Crackle.
Squish.
Tick Tick Tick.
Crack!
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!
The antiheroes stood inside the crater.
They continuously heard the sounds of shells opening up.
The sounds of hatching eggs.
Samantha looked completely drained. Her eyes drooped, and she looked at Trevor like 'seriously?'
"Why did we come here..."
She had given up hope.
Ever since coming to this world, it had been one insane situation after another.
Was there any way they would survive this?
If 10,000 baby spiders were to onslaught them, surely there would be no chance of victory, right?
If they won against something like that, it would be plot armor at that point.
Even if the baby spiders were extremely weak, there was no way that they would be able to defeat 10,000 of them.
They would run out of mana. Samantha was at 15/50 right now. Even if they leveled up and regained their health and mana, they would still eventually run out. They would reach a point where leveling would take too long- they would have to defeat too many monsters before they regained their health, and eventually they would be worn down from the onslaught and die.
So that left the antiheroes with one option.
Run.
But how?
Ashley surely couldn't fly with everyone. Even when she boosted herself with her fireballs that spouted from her feet, she was only able to slow the fall.
This wasn't something in close quarters like when Ashley flew everyone up the small crater made by the earth burrower either. The distance to fly up the crater was much greater than before- too much to just fly up one by one.
Was there nothing that could be done here?
Was this as far as they went, after all they had been through?
Well, if that was it, they might as well go out with a bang.
Samantha had not yet been able to show off her wonderful personality and excruciating beauty to the people of this world.
She wanted to live so that others could recognize her.
However, right now, Samantha was grounded in reality.
Was there anything that could be done?
But just as Samantha was thinking this, Ashley made a creepy smile with that ghastly mouth of hers, and stared at Samantha with those baggy eyes.
"Hey useless woman, I think I have found a use for you. Help me out with this one. Everyone, get back to back."
Ashley ordered the party around. This was somewhat of a first.
The group did as she said, and they all scooted back to back so that they were touching each other.
Each member faced a cardinal direction. Trevor took out his bow, but he knew that it was useless. He would run out of arrows long before all the spiders were dead.
Garett held his fanged club in hand. He hadn't had any opportunity to test it out, but perhaps this would be the last chance to use it.
And then, baby spiders came flooding into the crater.
The surface of the crater was so filled with baby spiders that the ground couldn't be seen.
Garett had used [Tactical Analysis] on the baby spiders, and they all had the same statistics.
[Baby Spiders] (Lvl 1)
Attack: 1-3 (Melee)
Physical Defense: 2
Magical Defense: 2
HP: 5/5
MP: 0/0
Special skills: Spin silk
"Useless woman. Can you create a barrier around us, and another barrier around the crater?", Ashley asked
"I can try..."
"There is no try. Do or don't" Trevor stated bluntly.
And with this, Samantha held up her hands.
"If I do this I won't have much mana left to heal. Is that alright?"
"There's no time right now to think about that. Just do it!", Garett yelled.
And so, Samantha screamed [Double Barrier!]
[Player Samantha: Intelligence roll: 9]
[Player Samantha: Intelligence roll: 15]
And 2 barriers appeared, one around the group, and one that was enormous, completely surrounding the crater and trapping in hundreds of the baby spiders.
[Player Samantha: MP: 5/50]
Ashley quickly followed up with a [Wall of Flames]
[Player Ashley: Intelligence roll: 31]
[Player Ashley: Intelligence roll: 8]
[Combination skill activated: Contained wall of flames]
Fire needed oxygen to burn normally, however in this world of magic, things were fundamentally different.
Spells that were made from elemental magic were made from particles of energy that lie within either the air or in a living being. Therefore, if one had mana, they could create fire, even in a space without oxygen.
Not only this, but enclosing this fire into a small space made the flames rage all the more, expanding to engulf the entire space.
And this is what happened with the wall of flame.
It spread all over the area inside the barrier that engulfed the crater, and completely burnt to a crisp all the baby spiders that were attacking.
"I hope you all like spider meat cause were having that tonight...", Ashley said while snickering and seeming to enjoy the massacre that she was performing.
She was definitely a morbid girl. Samantha vowed to not get on her bad side.
[654 Baby Spiders: HP: 0/5]
[Level Up! Lvl 10. HP and MP restored. New stats and abilities will appear out of combat]
The inner barrier disappeared first, however Samantha used up the last of her mana to put another one up before it could disappear.
[Barrier!]
[Player Samantha: Intelligence roll: 5]
[Barrier!]
[Player Samantha: Intelligence roll: 5]
[Barrier!]
[Player Samantha: Intelligence roll: 5]
[Barrier!]
[Player Samantha: Intelligence roll: 5]
[Barrier!]
[Player Samantha: Intelligence roll: 16]
Samantha had continuously been reinforcing her own barrier because the flame wall lasted a grand total of 31 seconds, and she needed to keep the barrier up for that long so that the flames wouldn't come in on the party.
Jeez! What a dangerous combination! Why would they ever use this if it could so easily harm themselves!?
Then again, it killed over 600 spiders so easily!
After the flames were gone, the barriers also went away. All this had occurred in the matter of 30 seconds.
From above, the antiheroes heard the sounds of mandibles clashing against one another, and fighting and squealing going on.
Was something going on with the spiders up top that the antiheroes were unaware of?
Either way, they all took a breather. They needed to rest up now while they could before another wave of the spiders came in on them.
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