Kage stepped into the big room. Immediately he felt the high concentration of essence in this room. There were multiple pods made out of the toxic webs littered around the ground. Kage counted more than thirty of them. They all drained essence through a connection of thin toxic webs leading to the ceiling where it converges into a massive pillar of webs that lead to who knows where. Just above the pillar of webs was a Spiden. Kage was a little disappointed to the fact that this spiden was giving of the same essence grade as the rest. It was a High grade Spiden.
The spiden sensed Kage's presence as it dropped down from the ceiling while holding onto a thin web to keep it from touching the group. Once it was close enough it spat an interconnection of webs that formed into a net at Kage. He managed to dodge the toxic net. This was new. It was the first Spiden it this dungeon that actually spun a web at him. The others all tried to strike him with their pointed and sharp legs.
Kage's shadow moved towards the Spiden's shadow but had lost a lot of speed since this room wasn't covered in webs which allowed the gems embedded in the ceiling to produce light. Kage's shadow finally made it to the Spiden shadow while Kage was busy dodging the toxic net attacks.
Zing...
A slicing sound was heard as the shadow returned back to Kage. The spiden fell from the ceiling onto the floor taking a lot of damage. It also started bleeding from a vertical line going straight along the mid section of its body. It was severely weakened and could bearly stand as it bled green blood from its wound.
Kage's shadow moved over again and this time successfully sliced the spiden in half as Kage gained another shadow spiden to join his new spire army. He also noticed that this one had comfortably produced enough shadow from its death to both feed his shadow and create a Spiden shadow. Now he had sixteen.
Kage summoned his entire spiden collection to absorb the essence produced by the pods as he revisited the rooms he cleared to collect the origin cores left behind. Everything was done in a few minutes as he returned to the main corredor and went to the left branch.
As he moved he met the three guards. He quickly dealt with them and was met with another set of five rooms. Just like before he started from the room to the right but this time he was going to do things differently. As soon as he entered the room he released all his sixteen stored spiden to battle the normal spiden and watched the battle.
His shadows had the unique ability to grow stronger the more essence they absorbed. Normally they just absorbed the essence of the enemies they killed to get stronger but this time he had fed them pure essence from the pods so they were already back to the full power of a Spiden. They even started using their toxic web attribute in combat. The webs had the same characteristics as the normal ones except for the fact that they were black instead of white. His shadow spiden collection had the full power of a high grade Spiden while the normal spiden of this chamber bearly had enough to stay alive. It was not a fair matchup.
Kage started training the spiden army to do manial things like collect origin cores from fallen enemies. What made Kage's shadows truly grow in power were origin cores. Once he stored them within his shadow and desummoned his army they would start feeding on the cores until they were finished, that's how they grew. So the origin cores were very necessary for Kage.
He went into the next room without desummoning his spiden collection. They had grown by five more members and were now double the number of spiden per room with an extra. They were twenty one. After kage finished the last two rooms after this one his collection had grown to thirty one as he looked at the biggest room of the left branch.
He entered the room with his thirty one Spiden and had his shadow strike the natural spiden once to heavily injure it and cause it to fall. After hitting the floor it was swarmed by the many shadow spiden and devoured by them, literally. Kage returned back to the main chamber after collecting everything and set his eyes on the main corredor that led deeper into the dungeon.
Kage and his collection of the now thirty two shadow spiden walked deeper into the dungeon for a few minutes before being stopped by a group of five high grade spiden that were the same essence level as the ones in the big rooms of the first two branches. He sent his shadow spiden collection to deal with them but didn't interfere with his shadow. He wanted to see how well they would do.
The battle lasted way longer than expected with zero casualties thankfully. Kage gained five now weakened shadows to add to his collection as they quickly grew to the power level of the others when Kage filled them up with his essence. They kept walking for a few more minutes before reaching their next challenge. They were at the same junction type that Kage had been at not to long ago but there was a problem. Kage knew his shadow spiden collection alone would not be enough to get him out of the situation he currently found himself.