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Chapter 332: Translucent Terrors - Markets and Multiverses
🕑 Added 2024-12-18 09:04:25 +0000 UTCThe moment my clone got in range, it dumped a huge chunk of its absorption essence into my second rune ability. A portal appeared right in front of it. My clone leapt through it. The portals I could open were too small for me to move through - but my water clones had far more adjustable size and shape, since they were made of water. Even though it was a tight squeeze, my clone managed to slip through.
From the eyes of my main body, I saw the translucent spider apparition whirl towards the portal the moment it opened. For a moment, I panicked, as I thought the translucent spider would pop my clone before it got the bomb through the portal. After all, these portals were two way.
However, even as I started to process just how dangerous the situation was, my clone reacted. Despite being me, I could feel the clone’s mind, straining to react in time as I processed the imminent collapse of my plan. Instead of just one portal opening in front of the translucent spider, nearly two dozen appeared. The spider’s limbs cut towards the portals, confirming that the monster had some sort of connection to space. It could see the portals my clones were opening, even before the portals finished forming. However, the raw quantity of portals seemed to startle it, delaying its attack by a second.
That second was enough for my clone to dive out of the portal. The giant spider’s legs snapped towards my clone the instant it appeared, but its aim was off. Instead of bisecting my clone, it ripped away a huge chunk of its body. My clone had suffered nearly-fatal damage, but it had enough time to do what it needed to do.
My clone reached out towards the ‘tether’ that connected the translucent spider to the horror that lay unseen in the spatial fair. Unlike the fishing line my clone had held together while inside the spatial fair, this time, my clone had an easier job.
It took every single drop of essence it could muster, and tore.
The tether between the translucent spell impression and the spider’s main body shuddered for a few moments. It was far less of a result than I had been hoping for. I had hoped that the spider’s translucent body would collapse entirely, but even with my clone’s entire essence pool, the spider’s translucent body was still intact. However, it looked as if it were lagging - its movements were disjointed and uncoordinated, as it took another swing at my clone.
Before its second attack could connect, the bomb finally exploded.
In a flash of fire and light, my clone’s surroundings became filled with the heat of a bonfire. For a few moments, I couldn’t even process what had happened. My clone disappeared, erased from existence, and the sense of loss sent me reeling in shock.
When I regained my senses, I glanced into the distance. The spider army was still there, but smaller.
Twenty of the spider souls had winked out. Furthermore, I could see a few more spider souls that looked like they were on the verge of disappearing. The previously strong spider souls looked like candles on the verge of winking out - which I was half-tempted to take advantage of. A big part of me wanted to start launching extinguishes at the creatures, and mop up a few more of them - but I restrained myself.
There were still over sixty spiders. If they caught us, we were dead. Wasting my essence attacking them would be a huge blunder, even if I found myself wondering how much Achievement killing a few more spiders would be worth.
Then, another part of my brain caught up with what had happened.
Twenty spiders had died.
Twenty spiders had died.
Originally, I hadn’t hoped for such good results. I had been hoping the bomb would set off the spider’s boosts, and then they would flee before their buffs ran out. However, Felix’s bomb had done more than that. It had outright killed a quarter of the enemy’s forces.
When the spiders had their sound-related Ability turned on, it wasn’t too hard for the little monsters to dodge grenades and shrapnel. They were so fast it was nearly impossible to hit them with fast-moving projectiles. However, Felix’s bomb had hit them before they could turn on their ability. In other words, we had caught them at speeds where dodging wasn’t so easy for them.
<Miria, what do you see?> asked Felix.
I shared my vision with my friends again, and Felix cackled in joy.
<It worked!> He said.
<What did you do?> asked Anise. <When I used {Phoenix’s Last Stand} to hit the bomb with flames, it felt like something ate my fire. It was weird.>
<I turned the whole bomb into a fire amplifier. It doesn’t make much sound anymore, and it also doesn’t do much on its own. Instead, it takes any flames it touches, ‘eats’ them, and then grows them. Then, ten seconds later, it explodes. Most importantly, it doesn’t make much sound - meaning it takes an extra second or two for the spiders to get their physical boosts and react,> he said.
A moment later, however, the delight in our conversation disappeared.
The massive translucent spider, which had been disoriented and half-functional after my clone’s attack, started to stabilize. I saw the spell construct start to rearrange its limbs with the same fluid dexterity as before. A moment later, I felt essence surge, and the flames in the distance winked out like a candle thrown into the ocean. I blinked in surprise.
