Chapter 144: The Spider

Meanwhile, the ruins of Hanging Spine City looked like the skeleton of a giant beast whose internal organs had been hollowed out in the twilight.

The gray-white city walls were cracked in over a dozen places, seven arrow towers had collapsed, and the city gate had been smashed, only to be hastily sealed with rubble and iron bars. Demon corpses were piled at the foot of the city wall, layer upon layer, soaked in tar and blood.

Elna stood at the highest point of Eagle Beak Cliff, overlooking the fortress she had besieged for two months.

Her dark red eyes reflected the evil fire flickering on the distant city walls, her long silver-white hair blown backward by the sea breeze. Behind her stood two people: Personal Guard Commander Veris and Spider Queen Priestess Masha.

Giske had been gone for two months.

Before that Gnoll pup left, he had gone mad and charged seven times with his fearless Gnolls. Seven charges, seven times tearing the demons' defensive lines apart and having them close, closing and tearing apart.

The last time, he personally carried the battle flag and charged onto the city wall, standing on the parapet for a full half-quarter of an hour until confirming that section of the wall could no longer be held before retreating.

Giske had spent nine months under Hanging Spine City, cumulatively killing over fifty thousand demons. Those corpses were piled at the foot of the city wall like a rolling gray mountain range, and they hadn't finished burning them after two months.

The Gnoll pup was a madman in battle. But the madman was gone, and the battle had to continue.

"Losses?" Elna didn't turn back.

"Four hundred and twenty Drow fallen, Goblin losses exceeding one thousand, and fewer than two hundred Harpies left that can fly."

Veris's voice was steady. "But the demons' losses are greater. That last charge before Marshal Giske left wiped out at least two thousand of their remaining effective forces. Now the total number of demons in the city won't exceed twenty thousand, and more than half are Lesser Demons."

The corners of Elna's mouth moved slightly. Not a smile, but a more faint expression, like spider tentacles trembling lightly.

"Twenty thousand," she repeated. "Besieged for nine months, fought from seventy thousand down to less than twenty thousand. That mad dog Giske saved us quite a bit of effort."

"But My Lady Matriarch," Masha's voice came from behind, carrying the feminine, prayer-like quality unique to Spider Queen Priestesses.

"The evil energy concentration in the city has been rising these past few days. It's not that there are more demons, but something is extracting energy from the ley lines."

Elna turned around and looked toward Hanging Spine City. In the twilight, the evil fire on the city walls was indeed brighter than in the past few days. It wasn't dark red, but a purplish color, like bruised blood.

Glaze.

Elna knew that thing. A demon-manufacturing machine. A type of Abyssal creature that existed solely for reproduction and consumption. It had no fixed form, like a lump of constantly wriggling flesh, wrapping countless unformed Lesser Demon embryos inside.

As long as there was enough energy—corpses, souls, or simple ley line magic—it could produce Lesser Demons at an astonishing speed. A mature Glaze could produce over a hundred Lesser Demons a day.

Those Lesser Demons were only the size of puppies when they were born, wet all over, unable to even stand. But they grew fast. Eating rotten meat for three days, they could grow to half a person's height; eating for a week, they could charge with bone spears;

Eating for a month, some Lesser Demons would begin to molt and mutate, growing dark red scales from beneath their gray-black skin, their size ballooning by a factor of two, turning into Berserkers.

Continuing to eat, kill, and absorb the energy of the Abyss, a very small number of them would continue to evolve—Judgment Demons, Snake Demons, or even Balor Demons.

Glaze didn't produce high-level demons directly. It only produced the lowest-level Lesser Demons. But Lesser Demons were the seeds of the Abyss; give it enough time and nutrients, and it could grow an entire army.

Giske killed fifty thousand demons, but the speed at which he killed might not keep up with the speed at which Glaze produced them.

"Have you found its location?" Elna asked.

Veris took a step forward. "Underground sewers, where we detected signs of massive demon activity."

Elna was silent for a few breaths. "Where is the entrance?"

"Behind the ruins of the old City Hall, there is a vertical shaft blocked by rubble. But there is active space beneath the rubble. Demon patrol teams come out from inside every few days to drag corpses back."

"Frequency?"

"Irregular. Sometimes once every two days, sometimes once every five days. Depends on how hungry Glaze is."

Elna's gaze turned toward the distant city walls. The twilight grew thicker, and the evil fire flickered in the mist like a group of floating ghost fires.

