Chương 214: Chapter 290: That’s a Good Spider

Loth's eyes flickered open, and Will watched as her Class rearranged itself, becoming even more streamlined as numerous extraneous branches were cut off and subsumed into the whole. If I could pick out individual Abilities I'm sure I would be even more fascinated by this, Will thought, carefully documenting the changes in Loth's Class. It would probably come in handy to have documented evidence of two large Class alterations on the same person when he wound up doing his own.

"Hi, welcome back," Will said as Loth's gaze focused on him.

"The Devourer attacked as soon as I went under, didn't it?" Loth asked, glancing around. She was being suspended in midair by Phantom Hands far above the Devourer's maximum range. Or, its demonstrated maximum range. Will would rather err on the side of overestimating this particular threat.

"Yep."

"Figures. What's the situation?"

"It's probing us, trying to learn our Abilities and such." Will said.

"It saw my original Ability twice and nearly copied it perfectly. I took us above the cloud layer because it doesn't seem to be strong at flying."

"Currently, it's trying to send up floating balloons of miasma attached to lethal strands in an attempt to choke the air space." Will glanced up at the sun, which was nearly directly overhead.

"If I knew exactly where its main body was, I might be able to cook it." Will hadn't done the sunlight trick in a long time, but this was the perfect solution to a tense stalemate like this. Except Will wasn't sure it would deal damage to a miasma creature, and if it had a physical body, he had no idea where it was hiding.

"Main body?" Loth asked.

"It seems to had adapted its tactics since we scared it off, making decoys that are connected to the main body."

"Any reason we can't follow the connection back to the main body?" Loth asked. Will thought about it a moment.

"It's not connected by a long thread that points back to the main body, its connected by a thread that tucks into a tiny little subspace portal made of miasma, like that pickpocket."

"Hmm." Loth rubbed her chin as she took over her own flight from Will, wings snapping out to either side. Will couldn't help but notice a dragon's lift-boosting miasma pattern forming under her wings.

"It's reasonably protected against external attacks," Loth thought aloud.

"But that must also mean that it's relatively squishy on the other side of that portal."

"The faefire of the Burning Court must surely be deadly against a creature like this." Loth said, turning to Will. Will's jaw dropped.

"Yeah…it probably would be." Loth frowned. Below them, Will saw the grain of the miasma along the forest floor rearrange itself, as if someone had run their hand across velvet to reshape it. An instant later, the thousands of floating bubbles of miasma began to dissolve as Loth's Draconic Domain began eating away at foreign influence on her territoty.

"So…what did you take for your Class Advancement? If you don't mind."

"Rather than take a new Ability, I chose to combine Draconic Domain and Master of the Vivarium into one Ability, combining their effects and boosting their power." Loth said.

"I'm a level sixty-five Master of the World." Will whistled in appreciation." Damn!"

"Right!?" Loth asked with a grin.

"Before we continue hunting The Devourer of Worlds, I wanna clear something up." Will said.

"Sure." Loth replied.

"We're gonna have to fight at some point, aren't we?" Will asked. Loth frowned, thumbing her chin for a moment before nodding.

"Probably. We are both going to live quite some time. On a long enough timeline everyone will become enemies."

"Well, I look forward to that." Will said, offering Loth his hand.

"Congratulations on your Class Advancement."

"Thank you, William Oh." Loth replied with a smile, shaking his hand with her own cool ebony scales.

"So, what actually is the plan?" Maribelle demanded, squinting down at them, her wings lazily keeping her afloat beside them.

"Are you two just going to pat each other's backs or…"

"Dibs on the Sacrifice!" Will shouted, shooting downward. If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

"Bastard!" Loth shouted before shooting after him, the miasma around her forming a sort of tube before… Loth blinked out of existence, reappearing on the other side of the miasma tube that appeared nearer the ground. They were probing each other, naturally. Will wanted to know more about what Loth could do with her new Class. He'd been flaunting his Advanced Class Abilities for quite some time, so Loth had an inherent advantage in knowing Will's limits, but she also needed to get used to her new Abilities.

They had come to a wordless agreement to stretch her new wings. It would be an interesting test to see who could find The Devourer of Worlds first. And… Will thought as Loth flickered out of existence ahead of him again. It feels like that day we raced through town in a wheelchair. Will shot down through the forest and spotted one of The Devourer's decoys. He whipped up a little miasmatic trick between the fingers of his left hand as he swooped forward.

The decoy spat out a wall of miasmatic webbing, which Will evaded by yanking himself to the side. He swooped up to the funnel-shaped web of miasma and threw his trick through the center, where the creature seemed to vanish to his senses, where it was connected to the main body by a tiny portal. CLANGALANG!! Will's ears were assaulted by the sound of wind chimes banging against each other as the packet of miasma broke apart and the noisemakers began overwhelming his senses.

The decoy froze in confusion, its eyes looking at the Miasma jangling around its inner space. Will reached in and silenced the noisemakers with a wave of thick tangling miasma. Clangalang. In the distance, Will made out the sound of his rigid miasma noisemakers clanging against each other as a small fraction of their noise made it through the fist-sized portal and back to Will's ears. Will ducked under a reflexive attack from the decoy and whipped himself towards the sound.

