid Mindscape [2nd]: Suffuse your mind with healing, radiant energy mixed with the aspect of frost. This spell will actively slow the effects of mental intrusions and will likewise slowly reverse said effects. Mana cost dependent on the level of mental damage to be reversed.

Noxious Mindscape [2nd]: Suffuse your mind with healing, radiant energy mixed with the aspect of poison. This spell will actively eat away at the framework of mental intrusions and will likewise slowly reverse said effects. Mana cost dependent on the level of mental damage to be reversed.

The effects were... interesting, but what bothered me was that they changed the wording of [Heal Mind] which seemed to suggest relatively focused mental healing. Both of the new spells, on the other hand, specifically called out that they would only slowly reverse the effects of mental attacks.

This made them seem less than ideal to me.

When I selected the [Greater Mana Shard], however, I was met with a series of options.

[Selecting a Mana Shard as a secondary shard allows you to choose from a list of options to modify your spell, without raising its casting cost, dependent on the tier of the shard. Would you like to: turn this spell into an aura to also buff allies, increase the tier of this spell by one, or further lower its mana cost?]

The greater mana shard definitely offered the more interesting options, though at a much greater resource cost to my current shard stores.

While reading the options, however, the new information eventually led me to close out of the [Heal Mind] spell entirely.

Instead, I pulled up a new spell.

[Envisioned Spell]

Thought Ward [1st]: Erect a psychic barrier around your mind, protecting you from outside mental intrusion. Mana cost dependent on the strength of the ward.

Selected Shard: Greater Mana Shard.

Add Secondary Shard: y/n?

Create Spell: y/n?

I wasted no time in selecting that I'd like to add a [Greater Mana Shard] into the spell forging process and, when prompted, selected that I'd like to reduce its casting cost further than a singular mana shard already would.

It was possible that my Spell-Forging skill might be able to offset the issue with mana cost of using the Psychic element.

The spell morphed to fit my desires rather quickly.

[Envisioned Spell]

Efficient Thought Ward [1st]: Erect a psychic barrier around your mind, protecting you from outside mental intrusion. As a spell with the 'efficient' quality, the mana cost to cast this spell is greatly reduced, but is still dependent on the strength of the ward.

Selected Shard: Greater Mana Shard x2.

Create Spell: y/n?

I selected yes to creating the spell.

I had a lot of mana for my level. And, despite her seeming to be strangely intelligent when compared to the other monsters I'd faced, I didn't think the Webspinner could be all that much of a higher level than I currently was.

If the inclusion of another [Greater Mana Shard] was truly going to make the spell way cheaper, then I figured I'd have a chance at stopping whatever the strange boss monster might throw at me, as long as I devoted the mana to doing so.

Speaking of, as the massive, tarnished and frozen moss covered silver doors of the Webspinner's Cathedral came into view, the feeling of radiating power was becoming almost physical in its thickness.

I could feel the odd energy pulling at my mind and trying to influence me to walk into the large church unprepared and without hesitation.

And it pissed me off.

I summoned up my [Efficient Thought Ward] and channeled mana into it, until the pulling of the cathedral stopped having much of an effect on me.

To my relief, it hadn't been all that expensive of a cast, only costing me around fifty of my four-hundred plus mana to make happen.

Still, I didn't want the ward shattering the second the Webspinner actually attacked my mind, if she was indeed capable of doing so.

I had a good reserve of mystical energy, but I didn't want to waste any of it. Of course, I also didn't want to be too conservative in my preparations.

As tonight's events had already shown me, being tactical and preparing before a battle could altogether decide its course before it had even began.

With that in mind, I channeled another two-hundred mana into my ward.

As my power flowed into the invisible shield around my being, I felt the spell wrap around not only my mind itself, but my entire body and spirit.

The invisible shield grew thick in my magical senses, glutting itself on the power that I was feeding it.

I summoned a few potions to offset the cost of the preparatory, and perhaps paranoid, casting.

