It took him a few minutes, but Draven finally reached the soft flesh of the colossal spider. With a single, decisive slice, he cut open the upper side, and a torrent of viscous fluid surged out.
Draven leaned back as the pale blue liquid gushed out, crashing into the nearby wall. A few drops even fell on him, burning through his skin and flesh like acid.
The liquid pooled on the ground, bubbling and hissing as it made contact with the air. Wisps of mana-charged steam rose from it, filling the chamber with a pungent metallic smell, rich with an intense taste of copper.
It took a mere moment before his very skin began to melt away, his blood painting his face, arms, and torso red, but Draven did not even flinch and patiently waited for the most of fluid to run dry.
The runes shined brightly as the array hungrily absorbed the mana in the room, using it to strengthen the barrier, but more than that, a thin layer of frost began to cover the blood, quickly freezing it in place.
The spider was dead, but its body was still full of toxins that could kill him just by breathing the air affected by its fumes for a few minutes, even though he had a healing potion running through his veins that continuously healed him of any damage.
At first, only the blood on the ground was freezing but slowly even the stream of blood leaking from the hole began to freeze, eventually leading the ice into the spider's body.
Draven waited for nearly ten minutes, allowing the entire fluid inside the spider to freeze, before finding the dead centers of its back and plunging the sword into it.
He carved out pieces of the thick crystal carapace and placed them inside the space ring, and just a few minutes later, he reached the soft, cold flesh beneath.
The blade easily sliced through the near-frozen tissue, severing tendons and cutting through the thick, sinewy mass with ease, and with each piece getting carved out, Draven carved a path toward the heart nestled just beneath the spine.
Finally, he broke through the last layer of flesh, and there it was, the heart, an elongated tube resembling a long, slender vessel, a pulsating mass that still held remnants of its former vitality.
The pale, elongated tube, while different from the muscular heart of a mammal, was the spider's heart responsible for pumping blood through its massive open circulatory system. Every tissue of the heart was refined with elemental laws, enriched with the same energy as a grown beast.
Draven drove the tip of the sword deep into the flesh and expertly carved out a square section the size of a fist. While small compared to the massive body, it held enough pure energy to kill the best of fourth-Rank Ascendant and was also enough to complete the final condition.
Draven placed the small piece into the inventory before hopping onto the frozen floor and moving to the neck joint connecting the head and body.
Draven work was done, but since he had everything set up, he wanted to extract the Beast's core, which he previously planned to leave inside since he was planning to sell the spider queen. Since that was no longer possible, he at least wanted its core.
While the core was useless for the time being since he could not sell it, it could, however, reveal some intel about the secret that the Spider Queen was boasting about.
Draven began to tear open an opening from the right side of the joint, his blade quickly carving through the hard chitin carapace, but as effective as the energy that cloaked it was, it was also slowly disintegrating it.
The pristine, broad blade was slowly turning into a thin, eroded piece of metal barely held together by the runes.
Draven moved with quick successive places, every other strike, making a chunk of chitin or flesh fall onto the ground, and just two minutes in, he reached the ventral nerve cord of the spider, the main nerve that connected everything.
The Beast core was located just on the other side of the nerve, and after a quick few slashes at the thick green nerve, it was sliced open while the blade was forced to stop.
Draven pulled the blade back, revealing a milky white crystal peeking through the short opening. With precise movement, he began to carve the nerve, revealing the entire core attached to it.
The core was as large as his open hand, glowing dimly like any other normal white crystal, yet the blade capable of cutting through crystal carapace like wet mud did not leave a search on it.
Draven caught the core as it fell, and seeing it clearly under light, he saw something strange. A brief flicker of confusion crossed his usually steady gaze, followed by a flash of realization as he recognized the anomaly, something that should not be present, not just inside the spider but even at this point in time.
'Do All high-rank Beast cores look like this, or is this one affected by some disease,' Nero asked, surprised, seeing a dark point deep inside the giant milky white crystal.
The Beast core had a sharp point on both ends, milky white, but at its center, deep inside, there was a pitch point of dark, hair-thin tendrils stretching out from it, reaching the surface and vanishing inside the icy white veins that connected the core to the green piece of nerve.
'A Mutator Core, It's too small, but it is a mutator core,' Draven thought, as a few dark memories flooded his mind, his jaw unconsciously clenched, as his knuckles turned white and blood leaked from his closed fist.
'Mother of Disorder. Sister, My little sister, I will find you, and this time, I will kill you,' Draven said, a cold smile stretching across his face, one too disturbing to even consider a smile.
'I am going to clean this place, and in the meantime, prepare yourself to pick the Devourer system,' Draven said as he placed the core and the spider corpse into the space ring.
He dropped the blade before taking out the rune pen and drew a two-circle array in a matter of minutes. The array came to life and began to create shockwaves that rippled out into the floor of pale blue ice.
The ice cracked, bursting open into chunks that Draven swiftly placed into one of the space rings, and minutes later, the entire training chamber was empty once more.
He sat down in the center of the room and took out four crystal vials, two filled with stary blue liquid, and the other two filled with deep violet.
Draven quickly drank the Mind's Edge Elixir and Mana Vessel potion bottles before closing his eyes. He absorbed mana from the surroundings and circulated through every inch of his body.
The Mind's Edge Elixir was going to sharpen all his senses, making him feel everything at ten times the normal intensity, including the terrible pain, but he needed such sharp senses to survive the raw untamed energy from the Spider heart.
The Mana Vessel potion would similarly increase his sensitivity to mana, something he did not really need, but he would rather be overprepared than regret it later.
Draven was mentally exhausted, having barely rested in the past dozen hours, moving from one task to another. Yet fatigue was the last thing on his mind, as his mind was consumed by the thought of what he would do next if they failed to acquire the Devourer system.
After a full minute passed, and Draven felt the effects of both potions kick in, he took out the fist-sized crimson piece of the heart, and without any hesitation or delay he ate it in a few bites.
The pieces instantly began to dissolve as they made contact with the stomach acid and began to unleash a surge of raw energy, gushing out like water from a broken dam.
The thin wisps dissolved into his body, swelling into endless bursts of energy that coursed through his veins with a fierce intensity, igniting every nerve like fire.
It twisted and coiled, flooding his muscles, bones, and every nerve, and moments later, his body began to tremble as the power overwhelmed him, stretching and straining every fiber as it worked its way deeper.
The unchecked force surged through his veins like a violent storm, growing stronger by the minute, acting like a deadly poison as it ravaged his insides.
As minutes passed, cells were killed by the millions, his blood burned under the furious assault, and his blood vessels began to rupture, bursting apart from the pressure.
His organs stretched to their limits, the tissue tearing as they fought to keep up with the overload. His heart was forced to beat far beyond its capacity, hammering wildly as it struggled to keep the body alive.