'If she has a great secret, then this explains how she rose to the world Ascendant Rank so quickly and started a war with the Locust King,' Draven thought, connecting the dots as he heard the spider queen lay out everything she could offer in exchange for life.
"ANSWER ME,"
"You will never find my secret. It would go with my death, but if you spare my life, it's yours, along with my loyalty." The spider queen roared as she clawed and ripped open the ground, only to find the barrier going deep into it.
The spider queen clawed at the barrier and roared angrily as her massive form drowned beneath a layer of frost. With every passing second, her movement became sluggish, her voice turned dry and raspy, and her lively eyes became hidden beneath a bone-white shell.
As seconds passed and no reply came, she stopped struggling, and with her head held high, she looked outside the barrier, staring at nothing but empty ground filled with jagged rocks before she began to speak her peace.
"I don't know who you are, but know this, by killing me, you have affected what they had planned for me," The Spider queen said with great difficulty.
"They will come for you, and my death will not go unavenged," She said, her head dropping the next instant as her soul left her body.
Relief washed over Nero as the spider queen finally fell lifeless, but her final words lingered in his mind, leaving him anxious, wondering if Draven had picked the wrong creature to kill.
'Don't overthink about her little threats, as they are just empty words spoken by a desperate creature on the verge of death,' Draven's voice sounded calm and collected, not slightly bothered by her threat.
'This was not part of my plan,' Draven thought, keeping it to himself as he sprinted toward the dead spider queen, knowing her threats were likely not empty.
The spider queen appeared out of thin air, but her first real appearance was nearly a decade ago when she killed the Galewing Roc, the previous Ruler of the Crystal Mountain territory.
A decade from now, she would advance to the World Ascendant Rank, reaching the height of world power in just half a century, a feat few geniuses could boast of.
It was possible she was a generational genius, but that idea held no ground if one considers that she had received outside help, and knowing that she was set to spark a war immediately after her ascension, it made more and more sense that her rise wasn't entirely her own doing.
'So all the unrest throughout the world in my timeline was not just a coincidence,' Draven thought, his mind going through all the major events, instantly realizing that their timing could not have been more perfect.
The tides of countless billion locusts plunged the Human continent into a state of unrest for years, and in the third year, the fourth Price Victor Aetherion Solis killed the king and took his position with the backing of six families.
The same year, the death of King Leo, the Brilliant Star, started the civil war on the Beast Warland. Shortly after that came the rise of Prince Amaros, who started the purge of the unpure to save the dying world tree.
The more he thought about the timing and effect of all the events, the more it felt like someone or some group had orchestrated everything from behind the shadows, starting all the major events at just the perfect time, and the end result of everything came in the form of complete disorder.
In his timeline, Draven was forced to flee from the world of Tessrak after nearly three decades when the entire world was engulfed in complete chaos.
The human continent was divided into six domains and tens of smaller territories, all waging war over each other for resources. The beast continent was the same but much worse. By the end of the third decade, the elves had completely closed off their territory, their numbers dwindling by the day after the death of the world tree.
In a mere three decades, the once peaceful world of Tessrak, a melting pot of cultures, was reduced to a war-torn planet with few places one could call safe-havens.
'As planned, I will try to save the world from the same fate, but I am not going out of my way and wasting time if some group truly is out to destroy this world,' Draven thought as he stopped mere inches away from the barrier.
Draven had lived too long, had seen too much, and understood that while he could save some lives, out there in the vast galaxy, tens of worlds would suffer a worse fate, countless billions would die an early death, and there was nothing he could do about it.
While it may be cruel in the eyes of some to just not help others when he could, he understood that if he failed to stop the true king, the entire galaxy would suffer, so the task of his growth mattered more to him than even a hundred worlds.
Draven stopped before the barrier and waited for the three-minute timer of frost to end, not worried that the beast kings of neighboring territory or individual baking the spider queen would arrive in the following few seconds.
However, the reveal of some other power being involved did make him a bit irritated because he was planning to clean the entire mountain of all the spiders to raise the funds he needed to acquire a few useful systems, but now he had to leave with just the queen.
As the three-minute timer came to an end, Draven entered the barrier swiftly, touching the frozen spider queen as he activated the space ring. Unlike with smaller items, the spider did not instantly vanish but rather began to be cloaked beneath a layer of waving space.
The space around the spider warped, its intensity growing by the moment, and after a little over a minute, it began to shrink and bend, taking close to twenty seconds before it finally vanished into the small ring.
Draven instantly sprinted toward his left, where a few giant spiders lay dead side by side, and he began to throw them into the space ring, all the while the barrier cracked, chunks of it dissolving into light.
It took him thirty seconds to collect four spiders, and without a moment wasted, he began to sprint toward the pile of crystals he had buried in the distance.
He took out his rune pen and began to draw the same array he was preparing in case things went bad, but unlike last time he moved much quicker, completing the circles in mere seconds, following quickly by writing the runes.
It had been nearly four minutes and by now the nearest kings would have felt the spider queen's presence vanish, and while they would be cautious and would not approach for some time, the same could not said for the backer of the spider queen.
The array took three more minutes before it was completed, and instantly, the runes came alive as they drew mana from the immediate vicinity, turning the mana crystal buried in the ground to dust by the dozen with each passing moment.
The surrounding space began to warp and contract, creating a hazy mirror around Draven, who stood in the center waiting for the process to end and teleport him near the edge of the Elderwood forest.
Nero did not what the array was going to do, but he could make a guess seeing the twisted space, as for the pile of spiders they were leaving behind which could be sold for a great sum of money, he did not even think twice about them since he was eagerly waiting for the moment when he could finally get the Devourer system.
The sheer thought of getting a system made him want to shed a few tears, a dream that every soul in the world had, and his dream was going to come true in some time.
He was worried about what kind of Architect the Devourer system would have since from everything that Draven told him it was not going to be a nice one, but he had already accepted dealing with it to be the price he had to pay to use it.
As the two points of space connected, the surroundings became a complete blur, and shortly after that, Draven felt the pull on his body, feeling a tinge of pain and cold that lasted just a moment before the hazy space began to clear up.
Draven found himself standing atop a mountain, looking at the setting sun, and with a quick look around he found the direction of the city and quickly descended the mountain and began to make his way toward the city.