And, with that done, I summoned my [Raging Blade] as the doors of the once gorgeous and now ghostly cathedral, bathed in the bloody moonlight, began to eek open ominously and of their own accord.

---

Ancient, massive, and off-putting were the words to describe the scene that opened up before us as we climbed into the ancient churchly building.

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"Be careful, Gwen," I sent the telepathic message to my familiar. "This place gives me the creeps."

We walked a few steps into the dilapidated building, before my new body's night-adapted eyes began to scan the expansive room.

Crimson light filtered in through the stained glass, and sometimes shattered, windows that lined either of the grey brick walls of the cathedral.

"The air feels wrong," my panther communicated to me and then growled aloud, "I don't like it."

I could feel the mystical and mental pressure that my more resilient ally was speaking of as the magical aura flowed, less like a battering force and more like a surging river, around my mental wards.

"Me either," I said back to her, restating my discomfort. "Just stay on your toes. We don't--"

Movement caught both of our eyes then.

"Clarissa," Gwen snapped a warning.

I gripped my flaming blade, its blue aura danced its light across the space around us and cast Gwen's now hackles-raised shadow ominously against a nearby stone pillar.

A figure, larger than any we had seen thus far, and even more massive than the truck-sized [Frostblood Barons] had been, was slowly lowering itself from above.

Held by a thick thread, more akin to a steel cable than a web, what I could only assumed to be the Webspinner descended from the ceiling.

My eyes scanned over the odd, terrifying, and somewhat beautiful creature.

She appeared to be a monstrous cross between a [Frostblood Countess] and a scaled up version of the aforementioned spider Barons.

There was one thing that caught my attention, and that separated her from the others, however: her humanoid, upper half was less wild and monstrously inclined than that of the Countesses had been.

Rather... the Webspinner, whose name now populated before me as a System nameplate, appeared much closer to how I now looked.

[Galadhel the Webspinner, Level 38 Elite.]

In fact, minus the spider that had replaced her legs, she looked like what I presumed to be a Caliban.

What in the hell did that mean?

"Yes, you are..." the Webspinner seemed to pause in her words and almost gasped in her final utterance, "real?"

"Who are you?" I asked, my words feeling a bit caught in my throat. "You're the first person I've been able to actually talk to since coming here."

I felt a change in the fluctuations of magical aura radiating off of the boss monster as I asked my question.

The Webspinner's face contorted in discomfort as the magical pressure bearing down on me and Gwen grew considerably more oppressive and violent.

"I--" the Webspinner suddenly fought against what appeared to be a great pain and struggled aloud in an unseen argument, "No... Never! I will not... kill the last of us. You will not trick me again!"

The Webspinner's line of string snapped off of her massive thorax and she slammed into the ground, her huge arachnid legs found elegant purchases on various rows of ancient wooden pews--of which only a few cracked under her not insignificant weight.

"What are you talking about?" I further asked aloud of the visibly conflicted monster. "What do you mean again? What made this world this way?"

The Webspinner's beautiful, now agony wracked face looked up to me as her emerald eyes flashed between a calm green hue and one of a sickening red that was more akin to what the Countesses had possessed.

"Little Caliban," Galadhel repeated her earlier address as her fang-filled mouth clenched in agony, "I should have told you to run, but I felt... hope."

Tears streamed from the monster's eyes as the green was overtaken, this time more slowly but also more permanently seeming, by the sickly crimson.

"Please," the woman said aloud, "everything we loved is gone. Please, please kill me."

Galadhel's head lowered and her eyes closed tight, before she uttered her final words:

"Before... I... kill you."

And with that final, ominous sentence, the woman that was Galadhel who had lowered her head was gone. I could feel it somehow.

It was the Webspinner that raised her head next and it was murder that she held in her glowing, inhuman eyes.

With more questions and emotions welling up in my chest than answers, I was forced into action as the boss monster raised her hand threateningly.