The giant spider was far more dangerous than expected. The amount of essence it had used felt like it was an order of magnitude greater than my pool of essence - at least. Worse, the spell construct didn’t even seem winded or injured as it brushed off the fire attack Anise and Felix had put their all into.
The spider didn’t wait for me to finish assessing its abilities. Instead, as if it realized it had lost the element of surprise, it started leaping towards the building we had hidden in. With how far each leap took it, the creature was practically flying through the air, like an arachnaphobe’s worst nightmare.
The other spiders were no longer holding back, either. The bomb might have killed several of them, but it had also created a noise and activated their temporary stat boost. The spiders seemed perfectly aware of that - so they were rushing. Since we had stifled any chance for them to leisurely hunt us down and kill us, they had decided to find us and kill us before their time ran out.
<I’m teleporting us in a slightly different direction. I’m hoping that the enemy will rush right by us. Once I teleport us, make sure not to make a sound, all right?> said Felix.
<Got it,> Sallia said, quickly followed by Anise and I.
A moment later, it felt like the four of us were surrounded in a comforting bubble of darkness, before we teleported away.
It was a process that was entirely different from my portal ability. We hadn’t opened a gateway between two spots, and then stepped between them. We hadn’t somehow stepped out of the conventional laws of physics, either, or at least not in a way my brain could interpret. Instead, we had simply snapped from one spot to another, like a rubber band stretched to its limit and then released. I got the faint feeling that Felix’s teleportation skill worked on an entirely different set of principles, compared to my own portals and eldritch teleportation.
I quickly realized that Felix hadn’t perfectly controlled where we landed, either. The four of us found ourselves sitting in the middle of a hallway, and I spent several seconds scanning our surroundings and reorienting myself. I wasn’t even sure whether we were in a house or a store anymore. However, it didn’t matter right now. What mattered was whether we had dodged the spiders. I glanced back towards the spider army, and grinned.
Felix hadn’t teleported us directly ‘away’ from the spiders. Instead, he had teleported us to the right of them, and a bit behind them. We had essentially gone from right outside their search area to an area we had already searched. Being this close to the spiders made me nervous, since even a small sound would give us away - but we were in the Market. Our bodies didn’t have needs the way most normal bodies did. We didn’t even need to breathe if we didn’t want to. Most importantly, Felix had also teleported us up, into what I finally realized was a rather densely packed apartment complex. That would make navigating out of the building a pain later on - but it would make us much harder to find right now.
We sat with bated breath, waiting to see if the spiders would notice us. However, to our surprise, and joy, the spiders didn’t seem to notice our new hiding spot. Over the next fifteen minutes, they tore apart all of the houses and stores in the direction we had travelled, constantly searching for us. They even found the house we had originally hidden in, and ripped up the building - but they seemed baffled by our teleportation afterwards. Whatever sense the translucent spider had for portals and spatial manipulation, it hadn’t managed to detect us as we fled. I wasn’t sure whether it was limited by range, or some other factor - but I was willing to accept any lucky break we could get right now. After ripping up our previous hiding place and finding nothing, the spiders started fanning out from that house. However, this region of the Market was too densely packed with buildings and houses. The spiders came alarmingly close a few times, but none of them managed to find us.
Finally, when the spiders had two minutes left on their speed boost, they started to retreat back towards the Spatial Fair. They had given up.
I felt a surge of hope well up in my mind, until I noticed something.
While the sixty small spiders had started to retreat towards the Spatial fair, one of the spiders had instead remained in the area.
The half-translucent spell construct spider had remained behind.
It hadn’t found us yet, but unlike the smaller spiders, the damn thing wasn’t leaving.
Author’s Note:
Don’t forget: I will be taking the last week of December and the First Week of January off as a vacation. The last chapter for 2024 will be on December 20th (my time), and I will return around January 5th… ish. I mean, that’ll be the day I start working on rough drafts for chapters for the week, which will take a few days to clean up, edit, and release. The first actual chapter of next year is probably going to be around January 7th for Markets and Multiverses, and around Jan 10th for Budding Scientist. (I say around because timezones can make this a bit wonky, and sometimes I upload really late in the… morning, honestly. But you get the general idea).
Join my Discord! (I’m much more active there than in the comments section).
Comments
FallenRock
If this level of enemy is protecting just the spatial fair then I'm scared of what the gang is going to find guarding the extra lives place
MinE
G.G clone Miria. I hope she gets to extinguish the special spider.