"We need more intelligence," she said. "Veris, pick three Goblins most skilled in stealth and have them sneak in from the shaft. No need for combat, just confirm the location of Glaze and the layout of the nest entrance."

Veris knelt on one knee: "As you command, My Lady Matriarch."

"Masha, set up a Silent Barrier around the ruins of the old City Hall. Don't make the range too large, just enough to cover the shaft entrance. Once things start inside, no sound can be allowed to leak out."

Masha also knelt on one knee, but she didn't say "As you command." She lowered her head, her lips moving slightly, as if chanting something. Elna couldn't hear the words, but she noticed Masha tapping her knee lightly—three short, three long, three short.

The rhythm of the spider.

Elna didn't pursue the question. She turned around and continued watching Hanging Spine City. Night had completely fallen, and the evil fire on the city walls looked particularly piercing in the darkness, like a vertical pupil slowly opening.

"Masha," Elna's voice was very light, "is there any news... from that side?"

Masha took a black crystal the size of a fist from her chest. Something was slowly wriggling inside the crystal—not mist, but something alive.

A spider the size of a fingernail crawled inside the crystal, and every time its eight legs took a step, a fine ripple would spread across the surface of the crystal. Masha held the crystal to her ear, as if listening to some extremely subtle sound that ordinary people couldn't perceive.

The silence lasted for about half a minute. Then Masha tucked the crystal back into her chest, looked up, and looked at Elna with dark red eyes.

"My Lady Matriarch, 'Things in the dark must be seen with eyes in the dark.'"

Elna stared at Masha for a few breaths. She didn't pursue the question, only nodding slightly.

"I know."

She turned and walked down Eagle Beak Cliff. Masha and Veris followed behind, the shadows of the three stretched long in the twilight, cast onto the gray-white rocks like three intertwined snakes slowly crawling.

No, not snakes.

They were the legs of a spider.

Three days later, three Goblins crawled out of the vertical shaft.

They were soaked through, covered in dark green fungal mat fragments and an indescribable stench. The oldest one, named Glick, was an old hand of the Goblin Mobile Corps Commander team, having followed Elna for nearly ten years. He lay on the pile of rubble and panted for a long time before catching his breath.

"My Lady Matriarch," his voice was as hoarse as sandpaper. "It's very deep below. The shaft is about forty feet, and the walls are covered in fungal mats, slippery as hell. At the bottom of the shaft is a tunnel, artificially excavated, with glowing evil energy crystals embedded in the walls."

"And Glaze?"

Glick's expression shifted. The Goblin's face was already wrinkled, but at that moment, the wrinkles deepened.

"At the end of the tunnel is a large circular hall. Inside is a Glaze, huge, at least twenty feet long.

It is coiled in the center of the hall, its body translucent, and you can see it's filled with dense Lesser Demon embryos. Every time it pulses, a hole splits open on its body surface, rolling out four or five Lesser Demons."

"Only one?"

"Only saw one. But there were two recessed niches in the middle of the tunnel, and things were pulsing inside them too. I didn't dare get close, afraid of startling them."

Elna was silent for a few breaths.

"Patrol teams?"

"We waited at the bottom of the shaft for six hours and didn't encounter any patrol teams. Glaze seems hungry; its pulsing frequency is very slow, and the Lesser Demons it produces are also listless, unable to even stand."

"Well done," Elna said. "Glick, take your men to rest. Tomorrow night, we move."

The next night, Elna personally took five Drow and dived into the vertical shaft.

Masha's Silent Barrier had already been set up. Elna didn't know what method she used, but she could feel that from twenty feet below the ruins of the old City Hall, the air was filled with an indescribable viscosity, like walking into a spider web.

Not a physical web, but something more invisible and cold, like an invisible spider weaving an unseen web in the darkness, isolating this small area from the outside world.

Any sound, any magical fluctuation, even any life aura, would be absorbed and swallowed by this web. From the outside, the ruins of the old City Hall looked no different than usual;

But inside here, the sound of clashing blades, the screams of the dying, even the wails of Glaze being torn apart, would not leak out.

When Elna slid to the bottom of the shaft, the tunnel was dead silent.

She walked along the tunnel wall, her scimitar turning silently in her hand. The five Drow behind her lined up, each step landing in the footprints of the one before, like a silent snake.

The tunnel was long, winding, and covered in dark green fungal mats, beneath which faint, thick, vein-like patterns were visible. Those patterns pulsed slowly, as if something was breathing beneath the fungal mats.

Elna stopped before the two niches in the middle of the tunnel.