I could sense danger as I charged forward in response to the feeling.

I saw no weapon in the Webspinner's hand, meaning that she was likely a caster; my mind was already working out the tactics and possible advantages of this situation.

If I got close then I, who could fight it out in melee, might be able to use her large and cumbersome size against the monster.

Of course, I had no real desire to kill the Webspinner after seeing the decency and pain in her eyes from before, but she had also made it all too clear that there was something inside of her that wanted to kill me--and it was that something's bloodlust that I could now all but feel throbbing in the air.

Galadhel had asked for mercy, even, and I suspected mercy was something she had sought for as long as this ruin had been crumbling from the city it had once been.

Maybe she deserved to be freed by death. Certainly, no one deserved to be turned into a monster against their will, or to be made to continue to live as one.

As I moved, and my mind worked over all that had happened and might happen, a flash of white clouded over over my enemy's long and delicate fingers.

I suddenly felt my advance slow as if I was caught in a thousand, little strings.

My eyes widened in confusion when I felt the tingling of mana slide across my flesh as dozens of tiny strands of spider silk became visible all around me.

The strands lit up before my eyes, becoming visible, with the same milk-white aura that surrounded the Webspinner's hand.

"Foolish, child," the Webspinner said, her voice was the same as before but her way of speaking had entirely changed, "you have been within my web from the moment you stepped into this place. You were just too weak to see it."

The Webspinner clenched her fist further in my direction.

The mana-charged web that the enemy sorceress spoke of surged with a pulling upwards and I felt the many strands of spider-silk tightening around me.

Cuts quickly covered my cheeks, forehead, hands, and any other exposed part of my flesh as I was lifted off the ground by the now-sharpened and pulled-taunt web.

I felt Gwen roar in rage from beneath me as I was yanked a dozen feet into the air.

Whatever this boss monster was, if the Ruler of the West was any indication, she was much stronger than she should've been based on her level.

"You will be shredded to pieces," the Webspinner said to me as her web dug into my skin, "just as I could've done at any moment since you began your little attack."

The monster tightened her raised fist.

I felt the many strands of spider silk dig deeper into my body and began to feel their pressure through even my crafted armor.

"No--" I started to say.

Unfortunately for me, the moment I showed even an ounce of resistance, the Webspinner's eyes glowed a brighter flash of red and her oppressive aura thundered against me like a freight train.

I felt cracks form in my thought ward against the sheer bloodlust of the mental assault.

The monster's spider silk dug deeper into me, actually threatening to cause significant damage if I let it tighten any further.

I was only momentarily thrown off by the increased mental and magical pressure, however, and my thought ward, despite cracking and allowing some of the psychic attack through, did hold strong.

"You won't!" I finished my sentence in a shout, as my mana raged out from me, and I was bathed in a cloak of flame.

The mana-infused strands of cutting silk fought against my own anger-filled [Flame Cloak], but in the end they did begin to wither away underneath the heat of my fire.

I felt the monster's web give way as I started to tumble to the floor far below.

The impact against the ground rammed into my ankles as I made contact with the frigid and cracked stone tiles of the cathedral's flooring.

My body fell into a crouch and I lost some of my health as I tried to recover from the inevitable fall.

I needed a fly spell as soon as it became feasible.

Besides, flying would just be badass.

A massive blur of white shot past me as I slowly lifted my head up from where it had fallen in the immediate shock of the pain of my tumble.

Gwen roared and sent a telepathic shout of fury into the open air, for all to hear, as her body crackled with electricity.

"I will kill you!" the massive panther declared as she barreled between the isles towards the Webspinner.

Gwen's body broke apart as she ran and, within moments, a crack of thunder echoed throughout the massive stone building as the panther became a bolt of living lightning.

"No," I said as I came to stand, a trademark blue and red [Fireball] forming as a spiral of flames taken shape in my hand, "we're going to do that together!"

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