Will wasn't confident at producing Faefire, and it wouldn't help him locate the monster's body to confirm the kill even if it worked… but Loth's idea had given him a clue for how to track this monster through its decoys. The sound came from right… there! Will and Loth arrived in a small clearing at the same time, Will moving at sound-breaking speed, while Loth stepped through a miasma tunnel as the world folded itself to her whims.

"It's here somewhere," Will said, scanning the surroundings.

"I shoved some sound through the little funnel that connects it to the main body. How did you find it?"

"I used triangulation on three of its decoys." Loth said.

"You can see the decoys now?" Will asked.

"Sort of. Now that Master of the Vivarium is combined with Draconic Domain, I can feel everything that's under my influence much more sharply than when I first acquired Draconic Domain. The decoys feel like little funnel-shaped gaps in my control, glaringly obvious now." Loth glanced over at Will.

"Same with your Class and Hands."

"These or…" Will waggled his real hands then his Phantom Hands.

"Both. Your right hand and your feet have an aura around them that interferes with my control. Makes you stick out like a sore thumb." She said as she scanned left.

"I can sense you from miles away."

"I can smell you from miles away," Will shot back. Loth made a face in her draconic domain and had it stick out its tongue at Will. It wasn't an illusion, since it didn't create any visual stimulus that a normal person could see, it was just a lump of miasma formed into the shape of a kobold – Loth's old face, actually – sticking out its tongue.

"I can see that you know," Will said, making a rude gesture with Phantom Hands as he scanned the other direction. Probing each other's senses. This thing is really skittish. Will thought, frowning. The moment they arrived here it stopped sending decoys or probing them. Because it's trying to lay low until we leave. Sadly, going quiet like that only confirmed their suspicion that they'd located it. Will's gaze landed on a dead leaf near the edge of the clearing.

From beneath the dead leaf, there was a small well of fear oozing out. Will tapped on Loth's shoulder and pointed at the leaf with Phantom Hand.

"There's a tiny gap in my control under that leaf, but…" Loth frowned. Will reached out with Phantom Hand and carefully flicked the leaf over and spotted a tiny black spider clinging to the underside, radiating fear. Will had seen fear from plenty of insects before. It was a tiny pinprick of mortal terror, without any kind of nuance. There and then gone immediately. Insects felt fear, then immediately moved to alieviate that fear.

They did not need large amounts of it, it did not need to be complex, and they were physically incapable of stewing in it. This particular spider, a tiny speck in the distance some fifty feet away from them, was radiating the same kind of fear as a small child hiding under the bed from monsters.

"Surely not." Loth whispered. Will shrugged.

"One way to find out." Will shot a magic missile at the spider. The full miasmatic body of the Devourer of Worlds unfolded in the blink of an eye. It had changed drastically since the last time Will had seen it, adding a fluffy outer layer that made it difficult to see its inner workings, while adding pouches near the back that seemed to be storing pre-wound miasmatic strands, ready to be deployed at a moments notice.

Will's magic missile was intercepted by a hastily constructed one, which was followed up with dozens of strands of miasma that would alter their fate to cause brutal wounds if they let it touch them. Will and Loth dodged to the side, avoiding the strands as an unnatural gust of wind came down from above and picked up the leaf the spider was resting on, flinging it up into the sky. Will sprinted after it. Floor-wide Alert! The Raid Boss, The Devourer of Worlds has been engaged on the 14 th Floor!

The Devourer of Worlds was a funnel web curse weaver who was inadvertently brought to the 14 th floor by William Oh. After drinking from the Sap-Spring waterfall, it has gained substantial wisdom and power. … Whoops, Will thought, sheepishly. Bounty: 100 Ivory pieces, 5000XP, to be shared among the Parties that claim the bounty.

"WAIT, WILL! I WANT THAT SPIDER!" Loth shouted, chasing after them. Will paused, glancing over his shoulder.

"Are you serious?"

"I mean, that's a good spider." Loth said.

"I want it." Will frowned and turned back towards the leaf he'd been chasing, which had become mixed in with thousands of other leaves.

"Can you use your Master of the Vivarium to gain control of it?"

"I'll have to set it up, but if I can pin it down in one place for just a moment, then yes." Loth replied.

"I really want it as a Sacrifice." Will said, thinking about adding its miasma manipulation abilities into Map. It would be one of the biggest steps towards manipulating his own Class, like this creature seemed to have done.

"How about this: If we catch it, I'll breed some babies with the same ability and you can have one of them." Will rubbed his chin.

"And I'll pay you Influence."

"The bounty for it was pretty low, anyway," Will said with a shrug.

"YES!" Loth pumped her fist.

"Carrie Envar being a cheapskate has played out in my favor!"

"I've got it marked," Loth said, pointing. Will followed her pointer finger and spotted a stream of leaves being carried away by the wind. Will reached out with his right hand and seized the air around the fleeing spider.

"WAIT, WILL!" Loth shouted from behind him.

"Eh?" Will glanced over his shoulder and saw one of the funnel-shaped decoys behind Loth, using her voice to distract Will. When he turned back, the little bastard had already cut its way out of his grasp and was fleeing at high speed. Loth snapped her fingers and the decoy was shredded by her domain. The manic laughter welling up from behind him was all loth.

"That's a good spider!" Loth cried, teleporting ahead of him.