In each niche curled a translucent lump of flesh, calf-sized, covered in fine cracks.

The interior of the lump surged with dark yellow pus and dense, bean-like Lesser Demon embryos. Their pulsing frequency was very slow, slow enough for Elna to count the intervals between each contraction.

She ignored them. Her scimitar swept upward, the blade cutting through the flesh membrane of the first lump. Dark yellow pus sprayed out, and those unformed embryos struggled a few times in the pus before going still.

The second lump was also cut open a few breaths later. The entire process didn't emit any sound—not because Elna's movements were light, but because Masha's Silent Barrier swallowed everything.

Elna continued walking forward.

The end of the tunnel was a circular hall, larger than she had expected. The dome was embedded with evil energy crystals, the miserable green light illuminating the entire space like a giant stomach.

Coiled in the center of the hall was that Glaze, twenty feet long, with hundreds of Lesser Demon embryos embedded beneath its translucent flesh membrane.

Its pulsing frequency was much faster than the two smaller ones; every time it

Verna watched those small manes pass by her. They didn't even look at her; it wasn't that they hadn't noticed, but that they simply hadn't developed the consciousness to recognize danger.

They only knew to move forward, to walk out of the tunnel, to walk onto the surface, to eat, to grow, to become more powerful demons. Then to be hacked to death by Giske's axe, or pierced through by her scimitar.

Glaze seemed to feel something.

Its pulsing rhythm suddenly accelerated, and bubbles of various sizes began to emerge on the surface of its membrane. The embryos still inside it began to twist violently, as if struggling to come out early.

Verna didn't know if it could "see"; Glaze had no eyes. But it had other ways of perceiving, perhaps vibration, perhaps temperature, perhaps something she didn't know. It knew something had broken into its nest.

Verna did not give it any more time.

Her figure vanished from where she stood; it was a short-range shadow jump. She didn't know where this ability came from, nor did she want to ask. She only knew that when she needed it, the shadows would respond to her.

She appeared on top of Glaze, her scimitar stabbing downward into its core.

Glaze twitched violently. Its membrane collapsed inward, and dark yellow pus and half-formed mane embryos gushed out like a volcanic eruption.

Verna pulled out her scimitar and stabbed again, a second time, a third time. Each time she stabbed, the faint patterns on the blade would light up, as if something were flowing across the edge.

Not magic. Older than magic. Quieter than magic.

Glaze's pulsing grew slower and slower. The membrane lost its luster, becoming gray, white, and withered. The embryos still inside it began to rot, releasing a thick, foul stench.

Verna jumped down from it, standing in the pus, watching this demon-manufacturing machine that once could produce hundreds of manes a day slowly collapse and shatter like a piece of air-dried meat.

She squatted down and picked up a thumb-sized, dark red crystal from Glaze's remains. That was Glaze's core, containing a high concentration of life energy. She tucked the crystal into her bosom and turned to walk toward the tunnel exit.

Behind her, five drow emerged silently from the shadows, following her.

When they climbed out of the shaft, dawn was approaching. The morning breeze blew away the lingering stench of decay in the air. Veris stood guard around the wellhead with his elite guard, their blades stained with blood; a few small manes that had hatched in the tunnel had been silently dealt with by them as they scurried about.

"Matron, the demons in the nest?"

"They are all dead," Verna said. "Glaze is dead too. Hanging Ridge City will no longer have any reinforcements."

She stood on the ruins of the old city hall, watching the evil fire on the distant city walls extinguish bit by bit. Without Glaze to provide new troops, the demons entrenched in the city were an isolated force.

Out of ammunition and food, with no reinforcements and no retreat. They would be like beasts trapped in a cage—mad, desperate, but ultimately, they would all die.

The sea breeze blew from the direction of the Star Fall Strait, scattering the last traces of evil energy mist over Hanging Ridge City. Verna looked down at the Glaze crystal in her hand, its faint light reflected in her dark red eyes.

She tucked the crystal into the deepest hidden pocket of her sleeve.

"The siege begins tomorrow," she said. "Within a month, I want our flag planted on the battlements of Hanging Ridge City."

Veris knelt on one knee: "As you command, Matron."

Verna turned around, taking one last look at the fortress that was about to fall. Then she walked down the ruins and into the morning light.

The morning light was bright, but the shadow behind her was deeper than ever. It wasn't her shadow; it was something else. Those shadows squirmed silently on the rubble like countless thin, long legs, like a net slowly closing in.

Verna did not look back.